Tech Forward

Hello listeners! Welcome back to Tech Forward. On this week’s episode, I’m speaking with Lauren Wesley Wilson, President and CEO of ColorComm, Inc. From its humble beginnings as a luncheon in 2011 for women of color in the communications industry, ColorComm has grown into a professional community of over 40 thousand women. Lauren is also a Contributor to Forbes and has a column which covers women of color in business. Today on the show, we’ll be talking about her journey launching and growing ColorComm, and the state of affairs for women in communication and tech. Despite the fact that the communications industry is female dominated — women make up 70% of the workforce in that space — the executive leadership positions are overwhelmingly held by men. When their careers stall, many talented women end up leaving the industry for higher paying jobs in other sectors. In an effort to change this, ColorComm offers a variety of programs and services for members, including panel discussions on how women of color can

Hello Listeners! Welcome to the first bonus episode of the Tech Forward podcast.  In this mini episode, you'll hear a brief overview of the host's journey through the world of tech and why she started this podcast. Thank you for listening each week and supporting the show!

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward! For this week’s episode, I’m thrilled to share my conversation with Jessica Bell. Jessica works as a web developer for the Washington Post, primarily on front end and Javascript projects. She is also highly active in the DC tech community: she’s the Chair of DC ACM, as well as an active member of  DCFemTech and Women Who Code DC. Throughout the year, she helps people learn the basics of coding in web development by teaching at General Assembly. As if all that weren’t enough, she also hosts and produces a podcast, DC Tech Stories, which features local tech workers. We’ll discuss her unique journey into the world of tech, her experience at the Post — which has been recognized for its inclusive engineering team — and how she’s making her mark in the DC tech scene. Jessica came to DC after completing a degree in International Relations from San Francisco State University. After hitting a plateau in self-teaching, she enrolled in the General Assembly bootc

Welcome back to another great episode of Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I’m excited to share my conversation with educator and entrepreneur, Angela Lee. Angela is both Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Dean at Columbia Business School, and the founder of angel investment network, 37 Angels. With her commitment to education, it’s no surprise that she is a sought-after expert for many news networks, and has been invited to advise decision-makers at the highest levels, including Prime Minister Trudeau. We discussed her work fostering teaching excellence at Columbia Business School, how she launched 37 Angels, and her mission to activate female investors. At Columbia Business School, curricula have evolved to reflect a shift in graduate employment. Whereas graduates once primarily pursued careers in finance or consulting, many of them now go into technology or entrepreneurship. As Chief Innovation Officer, Angela has a threefold mission: faculty excellence beginning with orientation, curriculum strategy

Hello, listeners! Welcome back to another exciting episode of Tech Forward. This week, I spoke with Omari Edwards. In addition to serving as a board member at leading technology proficiency non-profit Mouse and founding K-12 STEM enrichment program Technology for {You}th, Omari is also the founder of image-based analytics platform Beak. We discussed his different experiences as a black man at both Morehouse College and the University of Pennsylvania,  and the unconventional journey of Beak from inception to present day. Omari spoke highly of the mentors in his early life, both in his family and in school. These role models instilled in him the confidence to seek out schools he might not have otherwise considered. He attended historically black Morehouse College for his undergraduate studies, and UPenn for his M.S. in Systems Engineering. While he loved both schools, the largest difference between the two was a top tier but purely academic experience, versus a more holistic one. UPenn had all the benefits of a

Hello and welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners. For those of you in the US, Happy 4th of July! I hope you enjoy the day off, whether you go out and get some sun or unwind with family and friends. Today, in light of the holiday, we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of bringing on a special guest, I’m going to go over some of the highlights and common themes from the first 15 exciting episodes of the show. We’ve covered a lot of ground since we launched nearly four months ago in mid March. Though our guests have come from a wide variety of backgrounds, career trajectories, and current roles, many of them have expressed similar struggles and insights about the tech world. Since we’ll be digging into many of these themes further in upcoming episodes, let’s recap. Allie Burns and Andreas Freund shared their thoughts on why the diversity problem exists, as well as some of the reasons why there is a persistent funding gap for underrepresented founders. Along those lines, Caroline Hofmann touch

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I spoke with Damion Wright, Head of Talent Acceleration at Intuit, Inc. In this position, Damion works with his team to build out the strategy and delivery for Intuit’s internship, new college graduate, and diversity programs for US Inside Sales. Damion first came to Intuit in a sales role, having 15 years of sales leadership experience, and moved organically into his current role, where he is highly involved in the growth and professional development of recent college graduates. Known primarily for their financial software such as Quickbooks, Turbotax, and Mint, Intuit has been on the list of best companies to work for in the US for the past 16 years. Intuit also has a reputation for diversity and inclusion, having secured a spot on Fortune’s “Best Workplaces for Diversity” in 2017. Damion and I discussed the strategies Intuit uses to attract and retain a diverse workforce, and how they’ve become leaders in inclusivity among the major tech compan

