Thomas Higgins

I started my career as a high school teacher because I loved figuring out how people learn and designing experiences that actually worked for them. As a classroom teacher, I most enjoyed working with students that others labeled "uninterested" or "difficult" and figuring out how I could engage them.  I like solving challenging problems and believe that a small perspective shift can change the way that someone sees something and how they learn. 

These days I work at Carnegie Mellon University advising graduate students at the School of Computer Science through complex, high stakes immigration processes, which has meant building training materials, documentation, and institutional resources from scratch. Alongside that I've taken graduate coursework in CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, diving deeper into learning science, instructional design, and UX research while working full time.  

I'm now looking to bring all of that together in a role where I can do meaningful work at scale. Curriculum design, learner-centered instruction, and assessment development are things I've been doing for years.  Recently, I’ve added tech and design skills and tools to help with my goal of making a better educational experience for as many people as possible. I’m looking for a role at that crossroads: learning design, UX research, or product-adjacent work in EdTech or mission-driven spaces where outcomes for real people are the goal.

In 2026, with AI everywhere and technology ubiquitous in our everyday lives, I give a lot of thought to the impact that these technologies have on all of us.  They are extremely powerful tools that have the power to transform how we think and learn, and a transformation will happen whether we are aware of it or not - so let's be aware of it.  We need people with pedagogical and design backgrounds to guide the way and make technology more meaningful, helpful and interactive rather than just giving us all the answers.  As exciting and useful as I think technology can be, as a real-life educator I can recognize that not every problem calls for ‘more technology’ as a solution.  I daydream about ways that educators can use technology in new exciting ways to be more effective at what they do, rather than the technology being the teacher. My educator's perspective guides my approach to user experience and interaction design.

In my free time, I am pretty passionate about music, both making it and discovering it.  In a past life, I was a professional musician and stand-up comedian.  I like spending time in nature and learning about languages and culture. Hablo espanol y 日本語を練習しています.