“Give me your woke, your entrepreneurs, Your huddled masses learning to code apps,” reads the inscription on the Statue of Capital, that neon-green behemoth forever “leaning in” on the center of wealth that is Neo-Manhattan, circa 2124 — a city artificially raised above the ever-increasing tide. Those unable to GoFundMe a new life onto the offworld Content Mines are forced to try and survive the Free Market of the New Paci-lantic Ocean, drifting by on dinghies made from electronic waste that hasn’t already been culturally appropriated into lethal shrapnel for barrel bombs deployed in yet another god forsaken Middle Eastern conflict you can catch highlights of on social media.
How did we get here? Why did we choose to arrive at this destination? Why has it taken so many decades to deny the reality of our pre-planned economy is as far from a “free market” as it could possibly be? When Reaganomics and “trickle-down” began in the 1980s, combined with social cuts and Clinton’s welfare reform (called “personal responsibility,” mind you) in the ‘90s, the redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest bracket of society began. Technology advanced, productivity skyrocketed, and now ninety percent of income gains flows into the hands of the top ten percent. With so few “job creators” and 85% of America fighting for 15% of the wealth, the rich have planned for their own benefit a hyper-competitive employment economy of who is willing to suck up the most shit, who is willing to work the most unpaid overtime, who is least willing to demand fair compensation for their labor, and who is most afraid of slipping into poverty and desperation.
tfw you automated the labor whilst failing to plan a post-labor economy
What Silicon Valley has been peddling for years is the “sharing economy,” or worse yet the “gig economy.” Uber and Lyft began as “disruptors” to standard taxi companies, now Uber is rolling out self-driving cars to cut out the human element altogether. Because so many people are out of work, they’re trying to survive by taking on “gigs” as “independent contractors” through apps run by private corporations who have found a legal loophole that doesn’t require them to be treated like regular employees while also enabling the monetization of every waking moment of their lives. A couple of years ago, you had plenty of stories like this in the news. “Handy,” for example, was sued over abuse of contract labor. “Homejoy” offered home cleanings in the Bay Area for $19 by employing the homeless with no benefits or protections if they are injured on the job. These “contractors” are not considered employees, not offered benefits or raises, nor opportunities for advancement in a real career, while startups making millions upon millions in venture capital exploit their lack of rights for profit.
Therein lies the divide of this two-tier society: those with the wealth, and those forced to perpetually turn every hour of their life, sometimes forgoing sleep, into a potential income generation moment— just to survive, all for the luxury of those with wealth, with little protections or rights for the laborers. If this starts to sound a little familiar, well, your ancestors had a decades long struggle for it long before you were born.
The Haymarket Riot, 1885 — People Died For Your 9–5!
On September 5th, America will celebrate yet another Labor Day — a celebration of the labor movement, a violent uprising against exploitative abuse and a denial of opportunity for the poor American to improve the life of himself and his family through hard work. So much was gained thanks to the struggle and sacrifices of those that have come before us, that we used to take for granted but now chase with reckless abandon: the 40 hour work week, Social Security, a minimum wage, the motherfucking weekend. All of these Silicon Valley is actively working to take away from millions of Americans for their own personal profit.
The media and our politicians often treat Silicon Valley like a industry of wise intellectuals, who will save our society through “tech.” Hell, our current President plans to become a venture capitalist after he leaves the White House, hoping to invest in the next great food delivery rideshare app. Our likely next President, Hillary Clinton, proposes wiping out the college debt of “entrepreneurs,” but not say, nurses, or scientific researchers, or schoolteachers. The foundations of our society and the infrastructure around us will continue to crumble, all in what is quietly referred to as “social Darwinism,” a delusional vision that humanity will only reach its fullest potential by creating a desolate wasteland where only the “strong” survive, who ends up being the already rich in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All the while, in those fleeting moments of leisure before wasted hours of rest, the lecherous poors can rest their eyes upon any number of avenues of wealth worship, such as social media meme accounts like “Millionaire Mentor,” or the “Wolf of Instagram,” or they can watch canned reality shows like “Shark Tank” or “West Texas Investors Club,” where wannabe entrepreneurs pitch their ideals to eccentric billionaires who post vague motivational quotes to Twitter and Amazon links to their book, which will somehow unlock your “potential” to become just as rich as them! Surely, if we all work hard enough, we can all become billionaires in an economy where ninety percent of income gains go to the ten percent of the country who already have all the wealth! Why aren’t you, pathetic worker, watching this viral clip of Mark Cuban (one of multiple billionaire Clinton surrogates) roasting this cooky fraud of an entrepreneur?!
