Dan Be is an educational technologist designing the education we need to see and shape our relationship with tech, more than the tech we put into education.
A third-culture kid shaped by life in Korea, India, the US, Canada, and Germany, Dan Be is drawn to how technology shapes culture, identity, and value formation. An avid AI tinkerer and critic, she proactively explores where AI/tech is embedded in her life -- and where it isn't. A core capacity she's working to nurture, in herself and in others, is striking a balance between digital and analog.
PZ Work
As an AI Fellow and Translational Research Designer at the Center for Digital Thriving, Dan Be works closely with stakeholders in education while taking a holistic approach to her broader praxis -- interfacing with technologists and organizations across sectors to understand both the universal throughlines and unique differences in how people experience technology across age, culture, domain, and developmental stage.
She's proud to contribute to the Inspiring Moral AI Guidance in Education (IMAGINE) project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. IMAGINE brings a value-centered lens to AI literacy, exploring how our lived experiences and value systems shape what we consider responsible AI use -- and creating psychologically safe spaces for pluralistic dialogue and deep introspection around Qs surrounding where we draw the line when it comes to AI.
Beyond PZ
Dan Be has co-designed and co-facilitated two mini-courses sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: AI Tools for Learning Design (2025) + AI Literacy 301 (2026). Both were opened to the general public and attracted working professionals, researchers, educators, and students, reflecting her commitment to learning experiences that are cross-generational and interdisciplinary.
As an AI Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she designed an onboarding experience to help incoming graduate students think about how AI could support their academic and professional endeavours. She has also served as an AI Fellow at New_ Public, a prosocial non-profit designing digital public spaces, where she contributed to the organization's internal AI policy and external AI statement -- both serving as guidelines that could inform responsible AI use in an organizational context.
Fun Facts
In her own words:
I like to go into certain experiences completely blind. I don't watch trailers before movies and often attend live shows without knowing a single song beforehand. For me, there’s something magical about encountering art and performance unprimed for the first time.
One of my hobbies is designing experiments to reduce algorithmic influence and introduce more randomness in my life. While living in Berlin, I spent a year asking strangers I met on the subway for book recs -- letting people, not recommender systems, decide what I'd read next.
How to Connect with Dan Be
The best way to reach her is by email! Bonus points if you drop a line hinting you've read this profile in full, calling out a detail that most resonated with you.
Languages
Dan Be feels lucky to be able to codeswitch between different languages -- Korean (her mother tongue), English, French, and German (absorbed during a childhood spent in an international township). Each brings out a slightly different version of her, so depending on the context you meet her in, expect a different personality and tone! She's definitely her goofiest self in English :)
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