Vanessa Vakharia

Vanessa Vakharia is a math educator, author, and founder of The Math Guru, a boutique math and science tutoring studio in Toronto established in 2010. Known as “the Lady Gaga of math education,” she is a certified high school math teacher and holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing Management, a secondary school mathematics teaching degree, and a Master’s in Mathematics Education with a focus on feminist theory and popular culture. Her own experience of failing Grade 11 math twice informs her work to change math culture and challenge stereotypes about who can be a “math person.”

Vakharia is the author of the Math Hacks Scholastic book series and the host of the Math Therapy podcast, where she explores math trauma and how students can build healthier relationships with math. She appears regularly on national television and news outlets as an expert in math education and speaks internationally on media representations of women in STEM and math positivity. She is also the lead singer and keytarist for the Toronto indie rock band Goodnight, Sunrise.