Speaking of “poors,” let’s not leave out the racial factor here: the top 10% of white families in America own nearly everything in America. Over 95% of the top 1% of households in America are white. The 2008 housing crisis in America wiped out 50% of Black wealth in America. While Silicon Valley postures itself as socially liberal with its embrace of gay marriage, diversity initiatives, and taking a bold stands via emoji — the fact of the matter is that it largely exists to maintain and enrich this racial divide.
All the while, geek media obsessed liberals more concerned with Twitter harassment and the diversity of the next million dollar videogame than the material lives of the actual people of color around them will insist there is some sort of “cross-class alliance taking a stand against violent racism,” pretending that leftism is for disgruntled white male “BernieBros” whose politics exist solely so they can kick at women and people of color. The problem is that this is largely ahistorical.
leftism has always stood against racism
A long time ago in America, during the labor movement that we celebrate every Labor Day, the Communists (who, may I remind you, Obama just equated to fascists and jihadists as the same evil at the 2016 Democratic Convention) would often put out a reminder to social workers or Klansmen in Alabama: The workers are watching you.While many Liberals will insist leftists are disregarding racism to focus on class, it was the labor movement of the 30s where Communists insisted racism be included as a part of the class struggle. The workers are watching you was an inherent threat: either you leave these black people alone (if you were a Klansmen), or you give them what they need (if you were a social worker), or we’ll break your knees. Needless to say, it worked.
When you type “the workers are watching you” into Google now, the first two results are an Atlantic piece about “when Big Data meets human resources,” and a Fast Company piece titled “The Office Is Watching You.” Our history is being replaced with a gentle reminder that The Algorithms are keeping a watchful eye on our ability to generate wealth for those above us. All the while, we are being led to believe that Silicon Valley is bringing humanity into a new gilded age of technological advancement and innovation, when instead we are simply creating luxury and convenience for the upper-middle class and the wealthy — there’s multiple taxi apps, multiple handyman and housecleaning apps, endless food delivery apps, an app to move your garbage cans to the curb, multiple dry cleaning apps, multiple apps to order and have your groceries delivered, apps to text a therapist, a butler app to manage all your other apps (which won a TechCrunch “Disrupt” competition), hell there’s even competing apps for “cuddling,” titled Cuddlr and Spoonr, because our world is now so heartless and cruel we now need to pay for non-sexual human affection.
When Labor Day comes on September 5th, we should be paying tribute to those who sacrificed so much for what we used to take for granted — and realize how quickly we are finding ourselves returning to the same nightmare our ancestors organized against. Silicon Valley will not save us — it will drive us closer to a society where those with capital live a life of luxury and delusion off of the backs of those of us unlucky enough that we are forced to monetize every waking moment just to survive. Our only salvation begins in organization.
Passion for analytics in human relationships and the intersection of technology and energy. Belief in role of education in changing the world.
Mar 113 min read
A Presentation Hack from a TED Talk by Airbnb Co-founder
I am delighted when I have an aha moment. It’s double joy when it relates to connecting with people. I found my moment in Joe Gebbia’s TED talk. He is a co-founder of Airbnb, a company that ushers hospitality industry into our own homes using apps.
