Black History and the Future of Data Science Roundtable

On Tuesday, February 15, 2022, DataCamp’s Social Impact Manager Nathaniel Taylor-Leach hosted a live roundtable discussion in honor of Black History Month. We invited three Black leaders in tech and philanthropy to join the conversation: 

• Nikisha Alcindor, President and Founder of STEM Educational Institute

• Sean Burrowes, CEO and Co-founder of Ingressive For Good

• Roger Roman, CEO and CO-founder of AfriBlocks 

The goal of the livestream, “Black History and the Future of Data Science,” was to highlight the contributions the Black community has made to computer and data science over the past century, while also identifying today’s challenges facing young people of color that make these highly lucrative and influential careers less accessible than they should be. 

One important theme our guests touched upon was the dire need for more Black and Brown data scientists in the AI and ML industries so that the algorithms of tomorrow do not unfairly perpetuate today’s unconscious biases and negative stereotypes. Questions from our viewing audience also prompted our panel of experts to recommend ways that nonprofits, companies, and governments can promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within their ranks by investing in learning development, internal promotions, paid interns, and more.

Below is a collection of resources shared by our panelists to learn more about the influential individuals and topics addressed during the livestream:

Black Pioneers in Data, Computers, and Education

• The Philadelphia Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois, 1899

• Marie Maynard Daly, Science History Institute, 2018

• Carter G. Woodson, NAACP, 2022

• Arturo Schomberg: His Life and Legacy by Herbert Norat, NYPL, 2020

• Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson

• HIDDEN FIGURES, dir: Theodore Melfi, 2016 

• The Story of NASA's Real "Hidden Figures" by Elizabeth Howell, Scientific American, 2017

Black Leaders and Resouces in Data Science Today

• Timnit Gebru, Founder and Executive Director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR)

• Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You're a White Guy, by Timnit Gebru, The New York Times, 2018

• “We're in a diversity crisis”: cofounder of Black in AI on what's poisoning algorithms in our lives by Jackie Snow, MIT Technology Review, 2018

• Black in AI, 2022

• Joy Buolamwini

• The IRS Should Stop Using Facial Recognition by Joy Buolamwini, The Atlantic, 2022

• Poet of Code, 2022

• DeVaris Brown, CEO and Co-founder of Meroxa

• 2,333 STEM education bills were introduced in the US Congress in 2021

• What's Driving Data Science Salaries Now by Alex Woodie, Datanami, 2016

• Diversity in High Tech—Executive Summary, US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2015

• Queer in STEM: Workplace Experiences Reported in a National Survey of LGBTQA Individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers by Jeremy B. Yoder & Allison Mattheis (2016), Journal of Homosexuality, 63:1, 1-27

• Machine Bias by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica, 2016

• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. NYU Press, 2018

Black-led Data Science NGOs

• Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab

• Algorithms of Oppression

• Data 4 Black Lives

• Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG)

• BlackInData

• Algorithmic Justice League

• HBCU Data Science Consortium

About the Panelists

Nikisha Alcindor is a Managing Director at Riverside Management Group, a merchant bank, and doctoral student in the Narendra Paul Loomba Department of Management at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College. She is a CUNY Graduate Center Fellow and the Provost Enhancement Fellow. She specializes in Strategic Management and her research area is in mergers and acquisitions. Nikisha is interested in examining the success rates of M&A transactions by applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to decision and risk analysis. She has an extensive background in corporate finance, healthcare, and asset management. Prior to joining the PhD program, she spent time in practice at Apax Partners, Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, and Columbia University. She is a Board member of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. Nikisha holds a BA in Chemistry from Emory University and an MBA from Columbia Business School as a Leon Cooperman Scholar.

DataCamp has partnered with Nikisha on her nonprofit, The STEM Educational Institute (SEI). SEI provides programming that gives underrepresented high school students the technological skills needed to enter today’s workforce while building generational wealth. In partnership with several corporations, the program aims to serve as a diverse talent pipeline for organizations and to build generational wealth.

Sean Burrowes is the co-founder of Ingressive For Good (I4G), whose mission is to increase the earning power of tech talents in Africa by training 1,000,000 youths and connecting 5,000 to jobs in the next five years. Since joining the Ingressive conglomerate in 2017, Ingressive has expanded from Nigeria into Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, and Rwanda. Sean leverages a decade of international operational experience and applies it to projects impacting youth-led initiatives, entrepreneurs, digital media platforms, and African tech ecosystems. He is committed to building the socio-economic infrastructure needed for a new African narrative by providing equal access to technology.

Sean is a proud graduate of Jackson State University and CEO of operations consulting firm Burrowes Enterprises. His overarching goal is to discover and create the operational processes necessary to build an economic bridge between Africa and its diaspora. In partnership with DataCamp Donates, the Ingressive For Good team has provided free data science education to thousands of disadvantaged individuals across Africa.

Roger Roman is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and marketing consultant for technology-driven startups. He is a two-time startup founder, and for the past five years, he’s served as the Managing Partner of Push Consulting & Marketing, a growth marketing and business development consulting agency. Roger has been recognized by The New York Times, Venture Beat, Black Enterprise, LinkedIn, and others as an authority on digital marketing and startup growth. He has guided fledgling startups from launch to acquisition and helped established corporations such as Walt Disney, Universal Music Group, and Apple drive online visibility and growth.

Roger is the CEO and Co-founder of AfriBlocks, the Global Pan-African Freelance Digital Marketplace, which is building the tech infrastructure for Africa's future of work. AfriBlocks aims to create a diverse network of qualified & skilled African Professionals and to connect them with remote jobs from across the world. In partnership with DataCamp Donates, he’s helped provide free unlimited data science education to hundreds of freelancers in Africa and the US.

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Thank you to our panelists and all the viewers around the world who tuned in and asked questions! If you enjoyed this livestream, we would love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]. To learn more about DataCamp’s Social Impact initiatives, visit datacamp.com/donates.