NSB Logo Ann Makosinski Ann Makosinski

Ann Makosinski

Speaker

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Student Inventor, Google Science Fair Winner & Forbes 30 Under 30

An all-around 21st century Renaissance woman, Andini is best known for her invention of the Hollow Flashlight, a flashlight that runs off the heat of the human hand, and the eDrink; a coffee mug that harvests the excess heat of your hot drink and converts it into electricity to charge your phone. She is currently writing her first book, focused on The Inventing Mindset, which is set to be released by a major publisher in Spring 2024. Andini has given 5 TEDx talks, is a brand ambassador for Maybelline’s new Green Edition sustainable makeup line, one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30, Time Magazine’s 30 Under 30 World Changers, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Young Millionaires, and Glamour Magazine’s College Women of the Year, and Popular Science’s Young Inventor of the Year.

Keynote Speeches

Virtual Keynotes & Webinars
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Combining Science and Art

Andini discusses the crucial yet often overlooked combination of science and art in the world around us. She encourages the audience to rethink the many stereotypes that the media has perpetuated over the years around people who pursue STEM versus Arts. Andini questions why we pit these fields against each other, instead of celebrating the many ways in which science and art are intrinsically linked. Andini believes that if we start showing the synergy between the arts and sciences at an earlier age in the educational system, it could cause a radical shift in society and cause a new generation of inventors and proactive problem-solvers to evolve.

Andini’s Life Story

One of her most requested talks, Andini focuses on her unique growing up experience – infused with classical opera, silent movies from the 1910’s, taking old electronics apart, inventing using garbage, eating insects, collecting bones, filming and editing with her dad on his documentary shoots, and beginning her science fair journey. Andini then explores the various international science fairs she competed in during her teenage years, and how her infamous inventions of the Hollow Flashlight and the eDrink came about while she was in high school.

21st Century Education

Let’s face it – the educational system is radically behind in the majority of countries around the world. The way we are teaching youth and what we are teaching them isn’t always inspiring them to become pro-active, autonomous learners outside the classroom. We need to equip students with 21st century skills, yet so often we are still seeing the stuffy classroom, textbook homework questions, and rigid class structure in place. This causes education (in the students’ eyes) to morph into an uninspiring chore that neglects to reflect or resonate with them. Now with the rise of AI, we need to put an emphasis on teaching critical thinking and visual analysis skills. Andini is passionate about challenging educators to rethink their mode of education and the way they are using their classroom.

Communicating Your Ideas

Having strong communication and storytelling skills are more vital than ever, especially with the advent of A.I. and social media. Now there are billions of voices (some human, some not!) on the Internet, so how can you ensure your ideas stand out and be heard? Andini reflects on her own 10 year journey as a public speaker and presenter – as well as an inventor/entrepreneur pitching her ideas – and gives advice on how to strengthen this skill in the audience’s own lives.

Tech - Tool or Terror?

Andini is a Gen Z’er who grew up with a smartphone, and then chose to own a flip phone when she first left for college. While she now struggles like the rest of us with her relationship to social media and her smartphone, Andini believes we all need to rethink our relationship with technology. As more new tech gets thrown at us on a daily basis, it becomes hard to draw the line. What to adopt, what to learn, what to ignore? How can AI be used in our personal and professional lives as a tool to make things easier, versus a crutch that weakens our creativity and imagination?

Social Media and Teens

Andini talks about what it could look like for youth (and/or you!) to have healthy interactions on social media – and if it’s even possible. She references the latest developments in both the mental health and social media spaces.

The Inventing Mindset

Andini’s first book, releasing Spring 2025 with Knopf Canada, discusses the idea of inhabiting what she likes to call ‘the Inventing Mindset’, a unique problem-solving approach to life that encourages constant creativity.

Give Your Kid Garbage

… And as an adult – you should play with garbage around the house too! With everyone’s eye towards sustainability, Andini firmly believes in innovating from whatever you do have. When you have less distractions, it allows your mind to experience boredom – and daydreaming, where some of the best ideas are born.

Project Based Learning

The standard classroom setup of a teacher lecturing in front of a room of unenthused students (who are dreading that night’s assigned textbook questions) should be illegal in the 21st century. This long-used method makes learning become a resented chore, instead of something to get excited about. How can we encourage and enable teachers around the world to inspire their students to become infinitely curious, life-long learners?

Andini believes that project based learning may be the key to what 21st Century Education looks and feels like.In this talk, Andini pulls from her unique upbringing and explores how you can create the appropriate environment for project based learning, one that will foster a passion within your students to begin organically connecting with their innate creativity, critical thinking, and innovative skills for the rest of their lives.

