Anna Ly

Ms. Ly is the Senior Manager of Programming and Operations for Sesame Workshop. Until 2015, she was the Senior Manager of Business and Creative Ventures for the Cooney Center. Previously, she completed an undergraduate degree in Business, Finance and Human-Computer Interaction with a focus in Communication Design from Carnegie Mellon. After several years in finance, she linked business with technology at IBM, where she worked for three years as a Business Strategy Consultant. She then completed a Master’s degree at Stanford’s Learning, Design and Technology program. At Stanford, her work focused on UX Research and Design, educational Tangible User Interfaces, and socio-emotional learning for children with autism. She has worked on interactive paper-based electronics including Papert Tronics and launched several applications to help children and adolescents with autism understand emotions in the context of their own lives, including Emotionary and Me.Mu for Kinect. While at Stanford, Anna worked for Intel as a UX Design Specialist where she focused on designing user experiences for the future, primarily in education. In the Fall of 2012, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center selected Anna to be the 2012-2013 Fellow to work on research and industry efforts under the Games and Learning and Learning Together core initiatives. A year later, Anna was named the Industry Fellow, a role in which she supported research efforts, assisted with strategy and partnerships, and created tools for media producers and investors. During her stint, the Fred Rogers Center named Anna an Early Career Fellow and provided her a grant to develop games for joint-media engagement. Now, in her new position as Senior Manager of Business and Creative Ventures at the Cooney Center, Anna is responsible for strategic planning and growth, forming partnerships, producing media and publications that inform and raise the sector, staying aware of trends, influencers, and innovation in digital media and learning, and building out game and media development projects. She is also part of the Content Innovation Lab group at Sesame, which develops innovative learning experiences for preschool age children using emerging technologies.