About Ian McCallum
Founder & AI Engineer
Naperville, Illinois
Who is Ian McCallum? Ian McCallum is a Naperville, Illinois tech builder, entrepreneur, Metea Valley High School graduate, and incoming University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Gies College of Business student.
What is Ian focused on? Ian is focused on Finance, Data Science, web development, AI-assisted automation, and building Beat the Clock.
Hello! I'm 18 years old and recently graduated from Metea Valley High School, and I'm excited to share a little bit about who I am, what I do, and what I love. I finished with a 4.25 GPA, was named an Illinois State Scholar, and graduated magna cum laude. This fall I'm starting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I plan to major in Finance and Data Science through the Gies College of Business. I currently live in the suburbs of Chicago, but I was born in the city and spent the first five years of my life there. At home, I'm surrounded by my three energetic younger sisters, my supportive parents, and our adorable dog Zoey.
I'm a recent graduate of Metea Valley High School in Aurora, Illinois, where I finished with a 4.25 GPA, Illinois State Scholar recognition, and magna cum laude honors. During my senior year, I joined Eco Club and Ultimate Frisbee while continuing my work with UNICEF. This fall I'm starting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to study Finance and Data Science in the Gies College of Business. My journey in tech started early, and I've been fortunate to work on various projects that combine innovation with real-world applications.
Most of my time goes to Clockwork, the AI operations platform I built for my company, Beat the Clock. It gives trades businesses an agent that catches the call they missed, drafts the reply in their voice, prices the quote off their own rate card, chases the follow-up, and collects the invoice — with the owner approving every message before it goes out. Building it has meant getting serious about Python, prompt engineering, and the unglamorous discipline of making an AI system fail honestly instead of guessing. This fall I start at UIUC studying Finance and Data Science, which will keep me fluent in the numbers a business actually runs on.
Python
Prompt Eng.
AI Agents
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
React
Premiere Pro
After Effects
Photoshop
Web Dev
AI Systems
