Joana Paulo Pardal has expertise on talking intelligent machines and robotics but her curiosity extends beyond these topics. She has been sharing her passion for coding by teaching people of all ages (from Kindergarten to University, but also adults and elderly). She has a Licenciatura (5-years degree, 2001) and a Master degree (2004) in Computer Science Engineering both from Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. In 2016, she completed a Post-Graduation in Mathematics, Literature, and Culture for Education from Univ. Lusíada. In 2021, she earned a Master in Informatics Teaching from Instituto de Educação, Universidade de Lisboa, where, in 2024, she started a PhD in Education in the area of ICTE, Information and Communication Technology in Education where she is exploring the relationship between reading and writing code when learning to program. In the first decade of the millennium, she was a Lecturer at Técnico where she taught the practical classes of several courses in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Programming Technologies and Methodologies. During that period, she was also a Junior Researcher at the Spoken Language Systems Laboratory, L2 F INESC-ID. Her research was focused on design, use (and reuse) of ontologies; spoken dialogue systems; and written natural language processing. She participated in several international projects, and authored over 20 international publications. In 2013, she joined the Link Consulting Project Support Office to lead the introduction of Agile Methodologies to the company. Her major goal was to increase the motivation and commitment of the teams. In 2015, she co-founded IT Up, a startup focused on retooling Engineers and Mathematicians into highly qualified OutSystems Professionals. She was part of the Training Office. In 2016, she joined the APECEF team to support the editorial process of textbooks used by thousands of students from the schools managed by the association and some friend schools. She orchestrated the move to cloud-based collaboration tools that proved essential during COVID-19. In September 2016, she was invited to lead the introduction of Programming and Computational Thinking to all students from kindergarten to high school, including Professional and has been teaching these topics ever since at Colégio de São Tomás and, more recently, Colégio de São José - Ramalhão. In 2025 she was an Assistant Teacher at the 1st Edition of PRODIGI for Técnico+ for FP and FSO.