Primary Job Title CEO & Founder Primary Organization First Code Academy
Location San Francisco, California, United States Regions San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast, Western US Gender Female
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Michelle is the CEO and founder of First Code Academy, a leading coding and STEM education institute that teaches coding to kids from 4 to 18 with hands on workshops, camps and regular programs. She founded AppJamming Summit, the largest app development competition that attracts thousands of submissions from students (8-15 years old). She is a
visiting instructor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), on the Mobile Computing Master Trainer program.
Prior to starting First Code, she graduated from the inaugural class of Hackbright Academy, a leading coding bootcamp in San Francisco, and held various technical roles in high growth startups in Silicon Valley, including as the first growth hacker at Buffer and Bump Technologies (acquired by Google in 2013). Born and raised in Hong Kong, she graduated from University of Chicago and began her career at Goldman Sachs as an equity analyst.
In addition to running First Code Academy, she is also passionate about women entrepreneurship and empowerment, cofounded a community for women in technology, Women Who Code (Hong Kong chapter). In her free time, she loves to train for long distance running, vinyasa yoga and travel. She contributes to Forbes and Womany (top blog in Taiwan).
Her work has received international and regional accolades including the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Asia List in 2016, BBC 100 Women Entrepreneurs in 2015, Women of Hope Award (Entrepreneur Category 2015) and (Tech Category 2014) and American Chambers Women of Influence Awards (Young Entrepreneur Category 2015).
