Esther Hong

Esther serves as the Innovation Program Design Manager at Merit America. An engineer by training, Esther brings 15-years of experience in program management, workforce development, career services, and recruiting. Previously, she co-founded a workforce development nonprofit serving low-income immigrants and refugees, which was later acquired by an umbrella nonprofit. Esther additionally worked in the tech industry in user research and product, including leading an incubation project of a machine learning e-commerce mobile offering. She left the tech industry to pursue her passion of building bridges to tech careers for diverse and underserved communities — and is thrilled to be applying her background in running experiments, startups, and career services to build innovative & impactful programs at Merit America.

Outside of work, Esther enjoys exploring the outdoors, sampling different cuisines, admiring good design, and watching standup comedy.