Tenaya Conklin

Tenaya grew up in Berkeley and Lafayette, always had a passion for theatre. She worked on 30-40 productions at Indiana University Bloomington, then moved to Europe for a year. Tenaya worked on several productions in the Bay Area including the San Francisco Follies. Then Tenaya found herself in the maker movement working for the Arduino brand for 4 years. She also started her own business, Rogue Making, to teach more maker skills to excited students. In her "free time" she rock climbs outdoors. As a maker, Tenaya sews with electronics, solders, does motor projects, makes paper circuits, and programs micro controllers. STEAM to the max. Tenaya's inspiration is her grandfather, Bob Warmington, who was a child of the depression and truly learned what it was like to be an engineer by finding wires in the street, taking an old printing press to fix it, and so much more. He soldered radios in a factory, set up the telephone systems of Chicago, taught sonar and radar in the navy, and was an engineer with Illinois Bell for 39 years. He would love platforms like Arduino, making it more accessible for kids to get into electrical engineering, but he would also say that kids can get over confident with a few successes, he would remind them to keep pushing, challenge themselves with more and more complex circuits and code. Tenaya's inspiration is her mother as well. Passionate about science as a young chemist, but shifted her life completely to be an artist. She enjoyed working with copper plates, bronze for busts, watercolor, sewing with fabric, knitting, crochet, and ultimately photography. She passed too young at 63, had much more to give. She was always thin and gorgeous as she danced a few nights a week her whole life.