Elena Céspedes Escalante

For the past four years, Elena has helped make the math in MathHero meaningful, engaging, and effective for children. Her work spans how mathematical ideas are introduced, how problems are written, and how children build understanding through practice. She writes and reviews problems and explores how children respond to different approaches before they are introduced into the game.

Elena was educated in the Russian mathematical tradition and holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and a master's degree in Mathematics, both with honors, along with an additional qualification in higher education teaching.

Elena also prepares children for mathematics olympiads and works one-on-one with children who struggle with math. This teaching experience informs her work with MathHero. She is a mother of two.

On the MathHero blog, Elena writes for parents about how mathematical understanding develops — from counting to addition and from addition to multiplication — and why the order in which children learn these skills matters.