Hadi Partovi is a tech entrepreneur, angel investor investor, and founder of the education nonprofit Code.org.
Born in Tehran, Iran, Hadi grew up during the Iran-Iraq war. His school did not offer computer science classes, so he and his twin brother Ali taught themselves to code at home on a Commodore 64. After immigrating to the United States, Hadi spent his summers working as a software engineer to help pay his way through high school and college. Upon graduating from Harvard University with a Masters degree in computer science, Hadi pursued a career in technology starting at Microsoft where he rose into the executive ranks. He founded two startups: Tellme Networks (acquired by Microsoft), and iLike (acquired by Newscorp). Hadi now invests and advises other technology startups.
In 2013 Hadi and his twin brother Ali launched the education nonprofit Code.org, which Hadi led as CEO for over a decade, and continues to serve as Chairman of the Board. Code.org has established computer science classes in the majority of US schools, created the most broadly used curriculum platform for K-12 computer science with over 100M student accounts, and launched the global Hour of Code movement that has had 2 billion student engagements spanning every country in the world.
Hadi has served as an early advisor or investor at many tech startups including Facebook, Dropbox, airbnb, Uber, and SpaceX. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Axon.
See also: