Jessica Staddon spent most of her career in industry at companies such as JP Morgan Chase, Google, and Xerox, to name a few. Now at Khoury College, she believes students are critical for furthering research.

I love trying to connect folks that I know from the work world with the campus, with the students. The sort of flexibility of the Northeastern student, I think, is really, really remarkable. They’re very resilient and adaptable. Students can bring such a fresh perspective and energy that you’re not going to find otherwise

Jessica Staddon, Professor of the Practice, Director of Computing Programs, Strategic – Oakland

Eleven different times, Chris Paul has either co-founded a startup or joined on the ground floor. And whether it was online media or rowing machines or an internet-enabled basketball hoop, his role has largely remained the same: to build, operationalize, and manage the software team that would make good on the company’s vision.

And as he built a resumé that reads more like an encyclopedia, Paul found a reservoir of software talent to tap: Khoury College co-ops. For more than a decade, he has not only hired them at company after company; he has involved his colleagues, forged connections with other companies, and shared his expertise with cohort after cohort of students at Khoury events. It’s no wonder, then, that the college bestowed him with an Outstanding Co-op Employer honor a few years back. Now, he’s added another: 40 for 40 honoree.

“In a town with some very good schools, Northeastern has long been my favorite place to hire engineers from because of the co-op program and the quality of the CS curriculum,” Paul said. “I simply love the program. I’m a huge fan, and I’ve tried to get involved.”

Paul began his own professional computing journey after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 1977 — “a hundred years ago,” he jokes, “with what amounted to a CS degree back then.” After working six years at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), then the second-largest computer manufacturer around, he founded his own: Working Set. The new company developed an SQL database for DEC that reigned as the world’s fastest for seven years, and Paul helped to develop database products for Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM.

From there, his career bounced between startups in numerous fields. Document management. Web traffic analytics. Media streaming. Video engagement analysis. Customized tween girl apparel. Investment reporting. But it was during his stint at InsightSquared that he first started hiring Khoury students, and the Boston-based business analytics company soon became a sought-after co-op spot.

“That was the big switchover because I met so many great Northeastern engineers,” Paul remembers. “Northeastern students love to build things. It’s a great culture of building and doing, and that’s the differentiating factor. They have a ton of out-of-class, practical experience that essentially none of the other schools have. You can work summer internships for a few months, but you can’t beat two or three stints of six months.”

Just about everywhere Paul went from that point, from software solutions provider Continuum to digital health company Om1 to rowing machine manufacturer Hydrow, he brought Khoury co-ops with him and earned rave reviews from colleagues. But the co-ops didn’t just come to him; he came to them too. Paul attended and volunteered for signature Khoury events, participated in panels, and shared his expertise with students looking to grow their skills and careers.

Northeastern students love to build things. It’s a great culture of building and doing, and that’s the differentiating factor. They have a ton of out-of-class, practical experience that essentially none of the other schools have. You can work summer internships for a few months, but you can’t beat two or three stints of six months

“I remember learning and struggling during my early days at Carnegie Mellon, and it would have been a whole lot easier if I’d had a decent mentor,” Paul explains. “Now I’m an old engineer with lots of experience who enjoys mentoring Northeastern students … The co-op program is so great, and it’s gratifying for me to help out in any way I can.”

Now, after his first retirement lasted, as his wife Lisa jokes, “about 15 minutes,” Paul says he phased out the majority of his work this spring to the point where he is now “very, very part-time.” He’s begun to make good on his long-awaited travel plans, rowing in Chattanooga, Tennessee before jetting off to France. And Rhode Kill, the long-running 65+ basketball team that Paul calls his “weekly religious experience,” is poised to make a serious run at a National Senior Games championship in July.

But even as Paul retires from working life, his fingerprints will linger in the form of the rising young professionals for whom he opened doors and shared wisdom.

