Meet the Socra team
We're students and teachers building the future of learning with A.I.
We mesh because we've lived on both sides of the classroom.
We've been students in lecture halls, Zoom squares, and late-night study groups, and we've been the teachers designing exams, leading workshops, and mentoring peers. That makes us uniquely tuned to what actually works in learning — and what doesn't.
We've seen firsthand the power of teachers, and we believe they must remain at the core of the classroom in this age of A.I. We're also part of the youngest wave of founders, growing up alongside A.I. instead of catching up to it. Each of us has hands-on experience building with A.I., from research papers to shipped products. Together, we bring the rare combo of pedagogy, product, and engineering: a team of students, teachers, and A.I. natives reimagining education from the inside out.
Deniz Gülbaharli
Co-founder, CTO
Deniz is a builder with expertise in engineering, product, and education.
She earned her engineering degree from the University of British Columbia, joined Microsoft as a Product Manager designing scalable, user centered tools, and later became the first engineer at a startup, where she built systems from the ground up. Before Socra, she directed curriculum development at a global nonprofit and scaled the program to thousands of students.
Being raised by two teachers, she is passionate about building technologies that amplify curiosity and support teachers rather than sideline them.
Being raised by two teachers, she is passionate about building technologies that amplify curiosity and support teachers rather than sideline them.
Haley Moller
Co-founder, CEO
Haley is an educator and researcher with roots in both the humanities and A.I.
After earning a B.A. in English from Yale in 2023, Haley taught literature and writing to high school students while also working in a Yale neuroscience lab and publishing research on large language models and their role in reasoning. Drawing on this cross-disciplinary experience, she founded Socra to make student reasoning visible and to support thoughtful, independent use of AI.
Her work is driven by a belief that AI should deepen students’ questions rather than replace their thinking—and that teachers must remain at the center of that process.
Her work is driven by a belief that AI should deepen students’ questions rather than replace their thinking—and that teachers must remain at the center of that process.
Max Raffel
Founding Engineer
Max is an engineer at the intersection of teaching, A.I., and creative software.
He studies computer science and game development at USC, where he has designed and taught programming curricula, as well as led large dev teams to ship innovative games at some of USC's leading extracurricular organizations. He has brought his user-focused design as well as engineering expertise building AI tools to Socra, where he strives to make AI foster creativity and critical thinking, not replace it.
Max is a black belt martial artist and lion dancer. Word on the street is he once hit the floor at a Boston Celtics halftime show.
Max is a black belt martial artist and lion dancer. Word on the street is he once hit the floor at a Boston Celtics halftime show.
Christie Yu
Designer
Christie brings A.I. product design experience from Lenovo, where she has led end-to-end design for large-scale A.I. applications used by millions worldwide.
She specializes in UX for A.I. systems, creating design languages that are modern, snappy, and ready-to-deploy. During the pandemic, she taught and led an 8-week English seminar for 70+ students from her bedroom, raising $26K for charity. Christie has a background in English and CS from Yale, blending storytelling and technical expertise in everything she creates.
Christie is currently teaching herself gardening through ChatGPT alone — and is determined to harvest her first big crop in 2026.
Christie is currently teaching herself gardening through ChatGPT alone — and is determined to harvest her first big crop in 2026.
Mudi Yang
Scientist
Mudi is a computer scientist pushing the edge of A.I. and quantum computing.
He is completing his Master's at Columbia while working as a GPU compiler engineer at Qualcomm, and earned his B.S. at Yale, where he was a teaching assistant for computational intelligence and discrete mathematics. His research has spanned NLP, quantum computing, and A.I.-driven sentiment analysis, with multiple papers and major fellowships to his name.
Mudi thrives at the intersection of theory and practice, turning cutting-edge ideas into real systems. He's also the type of guy who can explain quantum random walks over coffee and still make it sound fun.
Mudi thrives at the intersection of theory and practice, turning cutting-edge ideas into real systems. He's also the type of guy who can explain quantum random walks over coffee and still make it sound fun.