If you're looking for the next big tech entrepreneur, look no further than Roosevelt Island.
The small stretch of land in the East River houses Cornell Tech, an applied sciences graduate school that's the brain child of Mayor Bloomberg, who during the financial crisis led the push for the city to diversify its economy and become a leading tech hub.
"It promises to create a beehive of innovation and discovery," Bloomberg said in 2011, when the city announced Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology would build the new school.
The campus, according to Daniel Huttenlocher, the founding dean of Cornell Tech, quickly sent a message to the tech world that the city was serious about cultivating the engineering talent readily available in Silicon Valley.
"The symbolism is multi-faceted," said Huttenlocher, who stepped down last month. "But one very important part is that the city, because the city made an investment in this and the land, and in the competition, that the city is really looking to grow tech in New York City."
The school is still small, but growing quickly.
It now has 350 full-time students, up from just a dozen six years ago.
Graduates have founded more than 50 start-ups, nearly all of them based right here in the five boroughs.
The city's legacy schools, like NYU, Columbia and CUNY, also have strong engineering programs, but officials say what makes Cornell Tech stand out is that it was built from the ground up, with input from the city's top tech companies.
"They felt that the students, particularly in the master's level, had very good skills in their discipline," said Huttenlocher. "But [they] had almost none of the skills that were necessary to work in real teams developing real products and services."
Those who have the skills to get a job in the tech sector end up making a lot of money. According to the state comptroller, the average tech salary has grown three times faster than in the rest of the private sector to more than $147,000.
But the gains aren't being felt by everyone. According to studies, most of the sector's current employees are white and male.
The de Blasio administration is trying to change that by exposing the city's public school children to tech as early as possible.
"When you look at who has been learning computer science, K through 12, who majors in computer science in college and who has tech jobs, they don't look like New York City public school students," said Debbie Marcus, who is the executive director of computer science education for the city's Department of Education. "And we have to change that so we have the ideas and voices of all students, particularly our black and Hispanic and our female students.
In 2015, the city launched Computer Science for All, a ten-year, $81 million public-private partnership to teach computer science in every single public school.
"The way that the world is changing and technology is evolving it's important that these students have exposure to it so they can choose what they want to do," said Amy Sacks, a computer science teacher at PS15 in the East Village.
The hope is that some of the students who take the classes will be inspired to study computer science or engineering in college and at grad schools like Cornell Tech, which will help them to gain entry to the high-paying careers that will lift them, and their communities.