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Meet the Students

Students attending Make School are poised to be Silicon Valley's next generation of leaders and thinkers.

Ruhsane Sawut

Rushani is a self-driven, motivated, and hardworking student. She is Uyghur (a minority ethnic group) and born in China. She came to the United States alone when she was 15 years old with no prior English knowledge and managed to graduate from high school with a 4.0 GPA, ...

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Erik Batista

Erik is currently a student at Make School advancing in iOS development. He enjoys designing and shipping iOS apps. In his free time, you can find him going to tech events and working on side projects!

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Jamar Gibbs

Jamar is a former marketing strategist and MBA that enjoys coding in Swift. His journey began with web development, building small-scale content marketing sites for business owners in San Diego and San Jose. With time, his desire to provide bigger and better solutions le...

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Ramon Geronimo

Ramon Geronimo is an oriented application developer for iOS platforms and Full Stack web applications with various years of experience in iOS and more than 6 years of experience developing in the web. He is constantly striving to learn new technologies and looking to bett...

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Ricardo Rodriguez

Ricardo is currently a student at Make School with a focus in Full Stack IOS development. From a young age he developed an interest in computers and video games. He eventually went on to take a Computer Science course in a local community college, setting a foundation for...

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Stephanie Cherubin

With some prior coding experience, Stephanie Cherubin decided to pursue her Bachelor's Degree in Applied Computer Science at Make School. She is self motivated and an avid learner and is always looking to expand her skill set. Stephanie takes great pleasure in helping peo...

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Javi Mendoza

Javier is a junior at Make School who has a passion for learning new technologies and enjoys problem solving. He hopes to help contribute and mold in some way shape or form the future of technology.

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Noah Woodward

Noah is a passionate software developer who was a pioneer in the Voice assistant development industry. Having worked with companies that include Amazon, and Johnson and Johnson, he has extensive experience in the development of scalable enterprise software solutions. He i...

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Jon Kopp

Jonathan Kopp is a software engineer and currently a senior at Make School. He is a fast paced learner and can easily adapt to any environment. Jonathan started his journey into the world of software development when he was 12 years old. He founded La Jolla High School’s ...

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Jaeson Booker

Jaeson has studied Business Administration and attended a coding bootcamp prior to coming to Make School. He has a huge interest in entrepreneurship and how to accelerate the advancement of science and technology. Fields that peak his interest include Mobile Development, ...

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Ryan Nguyen

Ryan Nguyen grew up in a town on the east side of Los Angeles named El Monte. Out of high school, he was inspired by his teachers to dive into the medical field. However, realizing that it was not the right field he quickly pivoted to tech because of his brother. Ryan sta...

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Meet our Alumni

Alumni of Make School represent the brightest young developers around the world. With the expertise they gained at Make School, they’ve gone on to work at tech giants like Google, Snapchat, Oracle, and Yahoo!, as well as a slew of interesting startups.

Class of 2017

Fanisa Mlangeni

Fanisa is passionate about tackling the accessibility of resources problem in developing countries and desires to inspire people to innovate and create products that will have a positive impact. Her goal is to build products, fix problems and help others. She is particularly interested in EdTech and values great leadership. She has a penchant for music, sports and discovering new things. She strives to grow and be a better version of her past self and always sees room for progress. Prior to Make School, Fanisa graduated high school in South Africa.

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Buka Cakrawala

Growing up in Indonesia, Buka always knew he wanted to be an artist. He first started to learn programming at the age of nine. When Buka came to Make School’s Summer Academy, he arrived with several web-development projects under his belt. During the summer, he fell in love with the Swift language and created a 2D iOS game to help his four-year-old sister to learn her colors. He has a strong passion for back end development, mainly in iOS, and Buka is currently working with his team to create a tool for people learning to think critically.

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Kadeem Palacios

I was born and raised in the Bay Area as a first generation Afro-Latino. I wrote my first line of code sophomore year of high school in a program called SMASH Academy. That first exposure led to two years at UC Santa Cruz as a Computer Science Major. During some time off, Make School was recommended to me, and I attended the 2016 Summer Academy. Since then, I've shipped my first app to the app store, got second place in a hackathon, and third place at a Startup Weekend.

