CTE Expo 2026

Date: May 21

Location: CS Classroom

Extra Credit Theme: What you saw and what you learned?

Proof of Experience

Meeting Elijah Johnson
Image

Caption:
Here, I attended the guest lecture with SafeBallot Founder and CEO Elijah Johnson, where I learned about blockchain security in modern voting systems.

Before the Event

  • I expected something similar to other panels that I went to.
  • All I knew about Elijah Johnson before the event was that “He is the Founder & CEO of SafeBallot, a secure voting technology platform focused on improving accessibility, transparency, and trust in elections,” and that “He has also been recognized as a finalist for San Diego CEO of the Year and is the leader of a countywide feeding initiative that recently served 450 families across all 18 cities in San Diego.”
  • While the description is very impressive, I mainly expected a standard tech talk about blockchain and voting security.
  • Especially since he would be talking to an audience entirely composed of CS students, I thought he would talk very technically and focus heavily on code, encryption algorithms, and technical hurdles of digital voting.

Curiosity Before Attending

  • After reading a description on SafeBallot, I wanted to know how a brand new startup company would be able to actually convince governments to trust an electronic or blockchain-based voting system, especially given how sensitive election security is.
  • As a politician, would I trust a brand new company in controlling such an important aspect of democracy?
  • I knew from experience through projects we did in AP CSP last year that it is very hard to convince industry professionals to accept or invest in your project, and that was also on a much smaller, local scale.
  • I read that Elijah’s goal was to put his project on a nationwide scale, and I really wanted to know how one would be able to do this.

What I Saw

  • I attended the presentation of Elijah Johnson, the founder and CEO of SafeBallot, a former USD football player, and San Diego CEO of the Year finalist.

Most Interesting Thing I Saw

  • Most interesting from the whole talk was the discovery of the tremendous validation that SafeBallot has managed to attain on a national and international level.
  • It was quite intriguing to discover that their cybersecurity architecture has been presented in Congress, with findings revealing that the framework goes above and beyond federal security minimums, which is a fantastic achievement that has been attained.
  • Another exciting thing for me has been learning about the international scope of this project, as seen from meetings held by some of the leading corporations in Mozambique with their executives with regards to implementing the tool on an international level.

What I Learned

  • I came to understand the precise structure of how blockchain technology can be used in order to remove all the possible vulnerabilities from current voting systems.
  • According to Elijah, SafeBallot makes use of a decentralized and distributed ledger in not merely a marketing term but rather a mathematical technique for ensuring the legitimacy of each individual vote.
  • As the whole chain consists of transactions (votes), and each transaction has to be linked through a hash to the previous one, the resulting dataset becomes fully auditable, totally transparent, and absolutely unchangeable.

What Surprised Me

  • It is really amazing how much emphasis there was on the psychological, interpersonal, and storytelling aspects associated with developing a technological firm during the lecture.
  • Coming from a computer science background, my assessment of technology projects usually relies solely on optimization, efficiency, and speed considerations.
  • However, it was very enlightening when Elijah asserted that “people don’t purchase products, they purchase personality” and went on to say that when trying to sell something revolutionary, you need to ground your pitch in an effective story.
  • To be able to learn that human contact is equally important as architecture in developing a technological product came as quite a shock.

What Inspired Me

  • The philosophy behind the process of implementation by Elijah inspired me immensely, especially the concept of starting even if you’re not prepared.
  • According to him, one should start before he is ready and use the following motto in their work, “You don’t have to have the whole staircase to take the first step.”
  • Elijah proved this with an example of the way he came up with the brand name and the idea of a logo within just half an hour from the moment he began his thinking session.
  • After several months of work, this same identity secured investments worth $45,000 for his company.

Personal Connection

  • The story made me understand why my career goals in software engineering, project management, and technology entrepreneurship were very much connected.
  • Through Elijah’s experience, I realized that cutting-edge software development cannot occur without being embedded in reality.
  • This helped to reinforce my intention not only to become a programmer sitting in front of a computer writing code but to become a technologist advocating for innovation.

Interaction

Person or group I learned from: Presenter

  • Here, he gave us a brilliant idea on how we can actually discover market opportunities.
  • Here he suggested that if ever you get stuck at the early stages of your career, then what you need to do is just look around for an existing business model, and learn how you can build one which will be much better, faster, and cheaper than that existing one.
  • In addition to that, he showed us the true reality of money when it comes to scaling your business all across the globe.
  • The story of his encounter with Zain, a corporate vice president of Mozambique who owns companies with some big global contracts, where he mentioned that although SafeBallot will completely transform their systems, they will also need to invest upwards of $300 million for their cybersecurity.

Depth of Experience

  • The entire situation completely changed my perception about how software development teams and collaboration work.
  • Before this instance happened, I used to have the perception that for one to become a successful technology entrepreneur, you had to be the smartest person in the programming aspect, able to do everything yourself.
  • Elijah debunked all of these ideas, stressing out the importance of having the right partnership as the key to success.
  • He works very dynamically in his position as the CEO, concentrating on vision, scalability, and relationships while using a specialized team that focuses on particular parts of the programming process.

Connection to CS or Future Goals

  • The incident ties in perfectly with the subject matters covered in my computer science classes, especially data integrity, networking protocols, and good systems architecture.
  • The experience confirmed the fact that compliance and adherence to high security standards were an essential baseline requirement before user acceptance.
  • In terms of personal growth, the experience motivated me to apply a “CEO mindset” to my current academic pursuit.
  • According to Elijah, you cannot just wake up one morning and decide that you’re a founder; preparation comes from daily effort.
  • My application of the concept comes in form of continuous improvement, in which I strive to be 1% better in everything relating to programming and logic every day.

Final Reflection

  • This talk had a particularly profound impact on me in that it managed to move away from the theoretical concepts of computer science and put everything in the context of personal growth, emotional intelligence, and character building.
  • The speaker offered an approach to handling discomfort at work that will help me understand how I have to consciously embrace discomfort (as one would take unpleasantly cold showers) in order to develop necessary psychological immunity needed for making tough decisions.
  • Moreover, he gave a great piece of advice on social alignment (“you can’t fly like a swan among turkeys”) and on curation (“Bugatti is a car with two seats, while a bus has thirty”), which is a clear message for me to select my inner circle wisely.

Biggest Takeaway

It is not the degree of advancement of the tool that you create that is the greatest catalyst behind any remarkable undertaking; rather, it is your character, your mentality, and your connection with the people around you.