Tyler Menezes

Menezes was born in Toronto, Ontario, and moved to Spokane, Washington when he was young. He has stated that his interest in technology started during a period of long social isolation while living in Spokane and being uninterested in sports like the rest of his classmates.[7]

His formal introduction to computer programming came after moving to Redmond, Washington, when he stumbled on a book offering to teach the creation of a slot machine[7] in Visual Basic.[8] Menezes has said his later interest in STEM education was a result of realizing his luck in finding that book at that particular time.

In high school, Menezes participated in a video game programming competition organized by Microsoft,[9] which would later serve as the inspiration for SRND's CodeDay program.[10]

Menezes worked on CAPTCHA research in Microsoft Research's Machine Learning and Applied Statistics department while attending the University of Washington.[3] In early 2012, he dropped out of university to found TapIn.tv, a startup focused on live video streaming, and in mid-2012 he moved to East Palo Alto, California[11] to attend Y Combinator for TapIn.tv.[12][13] In 2013, TapIn.tv, now called Framebase, switched its focus to providing live video infrastructure as a service,[14] and Menezes left shortly thereafter.[15]

Despite having a business focus since 2012, Menezes is a C# and PHP programmer, and is the author and maintainer of several open-source projects.[16]

After leaving Framebase in 2012, Menezes moved to Seattle, Washington. He joined SRND as its Programs Director, where he was responsible for the expansion of the organization's flagship CodeDay program from Seattle, Washington to 28 cities nationwide.[15] In 2014 Menezes was promoted to Executive Director to replace the organization's previous head Edward Jiang.[17]

Menezes has said several times that he believes that creating excitement and creativity is an important part of education, which is ignored in school. He believes his work with SRND is a way to replicate that experience on a more predictable scale.[18][7][19]

In recognition of growing SRND's community to span across the entire United States, Menezes received a number of awards, including his inclusion in Forbes Education "30 Under 30" in 2018.[18][20][21][22]