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Ross Justin

Ross is a maker and technology enthusiast who is always thirsty for knowledge. His professional experience includes shipping a product that is now used by thousands. The product he developed is a system for controlling outdoor lighting (timing, schedules, various features) via iOS and Android apps over Bluetooth, including embedded firmware and circuit board design.

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Eric Wong

Eric’s journey towards software engineering began in January 2016 after attending the annual ATT Developer Summit. Treasuring his experience at the Developer Summit, Eric began writing his first lines of code in spring 2016. Since then, his passion and dedication towards software engineering has caused him to hone his skills in iOS development. While he is still growing in his technical ability, Eric holds a vision for the future and a keen sense for product development. In addition to his technical pursuits, Eric loves playing soccer, loves philosophy and is loved by Christ.

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Gian Franco Vitola

Gian Franco's interest in computers started early in life - he asked for a computer as a birthday present when he was 4 years old, at a time when even his parents didn't own one. That interest only grew stronger when he played his first video game, an event which eventually led him to experiment with software development and pursue knowledge within various topics of computer science. His hobbies are playing video games, playing electric guitar, watching movies/TV series, and singing like a rockstar when nobody's paying attention.

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Fiona Carty

From a young age, Fiona has been an avid lover of science and design. When she went through Girls Who Code at Google in 2015, she found that Computer Science is a balance between the two subjects. In high school, she taught programming to her female peers and organized hackathons. Currently, she operates as the Lead Organizer for Make Hacks. Fiona builds products that help her grasp Human Centered Design and User Interaction.

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Alex Peña

Towards the end of High School, Alex realized that he was passionate about Software Engineering, Space, and Education. It was then that he started the first Computer Science club at his school. Upon graduating, he was offered a position to teach AP Computer Science through TEALS, a Microsoft Philanthropy. Helping other people through what Alex creates has always been something he has cared about. Alex wants to change the way people think about education, help make earth become a multi-planetary species by means of engineering and research, and bring ideas that people can benefit from, to life.

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Alex Reilly

Alex’s first brush with coding was in 6th grade when he discovered he could make friends laugh by writing scripts that made his computer say funny things. He liked making people happy and learned he could do that through coding. After winning second prize at a hackathon during the summer, Alex has been working with his Make School peers on Aux Music. In his free time Alex enjoys reading, cooking, and learning to play guitar.

Winnie Wen

Winnie was born and raised in Suriname, a country in South America. She moved to the United States in 2010 and graduated from Mission high school, San Francisco in 2012. Winnie then majored in Dutch studies and minored in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, graduating in May 2016. Winnie has a passion for languages, both computer languages as well as spoken languages. Passionate about the Natural Language Processing field, Winnie wishes to someday build an app or work in this field to help people overcome language barriers.

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Bob De Kort

Since the day Bob learned to create the snake game in Excel, he had wanted to learn how to code. Not satisfied with traditional education, he stumbled upon Make School - and the discovery quickly turned his life around. He attended the 2016 Summer Academy in Singapore and later came to San Francisco to learn the very thing that kept him interested in school. Now with two apps on the Appstore, Bob wants to dive deeper into the Swift programming language and develop products for all Apple’s products. Besides building apps, Bob loves learning about space and its unlimited possibilities, contemplating about the meaning of life, and thinking about new ideas that could help the world accomplish day-to-day tasks.

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Alexander Dejeu

Alex strives to create impact and is a charismatic doer. He has been tinkering with technology for as long as he can remember and he comes to Make School with several established iOS apps. The common theme in Alex’s work is his combination of simple meaningful design with deliberate implementation of technology to solve real world problems mostly in the education area. Beyond programming, playing soccer, hiking, and exploring balances his dynamic life. In the future Alex hopes to work at an established company on a dedicated team impacting the way people learn around the world.

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Brian Hans

Brian has come to Make School with several hackathon awards and published apps under his belt, all before finishing high school. He has already impressed us with how much he can accomplish in such a short time. His first iOS app was built in just under 2 months and allows listeners around the world to sync their music sessions. Currently, he is working with a team of other Make School students to redesign music discovery on iOS. Brian is looking to push the boundaries of mobile development and create products that will change the lives of millions.

