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Stacey Abrams believes proponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) will need to be better at communicating achievements and advances if it’s to be protected. The Mississippi native’s sense of advocacy was shaped by her parents, who defied their economic circumstances by choosing to do good for others, she told AFROTECH™ in an email Q&A. This aligned with the family motto, “Having nothing wasn’t an excuse for doing nothing.” “Purpose and power are not dictated by where you are but instead by how you situate yourself in a given place and moment,” she explained. Reflecting on when she first understood the importance of standing in her truth and advocating for others, she shares that she was in second grade and defended her classmate against a bully. “I defended a Vietnamese girl against a White kid who felt comfortable using his size and race as validators. I stood up to him — it helped that I was as tall as he was — and I was able to show Julie and others that we had the same...
Confidence goes a long way, and that spirit helped New York’s Armand Cheeks make his next career move. Cheeks, Brooklyn-born but Queens-raised, comes from an electrical engineering background as a Penn State University alumni. He has always been drawn to science and credits his mother — a lifelong educator with more than three decades of experience, and who now runs an education consulting business — for instilling in him the value of education. “She’s really the reason for a lot of the things that I do right now,” Cheeks told AFROTECH™ in an interview. Cheeks is a digital marketing strategist with a consulting and marketing business, which he launched after finishing Penn State in 2016. It has reached clients across seven states (New York, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia). He adds that he’s worked primarily with Black-owned businesses and minority-led nonprofits based in Queens since the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. To further develop his...
These college students had a master plan that helped them land several interviews at the AFROTECH™ Conference 2025. Aishat Balogun is a sophomore at Boston University, studying electrical engineering. She attended the Illinois Math and Science Academy, which validated her interests in STEM. Esther Newton had a passion for people and creativity, which led her to take art classes since she was six years old. She was introduced to STEM through the Pittsburgh Technology Council, and she realized she could still use her creativity in the field and that not all roles were “super technical.” She is currently a sophomore pursuing industrial engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Balogun and Newton interned at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle as software development engineers during the summer of 2024. “We were all just super eager to be there and wanting to work together,” Newton expressed. PC: Aishat Balogun The pair were reunited again as attendees at the AFROTECH™ Conference...
At AFROTECH™ Conference, connecting directly with industry leaders feels effortless. Jamell Watson attended AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 as Attentive’s director of office operations, an SMS and email marketing platform. He is responsible for running the workplace across three different offices in the U.S., London, and Australia. He is also one of the founding members of the company’s Black union employee resource group, which sponsored some employees’ attendance at this year’s conference under the Executive badge. “We thought we would [be] boots on the ground and talk to students and people looking for jobs for recruitment purposes,” Watson told AFROTECH™. “We had some shirts made that made us kind of stand out, along with the Executive badge,” Watson said. “That kind of signifies to people that ‘I’m not looking for a job. I’m here for a purpose.” “Our main goal was to recruit for some of our sales roles, our engineering roles, and then also to, I wanted the Black union members that...
Maryland First Lady Dawn Moore is committed to providing opportunities to her constituents. Dawn is the daughter of two civil servants. Her mother was a teacher, her father a union member who worked in construction. Additionally, her grandfather served in the military before joining the union in retirement and helping to build the World Trade Center. Through her family’s example, she learned the importance of community involvement. “I would go to vote with my family. They would take me with them to the voting booths. And then when I went to college, I knew all I wanted to do was be involved in service,” Dawn said during an interview held during the AFROTECH™ Conference 2025. “And so I restarted the NAACP on campus. When I graduated, I called one of my professors and I said, ‘Do you know any jobs in service?’ And he directed me to the office of the Secretary of State for the state of Maryland. That’s where my service began as a community organizer and a community relations...
