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.[4]

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 in Visual Basic.[4][5] 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,[6][7] which would later serve as the inspiration for the CodeDay program.[8]

Menezes worked on CAPTCHA research in Microsoft Research's Machine Learning and Applied Statistics department while attending the University of Washington.[1] 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[9] to attend Y Combinator for TapIn.tv.[10][11] In 2013, TapIn.tv, now called Framebase, switched its focus to providing live video infrastructure as a service,[12] and Menezes left shortly thereafter.[13]

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.[14]

During his time in the technology sector, Menezes was also volunteering at CodeDay (at the time called StudentRND),[15] a not-for-profit headed by Edward Jiang which operated a 3,500 sq.ft. makerspace in Bellevue, Washington[16] where he helped start the CodeDay event.[17]

After leaving Framebase in 2013, and frustrated at what he perceived as Silicon Valley's focus on problems which didn't serve most of the population, Menezes moved to Seattle, Washington and joined StudentRND full-time to lead the growth of CodeDay events.[4][18] Menezes and Jiang's work in this period was profiled in the book Be a Changemaker: How to Start Something That Matters.[19][20] Jiang left the organization in 2014, with Menezes becoming the new leader of the organization.[21]

Menezes' work in education is focused on educational motivation. He has said that he believes that creativity and excitement are an important part of motivating students to learn which are ignored in school, and believes that by focusing on facts over creativity in STEM disciplines, schools are responsibility inequity in the technology industry.[22][23] He believes that programming is a possible way to ease inequity because it requires few resources and can generate wealth [24] and empower disadvantaged students.[25]

In recognition of growing CodeDay'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 2019.[26][27][28]