Nigerian founder Bisola Alabi is the powerhouse behind Heels & Tech, an e-learning platform that empowers women with technical education and upskilling. The platform aims to close the gender gap between women and technology, helping women secure flexible well paid work. As a bootstrapped founder with three toddlers and no external funding, Alabi has relied on being a generalist to succeed in her business. In a recent LinkedIn post, she shared some insights into the advantages of being a generalist. Versatile and adaptable “A generalist is someone who has a
SHENIX® is an innovative fintech company built by Latinas/x, for Latinas/x, to close the wealth gap by providing culturally relevant financial services. Created by Chicago-based entrepreneurs Olga Camargo, Juan Carlos Avila, and Patricia Mota, the web-based app provides financial education, career planning, and salary negotiation resources through a unique digital experience that prioritizes the Latina cultural mindset. After selecting the investment services they need, users are prompted to answer a short survey about their financial and career goals. Immediately after the survey, users get a customized budget recommendation and the
HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire’s special cover, Women To Know: Tech Titans, is a celebration of Black women blazing trails in tech. Despite making up just 1.7% of the tech workforce, Black women are leading, innovating, and disrupting the industry. So, HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire brought eight Black women changemakers and visionaries together for a shoot by Black women-owned production company Oracle Media and photographer JD Barnes. HelloBeautiful and Madame Noire also hosted a roundtable discussion with four Tech Titans: Kelsey Davis, Michelle James, Bozoma Saint John, and Kimberly Bryant. Together, they celebrated each other’s strengths and successes, were candid
There are now more women of color than men named Dave or David sitting on corporate boards, according to a recent report by social impact venture Him For Her and Crunchbase. Him For Her teamed up with Crunchbase for a fourth year to assess the gender diversity of over 600 high-growth private companies, representing nearly $200 billion in funding. WOC vs Daves Of the 4,610 board seats included in the study, 1 in 5 (20%) are held by men of color and 1 in 25 (4%) by women of color.
Wisdom is an audio-first social discovery app fostering deeper connections and lasting friendships between like-minded users. Founded by British computer science graduate Dayo Akinrinade, Wisdom leverages advanced AI with the power of social audio to make the world a little wiser. “Wisdom offers women a safe space to converse about topics that matter to them, such as women’s rights, domestic violence, leadership, and wellness,” Akinrinade told Apple. “Our users who don’t identify as women consider themselves allies, and provide support by participating in the conversations or simply listening.” On Wisdom, users
Two Black high school students say they have solved a mathematical mystery that some claim has eluded mathematicians for over 2,000 years. Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, both students at St. Mary’s Academy, presented their new proof for the Pythagorean theorem at the American Mathematical Society’s Annual Southeastern Conference in Georgia on March 18. The Pythagorean theorem is a fundamental theorem in trigonometry that describes the relationship between the three sides of a right-angled triangle. It is expressed with the formula a² + b² = c². The theorem holds true
This article was first published by Zaria Gunn on Medium. As a black female futurist and artist, I spent time working in VR at Google’s HQ in Mountain View. My team, Spotlight Stories was a part of Google’s R&D lab for hardware called A.T.A.P. (Advanced Technologies and Projects) though the workplace had international diversity, the African American woman population was just me. And though I’ve always wanted to be the first at something, I had never imagined that I would’ve been the first black woman in ATAP eight years after
When Olivia Hylton graduated from the University of Cambridge, she found herself struggling to make friends as an adult in a post-pandemic world. The 26-year-old spoke to POCIT about creating a meet-up app to empower Black women to make friends anywhere they go. Sistren is a digital platform that empowers users to make connections based on interests and proximity, with users able to create a profile, host events, and reach out to others that are local to them via the user directory. Hylton, who had never considered becoming an entrepreneur
The nonprofit social startup digitalundivided has released its latest Project Diane report unveiling the experiences of Latina and Black women tech entrepreneurs. Catalyzing Latina and Black women’s growth Founded in 2012, the Newark-based startup leverages data, programs, and advocacy to catalyze economic growth for Latina and Black women founders at all stages of their entrepreneurial and funding journeys. In 2016, digitalundivided launched the Project Diane Report, the first biennial demographic study that captures the experiences of Latina and Black women tech founders. “Building on the legacy of women like Diane Nash who worked
Edtech startup Kai XR has raised $1.6 million in seed funding to expand its virtual reality (VR) educational resources to one million kids across the US. Kapor Capital led the oversubscribed round, which included Mitchell Kapor Foundation, American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact, and others. The Oakland-based edtech startup is making education more accessible through inclusive mixed-reality spaces that allow children to explore, create, and learn. From education to innovation Kai Frazier founded Kai XR in 2018. Through her time as an educator in the classroom and in museums,