Jason Mayden was affirmed in his identity as a founder while working at Jordan Brand. Mayden launched his first business at age 10, shoveling snow and cutting grass as AFROTECH™ previously reported. Mayden’s first prototype was a basketball card collection featuring Michael Jordan, so his entrepreneurial hat would come full circle at Jordan Brand, where he started as an intern in 2000 and returned in 2024 as its chief design officer. The history of Jordan Brand dates back to 1984, when Michal Jordan and Nike formed a partnership, per AFROTECH™. The first Air Jordan shoe was released a year later and was a massive success. By 1997, Jordan Brand became an independent subsidiary of Nike. Following his internship, Mayden built his career at Nike, first as a senior product designer and later as director of innovation, according to his LinkedIn. In 2012, under the leadership of President Larry Miller, he transitioned to Jordan Brand as senior global design director. “I was working in...
François Locoh-Donou has several truths he believes Black professionals should apply. Locoh-Donou’s father was from a fishing village on the banks of Lake Togo in West Africa and was the fourth in a family of 16 children, Locoh-Donou explained on stage during AFROTECH™ Conference 2025. When it was time for his father to start school, admission was determined by height. After three failed attempts, he shares that his father refused to leave the school until he was accepted at age 9 into first grade. When it was time to graduate, his father then had the option to become a teacher, but he had broader aspirations. Leaving the village to study at a public high school 300 miles away, he graduated in the early 1960s. He applied for and was awarded a full-ride scholarship from the government to study architecture in college, which enabled him to complete projects across Africa. Locoh-Donou shares that he learned what an “extraordinary figure” his father was. He had not only helped his...
Dr. Astro Teller shares how Google X is pushing technological boundaries to solve global problems. During an AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 panel moderated by Blavity Inc. COO and Co-founder Jeff Nelson , Dr. Teller defined a moonshot as a groundbreaking technology that can solve a major world problem, but may sound like a piece of science fiction. He has worked at Google for 15 years as the co-founder and captain of moonshots at X, the moonshot factory, which engineers technologies specifically to solve global problems. Innovations that have come out of its lab include Google Brain, which is responsible for many of the advancements seen in machine learning today, such as AI chatbots. Additionally, Waymo, self-driving cars, and “Project Wing,” a drone delivery service, emerged. “The idea was not that we would look backwards at Google and try to fix Google’s problems, but instead our mission has always been go out in the world and find new problems to have and then hopefully solutions for...
After 32 years at Black Entertainment Television (BET), former CEO Debra Lee continues shaping culture and business. Today, she sits on the boards of Warner Bros. Discovery, Marriott International, and Procter & Gamble — but her legacy at BET remains untouched. At AFROTECH™ Conference 2025, Lee reflected on how her leadership from 2005 to 2018 helped define generations of Black entertainment, from shaping beloved programming to setting new standards for representation. Lee began at BET as the company’s first in-house counsel, building the legal department from the ground up. She later — and unexpectedly — became president and chief operating officer, succeeding founder Bob Johnson. “When people started writing articles, ‘Debra Lee is the heir apparent,’ it really shocked me,” Lee recalled. “I thought I was just going to continue to do the work, and Bob would get all the credit. That’s the way it went. No big deal. And it wasn’t until Bob left and I became CEO that people started...
Mustafa Suleyman has high hopes for the future of superintelligence and its impact on humanity. During a conversation at AFROTECH™ Conference 2025, he joked that he grew up playing “Snake” on a Nokia phone, which was supposedly a “phenomenon” when it launched in the late ’90s. Suleyman’s fascination with technological advancements never wavered, and his enthusiasm remains strong as the CEO of Microsoft AI. He shared his thoughts on superintelligence, stating early on that it “must always work in service of humanity.” He also offered his predictions for it by 2040. He expressed optimism about its potential to benefit humankind, believing that if developed successfully, it would align with human interests and improve the standard of living. Suleyman explained that it is already capable of world-class medical diagnostics and continues to advance in emotional intelligence and autonomous action. “It’s going to learn to use APIs, send emails, make phone calls, interact with us,” he...
Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche continues to prepare people to take control of their finances. The Budgetnista The Nigerian American and former Newark, NJ, preschool teacher may no longer be working a traditional 9-to-5, but she remains an educator. For 15 years, she has taught financial literacy, a lesson rooted in her upbringing. “I grew up in a household where money was talked about all the time. My father was an accountant and a CFO … It wasn’t really until college that I realized that people didn’t get financial education at home,” she told attendees during the AFROTECH™ Conference 2025. Aliche had a reckoning while teaching on a $39,000 salary, realizing that the corporate world was not her goal and she wasn’t willing to lose her soul for a paycheck, she explained. This led her to become a master of her finances, and she also taught the parents of her students how to do the same. “The kids went to sleep during nap time, and I had Parent University during nap time. I showed...
Dr. Jessica Shepherd’s upbringing emphasized education, which led her to become a doctor and chief medical officer. Dr. Shepherd, who brought her expertise to the AFROTECH™ Conference on Thursday, Oct. 30, admits she was intentional at an early age in planning for her future. Her path to being of service to others in health and wellness became clearer through her years of schooling, which started at the University of Oklahoma for her undergraduate studies. She brought that focus to Ross University School of Medicine (Doctor of Medicine), and then completed her OB/GYN residency at Drexell University College of Medicine, according to information shared on her LinkedIn. Today, she is the founder of Sanctum Med + Wellness, a concierge wellness concept founded in 2020 and based in Dallas. Additionally, since October 2024, Shepherd has served as chief medical officer of Hers, a telehealth platform that addresses hair loss, weight loss, perimenopause, menopause, midlife issues for women,...
What started as a spark in San Francisco, CA, has grown into a global hub for Black technology and innovation. Each year, the AFROTECH™ community convenes tens of thousands of professionals and students along with more than 150 global companies to exchange ideas, elevate representation, and celebrate progress. The weeklong experience is specifically curated to include top-tier keynotes, panels, networking events, and culture-driven programming that fuels the next generation of builders and leaders. The Beginning: From Idea To Impact In 2016, Blavity Inc. co-founders Morgan DeBaun and Jeff Nelson saw a gap in the tech industry. Major players hosted large conferences filled with opportunities, but those opportunities did not seem to be fully present for Black and brown people. Determined to change that, they launched the AFROTECH™ Conference in the Bay Area with 650 attendees, proving there was an audience ready for this kind of space. Photo Credit: AFROTECH™ By 2019, the conference...
Jason Mayden’s parents invested in him early on, helping him realize his dreams at Jordan Brand. Self-Belief Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he believed his imagination was better than his reality after spending time in and out of the hospital. He also observed that he was different from his peers as a neurodivergent individual and often felt overlooked. In an interview held during the 2025 AFROTECH™ Conference, he revealed that he gave himself permission to dream. This became his superpower. “In that imaginative state, I was able to give myself permission to dream and to eventually decide that who I am is enough,” he said. “I rejoice and relish in the fact that people underestimated me and I thank them for that because it forced me to realize that I have to be the progenitor of my own outcomes and, I’m the protagonist in my own narrative. I couldn’t choose my origin story, but I can write my ending,” he continued. Investment From His Parents When Mayden was 10 years old,...
Creators fighting the algorithm may need to have a change of heart, according to Tubi Vice President of Creator Partnerships Kudzi Chikumbu. He took the stage at AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 alongside Patreon’s Head of Business Development Stephanie Smellie on a panel moderated by Dream Con’s CFO Kendale King about how creators can break the revenue ceiling. Chikumbu suggests creators view platforms like businesses that they are looking to scale. They should evolve their content according to user and consumer taste, and lean into what platforms are telling them to be. “People need to stop blaming the algorithm and start being more flexible,” he said. He highlighted the push towards long-form content, which has remained a superpower for Tubi, and has captured the hearts of Gen Z and millennials through original IP and stories. “When people talk about ‘Why can’t I just post my pictures anymore? Why do I need to push for content, long-form content?’ It’s because that’s what people are...
