James Morgan McKelvey Jr. is an American billionaire businessman, who is the co-founder of

Block, Inc. Block, Inc. (formerly Square, Inc.) is an American multinational technology conglomerate founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and launched its first platform in 2010. It has been traded as a public company on the New York Stock Exch ...

McKelvey was appointed as an independent director of the

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the United States' central bank. Missouri is the only state to have two main Federal Reserve Banks (Ka ...

in January 2017. As of November 2021, his net worth was estimated at US$4 billion.

Early life

James Morgan McKelvey Jr. was born and raised in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

and is an alumnus of

Ladue Horton Watkins High School Ladue Horton Watkins High School is a public high school in Ladue, Missouri, United States, that is administered by the Ladue School District. Its namesake, Horton Watkins, was vice president of the International Shoe Company and died in 1949. The ...

. He wrote and published a Handbook on

UCSD Pascal UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (U ...

and Apple Pascal in 1986. After graduation from Washington University in St. Louis, McKelvey worked as a contractor for IBM in Los Angeles and in St. Louis. At the same time, he had jobs as a

glassblowing Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or parison) with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube). A person who blows glass is called a ''glassblower'', ''glassmith'', or ''gaffer''. A '' lampworke ...

instructor and founded Disconcepts, a CD cabinet manufacturing company.

Career

Third Degree Glass Factory

In 2000, after giving a glassblowing demonstration at WUSTL, McKelvey met Doug Auer. In 2002 they founded Third Degree Glass Factory in

, a glass art studio and gallery which also provides space for private events. He talks about this extensively in the Shaping Business Minds Through Art podcast.

Block, Inc. (formerly known as Square, Inc.)

In 2009, McKelvey co-founded Square with

Jack Dorsey Jack Patrick Dorsey (born November 19, 1976) is an American Internet entrepreneur and programmer who is a co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Inc., as well as a co-founder and the CEO and chairperson of Block, Inc., the developer of the Squa ...

. Professor Robert Morley designed the hardware used by Square in 2009, while McKelvey and Jack Dorsey later created a separate entity leaving Morley out of this entity's ownership. McKelvey then served as Square's chairman until 2010. , McKelvey sits on the Board of Directors at Block, Inc.

Cultivation Capital

In 2012, McKelvey teamed with other St. Louis-based businesspeople to help found Cultivation Capital, a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which h ...

firm that manages early-stage venture capital funds in software, life sciences, and agtech.

Invisibly

In June 2016, McKelvey founded Invisibly, a company seeking to allow consumers to profit from their online data.

The Federal Reserve

In 2017, McKelvey was appointed as an

Independent Director An independent director (also sometimes known as an outside director) is a member of a board of directors who does not have a material or pecuniary relationship with company or related persons, except sitting fees. In the United States, indepen ...

of the

NoW Innovation District

Since 2019, McKelvey and business partner John Berglund, as StarLake Holdings have been building the NoW Innovation District in downtown St. Louis.

Non-profit work

LaunchCode

In September 2013, McKelvey co-founded LaunchCode, a non-profit organization that aims to grow new talent and create pathways to on-the-job training and employment. LaunchCode partners with companies to set up paid apprenticeships in technology for talented people who lack the traditional credentials to land a quality, high-paying job. In 2014, LaunchCode was named "The Best Thing to Happen to St. Louis" by the St. Louis Riverfront Times. In February 2019, LaunchCode received a $300,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to support education programming.

Philanthropy

In 2016, McKelvey donated $15 million to the Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science to build a new computer science and engineering building named after his father. In 2019, Washington University's engineering school was renamed the

McKelvey School of Engineering The James McKelvey School of Engineering is a part of Washington University in St. Louis. Founded in 1854, the engineering school is a research institution occupying seven buildings on Washington University's Danforth Campus. Research emphasis ...

Works

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References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:McKelvey, Jim Living people Businesspeople from St. Louis Block, Inc. employees American computer businesspeople American computer scientists Ladue Horton Watkins High School alumni Washington University in St. Louis alumni American glass artists 20th-century American sculptors 21st-century American sculptors 21st-century male artists American male sculptors American installation artists Glassblowers Artists from St. Louis American billionaires Year of birth missing (living people)