Martin Zoltick was part of the first graduating class of Khoury College in 1983 with a BS in Computer Science. He says, “Back then, we had an older building where the computers were in the basement. Our lab was getting updated, but much of it was underground. When we wrote software, you’d go to the basement to submit it by typing into a terminal, which was connected to a mainframe computer. Sometime later the program was run, and if something was wrong, you’d have to start all over.”

Zoltick notes how much has changed from the College’s early years. “Being able to work on personal computers and seamlessly connect remotely – the evolution of technology has changed the way students can learn computer science. Beyond that, the importance and recognition of computer software and information systems technology has grown so substantially since the time I was studying at Northeastern. Like the shiny new building in West Village with more stature than our building back then. It was a small program with people primarily who wanted to study computers and become programmers. Just around the time I was graduating, students from other degree programs, like business, started thinking they should learn to program as software was starting to be used in all kinds of industries and fields.”

While studying at Northeastern, Zoltick had a co-op as a software engineer at several different companies, including Draper Labs, IBM, and Digital Equipment Corporation. At his co-op at Digital Equipment Corporation, he befriended an alum of Northeastern who was working at the company. “He had ideas about entrepreneurship, about starting a company that would focus on developing artificial intelligence technology.”

When Zoltick graduated, he worked at Data General as a software engineer and also pursued the AI startup with this fellow Northeastern alum. “In the context of starting the company and developing the business plan, we spoke with lawyers about names and protecting the technology. At the same time, at Data General, there had been legal issues with the software we were working with. Both experiences got me looking at what aspects of computers and software overlapped with the law. I got a book on it that piqued my interest. I applied to law school, got in, and decided to change my career path from software engineer to a lawyer whose focus would be computer technology and software.”

Thirty plus years later, Zoltick is a highly respected technology lawyer with Rothwell Figg, a firm based in Washington, DC. “Throughout my career, a lot of the technology I’ve worked on as a lawyer has related to computer tech and software, much of which now focuses on artificial intelligence and telecommunications. I work with companies to develop strategic plans to protect their technology and innovations, including applying for and obtaining patents, seeking copyright and trademark registrations, maintaining trade secrets, and counseling them on a wide variety of technology and intellectual property-related legal issues. I help my clients enforce their rights against companies that are infringing or violating their intellectual property rights and defend them when they are accused of wrongdoing. Lastly, I help companies handle transactions where they are acquiring tech, licensing tech, or raising money, and assist investors with due diligence review of technology and IP rights.”

In the past five years, Zoltick’s practice has included a focus on privacy and data protection. “It’s a timely topic now. It has a good cross section with technology and a lot of the areas that I’ve traditionally worked in as an IP and tech lawyer.”

The quality of the professors and the cutting-edge work that the college is publishing – the research groups are at a very high level. The school is leading the way in many important technology areas including AI and data privacy

Zoltick highlights three clients as particularly meaningful. “For twenty-five years, I’ve worked with one of the original developers of real-time operating systems software – Finite State Machine Labs. They were a company very involved in the open-source software community. They needed my help with navigating how to protect their technology and IP, while balancing that with providing open-source software to the community. I worked with them from an early stage and as they grew to be a market leader. I dealt with every legal aspect of their business.”

For the last ten years, Zoltick has worked to protect the technology and patents of Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunication company. Referencing the phone interview for this article, he says, “My work there relates to the tech we’re using right now on this call – 5G, etc.” He also represents RGF Environmental Group, an air, water, and food purification systems technology company. “Part of my interest is that I care a lot about the environment and global health. It was particularly important during COVID. Their devices to remove airborne pathogens pre-dated the pandemic – and they were then deployed around the world. I did the patent work to protect that technology.”

Zoltick is excited for the future of Khoury College and Northeastern University as a major research hub. “The quality of the professors and the cutting-edge work that the college is publishing – the research groups are at a very high level. The school is leading the way in many important technology areas including AI and data privacy. I’ve talked with current professors about this work. I see them publish and speak at conferences.” He’s proud to be a Northeastern alum. “When I was at Northeastern, people saw us as a small program. But now, Northeastern has elevated Khoury College to be on par with schools like MIT and Stanford.”

