Max is taking time of school to explore the world and dive into entrepreneurial projects and is a graduate of Lick-Wilmerding High School. He was born and raised in the city of San Francisco, and attributes a lot his mindset and interests to his formative surroundings. He reads a lot of nonfiction and has an eclectic taste in both music and food. Early on Max was infected by the change the world bug and strives for a balance between idealism and practicality. He believes everyone should nurture their entrepreneurial spirit and their penchant for taking the initiative to make a difference in the world. He is convinced that if you get the right people together anything is possible. In his sophomore year he founded the Technology Club as a vehicle to push the school into the 21st century, to organize like-minded peers, and to create a platform to visit and explore the vast network of people and ideas in the Bay Area. The club visited the Computer Human Interaction Lab at Stanford, the SETI Project at UC Berkeley, Squid Labs, and Google. Further explorations included Maker Faire, Macworld Expo, The Singularity Summit, and Long Now events. After reading Fab by Neil Gershenfeld, he was convinced that the school’s existing shops should move in the direction of digital fabrication, a direction that would also advance Lick’s goals for interdisciplinary education, project-based learning, public purpose, and more. The Technology Club wrote a successful grant for a laser cutter, the school’s first major digital tool. Last summer he was an intern at the Institute for the Future where he was inspired to create Force For the Future, which began as a side project exploring networking like minded high school students to change education and gather resources for our true passions, but it evolved into his full time obsession which he will be working on during his gap year between high school and college. Force For the Future is beginning by helping first time entrepreneurs accelerate their development by connecting them with the resources they need for success. But Force For the Future aims to grow into its vision of becoming a prototypical decentralized 21st century learning institution weaving together innovative processes from education, technology and social organization. This should lead to new kinds of learning environments suited to develop the talent of the next generation that our world needs to thrive. Max has spent a lot of time the last two years exploring big ideas from some of the world’s best minds, and surrounding himself with a network of people of all ages who can support each other in creating things that will push us all forward.