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Meet the Leader
Reuben Ogbonna II is the son of Reginald Chinedu and Sandra Yvette Ogbonna. He is a graduate of Southeast Raleigh High School and Duke University. Currently, he is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Marcy Lab School. Marcy Lab is an innovative alternative to college designed for students who face financial barriers or for those who are seeking a unique experience better suited to their career interests. In their first two years, they have raised nearly $10M in philanthropic capital from funders such as JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Cognizant. They have placed nearly 50 recent high school graduates into software engineering careers at companies such as Spotify, Squarespace, and The New York Times. Their graduates earn an average salary of over $100,000 per year.
Reuben was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. His family is split between Imo State, Nigeria and Shreveport, Louisiana. Prior to founding the Marcy Lab School, Reuben coached teachers across New York City as a Director at Teach For America. He recently had his first child, but one could argue that he has been a dad on the inside for several years already. When he is not trying to disrupt the higher education system, he is smoking briskets on his Big Green Egg while playing Afrobeats and Black cookout music. He is currently listening to African Giant by Burna Boy.
About the Organization
Grounded in creating a path toward social and economic mobility, The Marcy Lab School is an alternative to college that provides historically underrepresented young adults with a holistic accelerated pathway to land a high-paying job in the tech industry.
Students between the ages of 18 – 24 participate in the Software Engineering Fellowship – a 12-month post-secondary program designed to prepare high-achieving young adults from diverse backgrounds for full-time careers in software engineering. The curriculum, deliberately holistic, includes a mix of computer science and software engineering training as well as leadership seminars that center on race and identity development, civic studies, and career fluency.
Each Fellow is matched with a mentor in the tech industry and begins the foundations of their professional network and community. The program is entirely tuition-free, and after one year, each student graduates with over 2,000 hours of technical skills gained, as well nearly 500 hours of leadership development training.
The Marcy Lab School is committed to building generative pathways between education and the workforce sector to bridge the gap for young adults who are disconnected from the workforce or who have not benefited from the best of what traditional higher education has to offer.
Meet All the Awardees
Each leader is transforming education across the United States. They're building new learning models, developing talent pipelines for the classroom and beyond, and creating pathways to economic power for Black students and communities.
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