Rosenbaum’s Career Has Focused on Eliminating Systemic Biases That Prevent Access to Opportunity
Watch Mike’s Announcement Video
Today, businessman and economist Mike Rosenbaum launched his campaign for Governor of Maryland. Mike’s career has been focused on dismantling the systems that unfairly puts Black and brown communities, women, and the working class at a disadvantage. Through his companies, Catalyte and Arena, Mike has successfully built systems that use data instead of bias to identify talent, in the process creating opportunities for thousands of workers to move into higher-paying careers. His work has helped to train fast-food workers, gas station attendants, and farmers to become some of the best software engineers and app developers in the world.
“As a successful economist and businessman, I’ve spent my career focused on the premise that talent exists everywhere, but opportunity does not. My work is centered around the belief that our current systems are filled with systemic bias, and we need a governor with the courage and vision to challenge those systems to build a more inclusive post-COVID economy,” said Rosenbaum. “As one of the wealthiest states in the country, the fact that we have poverty is an unnecessary choice. We can chart a different path – one that dismantles the systems that lead to poverty and a lack of opportunity to create an inclusive economy, ensure our schools are training our kids for the careers of the future, make healthcare accessible to all, and reform our broken criminal justice system which continues to cost us more and more without making us any safer.”
About Mike Rosenbaum:
Raised in Montgomery County, Mike Rosenbaum is a lifelong Marylander who made a bet on Baltimore when he quit his job, maxed out his credit cards, and started a company based on the premise that talent is evenly distributed, but access to opportunity is not. Mike started his businesses in Baltimore 21 years ago, has raised his family in Maryland, and has created jobs throughout the state and the country.
Mike’s work has helped hundreds of thousands of people move into opportunity industries, like tech and health care while raising average salaries and creating pathways into the middle class for many underserved and underrepresented communities.
Mike knows that underserved, urban, and rural populations contain just as many people with the potential to succeed, but they are often overlooked by a system that fails to recognize talent and create opportunities.
Through his companies, Catalyte and Arena, Mike took a different approach, using data to identify potential, regardless of where people are from, who they are or who they know. As a result, he hired thousands of people, trained fast-food workers, gas station attendants, and farmers, turning them into some of the best software engineers and app developers in the world.
Before a successful business career, Mike served in the U.S. State Department, where he worked on trade issues. He also served in the White House under President Bill Clinton as an economist focusing on tech, labor, urban and rural policy for the Council of Economic Advisers and Vice President Al Gore. Prior to that, Mike was also a law clerk for the Honorable Diana Gribbon Motz at the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and practiced law at Hogan & Hartson.
Mike has authored numerous academic articles, where his research has focused on data and human behavior, building the foundation for what he would later use to start his companies. He earned a law degree from Harvard Law School, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.A. from Harvard College.
He is a proud husband and devoted father to his two daughters.
