About Me

Hi there!

My name is Mark McKinney and I am currently a Sophomore at High Point University. I am originally from Pasadena, California which is the same place that the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl are held. At High Point, I am majoring in Entrepreneurship and minoring in Strategic Communication. With that education, I hope to start my own tech startup as starting my own business has always been a dream of mine!

Interests

I have a ton of interests which can sometimes make it difficult to focus on just a couple things! But, three of my most favorite would include rowing crew, photography, and building startups.
Rowing had always been a sport that I dreamed of being able to do, but my High School just didn’t have a crew team. So, instead, I ran track as a sprinter (which I also enjoyed). Luckily, HPU had a rowing team and it’s been a blast!

I got my first real camera when I was about seven-years-old and I have been taking tons of pictures since! I have just recently gotten back from a two-week trip to Hong Kong, Thailand, and Singapore which was truly eye-opening as I had never been to Asia before. Some of my coolest experiences included riding elephants, exploring the jungles, and experiencing the vibrant night-life. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip:


As I said earlier, starting a successful tech startup is my end goal. That means I am always working on an idea! This was true for me since I was about eight-years-old when I began teaching myself how to program and the fundamentals of design. At that point, I was just making webpages that would host interesting content for my friends to spend time on. However, as I grew older and taught myself more, it evolved into apps and services. My first “startup” was a website hosting business in High School in which I was paid to host non-commercial websites. Recently, I have been working on a series of projects which includes stock market predictions using Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, and a college event finder (some snapshots in the picture below).



Random Facts

My favorite color is green. I have a four-year-old German Shepherd that is a bit of a dork. Fall Semester was the first time that I had ever seen an actual snowfall. I have been surfing in Bell’s Beach, Australia. I used to play the Saxophone in my High School Jazz Band.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to getting to know you guys in class!
- Mark


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