Reacting to the 40 for 40 selection, Zoltick says, “I’m proud to have been there at the beginning, and hopefully contributed to it over such a positive evolution in the last forty years. I keep in touch with the college and am glad to stay involved. From curriculum to professors to co-op jobs where you learn how to navigate the professional world, Northeastern provides relationships with companies and sets up students incredibly well once they get out in the real world. I credit a lot of my success to my experiences at Northeastern.”

As Northeastern University explored launching a new computer science campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada’s second largest tech and innovation hub, they received invaluable support from an expert in the needs of both the industry and the region—Brenda Bailey. Bailey, a leader in the local tech sector, held roles ranging from co-founding Canada’s first women-owned-and-operated video game studio to leading British Columbia’s interactive and creative digital marketing association, DigiBC. So, when she learned about Northeastern’s vision for supporting the local tech ecosystem, Bailey was thrilled at the chance to help bring the idea to fruition.

It all began when Bailey’s former colleague at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Bethany Edmunds, went to work for Khoury College. Edmunds, now a teaching professor and the director of computing programs at Northeastern’s Vancouver campus, shared with Bailey the college’s vision to prepare more women—and other populations underrepresented in the tech sector—for computer science careers. The college was looking for support in determining the best way to carry out its vision for the new campus. As Edmunds said, “We want to be part of the ecosystem. We recognize and respect what’s already here, so to have somebody that fully understands the nuances and can help inform where our value gets added, it allows us to be a better team player.” Bailey provided that guidance.

In 2019, Bailey met with Northeastern President Joseph Aoun and provided input as part of his informal advisory group. Throughout the development process, Bailey shared insights and advice around the strategic direction of the program. As the school prepared to apply to the BC Accrediting Board, Bailey helped to inform their approach of addressing the gap in research institutions offering master’s degrees, with particular emphasis on DEIAB. Bailey also wrote letters of recommendation and drew on her extensive network to make introductions to key industry and government partners.

As she helped the university find their place in the local education sphere, Bailey connected closely with Khoury College’s mission of “CS for Everyone.” Having focused much of her career on helping underrepresented groups, particularly women and First Nations people, move into tech, she saw the opportunities the Khoury programs offered. This was especially true of the Align program, which provides a two-semester bridge to prepare students from non-CS undergraduate backgrounds to complete a master’s program in data science or computer science. For students who may have gotten the message early on that computer science is not for them, Align provides a way to make the career shift a reality, something that Bailey feels the province really needs.

“When you’re a minority in a particular setting, it often can communicate to you that you don’t belong there,” Bailey said. “I was very often in rooms where I was the only woman leader. Those types of communications are done subtly through who’s represented in particular areas.” Bailey also believes that who makes our technology matters. “With technology, we are creating tools,” she said. “But unlike a shovel or a hammer, technology tools come with values laden within them. It’s really important that we understand that and ensure that those values express the values of all of us, not just one small segment. There are many examples of tech gone wrong because it hasn’t been inclusive. That’s a contribution that Northeastern is helping us with, and it’s deeply important.”

Bailey also understands the challenges that students may face even after graduating from Khoury College or another post-secondary institution, so she saw this as an opportunity to overhaul the Innovator Skills Initiative (ISI) program. The ISI program was originally designed to help recent public university CS graduates who were having trouble finding their first job because companies only wanted people with one to two years of experience. With the increased need for new talent in the region, this was no longer an issue, but the problem had shifted to one of bias in who gets hired for these early-career jobs.

With technology, we are creating tools. But unlike a shovel or a hammer, technology tools come with values laden within them. It’s really important that we understand that and ensure that those values express the values of all of us, not just one small segment

Bailey and the ISI team introduced a new $15 million program to focus on supporting people facing these barriers. The program provided grants to hiring companies to cover the mentorship required for onboarding someone from an underserved community with no experience. The revamped program also expanded the range of eligible post-secondary programs to include both public and private institutions, which allowed Northeastern to extend the opportunity to their graduates.