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! On this week’s episode, I spoke with Lidiane Jones, the VP of SW Product Management at Sonos, a leading smart sound system company. For over 15 years, Lidiane has worked in product management for a wide variety of products related to consumer productivity, machine learning, and much more. Over the course of her career, she has gained a reputation for building diverse, dynamic, and high-performing teams. In her current role at Sonos, Lidiane leads her team as they work to improve customers’ lives through great listening experiences. We discussed her career trajectory, and her advice to women looking for mentors and sponsors.   Even though she loved coding from a very young age, Lidiane’s transition from tech-focused roles to her position as VP of product management was an organic one. Realizing that she spent much of her energy on the what and why of the products, considering everything from the angle of customer experience, Lidiane met with some product managers and lo

Hello listeners! Welcome back to another exciting episode of Tech Forward. This week I spoke with Sage Salvo, artist, scholar, social entrepreneur, and founder of Words Liive, LLC. Named among the top 3 EdTech startups at the 2016 South by Southwest Education Conference, Words Liive is a 21st century education technology firm dedicated to eradicating illiteracy across the world — particularly in marginalized urban and rural districts. The Words Liive app, currently in beta, is a “platform as a service” (PaaS) technology which allows for the instantaneous development, discovery, and sharing of literacy-based lesson plans that integrate popular music. Upon entering the teaching world as part of a PhD program, Sage noticed many of his students lacked necessary skills in business and communication. In an attempt to find the root of the problem, he began volunteering with local high schools and fell in love with the teaching process. At the same time, he saw how tying student performance to educator incentives le

Hello and welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week I spoke with Jarrid Tingle, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Harlem Capital. An early-stage investment firm, Harlem Capital in on a mission to diversify the landscape of entrepreneurs receiving venture funding by supporting women and people of color. As stated in the Forbes feature, the ultimate goal is to fund 1000 founders from diverse backgrounds over the next 20 years. Jarrid and I discussed how they aim to attain that goal, the impetus behind Harlem Capital, and his advice for minority entrepreneurs seeking venture funding. When Jarrid and his friends started angel investing as a side project, they quickly realized that only a small percentage of venture capital and angel funding went to women and entrepreneurs of color. They saw an opportunity to make a huge change in the industry by focusing on early stage investing, since many of the female and minority led businesses weren’t in the asset class that larger firms targeted. Jarrid and his 3

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week, I spoke with Angelica Coleman, tech aficionado and Director of Community at Lesbians Who Tech. A global community of over 35,000 queer technologists, Lesbians Who Tech connects talent with existing companies by hosting summits nationally as well as globally. They partner with hundreds of companies every year, and offer coding scholarships to queer and gender nonconforming women. As an advocate for diversity and inclusion, Angie is always finding new ways to use tech to build communities and bring people together. Black women face abundant challenges in their professional lives. Not only are they frequently offered lower wages, they’re often steered away from the positions they apply for, and towards administrative or other non-technical roles. As a result, black women in the tech sector regularly end up underpaid, overworked, and pigeonholed into low wage, low status career paths regardless of their experience. Here are two tips from Angie on avoiding that f

Hello, listeners! Welcome to another exciting episode of Tech Forward. On this week’s episode, I spoke with Andreas Freund, co-founder of DiveIn, a platform where people can easily get involved with causes they care about at the local level. As a proud son of immigrants and a San Francisco native, Andreas was inspired to create DiveIn after witnessing the effects of the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015. In an era where we have so much at our fingertips, Andreas realized it was unacceptable that we can wake up with the desire to help in our own communities, but not be able to use technology to make that process seamless and frictionless. DiveIn helps its users connect on two levels: location, and causes. Whether your passion is the environment, animal welfare, or social justice, DiveIn allows you to access relevant content and discussions, and find opportunities to get involved in those causes with like-minded people at the local level. So what does “getting involved” look like? “The types of experiences them

Welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I spoke with Tina Lee, Founder and CEO of MotherCoders. Based in San Francisco, MotherCoders is a non-profit that’s expanding the tech talent pool by helping women with kids gain the skills, knowledge, and connections they need to thrive in today's digital economy. Tina’s career journey has taken her from management consulting and recruiting roles in the private sector, to philanthropy and nonprofit roles in the public sector. She’s passionate and prolific about the digital economy, especially the changing needs of women and families in a digital, globalized world. We discussed how MotherCoders came to be, and how Tina is helping moms of all types launch their tech careers. Currently, 86% of women will become moms, and with millennials becoming parents, there are more moms than ever with college degrees. As a person with caregiving responsibilities of her own, however, Tina discovered first hand that the free or low-cost and easily accessible options like meetups and w

Hello, listeners! Welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward. This week I spoke with Allie Burns, Managing Director at Village Capital. This global venture capital firm wants to build bridges for entrepreneurs looking to create an inclusive and sustainable world. Having worked with Revolution, the Case Foundation, AOL, Atlas Venture and more, Allie honed over the years a passion for working with young and emerging technologies. We discussed Village Capital’s unique model and goal to broaden access to capital worldwide, and to close the wealth gap for founders from underrepresented backgrounds. Village Capital is on a mission to reinvent the venture capital system in such a way as to truly back the entrepreneurs of the future. “The work we do is united by the principle of getting more capital to more people in more places, to solve the significant challenges in environmental stability and economic inequality.” Seeing as how 75% of venture capital goes to only 3 US states, and most of that to white men, th

