Baltimore Social Innovation Journal, Fall 2016 Fall 2016 | Page 13

will be held at Morgan State University, “on
plenty of bus lines,” says Moore, thus easing
potential transportation problems.
Moore, self-taught in computer coding
during a career as an ad agency video
producer and copywriter, produced a series
of podcasts a few years ago on poverty and
food insecurity. He began asking himself:
“Who’s profiting off of mass incarceration?
The fact that prison labor is a corporate
commodity really pissed me off. I wanted to
do something deliberate, to disrupt it.”
By 2022, Moore says, there will be over
two million tech jobs in the country. And you
don’t necessarily need a college education
to get them.
What you do need, he says, is mastery –
“Mastery of a portfolio, mastery of tangible
things.”

Moore is a self-professed research geek
and says he’s already found “some real
geeks” among the pool of applicants for
his program – “diamonds” he calls them.
And the most important thing they have in
common?
“They have all made a promise to their
support system, to the people in their lives,
that life is going to be better.”
“We’re training you to compete,” Moore
says of his students, “to disrupt generational
poverty. I want us to be a catalyst for you to
rediscover your inner greatness.”
B A LTI M OR E SOC I A L I N N O VAT I O N JO U R N A L