Kavindya Thennakoon

Kavindya Thennakoon, from Dehiowita, Sri Lanka, is pursuing a PhD in developmental and psychological sciences at Stanford School of Education. She graduated from Wellesley College majoring in anthropology and cinema studies and was chosen as the student commencement speaker. She then earned a master of science degree in learning, design, and technology from Stanford, where she was a Dean’s Fellow. Kavindya is a play designer and researches early childhood education with a focus on understanding how foundational skills like self-awareness, empathy, and metacognition can be built and measured. She is the co-founder of Tilli, a play-based learning tool that builds eight foundational cognitive skills before a child’s 10th birthday. Tilli has been used by over 15,000 learners globally and is a UNICEF Innovation portfolio company. Before this, she worked as a learning researcher at Google for Education. Kavindya is a recipient of the Queen’s Young Leaders Award and Stanford’s EDGE fellowship.