Carlos Diez

Carlos, aged 21, hails from Mexico. His career goal is to create his own startup, but he feels that he first needs to acquire the skills required to work at a successful tech company and work at one for some time. He loves gaming and is really interested in the eSports scene, enjoying tournaments of almost any game. He does not plan on becoming a game developer but nonetheless admires the work they do and, as his next project, is interested in building a platform for game developers that will make it easy for developers to playtest and receive feedback.

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Chandan Brown

Chandan grew up in Flint, Michigan, and from the beginning he loved playing video games. By the age of 9, he was convinced that he should be making the games he played. So he started writing stories for potential games, drawing characters and environments, and creating music. Chandan started coding at 13 and his love for video games soon expanded to a love for computers in general. He hopes to create great experiences for users everywhere and make his love for computers, games, art, writing, and music, contagious for new generations.

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Jake Zeal

Jake is an insatiably curious and passionate software engineer. He focuses on iOS because of its reliance on excellent code architecture, attention to detail, and continuous innovation of Swift. When not writing code, he is brainstorming new, creative ideas, reading up on new programming paradigms and studying everything from psychology to philosophy. Jake looks forward to a future of solving challenging iOS problems, providing enormous value to the world around him in his every day interactions, and living out his enthusiasm - working with awesome people.

Juan Pablo Fernandez

Jay started programming on his TI-83 Plus during his Junior year in high school, creating functions that pretty much solved every problem in his math class. This however did not have a happy ending. During his final math exam he was asked to clear the RAM of his calculator, leading to a low grade on the subject. Undeterred, he still pursued his passion for programming, leading him to iOS Development at the Make School Summer Academy and the publishing of 2 apps to the app store in the span of 3 months. One of his projects is an app that compares the price for various ride-sharing services, making it easier to choose the cheapest option.

Kenny Batista

Kenny creates software to connect people. This past summer he wanted to find a way to enhance how people communicated via text. He built a keyboard for iOS that allows users to send animated emojis, instead of sending static ones. Kenny strives to find new ways for people to communicate and stay in touch.

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Kojin Oshiba

Kojin is an artificial intelligence enthusiast who has work experience in natural language processing and data engineering. Before Make School, he attended Harvard College for two years, where he double majored in computer science and statistics. Kojin’s career interest is in education technology. His passion in education comes from spending 18 years of his life in Tokyo, where he experienced a totally different education system from the US. After coming to the US for college, he founded a nonprofit to help Japanese students study abroad. While continuing his studies in AI, he is eager to apply his knowledge to the field of education, especially on improving personalized learning and one-on-one communication.

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Lorenzo Caoile

Lorenzo previously enjoyed a successful career as a hairdresser, but was inspired to pursue his passion for video games and made the choice to become a Game Designer. While scouring the internet for resources to help him achieve his dream, he stumbled upon MakeGamesWithUs and knew he had found an educational model that resonated with his approach to learning. Now known as Make School, Lorenzo has been exposed to many different areas of software development from Front End Web to Mobile Development. With his eye for design, he aims to add gamification and style to every project. Lorenzo loves how games and technology bring people together and hopes to create experiences that people will never forget.

Luca Hagel

Luca grew up in Hattingen, a small town in western Germany. He knew that he wanted to be a professional developer ever since he got his hands on "Visual C++ 2008" by André Willms from his local Library and started learning the language. Recently his focus has been on helping fellow developers, either in the form of writing tools, passing on knowledge and automating daily chores. When he's not coding, Luca loves to see the more remote locations this world has to offer and enjoy the peace.

Madhur Malhotra

Madhur is a product engineer and designer from New Delhi. An early-obsession with video games sparked his long-standing infatuation with computer science. A fascination with storytelling drives his passion to create. An exquisite sense of design guides him to make delightful products that captivate and engage his audience. A thirst for learning motivates him to seek inspiring mentorship in thought-provoking environments. A natural leader, Madhur cares deeply about building inclusive communities throughout his endeavors. Corny puns, whimsical outfits, and a profound love for sports and hip-hop describe his sprightly presence. With a budding interest in technology and a bias for action, Madhur aims to positively impact others.

