Jim McKelvey has stated his intentions to expand LaunchCode, the paired-programming initiative that is primed to help fix St. Louis’ tech talent shortage, to a national — and even international — level.
He’ll start in Miami, where he plans to move with his wife and son in a few weeks.
His 3-year-old son will be attending school there, McKelvey said. And if the city shows a need similar to St. Louis’ — namely, a need for more computer programmers to help grow companies — he’ll set up a LaunchCode division in the city.
“That’s just a place where I have friends and colleagues,” he said. “And Miami has two international airports, so it’s unique for me and what I do. But there is a chronic programming talent shortage that is a problem around the world.”
St. Louis will remain LaunchCode’s center of operations, he said. And McKelvey will continue to be involved in the handful of other initiatives he has going on in the city — SixThirty, Arch Grants, Cultivation Capital to name a few.
“St. Louis is my hometown and I’ll still favor it whenever I can,” he said.
McKelvey is the subject of Friday’s cover story in the St. Louis Business Journal. For more on that story, pick up a paper or visit the Business Journal’s website Friday morning.
McKelvey’s plan to expand LaunchCode was announced in April, when McKelvey said he was eying potential locations such as Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Denver and a location somewhere on the West Coast.
McKelvey said officials at EdX, a joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that offers free courses, including the computer science course LaunchCode is using to train some of its aspiring coders, are encouraging him to take the program national before it reaches its year anniversary, which is in September.
