MARIO ARMSTRONG
2006 Legacy of Excellence
"Passing the Baton" Award Recipient
 American City Business Journal says he’s one of the “Top 40 Under 40” leaders to watch. The Baltimore Times Magazine named him one of Baltimore’s “Top 25 Young Rising Stars”, the Cable Beacon Awards named him “Best Cable TV Host 2003” and the Potomac Tech Journal called him Maryland’s Media Man.
By day, Mario Armstrong is the 1st to serve as Chief Technology Advocate for Baltimore City. Mario’s appointment as a top aide to Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley makes him responsible for developing and implementing technology driven community and economic development programs for the City of Baltimore.
By night, Mario is the technology correspondent for NPR’s News and Notes show with Ed Gordon. He is also the host of NPR (affil.) technology talk shows entitled “The Digital Café and “The Digital Spin”. Mario is also seen weekly on ABC2 news and CNN Headline News in Maryland delivering commentary and news for business and technology issues.
Mario publishes a weekly email newsletter Armstrongs’ “Digital Spin” and is a contributing writer for The Baltimore Sun and a columnist for their publication -”Unison”. Some of Mario’s show guests include; Spike Lee, Ted Waitt, Tavis Smiley, Russell Simmons, Sid Meier, Michael Dell and Dr. Cornel West just to name a few. Mario is also seen nationally hosting technology segments for TV-One, in 30+ cities and over 7 million viewers. From 1999-2002 Mario developed and hosted a weekly TV show about technology that ran for 3 successful seasons on ABC2 Baltimore.
Mario is a co-founder of the Urban Video Game Academy - a national non-profit educational program that uses the exciting video game development process as a new and interactive tool to get middle and high school students engaged in academic achievement in math, science, english and technology and his voice is featured in a new, fun and educational video game entitled “SpaceStation Sim’ developed by Vision Videogames for NASA. Mario’s involvement with technology and the Internet exceeds ten years. He built his first website in 1994 an e-commerce site in 1996 (which didn’t make any money). And as a kid Mario would take apart his Atari and other gadgets his parents would work hard to give him.
His career involves being Technology Advisor to Baltimore Mayor O’Malley, Dir. of Technology for State of Maryland Tourism, Technology Trainer for System Source Computers and he’s worked for companies like CIENA Corporation, TCI Cable and Cell-1.
Mario is also very active in the community and is on various boards. Most notably, he serves on the Hewlett-Packard Digital Village Program, is the Marketing Director for tech non-profit BDPA-Baltimore and is an advisor to the Digital Harbor High School. Through other civic initiatives with area businesses Mario ensures that several underprivileged Baltimore City youth are able to attend summer computer camp each year.
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