Hey! 👋 I'm Skyler

Growing up as a kid in Vancouver, I dreamed of being an astronaut and exploring the universe. When I was 12, I came across Chris Hadfield's book—An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth—and learned about how his Glider Pilot training in the Canadian Air Cadet program was crucial to his success in becoming an astronaut; I joined Air Cadets immediately. At 16, I had the amazing opportunity to train at Comox Air Force Base on the Glider Pilot Summer Training Scholarship during the summer of 2019. Over the summer of 2020, I represented Canada at an international summer program that brought together student delegates from over 21 countries. I led a team of North and South American students, where I pitched our metal 3D printing plant design to a panel of NASA engineers.

After this experience, I wanted to continue working in space exploration advocacy, so I became the Chief Recruiting Officer at Canada's Students for the Exploration and Development of Space as the only high school student in a collegiate organization. After graduating with a dual IB and French Immersion diploma, I was fortunate enough to choose from $200,000 in scholarship offers across 20 universities. I decided to take a risk and reject all university offers, and pursue my dreams in aerospace and entrepreneurship on a gap year.

I began my gap year pursuing my Private Pilot's License while being involved in two university rocket teams. After using Python to build an orbit propagator, I fell into a rabbit hole of building projects that used software engineering to solve global problems. One of these problems was revealed while I was travelling abroad — many talented students do not have access to opportunities where they could reach their fullest potential. I sought to build a more inclusive world and co-founded a startup, Sonder, a hiring marketplace that matched students to internships.

At 18, I raised 6 figures at a multi-million valuation from the Thiel Fellowship founders to support this mission. Sonder was also in the top 10% of applicants for YCombinator, for their Summer 2022 batch. In 2022, I lived in a startup co-living house in San Francisco, living amongst a thriving, diverse community of talented AI researchers and startup founders. During June to August 2022, I travelled to Toronto, New York, and France to present our product at technology and cryptography conferences.

I realized that I would better serve humanity if I focused on learning about the problems that are stopping us from becoming a multiplanetary species, and then applying my experience from Sonder to scale a solution through a space startup. I became so curious about how software, hardware, and science blend to establish humanity on Mars, that I decided to pause Sonder, return to my quest for truth, and began my studies in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

Currently, I'm a student researcher at the NASA Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES) through the Arkin Laboratory at UC Berkeley. I'm exploring how we can solve the habitation problem on Mars using autononomous construction robots.

In my free time, I love flying drones, reading, writing, and playing guitar.

PS - I hesitate to write a bio because I believe you should constantly evolve.