The Finley Robotics Initiative was founded by Dr. Reginald Finley, Sr. to address a gap he saw firsthand across classrooms, museums, public schools, and community programs: brilliant students with no path to the tools that match their curiosity.
Dr. Reginald Finley is a career educator, scientist, and technical trainer with more than three decades of experience in technology, science education, and community outreach. He is a US Army Veteran and has taught STEM subjects at the elementary, middle, high school, and university levels.
He currently works as a learning consultant with Siemens in industrial automation training, while teaching scientific literacy, doctoral-level statistics, and anatomy and physiology as a university instructor.
02 / Why this workAcross years of teaching, Dr. Finley repeatedly encountered students with obvious aptitude for engineering and computational thinking who had no access to the hardware that would let them prove it, to themselves or to anyone else. A coding lesson on a borrowed laptop is not the same as keeping a robot on your desk for a year. The Finley Robotics Initiative is built around that difference.
The choice of the Reachy Mini as the program's hardware is deliberate. It is open source. It is expressive. It is not a toy. It puts a real platform for AI experimentation into the hands of a student in the same form that a working engineer would meet it.
03 / ValuesCuriosity and talent are not limited by geography or finances. Access often is. That is the part we can change.
The Initiative is intentionally small. We would rather select ten scholars and stand behind them than send a hundred kits and disappear. Honesty about scope, transparency about our nonprofit status, and rigor about outcomes are part of the work, not separate from it.
The Initiative is guided by a founding board of educators, scientists, and engineers who share a commitment to expanding access to robotics and AI for students who would not otherwise reach it.
Founding Board Member
Dr. Irving Brown is a mathematician and educator with a doctorate spanning the computational and technical sciences, bringing deep quantitative expertise alongside experience in mechatronics and grant development. His career has centered on developing the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers.
Founding Board Member
T'Shawn Rivers is a nonprofit development leader with more than twenty-five years of experience in fundraising, campaigns, and institutional advancement. She serves as Director of Development and Campaigns at ABFE, a philanthropic partnership for Black communities, where she leads comprehensive campaigns, donor stewardship, and data-informed fundraising strategy.
Founding Board Member
Kimberly Bryant is an enterprise program and portfolio management leader with more than twenty years of experience driving transformation and governance at scale, including generative AI program oversight at a major telecommunications company. She pairs that with nearly a decade of nonprofit board service focused on educational access, and holds an Executive MBA and PMP certification.
Founding Board Member
Dr. Gladys Delancey-Bolding is a scientist and science educator who has spent her career putting real laboratory experience within reach of young people. A lecturer at Georgia State University's Perimeter College, she is the founder and CEO of BioLogue Laboratorium, a hands-on science enrichment program that has guided metro Atlanta students from their first lab session through college and into STEM careers since 2011. Named Women in Technology's 2020 Woman of the Year in Science, she holds a master's degree in molecular and cell physiology from Georgia State University and a PhD in curriculum and instruction.
A board seat remains open. If you believe access to robotics and AI should not depend on geography or finances, we would like to talk with you →
Alongside the board, the Initiative draws on an advisory council of professionals in law, ethics, and organizational strategy who lend their expertise as the program grows.
Advisor
Dr. Adrianne Phillips is a strategic operations and governance advisor whose work centers on helping organizations build the systems, structures, and decision frameworks needed to scale sustainably. A U.S. Air Force veteran, she serves as President of SAVI, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supporting veterans' transitions to civilian life, and holds a Doctorate in Business Administration with a research focus on AI-driven decision-making.
Advisor
Cleo Millender-Belmonte is a corporate attorney with more than twenty years of experience advising boards of directors and C-level executives at public and private companies. A senior vice president and associate general counsel in the financial services industry, she holds a JD from Georgetown Law, and her expertise spans corporate governance, securities law, and entity formation.
Advisor
Dr. David Koepsell is a philosopher, attorney, and author whose research examines how ethics and public policy respond to emerging science and technology. He has held academic appointments at TU Delft, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University at Buffalo, and Texas A&M University, and is the author of numerous books including Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes.