The Coding School on AI and Quantum Education

Jeff Kavanaugh:

I'm Jeff Kavanaugh, Global Head of the Infosys Knowledge Institute, and we're here at Infosys Foundation USA Crossroads 2025, where leaders across education, technology, and social impact have come together to shape the future of learning. I'm so happy to be joined by Keira Peltz, founder and CEO of The Coding School, a nonprofit dedicated to training the next generation in emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and data science. Under Keira's leadership, the organization has reached over 50,000 students and educators in more than 130 countries. Now, Keira, thanks for joining us.

Keira Peltz:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited about this.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

I mean, this convergence of technologies—I'm sure separately they're great, but even together. What inspired you first to start The Coding School and focus on building this new generation and these emerging technologies?

Keira Peltz:

Yeah, well, you know, I've never been really a STEM person, which might be shocking considering I run a STEM education nonprofit. But really how I got interested in this space was I was raised by a single mother. I worked really hard throughout middle school and high school to get into my dream university, which was an Ivy League. And I thought, you know what, once I get here, doors are just going to be open to me and I'm not going to have to beg people for chances. I spent so much of high school cold emailing people and just begging them to take a meeting with me. And I thought, once I get to college, I'm set. And so I got to college and I went to a career fair the beginning of my freshman year and I was this really over eager freshman and I went up to all these recruiters and I said, do you have internships? And they said, yes. Do you know how to code? I said, no, I'm an ideas person. And I very quickly found out that I really didn't stand a chance in the job market.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

It’s like in a world that prized English, you didn't know English. So the language they wanted, you didn't know yet.

Keira Peltz:

That was exactly it. And they were really excited about—you know, they weren't turning me down saying, you know, you don't have these skills, you can't come here. But they said, unless you get these skills, the door is not going to be open. And I really started to—exactly like you said, the language piece—was like, wow, coding is the language of the 21st century. And this is something that I'm not versatile in speaking in. And so I thought, you know, what's the natural thing to do? Learn how to code. Let me enroll in the introductory computer science class—no-brainer—but I quickly found out that it was one of the hardest classes at my university and that over 50% of the students fail or drop out because it's so difficult.

And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to go out and try to do my part and try to offer long-term computer science instruction to K through 12 students to make sure they don't have the same experience I do when I get to college.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Your programs have had a global impact. We mentioned 130 countries. Let's zoom in on a few highlights. Can you share just one or two success stories and where it's made a difference?

Keira Peltz:

Yeah, I mean, I think what makes me so passionate about this space—a lot of people who start organizations or nonprofits, they are typically STEM inclined. They are people where STEM made sense to them. And so they want to spread that knowledge and passion to others. And for me, I'm on the opposite side. I was never encouraged to pursue STEM. Math was my favorite subject. No one told me there were opportunities that I should keep on pursuing because I loved mathematics.

And so I'm really focused on creating programs for young people like myself who are, again, maybe not STEM-inclined, don't have the support at home, but could do really well if they're given the right opportunities. And so we've always been focused on making sure that we're at the cutting edge of technology because that's what students need. We need to be preparing them for the jobs when they actually enter the workforce. So kind of to that end, I'm really proud that we were some of the first in the space to be introducing emerging technologies like AI, which we launched our first programs in 2016 for K through 12 students and educators. Quantum computing—we were the first globally to introduce quantum computing outside of kind of elite institutions to middle school students and above starting in 2019.

So at a high level, I'm really proud of those accomplishments. We were able to kind of move the conversation forward beyond foundational computer science and say, hey, not only should students and educators be learning about these technologies, they can do this. Because that was the biggest pushback that we were getting. And so I'm so happy now. AI—no one's questioning that. Everyone's saying they should learn it. But that was definitely not the case five-plus years ago.

And then I think on kind of a more programmatic level, we were the first to introduce nationwide for high school credit classes in AI and quantum computing for high school students. So any student in the US, as long as you had access to a computer and internet connection, could take a class no matter where you were located for two semesters worth of credit in quantum computing or in AI, no prerequisites required, and really ensured that students around the country could have access to these skills even if our education system hadn't kept up in the way it's needed to.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

And you don't need to know how to build these technologies, but you have to understand enough.

Keira Peltz:

I like to think about it as, you know, driving a car. You don't need to know how to kind of put together the car or fix all of it. But like if your car breaks down, you want to know how to jump the car. You need to be able to know how to change your tire.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Put the system to work for you.

