About
We connect students to the future they're studying for.
Our Mission
The Challenge
To solve the challenges of today and tomorrow, society needs not just more STEM professionals, but professionals who are better positioned to address them. The challenge breaks down into four parts:
STEM Power Skills
The so-called “soft skills” aren’t directly taught, even though they’re foundational to professional success.
Career Trajectories
Society nudges students toward a defined career (narrow) or a career path (broad) — rarely with the context to choose well.
Career Visibility
We ask high schoolers to make college decisions based on future careers without giving them visibility over those careers. It’s a three-phase journey — high school → college → professional — with opacity between each phase.
Career Networking
Existing professional networks don’t span the whole cradle-to-grave career, short-changing young professionals and preventing senior experts from imparting knowledge.
Our Goal
To build a self-reinforcing global network of STEM professionals — starting at high school and progressing through to retirement — to:
- 1Help set young professionals on STEM career trajectories.
- 2Impart soft skills to deliver more proficient professionals into industry.
- 3Facilitate knowledge transfer to solve bigger problems faster.
Our Vision
The Engineering Education Network
- ›Develop careers through industry simulation competitions and events.
- ›Provide future leaders the skills and tools they’ll need to solve tomorrow’s problems.
- ›Build a global support and collaboration network connecting students, professionals, and retired experts.
- ›We are the “Model UN for Engineers.”
- ›Our members learn the soft skills, and develop the relationships, that won’t be replaced by AI — every activity is oriented at a “High School Engineering MBA.”
- ›We will positively impact 100,000 students over the next 10 years.
Our Values
Members First, Last, and Always
Everything we do is oriented around providing educational benefits for our members — regardless of age, membership tier, or any other metric. You trust us as a Member, and we respect it.
Careers Start Now
Your career doesn’t start when you graduate — just as you don’t stop learning because you graduated. So what if you’re at school? Your career has already begun.
Learning First, Tools Second
STEM professionals must understand how tools work before they can deploy them. We will always prioritize learning foundational skills.
Respectfully Inclusive
We want our Community to reflect modern society, and strive to include everyone. In return, we expect mutual respect — to themselves, to other Members and Partners, and to Stellr.
Our Team
The people behind Stellr
David is a mechanical engineer and the founder of Stellr, driven by a belief that a community of STEM professionals can be both a positive feedback loop for future generations and a way to improve career outcomes. Having built his own path — from engineering to tech, from Australia to the USA, from the military into growing the Stellr Community — he's passionate about giving young people the mentors, the soft skills, and the visibility into STEM careers that he wishes he'd had — and that industry urgently needs.
Advisory Board
Jim Christensen
Ames, Iowa
Jim brings a career in space education to Stellr, having led K-12 programs at the Aldrin Family Foundation's ShareSpace Education. He knows first-hand how a single hands-on experience can change a student's trajectory, and he's a firm believer that giving young people real exposure to STEM careers is the surest way to inspire the next generation of explorers and engineers.
LinkedIn
Rick Griffiths
Dallas–Fort Worth region, Texas
Rick is a partially retired aerospace teacher, and fully retired US Air Force pilot, guiding high schoolers toward technical careers every day. A Stanford-trained educator, he has seen how competitions and real-world challenges turn classroom theory into genuine ambition. He champions Stellr's mission because it gives students the visibility, and the confidence, to pursue the STEM pathways in front of them.
LinkedIn“The reason I joined the competition in the first place was because it was on the topic of space, which is something I never really learned about in high school.”
Alvina Gakhokidze
Former Participant & Current Mentor
See the difference we make
Explore the impact Stellr has on student career trajectories — and where we stand on AI in education.