Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? My name is Fadumo. I’m going to be a third-year student at NYU, New York University. I study computer science and politics. This past summer I was at Facebook working with a product marketing manager as well as a civic engagement team. What I eventually want to do is work at the intersection of programming and government, making government more efficient. What interested you in technology as a [vehicle] for you wanted to do? I started college two years

You have an amazing backstory – going from studying engineering in college to being temporarily homeless to founding your own venture. How do you want to introduce yourself to the POCiT audience? I’m a black trans woman (with all the struggles that generally invites) and a successful web developer, project manager, and activist. In 2014, you started a queer trans collective called CollectQT. What was the inspiration behind it? The inspiration was two-fold. First was the incredible community support I experienced after moving to San Francisco. I had never felt

Congratulations on getting into YC and being the first non-profit. Yeah. We’re about one of 15 non-profits, so I think USA Today called us out as the first diversity non-profit. It’s still a very early program for non-profits in there, they’re still adjusting to it. Why did you start  /dev/color? And what has it been like thus far? I started it just seeing my friends and people that I had been connected to, as I discovered tips and secrets that were novel to me, I would share them with people

I recently took the opportunity to head down to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to see the arrival of Juno from behind the scenes. I was there as a social media ambassador with a group of other thought leaders to share in NASA’s next big moment of space exploration. While I was there, I met people I would not otherwise meet; the scientists who had an active part in designing the instruments on Juno, the project managers who drove the mission forward and even the Assistant Director for

    Senior Frontend Engineer at Eventbrite   Why don’t you go ahead and tell me about yourself? I got excited about computers at an early age. Probably early elementary school. My mom had a 286 computer that only ran DOS (pre-Windows). When she’d come home from the store, I would take the receipts and type them up in the word processor. I loved it! I learned basic DOS commands; enough to games like Math Blaster, Word Muncher, and Typing Tutor. I owe so much of my trajectory to those early moments. I went

How did you get involved in technology? When I was thirteen years old I was extremely obsessed with documentary films. I ended up watching a documentary about the history of computers. Everything from the first computers in the 40s/50s, to Microsoft and then the internet as it is today. I was like ‘this is so cool I’d like to learn about all this stuff’.  So, I just self-taught myself programming from high school, and my interests were in artificial intelligence and machine learning. So, I come in from a sort

I started programming 10 years ago this fall, and in many ways it’s shaped who I am today. But my future could have been totally different: I almost quit before I even started. My introduction to programming was a large “Intro to engineering” class of 200 undergrads at the University of Michigan. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one in my class who didn’t fully get it. I was so close to concluding that coding just wasn’t right for me. I’m so glad my 19-year-old self

Chief Technology Officer at Jopwell   How did you get into technology? My interest in making things started when I was young. My mom’s an art teacher, so my brother and I were always working on different projects around the house. I played with an astounding amount of LEGOs and got super into origami at some point during middle school. It wasn’t until college that I learned about programming as a craft, where you can create stuff that is in itself an intellectually stimulating discipline and could also be a

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