John Church

Building AI tools for nonprofits and education.

John Church

I'm a software engineer and product builder with a philosophy background from Claremont McKenna College, where I also studied CS at Harvey Mudd and wrote my honors thesis on the accountability of lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Currently, I'm Co-Founder & CTO of MilestoneX, where I build AI-powered platforms for the nonprofit and education sectors — Lilychart for special education IEP tracking and Northstar Toolkit for charitable data infrastructure. I also help organize Hack for Social Impact, connecting engineers with nonprofits to build AI solutions.

Previously, I served as CTO of Jet.AI (NASDAQ: JTAI), where I built and operated the company's entire software arm through IPO, launched a first-of-its-kind public carbon crediting API for aviation, and wrote fleet optimization software.

Claremont McKenna College 2021

B.A. Philosophy with Computer Science Sequence (CS at Harvey Mudd), with Honors

Thesis: The Accountability of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems” →

McKenna ScholarAppel FellowSummit Fellow1st Place Gould Humanities Competition

Lilychart

Co-Founder & CTO

AI-powered IEP tracking and intervention recommendations for special education providers. Deployed with Foundation for Blind Children.

Northstar Toolkit

Co-Founder & CTO

Data and AI infrastructure for charitable organizations. Long-term goal of creating a complete OS for nonprofit work with seamless AI assistance for monitoring and evaluation, theory of change ideation, and more.

Hack for Social Impact

Founding Organizer

Annual hackathons (150+ participants) connecting engineers with nonprofits to build AI solutions. Partners include Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, Project Homeless Connect, and the United Nations.

Jet.AI

Chief Technology Officer

Built and operated the entire software arm of this NASDAQ-listed company through IPO. Proposed, built, and launched the first public carbon crediting API for aviation.

Updated February 2026

Reading

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future Dan Wang

A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge

Dubliners James Joyce

Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro

The Death and Life of Great American Cities Jane Jacobs

Building

Scaling Lilychart's deployment with Foundation for Blind Children and adding new monitoring and evaluation features to Northstar Toolkit.

Thinking about

What theory of change evaluation and ideation looks like in the age of LLMs.

Shooting

Lately I've been shooting black and white architectural photography on my Fujifilm.

Architectural photograph 1
Architectural photograph 2
Architectural photograph 3
Architectural photograph 4
Architectural photograph 5
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Elsewhere

My desk
My desk
Personal photograph 2
Personal photograph 3
Personal photograph 4
Personal photograph 5
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz

San Francisco

Bay Bridge at dusk
Bay Bridge at dusk
Haight-Ashbury
Haight-Ashbury
Chinatown
Chinatown
Powell & Hyde
Powell & Hyde
Grant Avenue
Grant Avenue

New York

Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
Liberty at sunset
Liberty at sunset
Prospect Park
Prospect Park
Governors Island
Governors Island
Golden hour
Golden hour
2 train
2 train