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“It is still and peaceful outside in the fog-shrouded world.” 

Thus begins Scott Case ’94’s ninth-grade English journal entry dated November 27, 1990. He and his family (including sister Ann ’96) had just moved to the Pacific Northwest from New Jersey, and the dreamy landscape of evergreen trees, mountains, and water quickly and regularly left him in awe. This journal was part of a time capsule project, with a directive not to open the envelope until March 2020. “I don’t know why we chose that date; I guess 2020 seemed like a long time off,” Scott recalled. 

He opened it early upon learning he was named the 2019 Charles Wright Academy Alum of the Year, and in doing so a projection of his life’s path emerged. In addition to immersing himself in AP classes and extracurriculars such as editing the Academy Times, participating in Green Derby, and competing in Knowledge Bowl, Scott also has fond memories of cross-country practices in the woods behind the school and of the pivotal outdoor education trip. “I had my first hiking trip in the Cascades as a sophomore,” he said. “And climbing Mount St. Helen’s in the winter with Steve Lynch as a senior was an incredible right-of-passage experience.” It naturally followed that Scott would apply his academic knowledge toward preserving the environment. 

Returning east after graduating from CWA, Scott earned undergraduate degrees in political science and economics from Williams College and an MBA from MIT before moving to Seattle and building a career in the technology industry. Making a transition from a digital advertising tech company, Scott knew there were more fulfilling career options that could make a bigger impact. “Coming out of that experience, I loved the people I worked with and the interesting business and technology challenges we got to solve, but I felt there was a missing ingredient—it didn’t feel like an important problem,” he said. “My next gig, I wanted to work on something in energy and climate or in healthcare.”

Scott went on to cofound EnergySavvy in 2008 with several colleagues who applied their backgrounds in software to “get people to make their houses more energy efficient and save the 30-40% of energy that is wasted in the process of inefficiently heating, cooling, and operating homes in the U.S.,” he explained. “If we could make it work, it was a direct line to chipping away at the problem of carbon emissions and climate change.” In the decade since, the company has grown and was recently acquired by a larger company, Tendril, “to become part of a bigger residential energy-efficiency focus when combined with their complementary products.”

As part of the deal, Scott left the company and is focusing on Ada Developers Academy, a nonprofit school he cofounded in 2013 for female and nonbinary gender software engineering candidates who are looking to switch or advance careers in tech. Named in honor of Ada Lovelace, the woman considered to be the first computer programmer in history and who worked alongside Charles Babbage on the first computer in the 19th century, the academy “has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations—now graduating nearly 100 new female and nonbinary gender software engineers per year and injecting them into Washington state’s software industry with a 95% placement rate into software development jobs,” said Scott, who serves as the Ada board chair. “That makes us one of the top producers of new software engineering talent in the state.”

Also currently exploring potential startup ideas in energy storage and sustainability, Scott remains keen on investing in technology that minimizes harm to the environment—a dichotomy he was astute enough to observe even as a 14-year-old Tarrier. “In the forest, everything is silent and innocent, and nothing has changed,” he wrote in his English journal. “But inside, the sound of people and what man has done forever alters the planet. People laugh and talk. People greet each other and say goodbye. People have changed the earth, and there is no way to change it back. When man first stood up, it began a series of irreversible events from which the earth can never recover. Charles Wright and the students here must do everything we can to try to preserve at least a small part of the earth which man can never change. It is a difficult task, but it is possible.”