Kavindya Thennakoon

Kavindya is the Co-Founder and Head of Product at Tilli and a Learning Sciences researcher at Stanford. Tilli is an award-winning, play-based social-emotional learning tool used by over 8000+ learners, incubated at Stanford. Tilli combines the powers of machine learning and data and the joys of play to build and measure 8 foundational cognitive skills by a child’s 10th birthday. Tilli is a UNICEF Venture Fund portfolio company and has been recognized by leading organizations in the education space like IDEO, Sesame Workshop, Playful Minds, and UNOSSC

Kavindya conducts research in early childhood development and child-caregiver relationships at the SPARK Lab at Stanford where she is pursuing her doctoral studies. She obtained her MSc. in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford University where she was awarded the Dean’s Fellowship, and her BA from Wellesley College, MA in Anthropology. She has worked for companies like Google for Education, Meta, 2U, MIT Media Lab, and Coursera, researching and building high-impact learning tools that have reached over a billion learners.

Kavindya won both the inaugural Queen’s Young Leaders Award and the Harvard Global Trailblazers Award for her impact within the local education space.