As he was walking to take center stage on the red TED carpet, my thoughts raced on making a checklist on what to expect. He would likely try to make it interesting, inspiring and engaging. There are a couple of conventional choices he would likely employ — sharing his personal journey that mirrors the growth of Airbnb, he would likely share the future vision, peppering it with some impressive statistics in line with Airbnb “unicorn” status.
As I listened to him, I smiled. I was checking off the items created in my own mental game. Then, he surprised me with a wonderful zinger — a wonderful learning moment for me.
What Joe Gebbia did that surprised me?
He asked the audience to pull out our phones (I was watching at a remote live location). He urged us to unlock our phones which many of us gingerly followed. Next, he asked us to give our phone to the person sitting to our left. There was a perceptible pause before we followed through. At that moment, he shared the challenge his business faced. He was in the business of urging people to share their personal space — their homes with strangers. Without losing a beat, in that moment of feeling, he thanked his loyal hosts who opened their homes to unknown guests — the heart of smashing success of Airbnb as a recognizable name.
Using props is an age-old, sage advice — a great example being a TED talk by the author of Power of Introverts, Susan Cain. Her famous prop was a bag full of books she carried on stage. She talked about it but never opened it (until close to the end)— creating a curiosity quotient which served to pull in her audience.
Involve your audience is another well- articulated advice that is heard often.
What was remarkable about the simple act of Joe, he fused the two to create a multiplier effect — a prop that each member of audience personally owned!
He did not just engage the audience; he made us feel his business challenge — what it means to share a personal belonging — as personal as our cell phone, unlocked.
Right after the feeling moment, he gave me a thinking aha. He posed a question along these lines, “If you know a bit more about the person on the left before sharing your phone, would you it make it easier to share? How much more?” In his business, sharing just the right amount by the guest as an introduction to the host was key. And the “just right” design of the text box inside Airbnb app that held that critical information was instrumental in building trust. He masterfully brought me back to his area of expertise — design.
When he connected my dots that design can build trust, it appealed to my left brain. I knew that design and trust are important. The aha was when I could feel that design and trust could be interrelated.
What does the aha from a TED talk got to do with content in General?
An engaging written content has more degrees of freedom than a talk. The writer can write at his pace, the reader can read at their comfortable speed. Unlike a talk, the personal props are not restricted to the ones people carry. Unlike a visual prop, the writer can describe the prop and the reader can imagine it from their own experience, in their own voice. Everything else correlates.
Truckloads of material are available on content marketing. Joe’s simple act with audience cell phone personifies the heart of content marketing at its best — invoke feelings that people can relate, thank them in context and provide an aha that holistically excites the audience.
In Summary
I thank my friends at TEDx Houston for hosting the event live at Station Houston’s shack. #TED2016.
Interested in your thoughts in the comment section.
I build iOS apps, Founder @designfirstapps previously designed mobile @PayPal @Microsoft @Hotwire @Expedia and others.
Aug 194 min read
The Startup Story
We work out of my garage
How it started
So April 2015 my cofounder Mitchell and I left Silicon Valley to start a mobile startup in Seattle, I left my job as the Lead Mobile Designer @PayPal and Mitchell quit his job as an iOS dev with Ashe+AOL so we could both follow our passions of building a company (SF was so expensive, we only had savings, and nothing worth pitching to VCs yet, plus the startup ecosystem can get distracting). PS I met my cofounder Mitchell on twitter in Sept 2014, we both got lucky because we laugh at the same dumb shit, and feel the same about life, I guess you could say we’ve become good friends through this startup experience, we are kinda like brothers from anotha mutha.
We had been busy on an app that we lost momentum on before even launching when left the valley called Mymentor (education+vine). We needed a product, something we felt passionate about, something that we could relate with, what problems do we have?…. I remember waking up one Sunday morning in April and telling Mitchell we needed to build this app called Founderfox right now, it solved a huge pain point for us personally, and it was inspiring, so we did, we started that day, and 2 months later we launched it on Product Hunt. We had a great day, we “won” the day on PH, and saw over 5,000 downloads in that first 2 days, we also ended up getting featured by Apple 3 weeks later, and we received some press too. All of this opened so many new doors for us, we had people reaching out to us from all over the world.
