The design that made her name
The prosthetic that drew attention was not built to imitate a hand. It was built to do something a hand cannot: disperse biodegradable sparkles. TIME described it as a 3D-printable prosthetic for children, and the choice of function is the argument.
Most prosthetic design for children begins from the assumption that the goal is to look and work like the limb that is missing. Reeves started somewhere else — from what a child might actually want an attachment to do — and 3D printing made that affordable, because a printed part can be redesigned and reprinted as a child grows rather than fitted once at expense.
Born Just Right
With her mother she co-founded Born Just Right, a nonprofit that celebrates children with physical differences and gives them design and STEM resources so they can build their own solutions. The emphasis is on the children doing the designing rather than receiving a design.
She also co-founded the Steam Squad, an online organisation promoting science, technology, engineering, mathematics and the arts among young people, and co-authored a memoir setting out what she has learned from living with a limb difference. TIME reported a collaboration with Microsoft on an accessible guitar design and consulting work with companies including Mattel on toys that affirm limb difference.
Her own argument
Reeves put the case herself in one sentence to TIME: "A lot of kids with disabilities have a different point of view on the world, because the world isn't made for us really."
It is the design principle behind everything else on her record. A person who has to adapt daily to objects built for someone else's body accumulates a specific kind of expertise, and the products she has worked on treat that as expertise rather than as a difficulty to be managed.
TIME's Kid of the Year
TIME ran the award for the first time in 2020, with Nickelodeon, drawing more than 5,000 nominees aged between 8 and 16. Five finalists were chosen: Gitanjali Rao, Tyler Gordon, Bellen Woodard, Ian McKenna and Reeves.
The title went to Rao, 15, of Lone Tree, Colorado, an inventor whose work addressed contaminated water, opioid addiction and cyberbullying. The awards special was broadcast on Nickelodeon on 4 December 2020. Reaching the last five out of five thousand is the documented distinction; the winner's title is not hers.
Why the work matters beyond one child
Paediatric prosthetics have a structural problem that adult prosthetics do not: children outgrow them. A device fitted at six is wrong by eight, which makes conventional manufacture expensive and makes abandonment common.
Printed parts change that arithmetic, and a design library changes it again, because the same file can be scaled and reprinted anywhere there is a printer. That is the context in which a teenager's designs are more than a good story — they belong to a shift in how such devices are made and who is allowed to make them.
What is documented — and what is not
Firm: her age and home town in 2020, her limb difference, the sparkle-dispersing prosthetic, Born Just Right and her mother's role in it, the Steam Squad, the memoir, the Mattel consulting and Microsoft guitar collaboration, and her place among TIME's five finalists.
Open: nothing in this record describes what she has done since December 2020, and no source here gives her school, her current studies or any later product. Reeves was a child when this reporting was published, and only what was published is repeated on this page.
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elisabeth Anisimow | United States | Living paintings sold at 11 for $2,500-$5,000 each | Age 11 |
| Jordan Reeves | United States | 3D-printable children's prosthetics; co-founder of Born Just Right | Age 14 |
| Carmel Bechler | Israel | Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023 | Age 16 |
| Andrea Dominizi | Italy | A beetle in the corner of the frame, logging machinery behind it, and a wo | Age 17 |
| Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas | Germany | Winning Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2024 | — |
What is documented — and what is not
✓ Documented
- One of five TIME Kid of the Year finalists in 2020, aged 14, from Columbia, Missouri
- 3D-printable children's prosthetic dispersing biodegradable sparkles; co-founder of Born Just Right with her mother
- Consulting with companies including Mattel; Microsoft accessible guitar collaboration; Steam Squad co-founder (TIME)
? Unverified, disputed or wrong
- No reporting here on her activity, studies or designs after December 2020
- No source states the title, publisher or date of the memoir she co-authored
- No product specifications, sales or distribution figures for the prosthetic designs
Questions people ask about Jordan Reeves
What did Jordan Reeves invent?
A 3D-printable prosthetic for children that disperses biodegradable sparkles, along with other design work on accessible products.
Did she win TIME Kid of the Year?
No. She was one of five finalists in 2020; the title went to Gitanjali Rao, 15, of Lone Tree, Colorado.
How old is Jordan Reeves?
She was 14 when TIME published its Kid of the Year issue in December 2020. No date of birth is published in that source.
What is Born Just Right?
The nonprofit she co-founded with her mother, which celebrates children with physical differences and provides design and STEM resources so they can build their own solutions.
What is her limb difference?
She was born with a left arm that stopped developing below the elbow, as TIME reported.
Has she worked with companies?
TIME reported consulting work with companies including Mattel on toys affirming limb difference, and a collaboration with Microsoft on an accessible guitar design.
Where is Jordan Reeves now?
Not documented in the sources gathered for this page, which end with the December 2020 reporting.
Who else was a finalist that year?
Gitanjali Rao, Tyler Gordon, Bellen Woodard and Ian McKenna.
Quick quiz: how well do you know Reeves’s story?
What does Jordan Reeves's best-known prosthetic design do?
What is the nonprofit she co-founded with her mother?
Who won TIME's 2020 Kid of the Year?
Sources
- TIME's 2020 Kid of the Year: Meet Gitanjali Rao — TIME, 2020-12-03
Checked by the Geniuses.club editorial team. Ages are given as of September 2026.
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