Hope in the World of AI with Peter Wang and Dr. Andy Terrel
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Ever wonder how the tools powering today’s AI revolution were built, or how to empower the next generation to lead it? In this episode of America’s Angels, co-hosts Jenny Kaehms and Andrea Kalmans sit down with tech pioneers Peter Wang (founder of Anaconda) and Andy Terrel (lead of compute and open source at NVIDIA) to explore the future of technology and human potential.
The guests share their inspiring journeys—from growing up in Communist China and rural Texas to shaping the global open-source software landscape—and discuss how Python and AI tools are transforming problem-solving and scientific discovery. They also dive into the founding of the Austin STEM Center, a hands-on community space dedicated to democratizing technology, fostering mentorship, and building real-world skills for kids and adults alike.
Want to help inspire the next generation of innovators? Visit austinstemcenter.org to learn how you can volunteer, bring your school for a field trip, or support their mission! Don't forget to subscribe to America's Angels, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend!
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Technologist
Andy Terrel, PhD, is an Austin-based technology leader whose career connects scientific computing, open source, and business innovation. As CUDA Python Product Lead at NVIDIA, with executive experience at Anaconda, StoryFit, Xometry, REX, and Boldmetrics, he brings deep technical expertise to challenges across industries. His work focuses on developing new technology, scaling data and machine learning systems, and building teams that turn ideas into dependable products. A contributor to Dask, Conda, and SymPy and a NumFOCUS board member, Andy has helped shape the Python ecosystem.
Co-Founder of Anaconda
Peter is the co-founder of Anaconda, created the Python data science community, and was seminal to many foundational open-source projects in Python. As Chief AI officer, he engages with customers and innovators in the AI space, and works on a variety of strategic projects across the AI and open source landscape.
Through the AI Commons nonprofit, Peter is working on locking AI innovation open for all, building on learnings from 30 years of open source and its commercialization. AI Commons is initially focused on the data and legal aspects, including a new global data registry and a legal wrapper for AI usage of data.
Peter is the founder of Austin STEM Center, a hands-on science learning center, robotics competition hub, and makerspace for students from late elementary to high school.
As an angel investor, Peter's long-time interest in data privacy and sovereignty led to investments in many decentralized web and internet initiatives. The most prominent was his funding of the protocol and technology in Bluesky, where he is user #6. Peter has served as board member of the Center for Humane Technology for many years, working with Tristan Harris and team to articulate and to drive accountability around the harmful impacts of technology on society.