Our Team

We are a fully volunteer force that believes in grassroots change. We are technologists, designers, researchers, and educators working together to build and deploy our learning platform.

Tay Nishimura

Executive Director, Founder

Tay has 8 years of industry experience as a software engineer at cutting edge technology firms. A believer in grassroots change, Tay serves as an Auxiliary Police Officer in the New York Police Department and mentors veterans and military spouses seeking careers in technology.

Kunal Jha

Head of Philanthropy, Founder

Kunal is a United States Military Academy graduate working as an Active Duty Army Officer in Maryland. He is committed to helping individuals find pathways to success through authentic, human relationships. On his days off, Kunal loves to cook and visit local historical sites.

Tanya Kumar

Curriculum Developer

Tanya is an aspiring environmental scientist who completed her undergraduate education at the University of Maryland and is preparing for graduate school. She currently teaches in Maryland and spends her spare time writing, drawing, and playing with her pet rats.

Melissa Richardson

Content Designer

Melissa is a lifelong writer whose goal is to shed light on human rights issues and promote sustainable solutions. In her free time, she enjoys writing fiction, reading, watching films, and spending time with her husband Scott and their rescue mutt, Nubbs.

Scott Richardson

Software Engineer

Scott served six years in the United States Air Force, primarily doing software development, and has worked at Meta and Datadog. Scott is passionate about open-source software projects that help to make a difference in people’s lives.

Blaze Bissar

Software Engineer

Blaze served five years as a U.S. Army Cyber Operations Officer and now works as a Site Reliability Engineer at Two Sigma Investments. He has Computer Science degrees from the United States Military Academy and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Arthur Lacey

Software Engineer

Arthur served five years as a U.S. Army Cyber Officer and now works in NYC as a software engineer at Mandiant, a subsidiary of Google. Arthur believes education provides the keys to a better society. In his personal time he tinkers with electronics and occasionally crochets blankets.

Dakota Copeland

DevOps Engineer

Dakota is a Technical Support Engineer at Corelight doing support things. He also has experience teaching computer networking fundamentals at the West Tennessee State Penitentiary. Outside of technology, Dakota enjoys hiking, traveling, eating all types of food, and spending quality time with his 2 year old daughter.

Corrina Sivak

Software Engineer

Corrina is currently a software engineer working at Datadog. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at RIT. She enjoys mentoring and building cool things that other people find useful. Outside of programming, she enjoys rock climbing, dancing, skiing and travelling.

Advisors

Alberto Rodriguez

Technology Mentor

Alberto Rodriguez is a Senior Security Engineer at PayPal with experience in threat hunting, adversary simulation, cloud engineering. Previously a Cyber Operations Officer in the U.S. Army, Alberto is passionate about both leadership and assisting veterans transition into the private sector.

Hans Hermans

Career Mentor

Hans Hermans is a Founding Engineer at Strac, a startup which secures sensitive information to combat identity theft. Hans has over 9 years of software engineering experience on global, highly scalable systems such as Amazon’s payment widget and AWS.

Brianne Caplan

Strategic Advisor

Brianne is the Executive Director of Code Your Dreams, a nonprofit which equipping people with the skills and resources to innovate technology solutions for our world. She is committed to growing the next generation of diverse, community-minded technology leaders.

Matthew Selsky

Technology Advisor

Matt is a Site Reliability Engineer in the finance industry with over a decade of work experience in computer networking as well as system administration at Columbia University. He serves as a Deputy Inspector in the New York Police Department Auxiliary Unit.

Hiro Nishimura

Technology Education Advisor

Hiro is a freelance Technical Writer and Content Strategist, specializing in small to medium-sized tech startups. She is the Founder of AWS Newbies and a Technical Instructor at LinkedIn Learning. She has formalized training in Special Education.

Interested in joining Project Reclass as a Volunteer or Intern?

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