All posts by

Michael Berhane

In 2015 we interviewed former Twitter Engineer Leslie Miley. He shot to headlines over his decision to leave the company regarding his disappointment around their diversity and recruitment policies. Since then [amongst other things] he’s been Director of Engineering at Slack, worked with the Obama Foundation and Venture for America and has been a vocal critic of tech’s inability to tackle inequality. We caught up with him to discuss his journery, whether he’s any more optimistic about the diversity conversation and the general state of tech [and much more]. What’s

When Brittney Ball was pregnant and homeless in Washington DC, she never imagined she would be a successful software engineer, public speaker, and mentor just six short years later. But with hard work and determination, she has proven that your past doesn’t have to define your future. When Brittney found out she was expecting, she knew she had to get off the streets. The Salvation Army, Turning Point Center, opened their doors to provide transitional housing for Brittney and later her son, Liam. While there, she enrolled in Year Up,

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m Brenon, a second-generation Filipino-American born and raised in Vallejo, California, right outside of San Francisco. I currently live in Harlem, New York and recently joined AppNexus as a UX Designer. Before AppNexus, I worked at Havas as an Experience Designer, Bloomberg as a UX Research & Design Intern, and Comrade (now CI&T) as a UX Designer. User experience design is a pretty nebulous term, but if I had to summarize what I do, it would be this: I understand

We caught up with the amazing Fikile M Kani about her amazing new original webseries Tech Bae… As soon as we heard the premise of a black women founder trying to create a better dating experience for black women we had to find out more. Have a look at her tweet thread before deliving into our interview. Aya’s story needs to be on peoples’ screens not only to bring light issues around bias, but to add more black women’s faces in spaces where they are underrepresented–the tech/startup worlds and on

A conversation with the hilarious ex Googler and now stand-up comic and author Sarah Cooper. We talk her career transition, Trump, Beyonce and Jay-Z and her brand new book: How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings: Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women I think the obvious question to start with is how does one go from being a Googler to a comic/author? It was all based on a viral article that I wrote called “10 tricks to appear smart meetings” I wrote while I was working at Google as a

You are not your thoughts… One of my most important realizations is that banal statement above. So often we let a small voice in the back of our head guide our actions like it’s edicts are gospel. But it’s not. By choosing to ignore it’s neurotic, insecure ramblings, you will significantly improve your well being as a founder. What if I told you this website and the Techish podcast shouldn’t exist. Follow me for a second. August 2015, POCIT was nothing but a twitter account. We hadn’t officially launched the

Tell us a bit about yourself? So I’m Aniyia Williams, and I wear a couple of hats. One of them is being the executive director of Black and Brown founders. Which is how I spend most of my time these days – its a nonprofit that helps Black and Latinx people launch and build tech and tech-enabled businesses from the lens of doing that with modest resources. Our whole principle is pushing profitability over fund-ability and doing everything from the lens of if you never saw a dollar of investor money

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m currently a full-time software engineer on the Customer Acquisition team at Slack (a collaboration hub for teams) at their headquarters in San Francisco where my mission is to make your working life more straightforward, more pleasant and more productive. Previously, I worked at Accenture’s Liquid Studio as a software engineer and AR/VR intern and as a Front End developer at 80|20 (now Array Digital) back in Norfolk, VA. I’ve been working professionally as a developer since 2015, and I

Tell us a bit about yourself? Hey Michael I’ve been following POCIT since one of your first publications, and I’m pretty excited to contribute to the community. A bit more about me – I was born in Chicago, spent my childhood in Mississippi, and grew up in Seattle. Over the past 11 years, I’ve worked as an Engineer, or Team-Lead focused on building web-based business-to-business and consumer apps. These days my home is split between Barcelona Spain, where I’ve lived since 2014, and New York City where since 2017 I’ve

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I am a Filipina American born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. More recently, I pulled up stakes and relocated to Brooklyn, NY. I am a UX Researcher at 2U and am also a full-time graduate student at the University of Southern California, pursuing my Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business, and Technology. As the predetermined career trajectories for Filipinos are typically a nurse, doctor, engineer, or lawyer, I realized that my passions and interests never did

1 2 3 4 5 6 11 Page 4 of 11