This year for Mother’s Day I want to highlight the woman most directly responsible for helping to guide my life both personally and professionally, my mother. Born in rural Alabama she was relocated to Los Angeles, California at the tender age of four. From an early age she was sent outside of her neighborhood for better schooling based on her proven academic aptitude. She consistently scored high in STEM fields making her eventual transition to tech natural. She enrolled in a math and science magnet high school where she met my wonderful father. But this is not a story about high school sweethearts, this is a story about how a young Black woman entered the white-male-centered tech field in the early 2000s, and how her navigation of that space led to a brighter future for my sister and me.
In the year 2001, she graduated with her degree in multimedia design. By that time, she was already a wife and mother of two, having chosen to pursue this degree because of its emphasis on design and technology. I sat down with her recently to discuss how she entered the tech field and what her experience has been like over the last 20 years of her career.
What about tech interested you in the beginning?
Tech was interesting to me because it was an opportunity to get information into people’s hands easily. I saw the ability to provide people with access to services and information that was generally unavailable. I saw it as a way to empower vulnerable populations by breaking down geographical, language, and cultural barriers. It can provide people a different way of thinking than they may have been exposed to.
What would you say is the most difficult part of being a Black woman in tech?
Being a Black woman in tech has been an amazing blessing and challenge. No one expected me to be here. 20 years ago, when I started, there were not many women in general and certainly not women of color. I was so appreciative to have a woman of color greet me at my first internship, and I always wanted to be that welcoming person for the next group. I was often mistaken for administrative roles from both from people within IT departments and outside of them. This happened even when I was lead web designer. Having people on your own team downplay or mistake your role can certainly make you feel unaccepted.
What helped me to keep going was remembering that there had been women before me in more demanding STEM roles that I was standing on the shoulders of. It has been rewarding seeing the new generation of unapologetically Black women enter the space and thrive.
What helped me keep going was remembering the women before me in STEM that I was standing on the shoulders of. It's rewarding seeing the new generation of unapologetic Black women enter the space and thrive. Click To Tweet
How have you seen the field change in the years since you joined?
The technology has changed a lot in the last 20 years, which has made space for more creativity and access but unfortunately, I’ve also seen it be weaponized in ways I could not have imagined. Although there is more access to information than ever, we have also seen people flood these same devices and channels with false and misleading information. It has also been weaponized by keeping certain populations from access to the internet, thereby creating an ever-growing digital divide. I have been here since its infancy but still feel we are in the very early stages of what it will become. I can only hope that we will find a way to silence misinformation and to remove the inequity caused by the digital divide.
Technology has changed a lot in the last 20 years, which has made space for more creativity and access, but I've also seen it weaponized by keeping certain populations from access, creating a digital divide. Click To Tweet
What was your biggest hesitation for entering a leadership position?
Would the team and other people in the organization see me as a leader? I have always seen myself as one, but I found the challenge in getting others to see me as one and to respect me as one. Being a Black woman in a space predominantly held by white men, there was always that unconscious bias against me even though I had the experience and expertise necessary to lead a department. I was already so unexpected, but in the leadership role it was magnified.
Being a Black woman in a space held by white men, there was always that unconscious bias against me even though I had the experience. I was already so unexpected, but in the leadership role it was magnified. Click To Tweet
What would you say to your past self if you could?
Trust your instinct and don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Progress is being made. It’s needed and appreciated.
I want to thank my mom for sitting with me and imparting just a taste of the knowledge I have had the opportunity to learn from her over my 24 years. Her story of perseverance inspires me daily and I hope that someone else was able to see the benefit of her words that I have always enjoyed. Happy Mother’s Day.
