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
How and why did you get involved in tech Most of my studies from elementary school to college focused on the arts, specifically painting. I made the switch to graphic design during my latter years in college where I took courses around typography, photography and design theory. Unrelated to that, I also studied economics to gain a more balance education. It gave me the chance to train both my creative and critical thinking. My first gig was at a boutique design agency where I got exposed to many different skill
Tell us abit about yourself and what you do? I am a Bay Area native, Filipino-American feminist, activist, and software developer. I grew up in the East Bay and attended UC Berkeley. I am a full stack developer at Carta, where I mostly work with Python/Django and Javascript/React. I help make our software bulletproof by maintaining legacy code and triaging bugs. Our company is a fintech company. Coming from a Cognitive Science, Linguistics, and pre-medical background, getting familiar with the codebase, data flow, and data models remains to be a steep