Brenda Bailey was elected MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) for Vancouver-False Creek in 2020. She is now the Minister of Jobs, Economic Development, and Innovation for British Columbia. She sees the future of the local technology industry as a busy one, with a continued role for both public and private institutions in the region.

“There are a million people that we need to train in the next 10 years,” Bailey said. “Our industries are all transitioning to become tech enabled. Our future is in sustainable technology and a green economy. And those objectives align very strongly with what Northeastern brings to the table and the training that they provide. It’s a really strong fit, and we’re very grateful to have them do this work.”

When Rekha Kamat (MSCS ’05) was a young girl with a budding passion for science and technology, little did she imagine that she would one day become a prominent leader in the technology field. She worked with a single-minded focus and drive at every step of her journey, and success followed.

Today, Kamat is the Global Director of marketing for 3DEXPERIENCE Works at Dassault Systèmes, a science-based company and world leader in providing solutions for innovation, generating more than $5 billion in annual revenue. Her journey began in Mumbai, India, where she recalls watching in awe as NASA’s Sojourner Rover landed on Mars in 1997; she aspired to one day build game changing engineering feats.

“Growing up in India, I focused on education,” said Kamat. “Looking back, I think my passion and sense of purpose shaped my journey.”

Kamat’s family emphasized education from a young age, and in particular her mother — who once aspired to become a doctor herself — encouraged Kamat to pursue a future in STEM, despite the many challenges of entering a male-dominated field.

She became the first woman engineer in her family, graduating from the University of Mumbai with a degree in computer engineering. For advanced studies, Kamat decided to come to America for her masters, intent on building a career at the forefront of innovation.

Presented with many options for her graduate studies, Northeastern appealed to Kamat initially because of its location in Boston; she was inspired by Boston while learning of the American Revolution in history class and its centuries-long role in shaping the science and technology fields. What ultimately set Northeastern apart was the university’s wealth of opportunities and resources in cutting-edge areas of computer science.

“As I was reading up and researching schools, I remember there was an article at that time on Northeastern’s website about Agnes Chan. I also read about their programs in artificial intelligence from Professor Mitchell Wand, and their research in security, which all really attracted me to the school in addition to the opportunity to be in Boston and the campus.”

Her experience with the faculty and opportunities while at Northeastern lived up to her hopes when she first applied, paving the way for her career in STEM.

“The artificial intelligence courses I remember distinctly, learning the Lisp programming language that Professor Wand would teach us at that time. Security was another key field then, and the curriculum and teachings of the professors was innovative and inspiring,” Kamat said.

She accepted a role with Dassault Systèmes after graduating from Northeastern, first working on the research and development team before transitioning to sales industry and business consulting positions within the company.

Today, Kamat oversees 3DEXPERIENCE Works Marketing at corporate group level, including leading and managing geography marketing teams in 12 GEOs across the Americas, Europe and Asia. Her strong technology and sales background give her a unique perspective on how to effectively market the product and lead the strategic business initiatives.

“It’s a definite point of differentiation,” said Kamat. “I can look at how our solutions differentiate and add true value to our clients. I understand it both from the technology perspective, and the sales, business perspective.” Kamat is a lifelong learner, having acquired skills and additional qualifications in artificial intelligence, project management and marketing.

In 2018, Kamat was recognized in Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 annual compendium. She was also among 11 young women globally (and one of two based in the U.S.) to be named Outstanding Rising Talent by the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society at their global conference in Paris, France in 2018.

With her prominent role and influence in the industry, Kamat feels a responsibility to empower the next generation of STEM researchers and advocate for gender equality in the field. Kamat is the head of the Women’s Initiative Americas at Dassault Systèmes. The initiative aims to advocate for women in STEM-based leadership roles and provide resources for women to progress from the grassroots level-upwards.