Keira Peltz:

Exactly. And so for us, learning these core technologies, especially the technologies that are going to change the world. So big data, AI, quantum computing, biotechnology.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

I like the fact that you had data science as well because in our own research at the Knowledge Institute, we're finding that data and AI are so intertwined. AI is no good without good data, and data has to be structured, unstructured, and so does that relationship.

Keira Peltz:

You know, I love that you just kind of honed in on the data piece because we offer a four-week professional development for high school educators. Again, assume no prior prerequisites.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

So, you're teaching the teachers.

Keira Peltz:

We're teaching the teachers and we spend the first two weeks of this Foundations of AI program on data science. And the number one thing we kept hearing was like, okay, this is cool, but let's get to the fun stuff. Let's get to the cool stuff. I said, like, this is the core. This is the heart of AI.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

It's like this building. The boring part is the floor you're on and the infrastructure, but without that none of this is possible.

Keira Peltz:

Exactly. And so that's almost one of the biggest things that we have to switch in our learners’ minds—is that data and cleaning the data, making sure it's not biased in certain ways, making sure it's good data, as you said, making sure we are asking the right questions to get this data. Like that's where a lot of people's time needs to be spent and we need thoughtful analysis. And so it's been interesting to try to get students and educators to really see that as the important part, less on the really cool deep learning models or the things that can be done in GenAI because those wouldn't be around if we didn't have great data.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Well, now that we have that foundation in place, let's talk about the cool stuff. Things like AI, quantum computing—those are moving fast. How do you see them influencing the future of education and how is The Coding School helping educators keep up?

Keira Peltz:

I love this question. So I think that there's a lot of focus, especially with AI right now on AI tools. And when we talk about AI literacy, it's, you know, how do we use GenAI effectively in classrooms? Also, The Coding School—we’re less focused on the tool side as we talked about previously. We really want to make sure that students and educators understand why this tool exists.

And what's exciting about these different technologies, whether it's AI, quantum computing, data science, biotech—they all rely on the same core skills. And so if you're teaching students about AI, you're still building out the basics of programming that's related to quantum computing or that's related to computational genomics. And so what's really exciting for me is to be able to see for students how those build on top of each other and not have them be so siloed. And so that's a core part of what we do with our educators.

We focus at a high level of introducing educators to all these different emerging technologies. We don't think that they should just be focusing on one versus another. They're all really important and students should have awareness of all of these. And then we, after we kind of build that initial knowledge and also break down the idea that, you know, only geniuses can do quantum computing, or only geniuses can be building AI models.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Democratizing all this.

Keira Peltz:

Exactly. Then we really start to build out the foundational skills for teachers, which often comes as quite a shock to them because we've found that a lot of people are so focused on just training teachers to think about these technologies and don't trust them to be able to learn these technologies. And so we treat them just like we would treat anyone else. And we say, you're going to learn the basics of Python. You're going to learn how to build a traditional machine learning model.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

You can’t teach until you learn.

Keira Peltz:

Exactly. And so we really work with teachers on building out these foundational skills so if they can feel like they can do this—which they absolutely can—then they can bring that to their students and say, I'm doing this. You can do this too.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Putting a different hat on, as a nonprofit, how do you use thought leadership—whether it's facts, research, stories—to build support, attract partners, and drive change?

Keira Peltz:

Yeah. So I mean, if we're an organization focused on teaching about good data, we want to live that as well. So we are very data driven. Everything that we do is based on kind of pre and post-tests with our students and educators. We track students down the road to see kind of where they end up, how our programs could have impacted them. And so internally, we really focus on the data aspects. How are we moving the needle. And that's something we focus on conveying to external stakeholders as well.

However, I think what really—we can use all the data that we want. At the end of the day, people care about stories. They want to see that data come to light. And so because we've been in the space for over a decade now, we're able to show some of our students who have started with us in high school and now are getting PhDs and really say, you know, it was that introductory class that you taught on quantum computing that led me to get this PhD. Like I would not have thought about this.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

So you have your own alumni network become ambassadors for you.

Keira Peltz:

And actually a lot of our alumni come back and teach for us later on and come back and volunteer. So it's been really incredible to see the full circle and it's important. Like we can't do this without our incredible instructors. We can't do this without our mentors, without our advocates. Like it really requires an entire village to make sure that we have an education system for the 21st century.

Jeff Kavanaugh:

Awesome. Well, I’ll let you get back to the overall conference. Keira, thank you so much for the incredible work that you're doing to equip the next generation with the tools they need to thrive in the digital world. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance and to support your effort.

Keira Peltz:

Thank you so much.