Sohil Athare

Sohil Athare has done much for the hacker community in a short timespan. In only two years, he has gone full force into hackathons and achieved many successes all while in high school.

He grew up coding, beginning experimenting in sixth grade. He wondered how the websites worked and wanted to build his own solutions. He focused on learning programming languages, teaching himself with internet tools: mainly YouTube and Google. As his tech knowledge progressed, he moved into building web and mobile programs and apps, and that is what excites him most.

Sohil discovered hackathons and joined his first one, WinHacks, in Spring 2020. It was a virtual event, but he still made friends and found it an excellent introduction to the hacker community. Although he did not win the hackathon, he knew he had found something special and wanted more. Since WinHacks, he has entered over 15 events, winning 9 of them, including MHacks and PennApps, two of the world’s oldest and largest student hackathons. He competed against college students in many of these events, and, as one of the top 200 hackers worldwide, he was invited to Pinnacle, the Olympics of hackathons.

Sohil quickly realized how he could give back to the community that had propelled him forward. He became a mentor with Major League Hacking (MLH) and assisted newer hackers at many hackathons, like Hack the North, Hack the Northeast, Sunhacks, and DandyHacks. He didn’t stop there. He moved into organizing hackathons, becoming a leader in the community focused on helping newer hackers, mentors, and sponsors get together and thrive.

Hackathons have guided him down the path he’s taken. He says, “They have changed my life by providing a pretty limitless amount of opportunities for me…It has opened up quite a few doors in terms of my career, such as getting to know about opportunities in tech that are not posted elsewhere.” All of the roles Sohil has had in hackathons contributed to his development.

His organizational involvement has catapulted him into leadership. At DefHacks 2021, he was the Head of Hacker Experience. He led logistical planning, the UI/UX sector, and outreach. His outreach efforts led to significant results, including securing guest speakers like Michael Siebel: the managing director at Y Combinator and the cofounder of Twitch.

Sohil is heavily involved in organizing TOHacks, where he set up a university panel and some mentorship programs. His next event, JAMHacks, a high school student hackathon, was the first in-person hackathon he organized. It was challenging and rewarding. He says, “From being face to face with hundreds of hackers to coordinating in-person events during a power outage, it is safe to say that JAMHacks was an experience I'll never forget.”

Sohil’s passion for building led him to found Highlander Engineering, now Canada’s largest high school engineering community. This year alone “we hosted over 30 workshops in software development, machine learning, robotics, and more to inspire over 200+ high school students in my community to pursue an interest in engineering!”

Sohil is off to an impressive start in the hacker community. He remembers the support and encouragement he got as a participant, the opportunities he gained through mentorship, and the leadership skills from organizing hackathons and founding a community as he continues to pursue his own goals.