HIRE RAY GREEN NOW! What are you waiting for? He almost single-handedly beat hundreds of other engineering students and graduates from 48 universities, including Georgia Tech and Clemson, to place second in the 2018 IEEE SoutheastCon Open Hardware Competition!
Instead of applying his brilliance building robots, writing code and doing design work, he’s making sandwiches at Panera at night after a long day of studying at Code School.
“The thing about Ray is he’s not just brilliant, but he’s so good!” explained his mentor Robert Fortenberry. And by good he means the sweet kid in the photo, so willing to help others.
“He actually would have won the entire competition as his robot actually got the top score, but when he checked in, he forgot to bring his logo flag and that was the difference between first and second place.”
Ray and Rob are emblematic of the opportunity that needs to be nurtured in Memphis. Rob has devoted his time and money to helping young people achieve greatness. His own son won the competition at 10-years old and he now coaches multiple teams from Memphis.
Ray is that diamond who doesn’t even realize his own value, winning the competition was barely mentioned on his resume.
“So you participated in the IEEE Hardware Competition? Did you win anything?” I asked after reviewing his resume.
“Actually, I came in second.”
“Was it a high school competition?
“No it was college.”
“How many?”
“Not sure, about 50.”
Piqued, I threw out a few college names, “So did you beat Georgia Tech or Florida State?”
“Uh, yes… Is that a big deal?”
I nearly fell out of my chair. Here’s a brilliant, naïve, hard-working kid from Memphis, @Tech901 graduate and @Code Crew student who beats hundreds of other competitors from top engineering schools in 11 states, and has no idea whether that’s a big deal or not!
Good news for you, is he’s available now for part-time work and is graduating in just a few months, so grab him now. Also, he and Rob’s other Memphis teams need sponsors for the 2019 competition in April, so hurry and support greatness before someone else beats you to it!
Kevin Mireles 