Marquavious Draggon

Marquavious's interest in tech goes way back to the age of five. Being mostly self-taught and unsatisfied with the traditional model of education, he left college and enrolled in Make School. While making solid, conventional apps is his main goal, he also enjoys seeing new places, meeting new people and making deep connections with them.

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Anastasios Lambrou

The only thing permanent in this world is change, and Tassos wants to be a primary driver of it for the better. After receiving his BA in Economics from San Francisco State University he founded pullPixel Media, a marketing consultancy firm that specialized in web and print design solutions. With a vision for social entrepreneurship and a drive for excellence, Tassos hopes to bring real solutions to complex problems through his work at Make School and beyond.

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Nicholas Swift

Nicholas picked up his first programming book during high school, and it’s been a whirlwind of code since then. From self built C++ game engines to Python web scrapers, his love for technology has pushed him to constantly build and launch products. Despite his last name, Nicholas’s first encounter with the Swift programming language was at Make School’s Summer Academy! We’ve been amazed at what he’s accomplished since then - shipping many polished apps to the App Store, including the iOS app for Course Board (a course management system for Make School). Nicholas is currently working with a team of Make School students on Aux, an app that will revolutionize the way we listen to music.

Samuel Lee

Prior to joining Make School, Sam had been working toward degrees in both Math and Computer Science. Though college is now something behind him, he actively continues these interests in a new setting. Within engineering, Sam works hard everyday to be the best developer he can be, pushing his boundaries in every technology he gets his hands on. Within math, Sam acts as a tutor and mentor across a variety of courses and ages to push his students to be the best learners that they can be. Through his time at Make School, Sam hopes to learn skills that will allow him to bring technology to an audience of people untouched by its influence.

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Trevin Wisaksana

Trevin was born, like most babies, back in February 28 in the year 1998. His passion lies in creating new things, innovating, and inventing. He was taught to be creative ever since he was a child - drawing has been one of the most common things he did and his family even created a gallery of his drawings on his bedroom walls. But this represents only a fraction of Trevin’s creative journey. Today, the monumental moments of this journey have been etched into the 3D concepts that he’s designed, the business plans for a lot exciting projects, and the disaster relief drone project he is currently part of.

William Wold

William may have grown up on a farm in Virginia, but that didn’t stop him from learning to code at a young age. When he was 16, he got serious about it and learned C++. Since then, he has built a real time computer vision system, a 3D fluid dynamics simulation and much more. He loves figuring out logic puzzles and sees programming as the most useful application of that skill. When learning something, he’s never truly satisfied until he understands how it really works. His non technical pastimes include ultimate frisbee and making stuff out of popsicle sticks. His latest project is developing a new programming language, called Pinecone.

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Jose Gutierrez

Jose first experienced programming in an introductory Java course at North Carolina State University in 2013. He recognized the beauty in coding and its possibilities. Not long after, he was already considering it an art form by harmonizing functionality and readability with simplicity in the lines. Jose is interested in creating products with a straightforward intent. He spends his time focusing on personal growth, including coding mastery, learning, playing soccer, and asking why things work the way they do. His current vision is to build a platform for soccer fanatics, where they have access to the most comprehensive list of statistics in professional soccer.

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Maribel Montejano

Studying science has always been a passion for Maribel, which led her to graduate with degrees in Chemistry and Biology. While working in the industry, she often found herself gravitating towards researching and implementing new technologies. After noticing this trend, she decided to explore computer science. A curiosity for coding opened up when she wrote her first automation script, and she was ready to pursue a career in computer programming. Along the way, Maribel has also been a volunteer for several organizations, and has assisted as a mentor for other students. She is excited to embark on a career where she is able to serve others and also continue to flourish in her fondness for coding.

