Mel McGee
About
Melanie (Mel) McGee
Founder and CEO of We Can Code IT (IT education & mentorship), and imageNation (software development group), Mel is a Crain's Cleveland 2014 Woman of Note, author, and software engineer with nearly 20 years of professional experience, Mel McGee has worked with clients like Tyco International, DeLorean Motor company, and hundreds of others to develop software. Her programming experience translated to the classroom nearly as soon as she began coding.
An experienced educator, she has taught computer science and engineering subjects to kids, teens, and adults at We Can Code IT, Colleges, and even overseas. Lead educator and curriculum developer of We Can Code IT, she brings creativity into the STEM classroom through unique workshops for kids and adults. Mel's knowledge of full-stack development and over 20 programming languages allows her to adapt curriculum to students in a variety of ways. Her main objectives are to add fun and increase diversity in computer science.
Her love for sharing her creative computing techniques has not gone unnoticed. Her innovative early wearable computer was featured in Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs. Her web development expertise was featured in books like Curt Harler's Beyond the Browser. She has been featured on NPR, publications like Motor World, Crain's Cleveland Business, as well as the front page of Cleveland's Plain Dealer as an early Google Glass explorer. Her artificial intelligence bots, Zoe-bot and Skeletor-bot, have been entertaining the masses online and at community events since the early 2000s. She continues to break barriers in innovation with explorations in augmented reality.
We Can Code IT focuses on motivating, mentoring, and educating those who are underrepresented in computer science and engineering. We Can Code IT has coding bootcamps for adults, and computer science / computational thinking workshops for kids. Our goal is to empower underrepresented populations in technology, and help low to moderate income earners make a fast and lucrative career change.