Montgomery Blair High School graduate Patrick Lee, a tech entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as a co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, will be inducted into the Montgomery Blair Alumni Association Hall of Fame as part of the school’s 2026 Centennial celebration on Saturday, May 16.
Lee, a member of Blair’s Class of 1992 and graduate of the school’s Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science Magnet Program, co-founded Rotten Tomatoes alongside Stephen Wang of Columbia, Maryland, and Senh Duong while attending the University of California, Berkeley. The website would go on to become one of the internet’s most influential movie and television review aggregators, helping shape how audiences discover and evaluate entertainment.
The Hall of Fame induction is part of Montgomery Blair’s Centennial Year celebration, which honors graduates from each era of the school’s 100-year history. The event will also feature a student-produced video highlighting the experiences and legacy of Blair through the decades.
In a 2008 profile for Silver Chips, Blair High School’s student newspaper, written by Priyanka Gokhale, Lee reflected on how his time at Blair helped spark both his entrepreneurial mindset and his interest in entertainment and technology.
According to the article, Lee operated a bulletin board system from a second phone line in his family’s Silver Spring home while still a teenager. The platform allowed users to chat in forums, play video games, and connect online years before social media became mainstream. While many users were fellow Blair Magnet students, others were strangers from outside the school community, with Lee even organizing in-person meetups for participants.
Lee credited Blair’s Magnet Program and its teachers for helping shape his future success. “Wonderful, smart teachers who loved what they were doing,” Lee said in the Silver Chips interview, adding that he believed he received a better education at Blair than at Berkeley due to the smaller class sizes and engaged faculty.
While attending Berkeley, Lee balanced academics with a growing list of startup ventures. According to the Silver Chips article, he often took classes part-time, attended summer sessions, and even paused his coursework for semesters at a time while building companies.
In addition to Rotten Tomatoes, Lee co-founded Design Reactor with Stephen Wang while in college. The company provided interactive design services for major entertainment brands including Disney Channel and Warner Bros. Among its projects was the Flash game accompanying “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” during the height of the show’s popularity in the early 2000s.
Beyond his business ventures, Lee has also become known for philanthropy and nonprofit work, particularly in education and technology initiatives.