Welcome back to Tech Forward, listeners! This week I spoke with Stephanie Lampkin, founder and CEO of Blendoor, technology that mitigates unconscious bias in hiring through artificial intelligence and people analytics. During Stephanie’s 14-year career in the tech industry, she has founded two startups and held technical roles at Lockheed, Microsoft, and TripAdvisor. Despite a tech background beginning in her teen years, Stephanie still faced hiring bias from recruiters who told her she was “not technical enough,” and tried to steer her towards sales and marketing roles. This was her inspiration to start Blendoor, which enhances the ability of humans to judge other humans based on merits — not molds. On Blendoor, qualified candidates are presented to recruiters with no names, photos, or age listed — just that they are a fit for the role. Once the company selects a candidate, the person’s identity is revealed. Stephanie designed Blendoor around the idea that certain demographics are disadvantaged, and often ve

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week I spoke with Hayley Leibson, founder of the award-winning technology and lifestyle blog, Lady in Tech. Through Lady in Tech, Hayley is dedicated to inspiring women to become technologists and entrepreneurs, and to create a life that they love. As an empathetic technologist and inclusion advocate, Hayley also contributes to Forbes; her column moves millennial women to enter the tech industry and build important products at scale to improve the world. Upon taking her first undergraduate engineering courses, Hayley noticed how few women were in her class — and that none of them planned to pursue a career in technology. “The best way to make a positive impact on the world is through building technology. [...] A lot of what people are doing in tech is looking at the problems in their own lives, and solving them. For populations not well-represented in tech, nobody is looking at how to solve their problems.” With code and algorithms influencing more and

Welcome back to another episode of Tech Forward, listeners! This week I spoke with Caroline Hofmann, COO and Co-Founder of equity crowdfunding platform Republic. In her role as Chief Operating Officer, Caroline manages the company’s multi-faceted operation and its fast-growing team. Prior to Republic, she spent seven years as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in London and New York. Caroline is also an active angel investor and mentor to several startups. In 2016, title 3 of the Jobs Act opened up venture investing to non-accredited investors, which thereby opened the doors to equity crowdfunding. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, think of equity crowdfunding as a combination of angel investing, and crowdfunding as you know it through platforms like GoFundMe and Kickstarter. The investment itself is similar to those donations, but the investor holds a stake in the company moving forward. While Republic does not require investors to disclose their net worth, Caroline estimates that 80% of in

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! As you know, this podcast addresses all types of diversity in the tech world, including neurodiversity. This week, I spoke with Oliver Thornton, CEO of Coding Autism, about just that. At Coding Autism, an autism-specialized coding bootcamp, autistic adults learn the necessary skills to obtain employment within the tech industry. For Oliver, this is a very personal endeavor. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of two, Oliver worked hard to overcome many of the challenges associated with life on the spectrum. He came to think of Asperger’s syndrome as his “secret weapon” for success, especially when combined with his entrepreneurial mindset. The major goal of Coding Autism is to reduce the high unemployment rate within the autism community. Autistic adults have an 80% unemployment and underemployment rate, regardless of academic credentials, intellectual capabilities, and skill sets. Learning about these trends was Oliver’s primary motivation to devel

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Tech Forward! This week, I spoke with Janet Wu, co-founder and CEO of SilkRoll, about sustainability in the fashion industry as well as the importance of building diverse teams from day one. An avid traveler, Janet was born in China, grew up in the UK, and currently lives in the Bay Area. During her 10 years as an investment banker, she helped over 50 publicly listed companies raise over $30B in financing. She then went on to serve as the CFO of clean tech startup One Earth Designs before founding SilkRoll. During a 2011 sabbatical, Janet connected with an issue that had long been important to her: sustainability. In traveling through South and Central America, she directly witnessed the environmental impact of modern industry on ecology, biodiversity, and indigenous culture of these regions. She found herself wondering, “How can I contribute my skills in business and finance to this area?” The answer came to her as she confronted the cost of moving from Hong Kong to San F

Hello listeners, and welcome back to the Tech Forward podcast! This week, I spoke with Maria Salamanca, a venture capitalist at Unshackled Ventures. She was named 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Unshackled Ventures fills a unique space in the entrepreneurial ecosystem by funding teams with immigrant founders. Maria’s own journey — she immigrated from Colombia at age 7 and became a citizen at 18 — has motivated her to uplift others by eliminating barriers to entrepreneurship and education.  Due in part to her history, Maria has a deep understanding of the challenges immigrants face when starting a business in the United States. She and Unshackled Ventures have identified the barriers that immigrant entrepreneurs face: Access to capital Office space Lack of support network Immigration support These barriers are what led them to specifically support immigrant founders. “It’s hard to be an immigrant entrepreneur and jump into that full time while also juggling concerns about who will sponsor your