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Thanasi Stratigakis

Thanasi taught himself to program at 14 and quickly began developing apps that have gone on to win numerous hackathons, app competitions, and awards. He recently won the Congressional App Challenge, where he was invited to present his app to an array of congressmen and representatives from the tech industry. Even more recently, Thanasi won a scholarship to Apple’s WWDC, where he had the opportunity to meet many of Apple’s engineers and executives like Tim Cook. Thanasi also inspires others to pursue computer science. He tutored his upperclassmen in AP Computer Science and even started a club where he taught programming in high school. Thanasi is currently working on Aux, an app that changes the way we listen to music.

Nabil Khaja

A scientist turned engineer, Nabil is deeply fascinated with human behaviour and leveraging technology to optimize it for social good. During undergrad, if he wasn’t thinking about experiments to try in the lab, he was engrossed in pedagogical pursuits — teaching psychology, designing curriculum, or attending conferences about either. As he approached the end of undergrad, he found himself pushed further into software-driven solutions, be it for crunching brain data, teaching, or just good old fun. Inspired by software's capacity to drive change, and a fierce desire to build solutions, Nabil packed his bags in Canada and moved to Make School in Silicon Valley where he started building technical skills, and apps, at a ferocious pace.

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Class of 2016

Abenezer Mamo

Abe’s love for technology began in a remote village in Ethiopia where he was born. He took apart the radio his mother had, the only technology for miles on end, to turn it into a fan. At the age of 14, he got his first computer. His first company was started not long thereafter. He has since started and grown several startups, become an avid software engineer, and developed a keen interest in project management. Abe combines his skills as a developer with operational expertise not often found in CS students.

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Adrian Wisaksana

Adrian created a fitness app where the health of a virtual pet depends on your exercise. Everything we’ve seen Adrian create since he joined Make School has reached a level of polish above and beyond what you’d expect from a single developer. He has a great product sense and is incredibly dedicated to becoming a stronger engineer - he’s blown us away with his technical understanding and work ethic. The products he builds speak for themselves.

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Connor Maher

Before Make School, Connor worked in the Air Force and started his own irrigation hardware company. Connor’s growth trajectory as a software engineer at Make School has been phenomenal. His impressively polished sports highlights app is a testament to how quickly his abilities have matured. He is particularly interested FinTech and technologies that are revolutionizing infrastructure and low-tech industries.

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Daniel Hoang

Daniel has professional iOS experience and several apps under his belt. He is passionate about the dynamics of tournament and competitive games, so he built an app to help tournament organizers create brackets and track competitor progress. Daniel transferred to Make School after a year at Santa Clara University and is looking for opportunities at larger companies with a culture of mentorship and collaboration.

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Dennis Aleynikov

Dennis came to Make School with over a year of professional experience as a full stack engineer and a winning Hackathon record. He lives for the excitement people feel when they interact with what he has created. To balance his love for creating products people love, Dennis took a deep dive into cross-platform mobile development, doing extensive research on the state of the art. Today, he is presenting an analysis and comparison of three different frameworks. He is looking for both product focused and research oriented opportunities.

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Eliel Gordon

Eliel came to Make School to learn how to build professional-grade software and has excelled in doing so. His universal app connects individuals to the mentors they need. It is gorgeous, polished, and technically impressive under the hood. He has also been working part time as an iOS developer while studying. He is excited by the health and fitness space.

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Frantisek "Fero" Hetes

Interested in self-development, Fero has deep knowledge of speed reading, memory techniques, sleep hacking, and life hacking in general. He strives to be the best Fero that Fero can be and this attitude is reflected in his work and recent experimentation with his development setup. He’s excited by products that help users better themselves and built a tracking tool to quantify exactly how and how much we adhere to our personal goals.

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Hunter Larco

Hunter learns by building a better way to teach. This semester he tackled computer architecture and built a full simulated processor in Javascript designed as a teaching tool. He has also created a beautiful voxel engine purely in CSS. Before Make School, Hunter was running a successful software consultancy (while in high school - don’t tell his clients!). Hunter blasts through weeks of curriculum in days and is looking for opportunities where his thirst for learning and building can be supported by more senior mentorship.

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Ignat Remizov

Ignat’s new passion is Improv, so he built an app to practice. He loves diving deep into technologies - during the last few months as he became acquainted with iOS development he accumulated encyclopedic and often obscure knowledge on Swift, Objective-C, UIKit, and various other topics. He enjoys breaking and fixing complex systems by understanding how they work from the lowest of low levels all the way to the very top. He is particularly fond of working on technology to build communities and connect people.

