Sherry Lassiter

President & CEO

Sherry Lassiter is one of the architects of the MIT global initiative for field on-site technology development, the Fab Lab program. A Fab Lab, or as users like to call it, fabulous laboratory, is a rapid prototyping platform for technical education, innovation and personal expression. The Fab Lab network includes over 1,750 digital fabrication facilities in 100 countries. Lassiter is Director of the Fab Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to building technical capacity in a locality, improving individuals’ abilities to develop themselves and their communities and bringing access to tools and knowledge that cultivate and support innovating practices.

After a two-decade career in science journalism as producer, writer and director for television series such as Scientific American Frontiers, Discover the World of Science, and The Science Times, she became a protagonist in science and technology, becoming part of the story, rather than just telling the story. As Program Manager for the NSF-funded Center for Bits & Atoms at MIT she has seen and enabled the personal fabrication movement as it has grown and evolved. Today she serves as Director of the global Fab Lab Program at MIT as well as leading the The Fab Foundation, the non-profit spinoff from MIT.

Neil Gershenfeld

Chairman of the Board

Prof. Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. His unique laboratory is breaking down boundaries between the digital and physical worlds, from creating molecular quantum computers to virtuosic musical instruments. Technology from his lab has been seen and used in settings including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and rural Indian villages, the White House and the World Economic Forum, inner-city community centers and automobile safety systems, Las Vegas shows and Sami herds.

He is the author of numerous technical publications, patents, and books including Fab, When Things Start To Think, The Nature of Mathematical Modeling, and The Physics of Information Technology, and has been featured in media such as The New York Times, The Economist, and the McNeil/Lehrer News Hour. He is the originator of the growing global network of field fab labs that provide widespread access to prototype tools for personal fabrication, and directs the Fab Academy, the associated program for distributed research and education in the principles and practices of digital fabrication.

Blair Evans

Board Member

Blair Evans is Founder and Director of Incite Focus, a production and training lab focused on relationships between: Digital Fabrication, Permaculture, Experiential Learning, and Appropriate Technology. Blair is committed to engaging people in understanding their own ability to live a well-lived life. Issues of self-determination, self-sufficiency, and self-sustainability reflect in his work at Incite Focus.

Blair believes in the philosophy, “Work and spend less; create and connect more.” Blair promotes a greater sense of individual autonomy by developing community member capacity to make the things that they and their communities need; instead of depending upon external resources. Blair empowers community members to create the conditions of change and to make system-level changes which will prepare individuals to operate within a system of individual and group agency.

Blair's experience includes curriculum development in direct and advisory roles for K-12, college and professional development. Blair worked as a principal agent in designing, starting and training for over half a dozen Fab Labs and with many more collaborations. Since 2012, Blair is an instructor in Fab Academy. He also instructs a registered apprenticeship program based on Digital Fabrication.

His early career evolved from product designer, team leader, and group leader at Hewlett Packard and technology-based SMEs, to technical co-founder and VP of Engineering of MicroTouch Systems from start-up through public offering on NASDAQ. He has early inventions in touchscreen technologies.

Marie Planchard

Board Member

Marie Planchard is Director of Education & Early Engagement, at SOLIDWORKS, DASSAULT SYSTEMES. She is responsible for global development of content and social outreach for the SOLIDWORKS platform across all levels of learning including educational institutions, Fab Labs, and start-up companies.

Marie is responsible for the SOLIDWORKS Certification Academic program, providing highly qualified graduates to commercial engineering and design companies. She also manages the SOLIDWORKS Entrepreneur Program that helps young start-up companies design innovative products. As creator/author of the STEM Teacher Blog, Marie shares stories about students, teachers, entrepreneurs, and fabbers that design and make great things happen.

Katie Rast

Board Member

In 2007, Katie co-founded the San Diego Fab Lab. With a commitment to educational access, she built local partnerships and created a community-embedded learning laboratory. As Director, she developed programs, and established a social enterprise to increase sustainability and support for the organization’s mission. This effort expanded the Fab Lab’s offerings to include a fee-for-service model, and made over 4,000 no-cost educational experiences for K-12 students possible. In addition to college and career preparation, Fab Lab supported the local innovation ecconomy by providing access to tools, teams and training for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Katie has collaborated to launch local events to spark civic dialogue, including the Urban Prototyping Festival, San Diego Maker Faire, Smart City Hackathon, and the National Day of Civic Hacking. These efforts brought citizens, government, and academic partners together to consider community challenges through prototyping practices that place people at the center of the solution.

As a consultant, Katie has been a Senior Strategist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Design Lab, and has supported Fab Foundation, including with the General Electric Brilliant Career Lab pilot program in Boston.

Katie is currently the Director of Community Impact at The San Diego Foundation, working to maximize the impact of philanthropic investments through the development and management of a portfolio of programs that support the San Diego region.

With an ongoing commitment to the extraordinary Fab Lab community, Katie currently volunteers with the Fab Foundation, serving as a Board Member.

Luciano Betoldi

Vice President and COO

Luciano Betoldi has been involved in the Fab Lab Network since 2009, initially through his work at Fab Lab Barcelona, the Fab Academy program and most recently, by joining the Fab Foundation in 2016.

Trained as a Product Designer at IED Barcelona and as an Interaction Designer at Elisava Design School, Luciano’s early work focused on the intersection of manufacturing and craft. Exploring this theme inevitably led him to discover digital fabrication and the creation of projects such as Made@EU - a collaborative educational platform and exchange program, designed to introduce craftspeople and artist across Europe to digital fabrication tools and processes, with the support of the European Commission.

