Early life and education

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.^[6] He was introduced to computer programming after moving to Redmond, Washington, when he stumbled on a book offering to teach the creation of a slot machine in Visual Basic.^[6][7] Menezes has said his later interest in STEM education was a result of realizing his luck in finding that book at that particular time.^[8][9]

In high school, Menezes participated in a video game programming competition organized by Microsoft,^[10][11] which would later serve as the inspiration for the CodeDay program.^[12]

Menezes worked on CAPTCHA research in Microsoft Research's Machine Learning and Applied Statistics department while attending the University of Washington.^[2]

Career

In early 2012, he dropped out of university to create a startup focused on live video streaming, and in mid-2012 he moved to East Palo Alto, California to attend Y Combinator for it.^[13][14] In 2013 the startup switched its focus to providing live video infrastructure as a service.^[15]

During his time in the technology sector, Menezes was volunteering at CodeDay (then StudentRND), a not-for-profit headed by Edward Jiang which operated a 3,500 sq.ft. makerspace in Bellevue, Washington.^[16] As a volunteer he helped start the CodeDay event.^[17] In 2013 he left the startup to join CodeDay^[18][19] and in 2014 became the executive director of CodeDay.^[20] Speaking to Forbes about this career change, he stated "There was this huge inequity in Silicon Valley. People were working on big problems but they weren’t necessarily serving a lot of the U.S. population who come from marginalized, lower-income backgrounds.".^[21] He was profiled during this period in the book Be a Changemaker: How to Start Something That Matters.^[22][23]

Menezes also has a reputation for encouraging fun in education. He has become known for eating KitKat candy bars without splitting them into pieces in all his videos^[24][25] and many students have created satirical games as a result.^[26]

Additionally, he is a programmer and is the author and maintainer of several open-source projects.^[27]

Recognition

Menezes was recognized in 425 Magazine's "30 Under 30" in 2015,^[32] as a Game Changer and Most Inspiring in EdTech by Tech&Learning Magazine,^[33] and by Forbes Magazine as a top "30 Under 30" ^[34] and "Canada Under 30 Innovators You Need to Know".^[5]