Co-Founder and CEO, After School
An inventor and tech entrepreneur, Michael Callahan is passionate about making a measurable positive impact on the world by enabling communication through technology. Michael is the Co-Founder and CEO of After School, the largest teen-focused social network in the U.S. with networks in over 85% of all high schools. After School allows high school students to connect and share with their classmates in a private and moderated network.
Michael has lead efforts to plan, develop, and design innovative safety processes and features to encourage positive behavior in the app and prevent harm. After School offers its users a wide variety of online safety and mental health resources, as well as unique opportunities to participate in social change campaigns with our non-profit partners like DoSomething.org, Peace First, YSA, and many others.
Before After School, Michael developed a voice synthesizer, called the Ambient Audeo, that gives back the ability to speak to those who have experienced vocal cord or neurological damage, and allows thought-controlled wheelchairs. Michael completed the world’s first live voiceless phone call at the Texas Instruments Developers Conference in 2008, and in 2007, Michael became the first student from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana to receive the MIT-Lemelson Foundation award for Outstanding Innovation.