At eight years old, Kalimah held a successful hunger strike against his Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn group home to add more books to its library. As a trouble-making high schooler in Harlem, NY, he was mentored by Dr. Lorraine Monroe, a world-class educator, who sowed the seeds to him becoming a social innovator. By the age of 17, Kalimah started his first computer company that primarily served low income neighborhoods. In October of 2000, his teenage brother was shot and killed behind their childhood elementary school, inspiring Kalimah to form a lifelong commitment towards transforming education for under-served kids.

In 2010, Kalimah relocated from Brooklyn, NY to Oakland, CA to launch Qeyno. He is committed to empowering the minority-led startup community throughout the country and is also educator-in-residence for the Oakland-based "Hidden Genius Project", a program that trains black male youth in entrepreneurial thinking, software development, and user experience design.