About Xyla Foxlin

Xyla Foxlin is an award-winning mechatronics engineer turned YouTube creator who uses her knack for visual storytelling to share the creativity and joy of engineering with the world. Her YouTube channel features a blend of technical skill, craftsmanship, and art- everything from proving impossible physics demonstrations to constructing a livable camper in just a few weeks, to high power rocketry and organic chemistry.

Xyla is an avid supporter of women in STEM initiatives, including working with AAAS as an IF/THEN ambassador, where a full size statue of Xyla was exhibited in the Smithsonian Museum during women's history month. Prior to YouTube, she was the founder and executive director of the Beauty and the Bolt 501c3 nonprofit organization, whose #PrincessesWithPowerTools program has taught over 13,000 kids to use their first powertool and reached over 100,000 students in classrooms. When she left the organization, Reinvented Magazine took over all of Beauty and the Bolt’s programming.

Her college invention turned tech startup, Parihug, was 178% funded on Kickstarter. As a teenage founder and CEO she raised over $200k in preseed funding, and has been featured in the New York Times, The Verge, Mashable, Google Made with Code, and more.

Xyla has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree in General Engineering with a concentration in Mechatronics and Creative Technology with a minor in Studio Art from Case Western Reserve University. She is a AAAS IF/THEN ambassador, and has been named Cleveland’s Most Interesting People 2017, Crain’s Notable Women in Technology and 20 in their 20s, and was the featured engineer in Microsoft’s international Surface Laptop ad campaign. She was crowned Miss Greater Cleveland 2018 in the Miss America program.

She lives in Los Angeles where she is the proud owner and pilot of a 1946 Cessna 140 that she flies in her free time. She also loves backpacking or camping in her homebuilt teardrop, climbing large mountains, and salsa dancing.