Michole Washington

Dr. Michole Washington is a mathematician, educator, and researcher whose work spans mathematics, STEM education, and creative science engagement. Her love of mathematics began in childhood, where the subject provided a refuge and a tool for making sense of the world. Growing up on the Southside of Atlanta and attending predominantly Black schools, she developed her mathematical thinking through community, analogy, and storytelling—modes of understanding that later clashed with the narrow expectations she encountered as an undergraduate at a predominantly white institution. Those experiences sharpened her awareness of the cultural misalignments embedded in mathematics education and inspired her lifelong commitment to diversifying who and what mathematics is for.

Washington earned her B.S. in Mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016, becoming only the ninth Black woman in Atlanta to do so—an achievement that underscored systemic inequities in the mathematics pipeline. During her undergraduate years, she conducted research at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and studied abroad through the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. These formative experiences, while academically rigorous, revealed the barriers that Black students often face in being recognized as capable mathematicians. Out of these challenges, she launched her first company, Aphrithmetic Tutoring, through which she tutored more than 200 students across metro Atlanta and designed, fundraised, and led community-based math summer camps.

She went on to earn both a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education and an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan. There, she critically examined not only the content of advanced mathematics courses but also the culture of their teaching, bringing her developing expertise in education research into dialogue with her lived experiences as a mathematician. Her doctoral dissertation, The Space Outside of the Box: Fostering Fugitivity for Black Girls in STEM through Endarkened Storywork, built on this foundation by reimagining STEM education as a space where the generational knowledge of Black women could reshape how learners experience math and science.

Dr. Washington’s work bridges mathematics with other disciplines through creative design. She founded SpaceBox, an Afrofuturistic educational escape room that merges storytelling, game-based learning, and STEM concepts, and has collaborated on speculative research projects with Optimistic Design (funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) envisioning liberatory futures for math education. She co-wrote the ASU/Complexly Study Hall YouTube series. Her collaborations with NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement have included doctoral research at Glenn Research Center and developing frameworks that secured more than half a million dollars in summer STEM programming for HBCUs and MSIs.

Currently, as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, Dr. Washington contributes to NASA’s Science Activation (SciAct) portfolio through the SCoPE project, where she examines how NASA-funded teams recruit and engage scientists as subject matter experts. She has shared her research nationally, including as a Haynes-Granville-Browne Guest Speaker at the 2025 Joint Mathematics Meeting, where she explored the intersections of algorithmic bias, AI, and mathematics education for Black students.

At the heart of all her work is the belief that mathematics must be experienced as expansive, creative, and culturally grounded. By weaving mathematics into art, history, space science, and community practice, Dr. Washington continues to broaden the narratives of who can do math and why it matters.