The Future of Education

The future of education leans towards our students’ individual passions and skills, allowing them the personalized freedom to also express what they’ve learned in a format they choose, instead of a more traditional assignment approach. We also need to encourage a flexible classroom space, where the teacher learns equally as much from the students, and free-flowing dialogue and debate is encouraged between them. Andini envisions a future where different subjects that were traditionally separated (eg. science and art), are instead mixed. Equally crucial is preparing students to intelligently interact with AI generated content and information, and to do this we need to begin teaching early on critical thinking and visual analysis skills.

Even though Gen Z’er Andini chose to grow up without a smartphone, she does believe that the use of technology as a tool in the classroom is possible – if done in a way that doesn’t encourage the students to use it as a crutch. In this talk, Andini discusses what she envisions the future of education to be like, and also touches on the importance of technical and manual skills still being taught, and the power of bringing techniques from her experience in improv and acting classes into the traditional classroom.

STEAM Education

Andini enjoys being a multi potential, meaning she has always cultivated interests in both the sciences and arts, and chooses to pursue all her passions, instead of settling on one specific subject. She believes that interchanging professions – especially within the gig economy – will become a normal way of life for the next generation, and that we need to start shifting the educational space to accommodate students’ many different interests and skills.

In this talk, Andini touches on the crucial yet often overlooked combination of science and art, and why we need to reconsider the way STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) is taught in school. She dives into history to show how scientists and artists have always organically worked together and needed each other, and questions why we have decided – especially in popular culture – to generate negative stereotypes of people in STEM versus people in the arts. Examples of Renaissance individuals in history are Leonardo da Vinci, Hedy Lamarrr, and even actress Jamie Lee Curtis has a patent for a new kind of diaper she invented! Anyone can love – and be good at – the sciences AND the arts. Andini believes in the power of combining one’s own unique talents and interests in the sciences and arts to not only live a more fulfilling creative life, but also a more successful one.

Platform Plus Presentations

Unique formats and ways to connect with audiences.
Panelist/In Conversation
Ann is a great speaker for panels or interviews on the subjects of innovation, technology, science, STEM, entrepreneurship, education & more.

Audience reviews:

  • Ann is one of the spunkiest people you will ever meet…Ann has a wonderful and hilarious sense of humour... Ann has become a role model for thousands of students in Victoria, her hometown, but has remained a humble and down-to-earth person.

    - UWC Alumn
 

Speaker Biography

Andini is a 2020’s renaissance woman, inventor, in-demand speaker, and show host with many passions in the sciences and arts. Her first toy was a box of transistors, which kickstarted her curiosity into discovering how the world around her worked. Her mother coming from a small village in the Philippines, and her father growing up during WWII-torn Poland resulted in Andini’s childhood filled with the belief that being given less would result in maximizing one’s creativity. Andini was told to make her own toys with her hot glue gun, which she did by piecing together spare parts and garbage she collected around the house.

At age 11, Andini began entering science fairs with her inventions, and competed at 10 science fairs before finishing high school. Her projects were in the area of alternative energy harvesting. Andini’s most famous invention was born out of her friend Maria’s problem, who lived in the Philippines and had reached out to Andini in distress when she failed her grade in school. Maria was unable to study at night, as her family couldn’t afford electricity or light. Andini invented the Hollow Flashlight, a flashlight that runs off the heat of the human hand. The Hollow Flashlight won at both the Intel Science and Engineering Fair and Google Science Fair. Her next invention was the eDrink, a coffee mug that converts the excess heat of your hot drink into electricity, giving your phone or iPod a boost of energy, which also won multiple awards. Andini debuted both her inventions on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and began speaking globally, while working towards a degree in English Literature.

Andini is one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30, Times Magazine’s 30 Under 30 World Changers, one of Glamour Magazine’s top ten College Women of the Year, one of seven of Teen Vogue Global Earth Angels, Popular Science’s “Breakout Young Inventor of the Year” and named on Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Young Millionaires” list. Andini has appeared with Miley Cyrus for Converse, named the global brand ambassador for Uniqlo’s Heat-Tech fleece, and worked with Vice to create a campaign for the Google Pixel.

Andini studied acting for a year at Herbert Berghof Studios in New York City, while simultaneously working on a line of children’s toys that ran off of green energy. She is also part of Julia Middleton’s global expedition (https://www.womenemerging.org) to find a definition of leadership that resonates with women.

Andini has co-produced and hosted two seasons of the financial literacy show ‘Your World on Money’, made by the Singleton Foundation and sponsored by Experian. She recently graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA in English and Film Studies. Andini is the campaign face for Maybelline’s Green Edition makeup line, as well as for Yalea Eyewear. Her book ‘The Inventing Mindset’ will be published by Knopf Canada in 2025. Andini has also been hosting Nico Rosberg’s Greentech Festival around the world, in Singapore and New York, and soon in London!