Nia Asemota is a self-taught programmer interning at NASA as a software engineer. Despite being 21 years old, Nia has dozens of accolades behind her back. From collaborating with Black Girls CODE as a technical instructor, being a Game Design TA at the City College of New York’s free STEM Institute, to launching her own kids’ book about Black women engineers. She’s doing it all. But her journey has not been as smooth sailing as some might assume, as she’s had to navigate being one of just a few girls
Honeycomb is hiring on pocitjobs.com Alayshia Knighten is a seasoned DevOps Engineer with a love of infrastructure and a focus on breaking down technical learning barriers for customers. She recently spoke to POCIT about navigating life in the tech sector as a woman of color and her role at Honeycomb, an observability tool that lets developers quickly make sense of the billions of rows of data needed to fully represent the user experience in your complex and unpredictable systems. Since joining Honeycomb as a Senior Implementation Engineer in October 2020,
“Anyone can make music on their PC now,” laments DJ Sumbody of Ayepyep, Ngwana Daddy and Monate Mpolaye fame. “You don’t have to go to the studio. You get a program, you do beats. If they can master it, it’s a track, it’s out there. It’s simple now.” While preceding genres and music movements have taken advantage of the ready availability of software that can be purchased or digitally cracked to mimic a physical studio, amapiano has been the most radical departure from established and entrenched ways of making, marketing,
In 2017, Iris Nevins decided to leave her job as a teacher in Florida to attend a bootcamp in the Bay Area – but it was not without its struggles. On a Go-fund Me page – where she asked for support – she said: “I began learning how to code through online tutorials, and 7 months later, I quit my job as an 8th-grade history teacher, left my organization, and moved to the Bay Area to attend a coding BootCamp. “Making such a transition is very costly as I had
Nzambi Matee, a 30-year-old who quit her job in oil and gas to work on her passion full-time, has created a lightweight and low-cost building material that is made of recycled plastic with sand to make bricks that are stronger than concrete material. Every day her enterprise, Gjenge Makers, churns out 1,500 bricks made from industrial and household plastic that otherwise would be dumped in the city’s overflowing garbage heaps. In 2021, the team recycled 50 tonnes of plastic but Matee has ambitions to double that amount this year as
Black people have a significant legacy in the scientific and engineering fields. It’s important to remember and honor that legacy and highlight the brilliant work done by Black people – both past and present. Though this list is by no means complete, below are five scientists, engineers, and inventors whose work we all should know. Jerry Lawson – past The self-taught engineer helped create the Fairchild Channel F, the first home video game system that could play interchangeable games. Previously, video arcade machines played just a single game, but Lawson’s
This Black Blockchain Engineer Just Raised $3.3M Seed Round For Mueshi, Her Fine Art NFT Marketplace
Ariana Waller — known as Ariana The Techie — is a Miami-based blockchain engineer and the owner and founder of Mueshi, Inc. The company launched to be a marketplace where users will be able to buy, sell, and fractionally invest in fine art NFTs. The 26-year-old has just raised a $3.3 million seed round for Mueshi led by Harlem Capital to establish its place in the industry. Presight VC, CapitalT VC, music luminary and investor, Ted Lucas, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Black Venture Capital Consortium, and a cohort of additional strategic angel investors also participated. “I was
Amber Shand, a former junior Software Engineer at American Express currently working at Cybsafe as a front-end engineer and Jessie Auguste, a colleague and fellow engineer, sat down with POCIT to talk about their journey, the challenges, triumphs and more. When previously asked about what inspired her journey, Shand said in a blog post: “It all started in 2018; I was doing a Mergers and Acquisitions internship in Madrid. I had big ambitions about working at the Big 4 (PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte) once I had graduated but had
Cummins is hiring on pocitjobs.com When speaking to Kasturi Sahasrabuddhe, IT Project manager at Cummins – it’s clear that she’s finally happy where she is. Much like a lot of us – she’s tried and tested different careers from electronics engineering, Business analyst to an IT manager, and along the way she has learned dozens of skills that have helped her thrive in her current position. Sahasrabuddhe doesn’t shy away from speaking about her goals, including giving back to the younger generation and teaching others to remain their authentic selves.
Madona is an Android Engineer III at Streem-Frontdoor, a Women Who Code Mobile Lead, and a developer who enjoys sharing her Android knowledge and teaching women how to make Android applications. “As an Android Engineer, I work on implementing new features that transform the ARCore experience into the Streem SDK. Also, work on fixing reported bugs from clients, analyze, optimize, and improve the codebase,” she wrote on her Linkedin, adding, “I Work closely with iOS and back-end engineers to discuss implementation detail and architecture.” Why did you decide to join
