Gina Nakahara

Retired Lieutenant in the US Coast Guard with 19 years of k-12 teaching experience. A former FIRST Robotics Coach for FRC Team 2890, Hickory High School, Virginia (2008-13) and Technology Student Association (TSA) Regional and Chapter Advisor (2004-2013) and second coach to the Thingy Thing FRC Team 8387, Advanced Technologies Academy, Las Vegas, Nevada (2019-21), FIRST LEGO League (FLL), FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), VEX VRC, and VEX IQ. The facilitator of the RMMS Girls Who Code club (2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22), several Cyber Robotics Coding Competition (CRCC) Teams, Congressional App Challenge Teams and a Nationally ranked Financial Literacy team for the Capitol Hill Challenge Stock Market. Currently, I am the main robotics coach for our brand-new CTE high school at Central Technical Training Academy. My passion for technology STEMs from my military experience. I am honored to have been a LEGO Education Master Educator for 2 years (2019-2021), an appointed Donors Choose Ambassador (2020-21, 2021-22), Applied Digital Skills Ambassador (2021-22), and a board member of Envirolution (2021-23), School Organization Team (2022-24), and TSA (2022-23). I was recently appointed as the Nevada TSA state advisor (2022-23) and elected as the ITTEA Region IV Director, for which I'm excited to start in March of 2024.