Acquisition offers and Seed Funding
We got an Acquisition offer in our first month by Startups.co. The offer was good, but the timing was not right, we just started our startup and we both wanted to see what we could do with it. The day before we flew to San Francisco to meet with Startups.co and talk about an acquisition, we got a seed investment offer through our own app Founderfox by a local investor in Washington for $400K, everything was so surreal and crazy I was on a high,(startup rollercoaster) but we both knew the real work was about to begin.
We took the funding, and partnered with this angel, he allowed us to just build all kinds of apps, and see what sticks, then if something got some traction we would invest our f/t resources in turning that app into real businesses. Well guess what?… that’s a grind and a hard fucking model but we learned so much, so fast, and honestly we made so many mistakes, but if we had to do it all over again, wow! would things be different. We started cranking out beautifully designed iOS apps every 3 months, and getting press, and initial traction but nothing too serious, typically 15–20K users in the first month.(we would get into the top 100 in the Free apps listing), we have always be entertaining acquisition offers during these times as well, but still not interested yet. (Key Alert: Listen to offers but don’t get bogged down with them, it’s too distracting, lots of big companies just like to kick tires).
Startup university
We’ve basically been in the most grueling, hands on startup class for over a year, and we learned everything with trial and error, we had no mentorship, no hand holding, no free intros, the only thing we got was what we earned. I wouldn’t have had it any other way, hand holding would’ve made us lazy, and ungrateful. We found so many ways to do things out of pure want, and willingness to win, it’s crazy what you can do when you truly want something. We are now a battle tested team, with real scars and war stories, we have all this amazing startup experience, combined with passion, fire and hustle; We work everyday, sometimes I forget what day it is because Friday, and weekends haven’t mattered in over a year now. (We have a ton of fun working, always laughing, eating or deep in focus with EDM).
Our new path
We have stopped the mass app building model, it’s too tiring and we don’t have the resources to continue, plus it’s really hard to focus when you’re building a new app every 3 months. We need focus in a big way, we need to take all our experience and laser point it at one idea and go all in on that, we know we will be the best if we just focus. We found our new focus, it’s called DUSK . This new product is going to become the fiber of our company, it’s going to help build our culture and it’s going to tell an amazing story. I will tell you all about DUSK when the time is right, we’ve already tested it with 200 people, but doing public beta testing the first week of September, we plan to launch when things cool off from Apple iOS10 public release in September. We are ready to move into an office, we have 3 new world class hires ready to help us scale, and we have an awesome plan to win.
Our Dream Investor
We need an investor who will partner with us, who can help us win, show loyalty during hard times, laugh with us during good times, give us brutal feedback, challenge me personally to be the best CEO, and someone we can call anytime to talk about product or things we are stuck on. (Sick whiteboard drawing skills not required)
Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur w/ 2 exits, author, advisor & angel investor.
Jul 188 min read
Startup Success with a Decentralized Team
Do you feel like you’ve exhausted and struck out with the entire available employee pool in Silicon Valley and still have vacant positions at your startup? Maybe you can’t find someone to fill the exact need you have, or maybe the wage demands are impossible for you to meet at this point in your startup. Of course, you’d love to pay your employees what they want, but that’s not always possible in the early stages of your company. What do you do when you’ve run out of local options? If you’re in this position, it’s time to expand your talent search and consider hiring remote workers. But how to broaden your scope?
A startup I recently worked with had a serious challenge that many companies, new and established, face. They were having a difficult time finding quality employees with experience and talent that fit into their payroll budget. In Silicon Valley — as in every other Tech hub around the globe, affordable talent is hard to come by, especially for startups. The founders couldn’t sacrifice anyone else’s income, and they also didn’t want to end up with sub-par employees just to fit into their budget.
