Justin Hall is the President of Bit Source, a software development company that designs, develops, and deploys websites, applications, games, tools, interactions, and software solutions.

Hall agreed and came up with a business plan in which Bit Source would hire former miners as “apprentices”—paying them $15 per hour (thanks to federal funds available to jump-start the region) to learn a curriculum he developed involving HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In March 2015, Hall selected 10 former miners—chosen from more than 900 applicants—who quickly became fluent not just in coding basics but also in programs including Drupal, Xamarin, and Unity. Since then, they have completed dozens of projects, including repeat business from a Fortune 500 company. (Another ongoing effort, which the team brainstormed at an MIT hackathon in October 2016, is an app for delivering lifesaving drugs for opioid overdoses.) Hall says his goal is to establish the region as a hotbed for good coders and attract enough business to sustain the area’s thousands of displaced miners.

Education President, Technology,