This summer, we had the chance to work with two amazing AI engineering interns, Arjun and Nathan, both students at the University of Pennsylvania, and they did an outstanding job. Their projects not only showcased their technical talent but also made a real impact on Wonderschool’s mission of creating the ecosystem that empowers early educators to build sustainable businesses and enables families to easily find high-quality childcare.
At Wonderschool, our vision is simple but ambitious: every child has access to quality early care and education five minutes from home. Arjun and Nathan’s work this summer helped bring that vision closer to reality.
Arjun Ramprasad built a voice AI agent that gives our child care providers a dedicated phone line where parents can call to check program availability, learn about their program, and even book tours. By streamlining communication, Arjun’s project directly supports our mission, making it easier for families to find quality childcare and for educators to manage their programs efficiently. Outside of work, Arjun is passionate about soccer, both playing and watching, and if he could have any superpower, it would be the ability to time travel. His curiosity and sense of humor made working with him a joy.
Nathan Zhang created a tool that analyzes local data to give aspiring child care providers a clear picture of how much they could earn by opening a program in their community. He dedicated his internship to streamlining how Wonderschool supports providers in setting tuition rates that are both competitive and sustainable. Traditionally, our coaching team spent significant time manually researching local childcare prices, often calling local providers or combing through online listings, before compiling recommendations. To simplify this process, Nathan built a machine learning model that automates tuition guidance. By combining zip code data with key program details, his model generates recommended tuition tiers that reflect both local market conditions and the unique characteristics of each program. This approach not only reduces manual effort and speeds up pricing support but also establishes a scalable, data-driven foundation for tuition recommendations in the future.
By empowering future providers with actionable insights, Nathan’s work embodies several of our values, including Make Providers More Money, Delight Customers, and Act With Urgency. Nathan, who lives in Seattle, loves the city for its scenic hikes and thrives when learning through hands-on experience, a quality that clearly showed in how he approached his projects in San Francisco. Like Arjun, Nathan brought both intelligence and a great sense of humor to the office.
Nathan’s contributions extended beyond product and data work. Within just a couple of weeks, we identified a cumbersome manual process: each week, employees submitted a Priorities, Progress, Problems (PPP) report into a shared Word doc, which our EA then synthesized and shared in Slack.
Nathan helped us completely automate this process. He helped designed a process to capture the essential PPP questions, and then built a Zapier workflow with an AI prompt that:
This automation not only saves hours of manual work each week but also reflects several of our values, including Work Backwards, Be Open and Transparent, and Every Voice Matters.
When Arjun and Nathan started their internships, we were based in a small, dingy office near Union Square, right by the cable car turnaround. The neighborhood was colorful, to say the least, and we were serenaded daily by a saxophone player cycling through the same five songs all day. In August, we moved into our new space in SOMA. As part of the internship program, we explored the neighborhood together, enjoying intern lunches at local hotspots and free Forkable lunches in the office. These shared experiences reflect our value of No “I” In Wonderschool by fostering collaboration and community.
Both Arjun’s and Nathan’s projects hit at the heart of what we do at Wonderschool, and we were deeply impressed by their talent, curiosity, and drive. They both brought sharp minds, a collaborative spirit, and a wonderful sense of humor to the office, making work productive and fun.
Arjun and Nathan exemplify our mission, vision, and values: they tackled projects that empower child care providers, delight families, and build sustainable systems that advance our vision of quality care five minutes from every home. It was a true pleasure to work with them this summer, and we can’t wait to see the incredible things they’ll go on to accomplish.
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