Michael Ellison

Michael Ellison is the CEO and co-founder of CodePath, a nonprofit working to reprogram higher education to create the most diverse generation of software engineers, CTOs, and founders. To achieve its mission, CodePath partners with universities to deliver industry-informed curricula centered on the needs of Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and low-income students.

Since 2017, CodePath has taught more than 18,000 students and partnered with more than 80 colleges and universities to provide students with opportunities to build for top tech companies, ship real code, and lift each other up to become the engineering leaders of tomorrow. Drawing from his own personal journey as someone who grew up in a low-income household without access to computer science classes at an early age, Michael’s vision for CodePath is to increase diversity in tech by changing the systems that foster inequities in the industry.

CodePath is supported by Andreessen Horowitz, Blue Meridian Partners, Cognizant Foundation, Comcast, Google, Knight Foundation, Meta, New Profit Foundation, Salesforce, Y-Combinator, Walmart, Workday, and more.

Michael is a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow and a member of the Jobs for the Future (JFF) Racial Economic Equity Advisory Council. He was recognized as an Industry Changemaker, part of Walmart’s Black & Unlimited Initiative, during the 2022 NAACP Image Awards. Prior to CodePath, Michael co-founded ClassMetric, a tech startup that later became Segment and was acquired by Twilio for $3.2B. Michael is also a founding board member of Women Who Code.