#tech inclusion

Sibyl Edwards is a true advocate for tech inclusion and women in technology. She’s the chief creative inclusion officer for strategy agency Wetogethr, serves as president of DC Web Women, and is a co-founder of Black Female Founders, an organization and platform for Black women entrepreneurs. And that’s not even everything she does!

Sibyl talked to me about how she started out as a front-end web developer and the journey she went through to get to her current success. We also chatted about the ongoing conversations around diversity and inclusion in the tech and design industries, and she shared her latest venture — wellness in tech. Make no mistake, y’all — Sibyl is the real deal!

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I attended Tech Inclusion: Detroit and here’s what I thought

For the past few years, diversity and technology have not mixed very well.  While the Tech industry continues to grow both from a financial and employment standpoint, its diversity numbers have largely lagged behind.  Multiple efforts have been given to change the narrative and increase ethnic representation to match national and global numbers, but despite the efforts, improvements are hard to…

For the past year I've been writing about the issues in the Tech industry, usually with much criticism attached to it.  For a person born and raised in Detroit, and who spent time in Atlanta, GA for college, it seemed insane to me that initiatives like Tech Inclusion were visiting cities like San Francisco, Austin, and Boston in an effort to increase diversity.  It would be like an employer going to an all male school in search of female applicants.

But, times they are a-changing!

Tech Inclusion has announced its 2017 Forum Cities and they include....cities with a large quantity of minorities!!

Atlanta, GA

Austin, TX

Detroit, MI

Kansas City, MO

Miami, FL

Minneapolis, MN

Nashville, TN

Raleigh-Durham, NC

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Seattle, WA

For those unaware, Tech Inclusion and Change Catalyst "empowers diverse, inclusive and sustainable tech innovation — through education, community engagement and mentorship. Change Catalyst is a Certified B Corp, winning the “Best for the World” award for community impact in 2014 and “Best in the World” overall in 2015"

While there Tech Inclusion conferences are still located in "popular" cities like New York, San Francisco, London, and Sydney, the fact that they're reaching out to other cities is admirable.

If you're interested in learning more about Tech Inclusion and how you can get involved, head over the their Website below:

http://techinclusion.co/ 

Hopefully this is the first step to my ultimate desire, which is to have organizations like Tech Inclusion and Change Catalyst located in cities where minorities actually live like Atlanta, or Chicago, or, Detroit, or Oakland.

PS: I recently reached out to Tech Inclusion to gather more information on their support of the New York and San Francisco areas for minority and women tech entrepreneurs and I'll let you know what I find.  I am not too deep into the scene so maybe they can provide information that I am currently lacking to explain why Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas aren't receiving the same support as other cities.

By Larry Goldberg, Director of Accessible Media

Teach Access, the industry-academia collaboration founded by Yahoo, Facebook and two dozen other industry and higher ed organizations, has been busy. We’ve been on the road spreading the word about the need to make accessible design and development fundamental to college students in computer science, design and related fields. The mission of making technology pervasively accessible starts with making sure all college students in tech-related fields understand, at a minimum, the fundamental concepts of making tech work for people of all abilities.

Above photo: Larry Goldberg of Yahoo, Ted Drake of Intuit, Amy Chen of Adobe, Mike Shebanek of Yahoo, Laura Palmaro of Google, and Jeff Wieland of Facebook representing Teach Access during a panel session at the Tech Inclusion conference.

On October 26, we hosted a panel at the Tech Inclusion conference in San Francisco. I moderated the panel and our friends from Facebook, Adobe, Google and Intuit joined our own Mike Shebanek for a deep dive into the why and how of Teach Access for an audience of start-ups, long-standing companies, students and hiring managers, all gathered to learn how the diversity movement needs to be inclusive of people with disabilities.

Above photo: Larry Goldberg of Yahoo, Matt Huenerfauth of RIT, Bruce Walker of Georgia Tech leading a panel session at the Disability and Inclusive Technology summit at the White House.

Then, on November 7, the White House hosted the Disability and Inclusive Technology Summit where Teach Access was presented by RIT’s Matt Huenerfauth and Georgia Tech’s Bruce Walker with me as the moderator. Many in the audience of policymakers, major corporations and advocates for people with disabilities responded in agreement that Teach Access’ mission was the best way forward to assure that future technologies are “born accessible” rather than retro-fitted for accessibility after release. Shadi Abou-Zahra from the W3C attended and filed this report.

Above photo: Prof. Dave Chesney of the University of Michigan and Larry Goldberg of Yahoo at the Accessing Higher Ground Conference

On November 16 and 17, Teach Access continued spreading the word at the Accessing Higher Ground Conference near Denver, Colorado. Professor Dave Chesney form the University of Michigan and I sat down to discuss Teach Access with a gathering of 500 university-based accessibility professionals, campus leaders and solution providers in the field. Dave’s presentation, “Building Accessibility into a Computer Science Capstone Course,” was a highlight of the week, demonstrating practical methods of teaching accessibility in a mainstream computer science course at a major university. I also had the opportunity to present the project at a lunch time plenary session entitled, “Sorting Out Certifications for Accessibility Professionals, Application Designers & Developers.” I couldn’t be more excited by the positive response to Teach Access and the commitment of its members.

Who is She? 15-Susan and Zakiya (Hack the Hood)

I met both Zakiya and Susan several years ago here in Oakland. Susan Mernit and Zakiya Harris are the Co-Founders of a ground breaking Oakland based organization called "Hack the Hood". The organization brings in mostly African American and other students of color to learn about the tech field. From the interview I heard with Zakiya on "Blacks in Technology" it sounds like a stretch for some at first, but they soon realize that everywhere they go they are no only participating in the tech industry but they can be active makers and producers in it as well. The students learn basic and complex coding skills by building websites for local businesses. They are not only learn coding, but they learn people skills, how to work with clients, and what it takes to run a business-therefore bringing more people of color into a extremely white, homogenized, and exclusive field.  Along with other organizations like Code 2040 they are changing the landscape of tech and empowering young people to be creators.

Susan comes from a background in tech, working for corporations such as Yahoo, Aol, and Netscape. She also founded or Co-founded several media and tech savvy businesses here in the Bay Area such as Oakland Local. She is the CEO and Executive director of "Hack the Hood".

Zakiya I know from Oakland's historic arts culture of music. She was one half of the group Fiyawata, is currently working on a solo music project called "ShapeShifter". Zakiya has a long history of community organizing and youth education through organizations such as Grind for the Green at Ella Baker Center, TED, The Youth Leadership Institute, Global Exhcnage, and countless others. She is also a founding member of Oakland's Impact Hub which is the only HUb out of many worldwide run by Black women!