The third episode of Startup Cornell, Entrepreneurship at Cornell’s podcast highlighting the entrepreneurial ideas and success stories of Cornell students, faculty, staff, and alumni, featured eLab alumnus, Jehron Petty ‘20. Petty is the founder and CEO of ColorStack, a nonprofit that works to level the playing field for Black and Latinx computer science students.
ColorStack, which provides community building and professional development opportunities to students historically underrepresented in computing, has grown rapidly in the year since its inception. The company recently launched its Stacked Up Summit, a three-day virtual conference that allowed ColorStack members to learn from industry experts and connect with tech recruiting teams. The summit was sponsored by major tech companies like Microsoft and Netflix.
While ColorStack isn’t the startup idea that Petty entered eLab with, he incorporated the entrepreneurial lessons he learned from the experience into his current work. He also spoke about co-founding Black Entrepreneurs in Training (BET), a Cornell community that inspires and informs the next wave of Black entrepreneurs.
“There’s nothing that prepares you more for entrepreneurship than actually creating something from nothing or solving really hard problems,” he said.
To learn more about Petty’s work at ColorStack and hear the story of why he turned down a job at Google, listen to the full episode of the podcast here or read about the podcast on the Cornell Chronicle.