Jeffrey Zang is a first-year computer science student at the University of Waterloo. At 15, he landed his first internship and completed four software internships before his 19th birthday.
Since high school, he has competed in 17 hackathons, where he built projects from an eye-tracking device to a conversational robot resembling former .U.S. President Barack Obama. He became the youngest co-chair of Hack the 6ix, Toronto’s largest hackathon. With his help, the hackathon garnered more than 1,100 attendees and secured nearly $50,000 in sponsorship from companies such as Microsoft and Deloitte. He went on to organize six hackathons.
In 2023, Jeffrey was named an MLH Top 50 honouree, selected from a global community of more than 500,000 hackers. At 16, he became the second-youngest recipient in the program’s history.
Through hackathons and internships, Jeffrey is exploring innovative AI projects. His programming journey began with a high school hackathon — which he almost didn’t attend because of fear.
He also faced other obstacles, from failed installations at internships to organizing hackathons with tight budgets to proving himself to companies as a high schooler.
What is key to Jeffrey’s journey is learning to embrace failure.
Jeffrey discusses how he learned to build by showing up scared on Analytics Insight.