Timothy Taeil Hwang (born February 20, 1992) is an American businessman, the current co-founder and CEO of FiscalNote, a global software, data, and media company.
Tim Hwang | |
|---|---|
 Tim Hwang at the World Economic Forum, Davos (2018) | |
| Born | February 20, 1992 East Lansing, Michigan, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (Woodrow Wilson School) |
| Known for | Founder/CEO of FiscalNote |
| Political party | Democratic Party |
| Awards |
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| Website | fiscalnote |
Early life
editTim Hwang was born on February 20, 1992, in East Lansing, Michigan, the son of immigrants from South Korea.[3] His family later moved to Potomac, Maryland, where he was elected as the student member of the Montgomery County Board Of Education and graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in 2010.[4]
At the age of 14, he founded Operation Fly after a church missions trip to Guatemala.[5][6][7]
Hwang attended the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he was also active in helping to found the National Youth Association (now defunct), a national youth lobby organization.[8] He then was admitted to Harvard Business School.
Business career
editIn early 2013, as Hwang was finishing his degree at Princeton,[9] he launched FiscalNote along with two friends from high school, Gerald Yao and Jonathan Chen.[10] Hwang deferred his attendance at Harvard Business School to start the company[11] while Yao took a leave of absence from Emory University. At the time, FiscalNote began its service as a state legislative tracking service.[3] Hwang, Yao, and Chen, bootstrapped the business with several thousand dollars and incorporated FiscalNote in June 2013.[12]
FiscalNote soon moved the company to Washington, D.C., and raised several rounds of venture capital. The firm has grown to become one of the largest software employers in the District of Columbia. In 2017, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a major job training program and economic development package alongside Hwang, pioneering a new model for technology development in the city.[13][14][15] Hwang was the protagonist of a Columbia Business School case study in Fall 2015,[16] a 2016-hour-long Korean Broadcasting System Documentary (Sympathy: Tim Hwang at the Center of Korea's Attention),[17] and a South Korean biography "24 Year Old Tim Hwang: The CEO that the World is Paying Attention To."[18] Hwang has been widely criticized for making critical comments in the South Korean media about the health of the Korean economy, stating that "the Korean economy is like a patient with crutches."[19]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hwang fired 30 staff from the CQ Roll Call newsroom, with one source telling AdWeek that the layoffs included the entire team of investigative reporters, and all but one staff member from the print magazine team.[20] A month earlier, Hwang had told a reporter with Washington Business Journal that Roll Call was "on track to bring in $100 million in 2020 revenue and turn a profit.”[21]
Philanthropy
editHwang is a Trustee on the Board of the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, a member of the Board of the Afterschool Alliance, a member of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., and the Young Presidents Organization.[22]
References
edit- ^ "30 Under 30 2016: Law & Policy". Forbes.
- ^ "How FiscalNote Gets Ahead of Government (So You Don't Have to)". Inc.com. June 2, 2016.
- ^ a b Peck, Louis (March 24, 2014). "Is This the Next Bill Gates?". Bethesda Magazine.
- ^ "Wootton HS Junior Tim Hwang Elected Student Member of the Board". Montgomery County Public Schools. May 1, 2009.
- ^ Kinzie, Susan (July 12, 2009). "The Fresh Faces of Philanthropy". Washington Post.
- ^ "Nonprofit, founded by students, expands nationally". ww2.gazette.net. Archived from the original on March 22, 2012.
- ^ "Tim Hwang: Freshman in the Forefront of the Non-Profit Sector". Her Campus. April 2, 2011.
- ^ Restauri, Denise (September 7, 2012). "Meet The New "Balancers" -- The College Students Who Figured Out How To Do It All". Forbes.
- ^ Quora (February 9, 2016). "CEO of FiscalNote On The Challenges Of Starting The Company As A College Student". Huffington Post.
- ^ Schomer, Stephanie (August 30, 2017). "This 25-Year-Old Entrepreneur Is Trying to Do the Impossible: Make Sense of the Government". Entrepreneur.
- ^ "Tim Hwang - profile". Helena.org.
- ^ "The FiscalNote Origin Story". FiscalNote Insights. March 16, 2015.
- ^ "Mayor Bowser to Announce New Tech Job Training Opportunities". mayor.dc.gov. June 21, 2017.
- ^ Babcock, Stephen (June 23, 2017). "FiscalNote plans new DC headquarters, tech training". Technical.ly.
- ^ "FiscalNote, represented by Jones Lang LaSalle and backed by D.C., to move and expand". Washington Business Journal. Archived from the original on June 25, 2017.
- ^ "FiscalNote: Taking on the Big Guys in Information Technology". Columbia Business School. December 11, 2015.
- ^ "'다큐공감' 24살 한국청년 황태일, LTE급 추진력" ['Documentary' 24-year-old Korean young man Hwang Tae-il, LTE-level momentum]. polinews.co.kr (in Korean). March 12, 2016.
- ^ "24세 황태일 – 그는 왜 세계가 주목하는 한국 청년 CEO인가?" [24-year-old Hwang Tae-il – Why is he a young Korean CEO that the world is paying attention to?]. kyobobook.co.kr (in Korean). September 5, 2016.
- ^ ""제조업 강하지만 미래산업 약한 한국은 목발 짚은 환자"" ["Korea is strong in manufacturing but weak in future industries, a patient on crutches"]. hankyung.com (in Korean). November 1, 2017. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019.
- ^ Nover, Scott (April 2, 2020). "Dozens Fired at CQ Roll Call, a Publication Known for Reporting Inside Washington". AdWeek.
- ^ Medici, Andy (February 19, 2020). "Inside FiscalNote's turbulent 2019 and its CEO's plans for 2020". Washington Business Journal. Archived from the original on May 19, 2023. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
- ^ "Timothy Hwang – Agenda Contributor". World Economic Forum.