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Jacob Lichtstrahl

Jacob’s love for programming evolved from his close relationship with puzzles. Over the course of this semester, Jacob focused on hardware projects and wrote everything from an iOS app to custom Photon firmware for an IOT piggybank he created. He is excited to build web applications to power IOT devices in the coming semester and work with a company in the IOT and hardware space.

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Mike Kane

Mike has been a professional standup comic, high school CS teacher, and wrestling coach. His app helps high school teachers track documents students generate during the school year and allows them to easily file reports with their state. He cares deeply about education and helped Make School build a new AP Computer Science curriculum parallel to building his app. Today, he’s building the products teachers need, in the future he hopes to leverage machine learning and big data to help fix education.

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Jeroen Ransijn

DJ and developer Jay has pulled off a technical feat with his audio visualizer, allowing on-the-fly authoring of OpenGL shaders that are rendered within his app. Jay is passionate about the intersection of music and technology - his Soundcloud and Github will both impress you. Jeroen’s was a professional developer before joining Make School and his products achieve a high standard of polish and beauty.

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Jimmy Yue

Jimmy brings two apps and a custom iOS library with him to Demo Night. He has strong professional experience from technical and design contract work before and during Make School. He is an accomplished musician and passionate about pure math. Jimmy is most interested in joining an experienced team with a strong track record of producing well maintained production code for complex applications.

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Joshua Archer

Josh thinks deeply about the dynamics of technology enabled social interactions and the user experiences behind them. His social app enables a fundamentally new type of interaction on mobile - ask him about his design process! He has a feeling AI will fundamentally change the way we socialize and can’t wait to learn more about the latest in the field. We have a feeling the social applications Josh will work on in the coming years will be used by millions.

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Kavin Subramanyam

Kavin created a beautifully simple way to connect with people at events and learned about how devices connect in the process. When he’s not coding, he’s studying up on theoretical CS, math, and preparing for competitions. He is excited about companies that are advancing science and helping educate the world.

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Kazuhiro Komoto

Kazu joined Make School from a successful career in management consulting which gave him exposure to a wide variety of industries. He is particularly interested in robot-human interaction and has worked on a machine-human interaction project with Nissan. His app detects when people doze off while driving and helps keep them awake. His unique background allows him to bring strategic and engineering expertise to the table.

Kevin CaldwellNAME

Kevin impressed us by the number of technologies he learned to build his product - a security camera controlled by an iOS app. Before Make School Kevin worked at a 3D printing company and he is most interested in IOT devices with companion mobile applications. He is excited to build web applications to power IOT networks in the coming semester and work with a company in the IOT space.

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Leslie Kim

With a marketing degree and engineering internship under her belt, Leslie is passionate about joining a small startup in the education or health and fitness space. Her app is built for venues and performing artists, helping them plan shows and book talent. She has lived in Savannah, NYC, LA, Seoul, DC, and now SF in the past few years, recently sold pieces from her first painting series, and has a budding interest in computer graphics.

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Unathi Chonco

A natural leader, Unathi cares deeply about bringing resources and opportunity to the developing world. He built an app with Tyler that brings accurate transit directions to developing countries. Prior to Make School, Unathi was a freelance Android developer with a startup in the UK. He excels when his ability to inspire and create are both put to use and is looking for a company making positive impact on the world.

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Kyung Heui "Ryan" Kim

Ryan is preparing to file for an O-1 visa, a visa category popular among foreign entrepreneurs. His app helps founders prepare their petition, guide them through the process of filling out all required forms and help them to consult with an attorney. The app generates the entire petition to be sent to the government, saving users thousands in legal fees. In the future, Ryan hopes to bring technology to medicine.

Tyler Hoffman

Tyler has grown both as a software engineer and as a designer while at Make School. He built an app with Unathi that brings accurate transit directions to developing countries. Tyler enjoys competitive programming and rocking out on the bass. He looks forward to applying both his design and engineering skills during his upcoming internship.