The artificial intelligence courses I remember distinctly, learning the Lisp programming language that Professor Wand would teach us at that time. Security was another key field then, and the curriculum and teachings of the professors was innovative and inspiring

Kamat has also been a recurring judge for the Congressional App Challenge, a U.S. Congress-sponsored nationwide competition for middle and high school students to encourage STEM, and the Technovation Challenge, an initiative to promote girls’ participation in both entrepreneurship and technology. She also serves on the New England Council’s advisory committee for inclusion and diversity.

“We’ve made a lot of progress since I started,” said Kamat. “Now, we have to look at accelerating the pace”.

And, while Kamat’s contributions to the field of STEM are wide-ranging, she hopes to continue leaving her mark by impacting others.

“Civic engagement is something I’ve been passionate about throughout my journey, even as a child growing up in India, I was volunteering and hopefully making an impact in the community,” said Kamat. “Building an inclusive society is important, including changing the narrative and the stereotypes that we see all around us.”

For Melinda Kramer, professional pivots are nothing new.

That’s how Kramer, a member of Northeastern’s first computer science graduating class, marched from R&D co-ops and Wall Street firms to software consulting and start-up advising. And now, retired from her computing-and-business career, and with her advocacy work and far-flung hiking journeys to keep her busy, it’s worth peering back at the professional trail she’s trekked.

It began during her freshman year as a Northeastern business student.

“Even back then, I had a sense that tech could make a difference in the world,” she says.

“I went on co-op, and being my young self, decided I already knew all of this and needed to try something different,” she reminisces. Luckily, after she pivoted between different science degrees and recognized her interests in math, hardware, and problem solving, Northeastern’s curricula had evolved to match her interests.

“By my senior year, Northeastern had an official computer science college,” she says. “I loved the emerging technology, so I and 18 others became the first graduating class in computer science.”

Shortly thereafter, Kramer began her career on Wall Street, where she developed software for JPMorgan’s mainframe computers.

“It was fascinating to learn about the finance world, but after a few years, I got bored and wanted to try something new, so I pivoted to join a consulting firm,” she recalls. “I realized that I didn’t want to be a software developer, but I did want to be at the intersection of technology and business.

Her tech–business consulting work at Leveraged Technology wouldn’t take Kramer far from the word of software. The financial world was gradually moving online, and to build the tools traders now needed, coding support was essential. In one project, Kramer and her team developed what she called “a new concept in foreign exchange trading” — digital infrastructure for an industry that had conducted its business mostly over the phone. The goals, she says, were efficient record-keeping and faster settlements, which would eliminate failed trades if she could encourage traders to trust the tech.

During her time with the firm, Kramer traveled to Hong Kong and the UK for business, earned her MBA from NYU, and eventually took charge of her department. Then, in the early 90s, she moved to Chicago, where she soon joined Goldman Sachs and built the company’s first web-based money market trading systems. But her longest professional stint would come through one of a handful of her consulting clients.

“I was advising [GCM Grosvenor] while they were running everything out of one massive, sophisticated, incredible Excel spreadsheet,” Kramer recalls. “For growth and management, I advised them to hire someone with tech experience, someone who could systematically develop something to support their portfolio management. And they said, ‘How about you?’”

And so it was. After building software to replace Grosvenor’s behemoth spreadsheet, Kramer spent more than a decade running their new software department, and even hired a Northeastern co-op along the way.

Now, after more than 30 years in tech, Kramer has focused on giving back in retirement. For a while, that took the form of KloudVentures, in which Kramer offered mentorship, networking, and investment to Chicago-area women looking to build tech careers like she had. Now she’s turning much of her focus to her philanthropy and advocacy for women, the LGBTQ community, and disadvantaged children, which began with her co-heading the Chicago chapter of Help for Children.

I was advising [GCM Grosvenor] while they were running everything out of one massive, sophisticated, incredible Excel spreadsheet. For growth and management, I advised them to hire someone with tech experience, someone who could systematically develop something to support their portfolio management. And they said, ‘How about you?

