Mike Ross

Leading with Purpose as a Design Expert and Social Impact CEO

For years, Mike Ross has practiced the craft of personal and professional development. As a result, not only is he an award-winning Developer, Engineer & Visual Designer, but also a leading Social Impact CEO.

Based in Los Angeles, California, he is the Founder & Executive Director of Future Forward Education and Believe In You; Creative Leader – Developer, Engineer & Visual Designer at Alldream Studios; and Senior Application Developer at Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

To sum it up, he’s on a mission to create, innovate, and offer solutions for socially driven projects, initiatives, small businesses, and consumer driven efforts. In addition to being a Social Impact Entrepreneur, he’s also a Developer & Engineer in voter and elections efforts, the entertainment industry, healthcare, and education – all with a commitment to ‘service through technology’.

“My most valuable possession is hunger for knowledge and a desire to learn new things. For tangibles, I can’t really accomplish my creative niche without having the right tools. I need my ‘brush and canvas’ so to speak. As long as I have a functioning work setup and reliable connectivity, then I’m ready to get to work,” says Ross, making light of his tremendous accomplishments.

Mike grew up on the east coast in New England, USA and spent his entire childhood there. He had the luxury of attending a Center for Technology at his high school, and spent his junior and senior year being exposed to hands-on learning and technologies that he’s passionate about to this very day.

He eventually moved out west to California in 2010 to pursue his interest in the creative industry (art, design and technology). The transition from coast to coast was amplified in importance by the fact that when he was in school, he dealt with mental and emotional challenges such as being autistic and having learning difficulties. This made his time in the Center for Technology pivotal to his ultimate transformation of opening up and realizing a potential he never knew he would have.

“My professional portfolio spans from the time I first noticed an interest in anything in the creative landscape, which started while I was in high school (from design to functionality) to present day. I’m interested in both – how things look and how they work, so my portfolio will reflect visual mediums as well as functional ones. Visual entails graphic design, print design, illustrations, 3D models, et. al. Functional consists of applications, websites, native apps, systems development, et. al.”

For years, Mike would put his craft into producing products for various clients but over time, especially after moving away from the countryside and into the city, he became more focused on applying his skill set and passion towards creating social impact.

Some of that includes developing learning-based applications for youth, building a youth/education-focused nonprofit, starting plans for creating a social enterprise, and enhancing his online portfolio. Since 2012, he’s also been working for Los Angeles County, all the while working on external projects that he hopes will benefit members of society.

Further, he’s an active community contributor as a mentor and tutor to homeless children, among other community commitments. “Some of my hobbies branch from my professional projects. As an analogy, consider the trunk of a tree as my career and the branches as side projects and/or hobbies. It’s still the same tree and rooted from the same passion(s). This highlights how much of my interest stems from a passion for the craft over anything else. I’ll add that my interest in seeing change around me, in improving societal outcomes, is a major motivator in making most of the branches on that tree related to that craft.”

Forever driven by progress before monetary gain, Mike’s primary strength is his growth mindset, which helps him see further down the road than just what is right in front of him. This helps him with planning and conceptualizing new ideas as he can see what the end result may look like from a very ‘zoomed out’ perspective.

On the other hand, his weaknesses reside primarily in the communication space on a larger scale; speaking to large groups at once. That being said, he is in the process of developing the ability to make his voice more public since he feels it is essential to marketing the ideas he has. His advice to anyone would be to engage with any activity that helps you hone in on being able to master the skill of communicating to an audience. This could be through workshops, toastmaster events, or even narrating your elevator pitch out loud to yourself multiple times a day.

His challenges too, are manifold. How does Mike overcome the obstacles? “Over the years, I have been able to build on mastering the skill of time management. I keep daily task journals in which I outline my objectives for the day and am very hard on myself to complete them. I’ll often know in advance what my daily schedules will look like so it becomes easier to plan outings or personal activities around that. It is possible that impromptu events will show up and leak into an already-planned day but rather than delete a scheduled item, I will shift it. So that way, I am not bypassing the work at hand. This also means that I extend my work days into evenings, nights and weekends to accommodate for a dynamic schedule of professional and personal hybridity.”

Mike’s drive and acumen has led to the following accolades:
● 2 Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Project Awardee (Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk)
● 2 Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Green/Yellow Belt Certificates (Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk)
● Emerging Leaders Award (Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk)
● Excellence in Education, ‘In Recognition Of Your Contributions To The Field Of Education And Learning’, Education 2.0 Conference 2025 (Future Forward Education)
● 2 Best of Quarter in the Web Design category (The Art Institute of Los Angeles – CA)
● 2 Best of Quarter in the Graphic Design category (The Art Institute of Los Angeles – CA)

He credits his success to multiple inspirations throughout his life, much of that by his own family and friends. They have always been supportive of his interests and enabled him to unlock and be comfortable with venturing onto new projects and goals. He also capitalizes on mentorship and utilizes mentors to help guide him through some things he may be naive about.

A people’s person, Mike is always moved by individuals who remain focused on particular tasks even if the odds are stacked against them. He is a firm believer in developing the growth mindset and pushing through something that seems immovable. He has developed this mindset himself and uses it every day for any task. His ultimate goal? To create businesses that produce products and services that help people in the form of social impact-driven solutions!