OUR TEAM
Hai-Anh Vu - Founder & Director ​
Hai-Anh Vu grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam, and received her Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME), where she majored in Economics and French and minored in Gender Studies. A marketer by profession and an avid educator at heart, she has lived, studied, and worked in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, New York City, Washington D.C., Toulouse, Hong Kong, before landing on Whidbey Island in 2020 where she is now living with her husband and two school-age children on a farm in Greenbank.
A liberal arts college graduate, Hai-Anh has always been an advocate for giving children a well-rounded education. Inspired by the many enrichment programs for children she saw in big cities, she wanted to recreate similar opportunities for children like hers on Whidbey through Whidbey Island Language, Art & STEM Center. Hai-Anh now oversees all aspects of WILASC though her most favorite parts are meeting parents and students, as well as dreaming and plotting new class offerings.
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Claudia Sámano-Losada
Spanish Instructor & Language Program Advisor
Claudia is an educational & cultural enrichment facilitator and an experienced Spanish instructor. She is the founder and former director of InMotion, a recreational movement inclusive studio in Oak Harbor, which she operated for over 11 years. A native Mexican, Claudia invented BILMP® (Bilingual Integrated Learning Movement Program), an enriched program recognized by the state of Washington, focused on literacy, cultural awareness, socio emotional learning, Comprehensive Input (CI), movement and music. Claudia is a certified Early Childhood Educator and serves as the US President and an Advisor Board Officer of the International Chamber of Language Teachers (ICLT).
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Claudia moved to Arizona in 2022 but keeps her connection with Whidbey strong. She is the Spanish & Cultural Awareness Instructor for Woodhaven High School, and now serves as an advisor and trainer for WILASC’s foreign language programs.
Justin MacDonald
Coding Instructor & Academic Advisor
Justin grew up in the Seattle area and has a PhD in Quantitative Psychology from Purdue University. He has been college faculty since 2007 and regularly teaches graduate coding classes. He has extensive experience with a number of programming languages, including Python and Matlab. He also serves as the Math teacher for the 6th and 7th grades at Whidbey Island Waldorf School. Justin is WILASC's coding teacher and academic advisor for the STEM program.
Lina Shen, Mandarin Chinese instructor
Lina is the founder and head instructor of the Anacortes Chinese School. A native Chinese from Kunming, China, she has taught Mandarin Chinese for over seven years to a range of learners from absolute beginners to advanced, and from young children to adults. She has also taught Chinese calligraphy and Chinese culture. Lina was the Chinese instructor for the Chinese Cultural Camps held by the Northwest Language & Cultural Center in 2017 and 2019. Her teaching background also includes ten years teaching and tutoring English to high school students in Kunming, China.
Aside from teaching, Lina is a Chinese Mandarin Course Developer for Mango Languages – an online language learning software company. She holds a university degree in English and a senior professional certification in teaching Chinese to foreign learners.
Justin MacDonald - Coding Instructor
Justin grew up in the Seattle area and has a PhD in Quantitative Psychology from Purdue University. He has been college faculty since 2007 and regularly teaches graduate coding classes. He has extensive experience with a number of programming languages, including Python and Matlab. He also serves as the Math teacher for the 6th and 7th grades at Whidbey Island Waldorf School. Justin teaches coding for the afterschool and summer programs at WILASC, where he routinely engages students to code through fun, quirky coding exercises.
JiuYu Xiao,
Art Instructor
Jiuyu is an Integrated Creative Art Instructor with backgrounds in various medium. Her art follows an integrated approach combining Body-based Arts, Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga, and Waldorf Education. A Chinese native born to a Buddhist family, Jiuyu spent her childhood and teenage years traveling and living around the globe, where she found her passion for nature and community building. In teaching art, Jiuyu uses elements of movement, storytelling, meditation, art-making, and weaves together multiple aspects of the creative being.
Jiuyu graduated from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. She has experience in teaching both young children and adults. She believes that for young children especially, art is one of their primary languages of communicating with the outside world. Through art, children can process emotions and soften their approach to the world. They build capacity for reverence,and learn to express love in a non-linear way.
Jean Stark
Art Instructor
Jean is a local artist and art instructor in Langley. She holds a Bachelor in General Fine Art, and a Master of Teaching Art from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD, and has over 14 years of experience as an art instructor at the Fairfax County Public Schools and the Art League School (MD). A native of Ithaca, New York and long-term resident in Maryland, Jean has found her way to our beautiful island and has been living in South Whidbey since 2021.
Painting and drawing are her favorite forms of expression, but I love working with clay, collage, and playing with anything that's calling to her at the moment.
She hopes to make art available to young people who would benefit from a creative practice. Her own art is influenced by exploring new paints, new combinations of materials, or making something as large as she can. She finds influence in the environment, from plankton to old-growth forests.
Claudia Kiyama
Spanish instructor
Claudia was born and raised in the surrealist magic that is Mexico City. After earning her BA in Architecture in Monterrey, Claudia returned to Mexico City to graduate from the Masters in Architecture program at Mexico’s National School of Preservation and Restoration. Claudia has worked as a preservation architect in Mesoamerican ruins, Colonial World Heritage sites, modern buildings and rural cultural landscapes.
Parallel to her career in architecture, Claudia has been involved in education most of her adult life. From private tutoring, to homework support as community service, teaching assistant at her daughter’s preschool, and as Design and History of Architecture Professor at her alma mater. Claudia is teaching Latinamerican and Spanish culture at the Whidbey Island Waldorf School.
