Aileen Owens

Aileen is Business Development & Operations Director for Schools That Can Pittsburgh. She leads STC’s operations with an expanded focus on business development. This includes developing opportunities to introduce students to emerging careers that contribute to an innovation economy as seen through the aerospace sector and other growing industries.

She will continue to advance career awareness, career readiness, durable skills, design thinking, and computational thinking skills.

Aileen has an extensive history building and leading innovative teaching and learning experiences in K-12 and higher education specifically focused on strategic planning and implementation of computer science, computational thinking and STEAM pathways. Prior to working at Schools That Can, Aileen was Director of Technology and Innovation at South Fayette Township School District (2010-2021) where she and her team built one of the nation’s first vertically aligned CS / CT pathways. Among other experiences embedding computational thinking into the curriculum, Aileen worked as project manager on an NSF Grant Developing a K-8 Coding Pathway for two Eastern KY districts (2010 - 2021) and as a Co-Principal Investigator on a second NSF Grant (2023 - 2026) which extends the previous work to create, implement, and study CT lessons that are connected to local cultural heritage of problem solving.

Aileen is the recipient of Education Week’s Leaders to Learn From Award; Pennsylvania ASCD Outstanding Research and Publication Award; the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) Frank Withrow Outstanding CTO Award; and the PAECT Chief Technology Officer of the Year.