ACE Community Spotlight: Yaritza Villalba 🎉 🤩 ❤️

ACE Community Spotlight ✨

Back again with our monthly space to celebrate the educators, stories, and creativity happening across our community. We say it a lot, but this community feels the way it feels because of YOU. So each month, we pause to celebrate all the good things happening across the community and celebrate you!

This month, we're shining the light on someone who showed what happens when creativity, real-world challenges, AI, and purpose come together. 🙌

Meet Yaritza Villalba 🎉

Yaritza began her career teaching Social Studies to high school students in Brooklyn, and she's been building culturally relevant resources for teachers, students, and families ever since. She's the founder of McKenzie's Adventures LLC, the author of the McKenzie's Adventures book series, and an ACE Innovator who believes students deserve real stages for their real ideas.

Her IGNITE Talk at Summit 🎤

Let's start at the Adobe Education Summit in San Jose, where Yaritza presented and shared her IGNITE Talk with the community. Those three-minute stories pack a lot into a small window, and hers set the tone for what she went on to build: students with real ideas, real tools, and a stage worth standing on. 🫶

10 Students. 10 Weeks. 1 Big Stage. 🦈

Here's where the impact really showed up.

On August 7, Zenith Prep Academy students from across the U.S. took the stage at Adobe Headquarters in San Jose to pitch real-world solutions and community impact apps they developed during a 10-week STEM For Change experience that Yaritza and her team at McKenzie's Adventures LLC led. Students traveled in with a family member or guardian, and the day was Shark Tank style: a Creative Pitch competition in front of a panel of Creative Shark judges from Adobe and Foot Locker.

Keynote speaker Reggie Stephens, former NFL player and community leader, opened the day with an inspiring message, and a group of local Adobe Student Ambassadors from higher education institutions shared their own creative journeys. The students also had conversations with the Foot Locker Sponsors and toured Adobe HQ.

And the pitches? They blew our minds. There were working prototypes, fully deployed apps, and solutions already being rolled out in real communities. Students tackled:

• Live medical interpretation and translation
• Gamifying environmental solutions to reduce pollution and waste
• Mental health and addiction support
• Helping teens manage stress with AI mood detection, music, and resources
• Adaptive college prep counseling that grows with students
• Eliminating misinformation on social media
• Supports for under-served students with language barriers
• Smarter nutrition for ADHD
• Eradicating food waste
• Prolonging food usability

Read that list one more time. These weren't class projects waiting for a grade. They were tools students built because they saw a problem in their community and decided to do something about it. Yaritza said it best, “The energy was electric, the ideas were inspiring, and the future was on full display.” 💯

The day also gave us a front row seat to something we care deeply about, K-12 and Higher Education connecting in the same room. Families learned about Student Spaces and our Adobe Student and educator programs, and we even met parents who are higher education faculty and wanted to explore ways to get involved. A day of Community CARE in action. ❤️

From San Jose to Southeast Alaska 🏔️

Yaritza didn't take a victory lap. She took the model north.

In late September, she led a 5-day STEM For Change intensive in Juneau, Alaska, in partnership with Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Alaska Society for Technology in Education, as a workforce development opportunity for students across Southeast Alaska. She used Adobe Express, Book Creator from Kami, and Microsoft Learn to help students build real skills. 🧰

Her takeaway was one we can't stop thinking about. Students in rural communities were eager to explore pathways that helped them see themselves in tech-driven careers, and as she put it, the future of CTE is STEM.

From there, she carried the work on to Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, bringing the same energy to even more students. She also gave a shout out to our team in her thank yous. Right back at you, Yaritza! 💙
 

Your Turn 💬

This spotlight only works if it keeps going, and that means we need YOU.

Did something click for you recently? Did you try something new with Adobe Express or Student Spaces, host a training, or watch a student turn an idea into something real? Add it to the comments below, write your own post, and link your social posts and stories celebrating what you and your learning community are learning, creating, and sharing. We'd love to shine the light on YOU next month, and the month after that. 🎉

And if Yaritza's work inspires you, tell her! Leave a note below. 👇

This is your community. Let's keep celebrating each other's stories! ❤️🎉💯

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