As a solution, I suggested that they “act” outside of the box by decentralizing the team. In this case, the box was perceived geographic restraints. Instead, they investigated hiring remote workers to fill their vacancies. Many jobs, especially in the tech industry, don’t really need workers to be in an office space to fulfill the duties. While the startup was worried about managing remote employees, they decided to take the plunge. What they found was a larger talent pool at a more affordable price, which was exactly what they needed to continue moving forward with their startup. They were delighted to discover that an engineer from Wisconsin or a designer from Texas was just as talented as the candidates they were considering in Silicon Valley. With their positions filled, they were able to make excellent progress moving forward towards success with their startup.
Why Remote Workers Love Joining (Silicon Valley) Startups
There are many more benefits than what’s listed, but these are some of the more compelling reasons why you should hire remote workers.
1. They can’t move to you or away from you
Many people are tied down by a mortgage, kids in school, or a spouse with a great job. They would love to move to Silicon Valley and work for you, but they can’t. However, by hiring remotely, you are opening up your search to hundreds of people who have great experience that you might have missed out on just because of where they live.
An in-office employee moving away has a big impact on both your work culture and your productivity. There are so many reasons why someone would leave a job, and many of them have to do with geographic location. You won’t lose anyone due to needing to be closer to family, leaving because their spouse got transferred or is attending school somewhere, or not being able to afford living in Silicon Valley anymore. When a remote worker moves, the most you need to sacrifice is maybe a few days of vacation to make the move. Otherwise, since they can work from anywhere, you can rely on them as permanent employees.
2. There are plenty of fish in the sea
For every one employee who is in your location and could work for your, there are at least 100 more who are not. Restricting your accessible talent pool to your geographic area removes hundreds of quality workers from your search. If you’re creating a tech startup in an area that isn’t tech-centric, hiring remotely would allow you to find developers, coders, or engineers in places like San Francisco and Boston. You can even make your search worldwide to the enormous pool of talented workers from anywhere like the Philippines or France.
3. Remote workers are more productive
You might be inclined to think that remote workers would spend less time worker than their in-office counterparts, but the opposite is actually true. In fact, in a recent survey by Global Workplace Analytics, 53% of remote workers reported that they were likely to work overtime, compared to only 28% of in-office employees. With the flexible hours and no commute that remote working allows, it’s easy to see how they wouldn’t mind working an extra hour or two every day.
Offices are full of distractions. From impromptu meetings to chatty colleagues, there is plenty happening that can take you away from your work. At home, your workers can focus on their tasks completely uninterrupted. Additionally, office hours are typically set from nine to five, and not everyone is at their most productive during that time. You might have employees that get the most done when everyone else is asleep, or like to bang out their tasks before the sun comes up.
Additionally, office workers often equate being at the office as working. It’s impossible to know how many hours your employees are actually working while they are at work, so you need to gauge productivity by what is getting done. Remote workers can’t fool themselves into thinking that they are “working” by just sitting at their home computer, so they tend to be more productive during their work hours.
4. Communication improves
When you first start out, the few employees you have know everything. As you grow, it’s impossible to keep that up without top-notch communication, and you can’t rely on overheard conversations of water cooler chats to spread information. You have to work with different channels like Google hangouts, Slack and other type of communication and collaboration platforms to stay in touch.
5. Find more qualified workers
Restricting your search to one area or demanding new hires to relocate can dramatically narrow your results. By hiring remote employees, you broaden the talent pool and include a larger number of qualified workers in your search. As an added bonus, remote workers tend to be happier than in-office workers, which can translate into better results.
6. Remote workers save you money
As a startup, one of your biggest concerns is budget, and replacing an employee is a cost that you might not be able to handle. It is estimated that an employee making $50,000 per year will cost you 20% of the salary to replace. If any of your positions require high levels of training or education, the turnover cost will be even higher. Remote work can be used as a perk to retain your best workers and avoid having to pay to replace in-office workers.
