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Everything journalists, podcasters, and partners need to cover Northland Hackathon — brand assets, founder bio, ready-to-use boilerplate copy, and key facts. All downloads are free to use without prior permission.
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Founder · Northland Hackathon
Luke Heine is a Minnesotan software developer who grew up in rural northern Minnesota and saw firsthand how hard it was for students outside the cities to access quality tech education. In 2022, he founded Northland Hackathon to fix that — starting with a small cohort of high schools in Northeastern Minnesota and growing it into the Midwest's largest free student hackathon.
Luke runs Northland Hackathon entirely on a volunteer basis alongside a team of fellows from the American Connection Corps (Lead for America) and industry mentors from companies including Google, Amazon, Square, DroneDeploy, and onXmaps.
For interviews: team@northlandhackathon.com
Personal site: lukeheane.com
Attributable to Luke Heine unless otherwise noted. Feel free to quote directly — or reach out for custom commentary on your specific angle.
Minnesota ranks last in the nation for offering public computer-science education. That's not an abstract statistic — it means thousands of students are graduating without ever writing a line of code, disproportionately outside the Twin Cities. Northland Hackathon exists because we didn't want to wait for the system to fix itself.
Luke Heine, Founder
Most people experience the internet from the back seat — consuming, scrolling, reacting. Northland is about moving to the front. We want students to leave feeling like they can build the things they use every day.
Luke Heine, Founder
Every mentor and organizer is a volunteer. There's no paid staff, no office, no bureaucracy. Every dollar a sponsor gives goes directly to students — swag, prizes, and keeping the event free for every participant, forever.
Luke Heine, Founder
A student in Hibbing, Bemidji, or Worthington sits down on a Saturday morning and has the exact same experience as a student in Minneapolis — same mentors from Google and Amazon, same energy, same shot. That's not an accident. It's the whole point.
Luke Heine, Founder
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