Knatokie Ford, PhD

“We have a mismatch between the supply and this growing demand for people with skills in science, technology, engineering and math… This diversity challenge is not just a matter of us needing more workers — we’re actually missing out on ideas.”

Knatokie Ford is the founder and CEO of Fly Sci Enterprise, an education and media consulting organization focused on leveraging the power of storytelling to promote social change, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

An international advocate for STEM inclusion, Ford works to increase accurate portrayals of women and girls in media as the STEM & Entertainment Engagement Advisor to the Association of National Advertisers’ #SeeHer initiative. She also works with YouTube and Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls.

Ford is a former Senior Policy Advisor to the Obama Administration’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where she oversaw development of national initiatives including the “Image of STEM” project to raise visibility and improve the image of STEM fields and careers. As a former AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at OSTP with the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Ford managed projects on education technology and improving the U.S. healthcare system.

Ford has served on the YouTube Kids Global Advisory Committee, the Toy Association’s STEM/STEAM Strategic Leadership Committee, and the Barbie Global Advisory Council. She has been recognized by the Women’s Choice Awards and featured in the book BLACK GIRLS ROCK!

Ford received her B.S. and M.S. in chemistry and biological chemistry from Clark Atlanta University, and her Ph.D. in experimental pathology from Harvard University studying age-related macular degeneration. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Schepens Eye Research Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.