Riley Butler started ballet at The Studio School of Classical Ballet at the age of 6. She danced with Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre in the Petite, Junior, and Senior Companies for over 10 years. She performed in “The Nutcracker” as Soldier, Clara, Snowflake, Spanish dancer, Marzipan, Chinese soloist, amongst other roles. While a member of the Senior Company, Riley attended Teacher Training Courses with Diane Cypher, and quickly became an assistant for Pre-Ballet and Primary classes. Since graduating from high school, she was involved with many Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre productions including directing rehearsals for "The Nutcracker" and served as Children's Ballet Master. She looks to guide young dancers to learn about and reach their potential and discover their sense of self.

During the quarantine period of COVID-19, many students fell through the cracks when transitioning to online learning. Many households do not have the perfect conditions for learning at home, with parents working or busy households. I became a personal tutor for students in elementary through high school in order to help create a system of learning personally tailored for each student. Scheduling, collaborating with parents and teachers, as well as keeping the student engaged were key aspects while also having fun while learning and limiting their stress. As a result, my students were able to strenghten their abilities and able to build on them to create confidence in their educational path.

I studied and performed rigorous classical ballet at Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre and The Studio for over 13 years. Upon graduation, the Director offered me a position as a ballet instructor for ages 4-10. I also serve in several other capacities as needed by the Artistic Director including supervising and coaching over 50 ballet students ages 3 to 17 through class repertoire and rehearsals. I also oversaw backstage productivity for professional productions and continue to perform occasionally.

SMASH Rising, a micro-internship + workplace exposure program, where students learn problem-solving skills, build their networks, and solve real-world challenges being faced by SMASH Rising Corporate Partners. Using design thinking and rapid prototyping curriculum, scholars create high-impact solutions for partners.

Completed a three-year STEM-intensive residential college prep program that empowers students to deepen their talents and pursue STEM careers.

Through SMASH Rising I was given the wonderful opportunity to be a part of a pod of 6 at Zillow. We were given the sprint question to develop prototypes to quickly help the renters confirm their property details already documented in the listings they were viewing, capture any additional self-generated information (notes/observations/questions) about each property, and easily compare and make tradeoffs as they narrow down their list of properties. As well as design an improved virtual touring experience. My team and I were able to create prototypes of what our solution, ZillowScout & Ztool, on Figma. We were then given a second sprint question of how might we educate first time buyers from lower socioeconomic communities to give them confidence in their buying experience. We came up with our solution JourneyZ, also on Figma. This tools goal was to inform underprivileged communities about housing, to facilitate financial literacy, as well as create confidence in younger buyers with this web extension.

Through SMASH Rising I was given the amazing opportunity to be a part of a pod of 6 at the corporate headquarters of First Republic Bank of San Fransisco. We were given the sprint question to develop a system for ages 5 to 17 in order to help parents teach about the concept of money and financial literacy. Our solution to this problem was a gamified learning experience, Fortune, that brings the user through path with questions relating to finance so they become familiar with different terms and ideas about money. Another sprint question was to develop an Alexa skill to help higher the degree of convince for clients to bank. We created an extension for settings and privacy on the First Republic bank app on Figma as our prototype.