Linda Liukas

Author

Linda Liukas is Finland’s most renowned coding ambassador and author-illustrator. Linda travels the world as a keynote speaker and her speaking topics range from education to AI. She shares the message of embracing coding and computing at technology conferences, teacher training sessions and even at the United Nations. Her 2015 TED talk has gathered over 2 million views. In 2014 Liukas was awarded Finland’s State Prize for her services to making digital technology education accessible for children. In 2017 Linda won China’s biggest design award, the Design Intelligence Award, and in 2018 she was named by Forbes list as one of the most influential women in tech.

Linda is the creator of Hello Ruby, a children’s picture book series about the whimsical world of computers which has been a worldwide success story since its release in 2015. The Hello Ruby series has been translated into 37 languages. Hello Ruby made its debut on Kickstarter and quickly reached its $10,000 funding goal after just 3.5 hours, gathering 380 000 dollars in total funding. Linda is co-founder of Rails Girls, a global initiative teaching coding to girls in over 260 cities.

Linda has studied business, design and engineering at Aalto University and product engineering at Stanford University.
She loves Muji, Zelda Fitzgerald, software, and sparkly things.

“Writing software is about expression, creativity, and practical application. Our kids should learn to bend, join, break and combine code in a way it wasn’t designed to. Just as they would with crayons and paper or wood and tools. I believe there’s plenty to learn in programming logic and culture before showing children a single screen.”
 
– Linda Liukas

Awards & nominations