Built by an engineer and parent — to make problem solving a habit

Aasquare Academy started the way a lot of good things in Silicon Valley do: with an engineer looking at what was available and deciding to build something better.

I am a Silicon Valley parent, deeply passionate about helping kids become innovators and problem solvers — and empowering them with the tools and knowledge to take on the challenging problems we face every day. For the last 10 years I have volunteered in Cupertino, CA schools to encourage math and programming, work that has been recognized with volunteering appreciation awards.

As a parent, I also toured the local options — coding academies, robotics franchises, enrichment classes. Almost all of them shared the same ceiling: follow the kit, earn the certificate, move to the next level. Fine as activities. But nothing like what actual engineering feels like — and nothing that produces work a student can point to years later.

To create a larger impact and help build the next generation of innovators, I created this platform with one goal: make problem solving a habit. I believe in pitching knowledge and ideas to kids constantly, at a consumable pace, so they naturally come to enjoy working with technology — building the basic fundamentals early instead of hitting students with sudden exposure in high school and college.

So we mentor students the way engineers are actually trained: real projects, real reviews, real deadlines, and a finished artifact as the goal. That approach has carried our students to competition wins and engineering portfolios they can point to — students who started as curious kids and finished as people who can define a problem, build a solution, and defend their work.

College admissions have changed. To get into a top STEM college, it is no longer enough to excel in high school — students also need to demonstrate the ability to innovate and solve problems by collaborating with others. And kids interested in technology careers should know: the tech industry wants ready-made talent and does not invest enough in training new talent. That makes early exposure essential — it lets kids discover which parts of technology they have a natural affinity for, and specialize there.

Learning technology paired with a mentor who has deep technology experience is one of the most impactful investments you can make in your child. Aasquare Academy is that mentorship, made into a program: two tracks — the year-round Robotics & AI Mentoring program and the High School Tech Hero program — one standard, and cohorts kept deliberately small, because the thing that makes it work was never the curriculum. It was the attention.