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Class of 2015

Lynne Okada

Lynne previously attended UCSC. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall and marched in the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade. She planned to work as a game developer and designer after Make School.

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Phillip Ou

Phillip previously attended MIT, loves fixing cars with his dad, and made an app with Sam that will revolutionize the way you read and share news. Since finishing the Gap Year, Phil interned at drchrono and Snapchat before continuing his studies at MIT.

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Masa Bando

Masa chose to attend Make School instead of MIT after graduating high school and was our first student to receive an offer to be the CTO of a startup. During his time at Make School, he worked with Luke on an app to answer the age old question - where should we go to eat?

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Ivy Xing

Ivy previously attended Bowdoin where she was a mathematics and computer science double major. She did research on how much patients trust their doctors by analyzing data from Twitter. She aspires to be a software engineer and founder.

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Harlan Kellaway

While at Make School, Harlan interned for a mobile agency - and was hired shortly into the internship. Since Make School, Harlan has been working full-time as an iOS Engineer at Prolific Interactive, bringing apps to life for brands like Hollister, SoulCycle, and more.

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Jordan Arnesen

A UC Berkeley graduate, Jordan has held a Top Secret clearance, traveled to Jordan, made a game about bat echolocation, and biked from SF to LA. Jordan may well be the most interesting person in Make School.

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Luke Solomon

An RIT graduate, Luke goes rock climbing, longboarding, and plays soccer - all while his code compiles. During the Gap Year, he worked with Donny and Phil on an app to help you understand context behind trending hashtags on twitter.

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Sam Drozdov

Sam previously attended the University of Maryland. He holds a pole vaulting record from high school and started an awesome music blog called laidbackbeets.com. He's an incredibly productive developer, having shipped three apps in 8 weeks during the Summer Academy in 2014.

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Andrew Brandt

An eagle scout who first started coding on Lego Mindstorms, Andrew was a pharmacy technician, is now a software developer, and built a new kind of pharmacy that can be accessed entirely through a mobile app!

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Donny Kuang

Donny previously attended Cal Poly. He’s Make School’s League of Light Champion and built an app to help journalists effectively catalog their interviews. He planned to join an early-stage.

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Morgan Chen

Morgan is Make School's rock climbing champ and, believe it or not, will beat you at Melee while playing Yoshi. Yoshi! At Make School, Morgan worked with Sam and Andrew on an app to share and upvote trending music.

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Meet our Faculty

Faculty at Make School hold vast industry-wide experience and put student learning and outcomes first. They use their expertise to provide a depth of practical and theoretical knowledge with tailored individual attention. Faculty-student relationships generally go far beyond Make School - instructors often become mentors and offer lifelong career support.

Adam Braus

Instructional Designer

Adam is self-taught with 10+ years of experience. He started his journey building the tech community in Madison, WI before becoming an instructor at General Assembly. Adam believes Make School is an important part of the solution to a broken system of Higher Education. In addition to JavaScript and Python, he is fluent in or can read Spanish, German, Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and French.

Adriana Gonzalez

Instructor

Adriana has previously been an iOS developer and CTO of a startup. She’s been building projects in teams of all sizes since 2014. Adriana is at Make School because she loves contributing to a major change in higher education - making it accessible for everyone.

Anne Spalding

Dean

Anne holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics and started her career as a CS Professor at Colorado Mesa University. After years of teaching at a traditional college, she moved to San Francisco to work as a software engineer, then help start Dev Bootcamp, and build internal technical training for software engineers. Anne is passionate about empowering students to build the software of today and change the world of tomorrow.

Alan Davis

Instructor

Alan holds a BS and MS in Computer Science focusing on AI, ML, and NLP. I left academia because I wanted to build products, but knew I'd eventually become a teacher. He worked as a software engineer at Twilio, then as an early employee at Leap Motion where he designed the real-time hand motion tracking API used by 50k+ developers. He loves seeing ideas click in students’ minds.

Caroline Virani

Student Experience Coordinator

Caroline has received a BS in Psychology and Education. She’s been a teacher in rural public schools, taught at an orphanage in Kenya, and worked in Admissions at a progressive school in San Francisco. Caroline loves making education more engaging and accessible for all students, helping them tap their potential.

