Mateja Milicevic
Mateja Milicevic

At Michigan State University, Mateja Milicevic founded and led an organization that gave more than 500 students a way to learn software engineering by doing it. As founder and president of Imagine Software, he connected students seeking technical experience with student startups that needed technical talent — and built a program of projects, events, and speaker sessions around that exchange.

Imagine Software was built around participation. Students were paired with student startups that needed technical support, giving them a chance to apply software engineering skills in an active project setting. Startups, in turn, gained access to motivated technical contributors. The model created value on both sides of the exchange.

"The goal was to help students learn by giving them a real opportunity to contribute," Milicevic says. "They could work with a startup and build their skills through the process."

Milicevic extended the program beyond project work. Under his leadership, Imagine Software brought in speakers from LinkedIn, Amazon, Humana, Ford, and other Fortune 500 companies, giving students direct access to professionals already working in technical and business roles. The sessions showed students where their skills could lead while they were still building them.

The results followed the participants. Many former members moved into roles at companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Robinhood, Meta, and Google. Those outcomes belong to the students themselves, but Imagine Software gave them a working technical community, live project experience, and industry connections while they were still at Michigan State.

"Imagine Software gave students another place to grow," Milicevic says. "That is the part I am most proud of."

Under Milicevic's leadership, what began as a college project developed into one of the university's larger technical learning communities. He describes Imagine Software as an educational institution operating within another educational institution: students were already pursuing formal degrees, and the organization created a second setting where they could keep learning through real projects and professional conversations.

"College gives students a strong foundation," Milicevic says. "Imagine Software gave them another way to keep learning and applying what they knew."

The organization reflected Milicevic's broader instinct for building systems that other people can use. In this case, the system was educational — a structure through which hundreds of students gained exposure to software engineering and to the companies employing technical talent. He did not limit his college years to developing his own skills; he used his position to widen the opportunity for everyone around him.

That instinct carried into his career. Milicevic went on to become one of the first three researchers at Aaru, where he helps build the models behind the company's human behavior simulations. The two roles differ substantially, but both placed him at the early development of something new — and both required turning an idea into a working system that others depend on.

Imagine Software remains one of the clearest records of Milicevic creating opportunity beyond his own advancement. Its reach — more than 500 students, Fortune 500 speakers, and alumni across the largest technology companies — is measurable, and its purpose was constant from the beginning.

"I am proud that students were able to learn and grow through something I helped create," Milicevic says. "That was always the purpose of Imagine Software."