Social Impact in Education Technology: Carolyn Macleod

The power of technology to create social impact in every industries, from politics to education to healthcare, draws a lot of people in to studying Computer Science, but many get swept away by big tech, spending their time tweaking buttons and optimizing performance instead of making real impact. 

Carolyn Macleod is a computer science teacher at a charter school in New York. After interning at a tech company two years ago, Carolyn abandoned the Silicon Valley to build software for a Rape Crisis nonprofit in South Africa, and after graduating from Duke in 2020 with a bachelors in Computer Science, Carolyn found an interest in edtech, starting as a teacher. In this episode, we'll be uncovering why she turned down big tech, and how she hopes to unconventionally leverage her skills to make impact.