Why is access to
transformative opportunity
so arbitrary?

That question drives my work.

Silas Tautz

Growing up in a rural Illinois town of 1,500, I attended a Title I school through eighth grade. A last-minute application to a lab school founded at SpaceX opened a door I didn't know existed.

The environment was electric, and it left me with a realization: if access to such transformative opportunity is this arbitrary, the system itself is broken. I focus my work on understanding why public education is resistant to reform, and what politics and design can do about it.

Experience