From Raising Awareness On AI Bias To Creating A Chronic Disease Management Platform – Here Are The Black Techies Making Real Impact
There are many ways to celebrate Black History Month, and while it’s important to look back at our history from Martin Luther King to those that paved the way in regards to racial justice – it’s equally important to celebrate Black joy and Black excellence in other areas too.
One area where the community is really making moves in tech. It’s no secret that diversity is a challenge in the tech world, with the industry lagging behind the rest of the economy on almost every diversity metric, but it’s important we celebrate the individuals doing amazing things in the field whenever we’re given a chance.
We focused last week on the engineers and innovators who paved the way decades ago but today we’ll be looking at young people who are making an incredible impact in the world of tech – whether as founders, engineers, or developers.
Janu Shanmugavadivel
Founder of CareIQ
CareIQ is a chronic disease management platform that makes regular care faster, cheaper, and transparent for GP clinicians and established patients. Its web application integrates with EMHRs and fast tracks a complex, time-consuming process, typically taking months into minutes.
Computer Science graduate Janu Shanmugavadivel teamed up with Dr. Pratheep Suntharamoorthy, a senior GP with 10 years of clinical experience, to launch CareIQ.
Eyitayo Ogunmola
Founder of Utiva
Utiva is a complete end-to-end software as a service technology platform with multiple features that are pedagogically designed that helps educators across multiple verticals and markets build their virtual schools in seconds and also leverage AI to access markets in emerging markets.
The talent accelerator that helps graduates in Sub-Saharan Africa transition from school to work through skill development, employment, and entrepreneurship was launched by Eyitayo, who has more than eight years of experience in the development and social impact investment sector.
Alex Fefegha
Founder of Comuzi
Co-founder and head creative technologist of design invention studio Comuzi, Alex is doing incredible work in the AI space, raising awareness of the implications of algorithmic bias with regards to race and gender.
Adel Abdullahi
Founder of Dash
Adel is the co-founder of Dash, an app that creates shared virtual cards that allows people to split bills with friends or share costs with flatmates. They received a grant from YC this year. Adel is super passionate about diversity, and even created a series of nutrition labels using diversity stats from various companies, to highlight that a lack of diversity is unhealthy.
Pearce Jarrett
Gwaan is an artificial intelligence-powered personal trainer that allows users to access real-time statistics on their exercise performance; dynamically tailoring their workout in real-time in order to motivate the user to keep making progress.