“We raised awareness and money for organizations around the world that worked to prevent and treat child abuse,” Kramer explains. “We raised millions of dollars per year through our business networks, then spent time getting to know local organizations, vetting them, and providing grants.” Now she does similar work with Impact Grants Chicago, an all-female nonprofit with an even wider philanthropic mission. She also advocates for transgender people and communities, typically in the form of one-to-one relationship-building rather than large-scale public philanthropy.

But even in retirement, her computing connection can’t help but come full circle. In 2021, Alex Ernst, one of Kramer’s two children, graduated from Khoury College. And just like his mom, he’s forging a career at the intersection of computing and another field — music in his case, through a software engineering job at Spotify. Through him, as well as her financial support of Khoury College and her old Husky rowing team, Kramer says she’s never lost touch with the university where she first dove into computing.

“I have a soft spot in my heart for Northeastern; it really was a great fit and opportunity for me,” she says. “Northeastern remains core to a lot of my world.”

When deciding where to go for college in the early 2000s, former Lyft CTO Chris Lambert chose Northeastern University in part due the strength of the co-op program. “I found it valuable as a way to accelerate and enhance my experience.” He majored in computer science, and, he says, “got exposure to a broad set of areas within CS.” Lambert’s first two co-ops were with Intel, and his final co-op and first engineering position was with Google. A variety of classes set him up to hit the ground running, but he mentions his informational retrieval class with Javed Aslam and software development with Matthias Felleisen as particularly important.

A directed study with Aslam was important to his first job at Google as part of the natural language processing team in building a system that could translate between a hundred different languages. “The concepts and algorithms that I learned in the information retrieval class set me up to be comfortable in that research group.” In the directed study, Lambert was excited to work with Aslam as a mentor to apply the knowledge from his class to solving a specific problem domain: building a search engine for programming languages that was higher quality and more useful than a general search engine. “[Aslam] would give me suggestions and helped me approach problems the right way, but I had flexibility in the content and direction of the work.”

Looking back on his work in Felleisen’s class, Lambert remembers it as “very pragmatic in building software systems and teams for large scale development.” This proved useful in his second team at Google – the mobile group. “It was 2007, pre-iPhone. It wasn’t yet a priority for Google – we had one team doing mobile projects for the whole company, which was over ten thousand people.” Lambert’s focus was on location services and mapping technology. “I got exposure to large scale distributed systems, machine learning, mobile development, location services. It all ended up being a great background for what I did at Lyft.”

Lyft launched in May 2012, and Lambert joined in November 2012 as a software engineer. The engineering team was eight people in a thirty-person company. “We still had the pink mustaches on the cars, with maybe a hundred drivers on the road. It was an exciting, fun chaos. Every Friday night was our biggest night ever. When you’re growing that quickly, you’re always hitting the scaling limits of what you’ve built, and it’s all-hands-on-deck to fix it – a classic startup experience.”

He soon shifted into a CTO role. “Lyft was my first time as a people manager. I learned a lot of great lessons about building teams and taking care of people, putting people first.” Although the pandemic was “the hardest years” for the company, Lambert takes pride in weathering the storm and rallying employees to bounce back. On the business side, a proud moment for him was when Lyft launched twenty-four cities in twenty-four hours in 2014. “We enlisted our community of drivers to help onboard new drivers. It was a big milestone for us.” On the product side, he mentions the shared rides feature. “We were the first company to do that. We’ve expanded to be a portfolio transportation company, integrating a variety of transit methods into the app.”

We still had the pink mustaches on the cars, with maybe a hundred drivers on the road. It was an exciting, fun chaos. Every Friday night was our biggest night ever. When you’re growing that quickly, you’re always hitting the scaling limits of what you’ve built, and it’s all-hands-on-deck to fix it – a classic startup experience

Before going into the next phase in his career, Lambert plans to take a few months off and travel with his family. But following that, he’ll figure out what’s next. “Probably something early stage. That’s where I have the most fun, I’d love to that again.” In terms of areas, he’s particularly interested in large language models and the new AI revolution. “It will change more industries than you can believe.”

