Arlington entrepreneur who makes STEM kits for kids is headed to space with Blue Origin

With the number of people in STEM occupations projected to grow over the next decade, an Arlington startup wants to lower barriers to that career path.    

Lingo develops and sells educational, STEM-focused kits to teach students in middle and high school, as well as in college. Projects highlight both software and hardware, with one kit showing how to build and code a backup sensor for a car. 

Aisha Bowe, CEO and founder of Lingo and a former NASA rocket scientist, wanted to provide hands-on learning to students — an option she wished she had growing up herself. The traditional school model of memorizing and repeating information didn’t work for her, she explained. 

“It really was a labor of love,” Bowe told Technical.ly. “It was almost as though we were making something for our younger selves.”

About 10,000 students have used Lingo kits across the US and in England, per Bowe. She and her team of three, who all have extensive engineering backgrounds, develop the kits themselves. Cofounder and COO Jarvis Sulcer has a master’s and PhD in nuclear science and engineering from Cornell University, for example. 

Bowe is also heading to space on a celebrity-filled Blue Origin flight, which will launch sometime this spring. The trip, hosted by the aerospace technology company that Amazon leader Jeff Bezos founded in 2000, will also include popstar Katy Perry and award-winning journalist Gayle King. 

While on the mission, Bowe will work with the astrobotany lab out of Winston-Salem State University to research plant health and molecular changes when exposed to microgravity. 

“It’s a dream come true,” Bowe said. “From someone who never thought that they would be in this field, to say that not only am I here, but I’m going to space, and I’m taking an experiment —  it’s an honor.”

To pair with this flight, Lingo released new kits related to space exploration earlier in March. One is a countdown timer for a rocket launch, while an “Earth Observer” set teaches students how to prototype and use a remote sensing satellite.

These are tools, not toys, explained cofounder Sulcer, who came on board shortly after Bowe started the company. 

Lingo originally launched under the umbrella of STEMBoard, also founded by Bowe. That firm, founded in 2013 and headquartered in Arlington, conducts tech advisory work for the public and private sectors. 

In 2022, Lingo spun out of STEMBoard as its own company and began raising funds. In November, the startup announced that it had amassed a $2.25 million seed. Prior to that, Lingo bootstrapped, per Sulcer, who previously joined STEMBoard in 2015. 

Both Sulcer and Bowe have seen a wide range of kids of all ages use the kits via their work with local schools, including Bowie State University in nearby Prince George’s County, Maryland. They are also collaborating with Arlington County Public Schools to experiment with introducing it to fourth and fifth graders soon, said Sulcer. 

Bowe sees the robust school systems as a plus for the company’s roots in Northern Virginia. She also referenced the region’s various engineering companies and tech-focused government contractors, which all feed off of each other, she said.   

“It reminds me, in many respects, of what I saw in Silicon Valley,” she said, “where you would have all these complimentary businesses so close to each other and helping each other thrive.”

Bowe’s main goal is to continue getting her kits into the hands of students. She eventually wants one million students to have used them. 

“I want to be the leading provider of hands-on STEM activities to students, regardless of where they are,” Bowe said, “and have content that’s right-size so we can meet them where they are.”