Tell us a bit about yourself? My name is Sheena Allen. I am from a small town in Terry, Mississippi. I started my first tech company in my senior year of college; the company was called Sheena Allen apps, now I’m actually onto my second startup which is a company called CapWay, which is a financial technology company. We are a mobile first, and we focus on the unbanked and underbanked millennials. What was your journey with starting CapWay? I was working on my first company. It was doing pretty
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? My name is SaaSha Pina; I’m a full-stack software engineer. I’m a second-generation American. My mother is from the beautiful island of Bermuda, and my father is from the beautiful West African island of Cabo Verde. I was born and raised in Boston, MA. I’ve always been a tough, determined cookie that tried to break the stereotypes that my appearance emits. I’m a mixed martial artist, a lover of Xtreme flipping and parkour, and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Tell us abit about yourself and what you do? I’m a first-generation Mexican-American born and raised in Santa Ana, California. I studied psychology at the University of Notre Dame, but I had been tinkering with computers and the web for a few years before then. I recently joined the Product Design team at Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress, the platform that runs about 30% of the web. Much different from where I was at before, IBM Watson, where I designed AI software. My career has a quirky history,
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I am Alex Fefegha, co-founder and head creative technologist at Comuzi. We are an experimental research agency working at the intersection of emerging technology and culture. We help our clients answer questions about the future and experiment with emerging technologies with the purpose to build a better world. We identify blind spots, coming up with high-quality research tangibles in order to develop real-world opportunities. How and why did you get involved in tech I got involved with tech because the
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I was born and raised in the Bay Area. I come from African and Indian roots with my family born in Tanzania and generations before originating from India. I love to write, I have journals dating back to when I was 8 years old. I always felt a sense of ease when I got my thoughts organized in writing. I graduated from UC Berkeley last May with a B.A. in Media Studies. I started working at Twitter after graduation, and
Tell us about yourself and what you do? Talofa, my name is Pou Dimitrijevich I am a Product Designer, living and working in the epicenter of tech: San Francisco, CA. I was born in Pago Pago, American Samoa, but grew up in Southern California. As a woman of color and as a first-generation Samoan woman, where I would go ‘next’–after high school or post-college–wasn’t always so perspicuous. I never thought I’d end up in Tech. I was raised by a single mother, in a two-bedroom apartment with seven siblings and
Alexandria Prather is Director of Strategic Partnerships and the latest member of the senior staff at All Star Code. What’s your background? I’m originally from Indianapolis. I did undergrad at Indiana University (go Hoosiers!) where I majored in International Studies & Spanish, and then American University in Washington DC, where I earned a Masters in Public Policy. When I was in DC doing my Masters, I interned at the White House and worked in Leader Nancy Pelosi’s and Representative André Carson’s office. I also worked at The Brookings Institution, a
This is part two of our new series Fashion Meets Tech [see part one here], in tandem with onchek Jordan, a software designer at Etsy and formerly Twitter, is one to talk about music, art, and design. As a creative, who currently shares his creativity through software, he can easily go in depth on fashion and poetry as well. In his world, creativity is fluid. It can can take any form. “I’m glad to be here,” he said as he walked in. “I’ve never really done this before, but let’s
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? My name is Jennifer Cao. I’m a Service and Interaction Designer at Fjord. We help clients create digital services and products. It’s a great intersection of design research, strategy, and product creation. Every project a different dynamic and ask, so there is always a lot to learn. How and why did you get involved in tech? I had an interest in the arts growing up, but my parents were refugees and encouraged me towards a pragmatic and stable career path.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? I’m the co-founder of two businesses, KeepUp and Black Women Talk Tech. I started KeepUp, which automates social media listening for consumers and small businesses, in 2014 and shortly after won the largest business plan competition in the world, 43North competition. A few years in, I founded Black Women Talk Tech with two other tech founders to help provide resources, support and funding to help black women create the next billion dollar companies. Our main event, a two day conference
