Our founder grew up in NYCHA and has a passion for youth in NYC public housing. Our support team loves the coding profession and seeks to provide new pathways for young people in our city.

Staff

Jason Gibson

Founder & President

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Jason is a lifelong NYCHA resident. He created Hood Code to close the socio-economic opportunity gap he experienced first-hand. By providing children in public housing access to free after-school coding courses, he aims to subvert the school-to-prison pipeline and empower young Black and Latino youth to positively impact their communities through digital solutions.

Stephanie Kim

Co-Facilitator

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Stephanie is a student at Macaulay Honors College obtaining her bachelor’s in Computer Science. Her interest in coding was sparked in high school and she has been pursuing it ever since. Stephanie shares the passion to close the gap of underrepresented youth in tech and sees coding as a way to do so. Her mission is to provide a positive coding experience to young students and equip them with the necessary tools so that they could pursue coding in the future. She is thrilled to create new opportunities for the incoming students!

Board of Directors

Malcolm Edwards

Board Chair

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Malcolm’s enthusiasm to help support Hood Code’s mission comes from a valued parallel experience. As a young NYCHA resident, he participated in a summer youth employment program (SYEP), where his exposure to a word processing machine began his tech learning journey. While in graduate school, he learned about constructivism as a paradigm for integrating technology into a working school curriculum. He later fine-tuned this paradigm to advise corporate IT departments on achieving their strategic business alignments.

Malcolm is an advocate of early technology exposure and is grateful for the impact it has had on his journey. He is currently a Senior Business Analyst at a FinTech startup with 15+ years of experience in the Institutional Investments space. He holds an MA in Education from Columbia University and a BA in Communications from Bloomfield College.

Sylvain Grande

Board Member

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Sylvain is the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer at Yieldstreet, leading product management, design, and data teams. Prior to joining Yieldstreet, Sylvain was a member of the Executive team at Shutterstock, leading product and design. Sylvain brings to Yieldstreet more than 20 years of experience in technology, customer experience, subscription, and e-commerce business models, having worked at Sony, Nokia, Myspace.com, and SoundCloud.

During his tenure at SoundCloud, he was responsible for both driving revenue for consumer and creator subscriptions, and leading teams focused on product development (including advertising products) and content operations. Sylvain holds an MBA from Essec, France and a BA in History from La Sorbonne, Paris.

Jessica Toledano

Board Member

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Jessica is the Executive Director of F.Y. Eye, a New York City-based media agency with the only free out-of-home advertising network in the nation devoted exclusively to nonprofits.
She has spent the majority of her career seeking out creative and innovative ways to structure propose-driven organizations differently. She co-founded and developed the first U.S. social enterprise business model in vertical farming for adults on the autism spectrum. The infrastructure she created for non-profits was written up in the Harvard Business Review and is currently being used as a case study for social entrepreneurial MBA programs nationwide.
She has expertise in the non-profit and private sectors in public affairs, communications, development, organizational strategy, and restructuring. She has a very extensive network of contacts having served as an advisor to elected officials and several prestigious not-for-profit boards across the U.S.

Joe Robinson

Board Member

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Joe Robinson is the founder of Mindful Money, LLC, an online personal finance education company that helps clients develop healthy money habits and build wealth.

Since 1995, Joe has taught hundreds of
incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people personal finance, how to develop a wealth mindset, and entrepreneurship. He is the author of the nationally-recognized book “Think Outside the Cell: An Entrepreneurs’ Guide for the Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated.”

He is most active on his THRIVE! Community Facebook channel where he publishes videos every week about developing wealth-building personal finance skills.

Shakeena Moses

Board Member

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Shakeena was born and raised as a proud NYCHA resident. During that time, she was introduced to all the dangers that disguise themselves as opportunities to youth in the inner city. With a supportive single mother and equally supportive sisters, Shakeena’s determination to “Do Better” assisted her in avoiding the pitfalls of the projects. She brings a valuable first-hand experience that helps to create an immediate rapport with those that know the struggle. Coupled with 12 years of employment experience in Customer Service, Marketing, and Facilities Management, she exemplifies what a window of opportunity can do for children facing similar obstacles.

Bill Cummings

Board Member

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Bill loves working alongside organizations and companies to help make their work more simple, visible, and compelling. He has served in leadership roles in urban community development work since 1994 and has his Master’s in Social and Civic Entrepreneurship from Bakke Graduate University.

He founded Lemonade International in 2008, serving as its Executive Director for nine years. More recently he served as Director of Strategic Development for Zoe Empowers, and Chief Relationship Officer for Restore NYC.

Bill is the co-founder of Liminal Creative, a marketing and design agency that works with social impact organizations. He believes strongly in deep relationships and standing in solidarity with those who are marginalized. He and his wife Cherie live in Raleigh, NC, and have been married since 1990. They have adult twin sons and a teenage daughter.