Alia is the visionary and founder of Up and Atom. She has multiple degrees, in Education, Marketing, and Elementary Education. She grew up the middle sibling in a family of four kids and a single Mom. She often took care of her older sister who has a disability called Downs Syndrome and a sister eight years younger. She began working with Children, when she started babysitting at the age twelve and then her first professional job was working with infants/toddlers in a Child Development Center, as a teacher. After obtaining her degree, she worked for the Air Force in their Child Development Center. Eventually, her career took her into marketing. She has owned a few successful businesses and worked as an Executive sales Leader for some well-known organizations.

Alia is a mom of a younger boy and teen girl. She is married to her husband Ken who is from a family of Physicists. He is her partner in this and brings with him a deep knowledge of physics, and atmospheric science which he has a degree in.

Alia has always yearned to work with children, in education or philanthropy. She has a genuine and sincere desire to improve the lives of all, adults included.

In recent years, Alia has taken more notice to how profitable education has become. Many states place so little importance on education and providing a quality education to all. This is obviously truer in cities and states that have more minorities or underprivilege communities.

The schooling and access to educational content is lacking. Teachers aren’t paid enough and struggle with supplies and content.

Why do you think being educated has come with the stigma of being “Elite”? It is because as mentioned above, the people who get a better education are the ones that have money or live in the right zipcodes.

There are some amazing science activity subscription services, these cost money. Ask yourself, why all the educational channels and shows on TV are only available in the premium cable packages? We love channels such as, Science, HGTV, Discovery, History and more. These are not available to you unless you pay, one way or another, you either have premium cable or you pay for the app. PBS is the only free educational station and many states are pulling it off the air!

She first became inspired with the idea of a non-profit aimed at providing free, fun, fair educational and science content for all when a friend gave her a book from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Curious about the organization she began to explore how Dolly is providing vital books to those in need. She looked and searched for any organizations or other nonprofits that focus on education or science content and to her surprise there are none.

We are just getting started and still testing out different methods. But we are glad and out of this universe excited to be the first nonprofit organization aimed at not only providing free educational and science content to all, adults included, but we can’t wait to spark that curiosity and desire to learn more!

Under Alia’s leadership, including her husband, Ken and board members. We hope to inspire all to love to learn!