Omar Khan
Refugee Advocate
Old Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolOmar Khan is a refugee advocate and former award-winning software engineer with 15 years of experience blending technology, community organizing, and creative practice. Based in Toronto, he has spent the last four-plus years helping refugee newcomers settle, opening pathways to education, licensing, and psychosocial supports while building grassroots capacity in Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park. Earlier in his career he led product efforts at Google (including the Founder Award-winning Desktop and the PowerMeter energy project) and studied HCI at UC Berkeley, giving him a rare mix of technical depth and human-centered design. He connects systems-level advocacy with hands-on program delivery—creating initiatives like Number Buddies and partnering with the MIT Media Lab Refugee Learning Accelerator to support refugee technologists. An active artist and artistic engineer since 2008, he produces interactive installations that fuse data, light, sound and biosensor inputs, bringing experimental media into community contexts. Colleagues describe him as a connector who turns technical skills into practical tools for social inclusion.
15 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
MSc, Computer Science: Human Computer Interaction., MSc, Computer Science: Human Computer Interaction. at University of California, BerkeleyBSc, Summa Cum Laude, Computer Science, BSc, Summa Cum Laude, Computer Science at Cornell University
Github Skills (15)
node-application6
wifi4
puredata3
python3
mutable2
py2
instagram-api2
raspberry-pi2
bootloader1
api1
firebase1
sysex1
scripting1
kicad1
excel1
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
orcaomar/food_justice
Jun 2023 - Apr 2026
Contributions:21 PRs, 76 pushes, 107 branches in 2 years 10 months
orcaomar/qgis_range_filters
Jul 2019 - Sep 2022
Contributions:23 commits, 3 PRs, 23 pushes in 3 years 2 months
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.