Celisse Randolph

Residential Life Manager

Celisse holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Higher Education. She has been working in higher ed for 10+ years in residence life, first year experience, student activities, and student government most recently at Whitworth University. She is excited that Make School is dedicated to giving students an innovative educational learning experience where they can thrive.

Dan Morse

Instructor Manager

Dan is an author, award-winning entrepreneur, and growth marketer. Throughout his 10+ years of experience he has been on the lead team of a Venture Capital fund, led programming at a civic education nonprofit, started a youth urban agriculture program, and has grown a user base by 300k. Dan gets excited by students feeling able to change the world.

Dani Roxberry

Instructor

Dani wrote her first BASIC program at age five. Since then she has had experience as a Senior Systems Engineer, CTO with clients like IMAX and the NFL, CTO with patented software used by products like Twitch, and an instructor for UC Berkeley Extension. Her mission is to inspire others to build the innovations of the future.

Elizabeth Swander

Project Manager

Elizabeth started her career working at a project-based entrepreneurship non-profit serving K-8 students before moving on to lead student programming at UC Berkeley. She then transitioned to edtech as a Product Manager for higher ed tools at Cengage. Elizabeth is empowered to provide opportunity to the modern learner and values putting students at the center of the system.

Ian Birnam

Curriculum Developer

Ian’s experience includes curriculum building at UC Berkeley, product building for companies like HBO and Disney, and launching products in the tech industry. Throughout college, Ian struggled to find mentorship opportunities for his practical product goals. This is the core Make School is built on, and he is driven to continue executing on this vision.

Jeff D'Andria

Outcomes Lead

Jeff has experience as a tech recruiter at Microsoft, specializing in recruiting talent from colleges other than Ivy League schools. He also led the tech and startups career coaching at Stanford's Career Center, developing partnerships with employers and coaching students on their careers. Jeff is passionate about helping students land jobs that help them change their lives.

Jen Sikora

Director of Academic Compliance

Jen holds a BA in English and an MA in Theater & Community. Their career began as a Gallerist and Executive Director, which included developing arts programs in juvenile detention centers in Flint, MI. In 2012, their career moved to education - as program manager at CCA and SFAI. Jen loves ensuring students have the administrative support they need to matriculate.

Jessamyn Dahmen

Instructor

Jessamyn’s experience has been in teaching computer science fundamentals to people new to CS through outreach events. She has a strong interest in broadening participation in computing of underrepresented groups - focusing on healthcare, machine learning, and interface development applications. Jessamyn is passionate about making computer science more accessible.

Megan Dias

Student Experience Lead

Megan holds a BA in Psychology & Business Admin and an MA in Educational Admin & Leadership with an emphasis in Student Affairs. She has been published in Huffington Post & Inc on job-search best practices. She has worked in university admissions, residential life, career counseling, HR, and recruiting. Megan loves helping students to be successful.

Meredith Murphy

Instructor

Meredith earned her BS in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd before joining Google as a frontend software engineer. While at Google, she worked on the AdWords and Google Analytics platforms. After leaving, Meredith worked as a private tutor, and as an instructor for Girls Who Code. She enjoys helping students bring their interests and passions to the classroom.

Michelle Lessly Blackburn

Director of Student and Academic Affairs

Michelle holds a PhD in Law and Public Policy and an MA in Higher Education Admin. She has worked in higher education for 10+ years, specializing in student affairs and education policy at Abilene Christian University, Pepperdine University, and recently at MIT. She is inspired that Make School is dedicated to developing highly-skilled software engineers who can change tech.

Milad Toutounchian

Instructor

Milad holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and has worked for four years in the tech industry as a Data Scientist and mentor at Data Science Career Track on Springboard. He loves to convey his expertise in Data Science to students with very practical applications and real-world problems.

Mitchell Hudson

Instructor

Mitchell is self-taught and has worked freelance for various large and small companies in the Bay Area and around the world. His teaching experience has been as an adjunct and staff faculty in higher education. Mitchell believes that changing education is a great way to create positive change in the world.