Sylvain is an entrepreneur and a software engineer who has worked in the tech industry for over a decade. He currently lives in San Francisco.
He is the Co-Founder of Holberton, an education company training the next generation of digital talent at scale. Holberton educates thousands of students in over 10 countries, hired by the best tech companies like Google, Rappi, Tesla, Apple, and NASA.
Through his work, he partnered with technology leaders, including LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Yahoo! Founder Jerry Yang, Docker founder Solomon Hykes, and Facebook VP Payments Stephane Kasriel. But also sports and entertainment leaders like Grammy-Award winner NE-YO, actress Priyanka Chopra, and New York Jets NFL player Kelvin Beachum.
Before Holberton School, he joined SlideShare in 2011 as a DevOps Engineer to support the infrastructure that served 3 billion slides every month. LinkedIn acquired the company in 2012, where he worked for 3 years as a senior software engineer. He co-founded while42, a non-profit organization that became the largest community of french software engineers, located in 40 cities with 3,000 members.
He has a Master in Computer Science from SUPINFO, studied in France, China (Hebei University of Technology), and the US (Dominican University).
During his free time, he likes to write and travel. He loves challenges; he has won the best API usage prize at TechCrunch Disrupt, explored 25 meters deep Paris Catacombs, and climbed Mount Fuji at 3,776 meters.
Industry papers
Talks & interviews
- UNESCO – Life-long learning in the 4th industrial revolution – November 2020
- Necker Island – Human Connection for Today’s Digital Natives – March 2020
- FLII X – Tech Education can Transform Lives and Build Economies – February 2020
- ProductHunt – How to access the best tech talent around the world – January 2020
- Holberton – The importance of ethics & diversity in Machine Learning – December 2019
- StartSe – An education for the 4th industrial revolution – November 2019
- Cheddar – Holberton School Expands to Its 9th School and Announces New Curriculum – December 2019
- LinkedIn Live – Networking Your Way – November 2019
- Forbes – Holberton School, L’Ecole Qui Forme Les Ingénieurs Informatiques De Demain – Novembre 2019
- IDB – New societies require a new skills-oriented pedagogy – October 2019
- KBLX – Sterling James interviews Ne-Yo – July 2019
- Cheddar – Singer Ne-Yo Invested in Silicon Valley Coding School, Adds AR/VR Curriculum – June 2019
- DockerCon – Transforming Education for the Next Generation of software Engineers – April 2019
- FrenchTech – Diversity, Impact on Performance & Organizations – October 2018
- Nexus – A Different Model for Developing Software Engineers – August 2018
- ASU GSV – Show Me the Money: Is Lowering Costs in Higher Education an Economic Imperative? – April 2018
- AFP – Learning computer programming, with no teachers and no tuition – April 2018
- TheNewStack – Training the Next Generation of CloudNative Developers – April 2018
- World Economic Forum – Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution – January 2018
- TFiR – The school that teaches full stack engineering, for FREE – May 2018
- U.S. Department of Education – Higher Education Innovation Summit – December 2017
- FastCompany – This School Has No Teachers, No Lectures, And No Tuition – July 2017
- Business Rockstars – Sylvain Kalache Co-Founder of Holberton School on Business Rockstars – January 2017
- France 3 – Une délégation d’Auvergne Rhône-Alpes en Californie – June 2016
- French American TV – while42.org, french tech networking – February 2014
- France Consulate in San Francisco – While42, the French Tech Engineers Alumni Network – December 2013
Writing
Sylvain writes about tech, entrepreneurship, and workforce development. You can find some of his stories below.