Recruiting new employees can cost you $7000 on average, or possibly more if you use a recruiter. That’s a big chunk of change for startups, and you might not even be happy with who the recruitment agency selects for you.
The time it takes to hire someone averages 10 to 12 weeks from job posting to an accepted offer. All of that downtime means there is either no productivity or the job is being diverted to someone else, which is going to cost you money, too.
Not having to rent a big office space allows you to save money as well. In fact, a recent study found that switching to telecommuting full time could save your business $10,000 per employee per year in real estate costs. For a startup, that is a huge savings. Utilizing remote workers helps you avoid expenses that on-location working requires like office chairs, office supplies, janitorial services, and utilities.
Finally, remote workers are less likely to call in sick or miss work due to inclement weather. Unscheduled absences like these can cost your startup up to $1800 per employee per year.
7. Scale as you grow
What happens when you outgrow your current workspace? Moving an in-house team every year or so is expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. With a remote team, you’ll never have to move offices, and your employees can function in a convenient way.
Remote work has plenty of benefits, but there are a small number of challenges to consider, too.
1. Your management style will need to adjust
Managing a team of professionals in different locations is not the same a managing an in-house team. You’ll want to make it a point to reach out to each of your remote workers on a regular basis and make an extra effort to stay connected to them so they feel like they are part of the company’s culture. Investing time in your remote workers will make them feel like they are truly part of the team, and they are likely to stay loyal to you, too.
You will want to be as transparent with your remote workers as you are with your in-house ones, and give them the same access to information as everyone else. There are different tools like Dropbox and Gdrive that allow you to share information easily.
2. Not everyone is cut out for remote work
Not everyone will find the freedom of remote work a way to become more productive. The ability to hire the right people for remote work is key. Certain personality traits and values align well with remote work, and you should look for those things. People who are self-motivated, organized, good and managing time and priorities, and can work independently are ideal candidates for remote work.
Since much of the communication done with remote workers is via chat or email, you’ll want them to be good writers. A bad writer can turn a short chat into a long one, which cuts into valuable time and decreases productivity. Find some way to test writing skills in the interview process to weed out the applicants who can’t write clearly and concisely about complex issues.
If you are interviewing someone who has not worked remotely before, be sure to thoroughly cover all of the concerns, questions, and possible issues in the interview so there are no surprises once they start working.
3. Hiring will still take some work
Although you’re increasing the talent pool you have to work with, it still might take some effort to attract qualified applicants. You may need to spend some time actively recruiting people to apply for positions with you. To find qualified workers, go to job boards where your ideal candidates are likely spending their time. Posting on the big sites like Monster or CareerBuilder for a specific and highly-skilled position isn’t a good idea. AngelList is a good resource for startups to use to find remote workers, and other resources are WeWorkRemotely, Dribbble, and SupportOps.
Tools for remote workers and employers
In addition to the job boards mentioned above, popular services like Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour, and Upwork allow startups to find affordable remote workers to complete small tasks or work on specific projects.
Sophisticated freelancer management systems are emerging for startups to make it easier to manage remote workers. These systems help create a digital bridge between full-time employees and remote workers to help everyone stay integrated and connected.
For communication, things like HipChat, Grape, Google Hangouts and Skype for Business allows you to make face-to-face contact with your remote workers on a regular basis. Having a great human resources information system and some type of shared drive is invaluable with remote employees. Software that allows simultaneous, multi-user editing and collaboration is necessary if you’re using remote workers.
Startups can benefit in a number of ways when they take advantage of remote workers. Not only does it open up a large and talented workforce that you might not have access to locally, it allows you to save money and scale as you grow. Find the right marketplaces for your niche and execute on it.
