Ronald Steven Schnell (born November 10, 1966) is an American computer programmer in Weston, Florida. He was co-founder of Mail Call in 1997 and the chief technology officer of Rand Paul's 2016 presidential campaign.[1][2]
Ron Schnell | |
|---|---|
 Ron Schnell in 2011 | |
| Born | November 10, 1966 |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Ronnie Schnell, Ronald Steven Schnell |
| Alma mater | Syracuse University |
| Known for | speaking at NYU (age 14), co-founder of Mail Call, CTO of Paul'16 |
| Website | www |
Life and work
Schnell began programming in 1975 (age nine), on the IBM 360 mainframe.[3][4][5][6] In 1981, he tested and spoke about SETL (for VAX minicomputers) at NYU's Courant Institute.[3][4][5] In 1982, Schnell wrote a chat program for Telenet called NET-TALK, while at the Maryland timesharing company Dialcom; this led to helping test the BBC Micro.[7] Schnell wrote[8][9] the text adventure game DUNNET in 1983 for MacLisp[a] and 1992 for Emacs Lisp.[b] After high school, Schnell attended Syracuse University from 1984 through 1986,[c] and was a DJ on WJPZ-FM
Between late 1986 and throughout the 1990s, Schnell was a Unix kernel consultant.[d] He moved to the west coast, and founded his first startup in 1990, Secure Online Systems.[10] He co-founded Mail Call in 1997 in Florida; the product used IVR and back-end text-to-speech (subscribers could call a toll-free number, and check their email via the telephone—Mail Call was before the invention of the smartphone).[11][12][13] From 2002 to 2005, Schnell was a divisional vice president at Equifax.[14][e] Schnell was general manager of The Technical Committee in Seattle, a court-mandated computer-software-nonprofit that monitored Microsoft's compliance with a federal court ruling.[15][f]
Starting in 2013, Schnell became an adjunct professor of Computer Security[g] at Nova Southeastern University.[16] In 2015, Schnell also became CTO of the Rand Paul presidential campaign; he hosted a hackathon in San Francisco during July 2015.[1] Schnell designed the app[h] for Paul'16 (featuring a hidden game, vote feedback, donations, and virtual-selfies).[17][18]
Personal life
Schnell was married in 1994, and has two children. Schnell's home automation system, which he helped specify, was profiled in 1998.[19] Schnell plays Segway polo, and in 2007 co-founded the Polo Bears team.[20]