Reacting to his selection as a 40 for 40 recipient, Lambert feels deep gratitude. “I look back at my time at Northeastern fondly. To be remembered by the faculty and staff is an honor. I’m thrilled and excited to reconnect with the community.” He believes Khoury College and Northeastern’s futures are bright. “In the last few years there’s been a nationwide shift where more students have been more interested in CS majors, but Northeastern has been investing for 40 years. With the amount of time and attention given to CS, it’s not just that Northeastern is investing today, it’s the last 40 years and has only gotten stronger since then. Whenever I return to campus, seeing the West Village building is a visible sign of that investment. We have an amazing faculty that is paying dividends in so many ways.”

In the middle of the pandemic, Maggie Xu became a mother. Being an Align graduate enabled her to work in tech roles during that period that helped support her new family while keeping her responsibilities and lifestyle balanced.

You don’t have to be defined by other people, or pretend to be someone else you’re not. And you can still survive and thrive in this industry

Maggie Xu, MSCS ’16

When Daron Green managed operations and academic relations for Facebook Research in 2018, he saw an issue in its hiring pool: a nominal proportion of women and groups historically underrepresented in tech, especially those with advanced degrees in computer science. So when Carla Brodley, dean of the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at the time, introduced Green to Northeastern’s Align master’s in computer science —which accepted students from any undergraduate degree — Green saw tremendous potential for systemic change.

“Facebook’s intent was to try and move the needle at a national level by investing in a program that demonstrably provided an on-ramp for a more diverse pool into computer science,” Green says.

So, to support the program in building on its initial efforts, Facebook made a $4.16 million, four-year investment. The grant provided funding for scholarships — which Khoury College managed independently without any ties to an internal Facebook talent pipeline — and grew Northeastern’s marketing and recruitment efforts. Additionally, the funding supported the development of the MS Pathways to Computing Consortium, a networked learning community of colleges and universities across North America that are investing in their own “Align-like” programs on their campuses.

Green and his team were experts in the computer science industry, but they trusted Khoury College to define the curriculum students needed to bridge their undergraduate studies to computer science. It was a working relationship that relied on expertise and guidance on both sides. Mary Trimarco, director of strategic partnerships for the Align Program, says that working with Green meant “having a true partner who helps you improve your program and understands where you’re going, and isn’t just looking for those benchmarks.”

Green feels that Khoury College is a thought leader in preparing students for the industry. The potential of the program was evident in the feedback he heard from students, and in the way it reflected his own transition from his initial field of study in physical chemistry and simulation to computer science.

I think that every single computer science department should have an Align-equivalent program. They should all be able to onboard non-computer science graduates into a master’s program. The value to the university, to the student, and to the industry is clear

“Actually meeting the students was probably the most influential thing,” Green says. “The commentary that I heard from the students was, ‘I really enjoyed my first degree. My passion for that topic is now satisfied. I want to get a job and have a skill set that’s marketable. And this is the magic.’ I know exactly what that feels like. This is exactly what I went through.”

Although the intent of the funding was to support the broader industry, not to expand Facebook’s field of applicants, hiring data has shown that Align graduates have done quite well in their independent pursuit of jobs at Facebook (now Meta) upon graduation.

After Green left Facebook in 2021, he was hired to do an analysis of Northeastern’s corporate engagement strategy, including a series of recommendations to enhance the university’s ability to effectively engage industry at scale. In July 2021, Green became the chief scientist for Autodesk. Although Meta’s four-year partnership with Align concluded in 2022, the program and the Pathways to Computing Consortium have continued to grow thanks to the tremendous boost provided by this early funding. And Green believes that this is only the beginning.

“I think that every single computer science department should have an Align-equivalent program,” Green says. “They should all be able to onboard non-computer science graduates into a master’s program. The value to the university, to the student, and to the industry is clear.”

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