(!!) And, the most genuine way of showing virtual appreciation for a writer is to share & tweet. In case you haven’t done it yet … I’m looking forward to it! Thank you for reading/watching this and stay tuned for next week’s post.
@CaritaMarr #HBCUInnovation Fine Artist #DiversityinSTEAM Advocate for my #UNCF students ♡Be Yourself because everyone else is taken♡
Jun 284 min read
RESULTS: 30 UNCF HBCU Innovation Summit Fellows now have Technical Roles
We have been hosting the UNCF HBCU Innovation Summit in Silicon Valley for the past three years. Our data indicates a clear upward trend. The results are both positive and gratifying. Our students are moving on to new horizons in Tech Ecosystems across the country…
They are now transitioning not only to Silicon Valley but in budding ecosystems including Austin, Texas, Portland, Oregon and Seattle Washington.
Ponder that for a moment, “Techies” from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the majority in the south and midwest, making their way across the country and bringing fresh, powerful new ideas and perspectives to tech companies diversifying their workforce. That’s powerful stuff!
118 Students from over 25 HBCUs participated in the 2014 and 2015 UNCF HBCU Innovation Summits. 93% of the students are computer science, engineering and information technology majors. Of those 118 HBCU techies, 30 respondents are now interning or working full time at Tech Companies in the United States…continue to follow #HBCUInnovation as we continue to capture and record dozens of additional student success stories.
Let’s have a look at a few of our fellows: take 2015 Summit Fellow, Aaliyah Griffin, a rising Senior at Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. Griffin was awarded an internship at Pandora in Oakland, CA this summer. Anthony Washington, a recent Graduate of Tuskegee University in Alabama, is now a full-time Cloud Software Engineer at Intel in San Antonio, Texas. Richard “Scooter” Taylor, a recent graduate of Morehouse College, Atlanta, has joined a new startup in Silicon Valley managing marketing and branding.
Babatunde Fashola, a graduate of Morgan State is a Full-time Software Engineer at Twitter. Attiyah Lanier, of Howard University, is interning this summer as a Software Engineer at Intel in Phoenix, Arizona. Ifreke Okpokowuruk, a 2014 & 2015 HBCU Innovation Summit participant in addition to HBCU ICE Hack at the Atlanta University Center, is now working full time at Google as a Software Engineer. Brianna Fugate, rising Junior, CS major at Spelman College is now a Code2040 Fellow at Intel.
One particular HBCU Innovation Summit fellow, Lusenii Kromah, Web Development Intern at Adobe in San Francisco created a GroupMe Group titled, Black Valley, for all Black San Francisco Bay area interns. The Group now has over 300 tech-related members. That’s 300 African Americans readily accessible and available for Tech Companies to hire and members are poised to create companies of their own. This group is one example of a grassroots effort bridging the diversity divide in Silicon Valley.
There is tons of Technical talent at HBCUs and students like these need exposure, mentors, and professional development. Most importantly, they need access to networks outside of their reach. We continue to serve as the link for access to these networks.
Thanks to all of our Tech partners, Sponsors, Speakers and Advocates: Airbnb, Chevron, Code2040, DigitalunDivided, eBay, Facebook, Google, Intuit, Kaiser Permanente, Kapor Center for Social Impact, NetApp, Oracle Academy, Pandora, Pacific Gas + Electric Co, Pinterest, Qeyno Labs, Salesforce, SpaceX, Square, Stanford d.School + University Innovation Fellows Program, STEMBoard, Texas Instruments, Towns Group, Twilio,Uber, UBS, ZeeMee, and Yelp, who continue to be allies (and others I may have missed), advocating and supporting the efforts of the HBCU Community.
The UNCF HBCU Innovation Summit is part of the HBCU Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship ( HBCU I.C.E.). Our mission of HBCU I.C.E. is to transform HBCU campuses into high-performance S.T.E.M. hubs and nodes of innovation and entrepreneurship that will have increased economic impact for the African-American community.