As VP of Operations at the Fab Foundation, his focus is to deliver on our core mission and expand access to digital fabrication across the globe, working closely with stakeholders to develop and refine our consultancy services and establish global best practices for grassroots innovation. In this role, Luciano has spearheaded the development of an ultra low-cost, off-the-shelf Fab Lab and deployed the first Super Fab Lab commissioned by the Fab Foundation - a state of the art research grade facility in Charlotte, NC (USA).

Most recently, Luciano has been a major driving force in the establishment of Fab Hub Kendall, a new home for the Fab Foundation and a global home for the Fab Lab Network.

Norella Coronell

Fab Foundation Forum Project Manager, Special Projects Consultant

As a Product Designer from Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla (Colombia) and with a Master’s Degree in Project Management from IEP Madrid, Norella’s early approach in the Fab Lab World came when she discovered through a tweet what a fab lab was, she became an intern at Fab Lab Barcelona (Spain) in 2012. Later in 2015, she became part of the Fab Lat Network (Latinoamerica), becoming the Regional Coordinator and finally, in 2017 she held the Fab Academy Diploma at Fab Lab Santiago (Chile), where she also co-organize the International Fab Lab Conference FAB13.

Norella joined the Fab Foundation team in 2017 as Special Projects Consultant where she aims to develop new tools and programs on how to work in a collaborative way among the network an facilitate communications between regional networks through the Fab Foundation Forums which she will coordinate based on her skills on Networking Strategies.

She currently lives in Barranquilla, Colombia and teaches the undergraduate course Technological Design on her former University.

Melvin LaPrade

Consultant, SCOPES-DF

Melvin LaPrade is a consultant with the Fab Foundation for the SCOPES-DF project. Melvin’s areas of expertise and research address both traditional issues, such as narrowing racial and gender achievement gaps as well as new challenges, such as the implementation of Common Core State Learning Standards with fidelity. Melvin was the Founding Director of Development for the Benjamin Banneker Academy for Community Development in Central Brooklyn, NY, a college-preparatory community development-themed middle/high school created by the Gates Foundation small school initiative. As Managing Partner of the New York based National Urban Research group, his thought leadership consultant practice works to shape the broader P-16 educational policy landscape by conducting analysis, research and idea generation on approaches objectively demonstrated to reach traditionally underserved neighborhoods, first-generation college students, low-income students and their families. In the fall of 2015, Melvin implemented the Clement School Analytics Leadership Team (C-SALT) model at CMSD Investment School Kenneth W. Clement Boys Leadership Academy (KCBLA). This model resulted in over 94 percent of KCBLA students meeting the 3rd grade Ohio Reading Guarantee promotion benchmark, and 80 percent of 7th grade student’s recorded MAP RIT scores above the 50th percentile.

Melvin is a graduate of CMSD schools, East High. He did his undergraduate work at Howard University, Master’s at Cleveland State University, and Post-graduate studies, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Ph.D. Program at M.I.T.

Chelsea Lynn

General Manager

Chelsea has multi-sector experience in operations, project management, and stakeholder engagement. As General Manager, Chelsea oversees the daily operations and administration of the organization, coordinates with program teams, and communicates with labs around the world. She ensures the steady functioning of the foundation across all portfolios and helps design better, more efficient workflows and strategies for the organization.

Prior to joining Fab Foundation, Chelsea was a team manager for the Massachusetts Covid-19 contact tracing program and directed strategic engagement with health departments across the Commonwealth. Earlier in her career, Chelsea was a Procurement Specialist supporting the development of projects at the US Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State. She earned her Master's in Women, Peace and Security from the Department of Gender Studies at the London School of Economics.

Jean-Michel Molenaar

Sr. Deployment manager

Jean-michel Molenaar works for the Foundation as a Deployment manager on international and US based projects, from contract negotiation to procurement and from installation and training management to project development. He also handles most of the internal IT infrastructure, and works on several of the websites the Fab Foundation runs. He has been setting up Fab Labs since 2007, starting out in the Netherlands, but eventually moving to various other countries to set up spaces and programs.

He speaks 4 languages, has a book published in French on digitally controlled machines and co-created The Resilience Collective, a group working on using digital technology for the most vulnerable populations around the globe. He lives in the French alps with his wife and 3 young sons.

Rodney Williams

Program Manager, Education and Outreach

Rodney manages and implements Fab Foundation's educational outreach projects with public, corporate and private partners across the world.

Prior to joining Fab Foundation, Rodney was the Director of Marketing and Communications with The Ancona School and began his tenure with the school as the Technology Integration Coordinator. Earlier in his career, Rodney was the Technology Specialist with the William K. New Sullivan Elementary School.

Rodney earned his Ed.D. in Educational Psychology and Technology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, his Master of Science in Applied Technology from DePaul University, and his undergraduate degree in Youth Development from DePaul University. Rodney resides in Chicago, IL.

In Memoriam: Fiore Basile

Chief Information Officer

Our colleague, good and dear friend, adventuring spirit, innovator and Bit Ninja Fiore Basile passed away November 2019. Fiore has been and will always be a part of the fab family, a part of all of us. We will miss him, and we carry his spirit and memory with us, always. Should you wish, you can make a contribution toward the Fiore Basile Scholarship Fund at donate.fabevent.org.