Black Women Making Moves in the World of Tech
Maria Tolliver | www.chicuicorn.com
Source: pintrest.ca
In the last ten years, black women have been taking over the tech industry in droves and it’s beautiful! In the world of technology, you hardly see many people of color let alone black women, the tech industry has always been largely a white man’s world. In fact, according to a study by the national center for women & technology, women of color only make up about 11% and black women only make up about 3% of those numbers. Thankfully, these numbers are slowly changing for the better and we are starting to see more black women taking on tech. I believe it’s important to shine the light on these women who are going into a predominantly white male field with passion, incomparable talent, and loads of black girl magic!
Olabisi (Bisi) Boyle, VP, Internet of Things (IoT) at Visa
Olabisi (Bisi) Boyle is a trailblazer in engineering and payment solutions. After receiving her master’s degree, Boyle started as an entry level engineer for Verizon then went on into a multitude of industries from IBM to auto manufacturing and product development. She is now the Vice President of IoT (internet of things) where she is working on infusing payment processing systems to vehicles! Imagine being able to use your car to make and accept payments, you would have her to thank for that!
Jasmine Lawrence - Technical Program Manager, Facebook
Jasmine’s has an exceptional experience as an engineer and entrepreneur and currently serves as the technical program manager for the blood donations team at Facebook. Lawrence has experience as a technical project manager in a variety of areas of tech for top notch companies like Microsoft Hololens, Xbox, and SoftBank Robotics. Her experience in tech and entrepreneurship reaches as far back as grade school when she officially launched her own natural hair care brand called EDEN BodyWorks after attending the NFTE BizCamp at the tender age of 13 years old.
Allie Tsahey -Founder -CEO Baddies In Tech
Ms. Allie Tsahey is the founder of the number one global community for female tech visionaries. Starting out from a biology/healthcare background, Allie took a turn towards tech entrepreneurship with very specific solutions in mind to serve women in the tech industry therefore, Baddies in Tech was born. Baddies in Tech is a large online tech community created for women who are working in tech or are seeking to land a career in tech offering a wealth of resources from interview coaching, tech assessments to see which tech career suits your skill sets, to resume writing services to help you make a stellar first impression while job-seeking. If you are looking for a sisterhood and to network with other tech baddies this is where you would want to start.
Kike Oniwinde - Founder of BYP
Kike Oniwinde, the millennial, a 2018 Sky Women in Technology scholar, has proven herself to be a superstar in the tech industry with her creation of BYP a networking app that is considered to be the LinkedIn for black professionals in the UK. She realized that black people black women especially were severely underrepresented in the tech world and saw that as an opportunity to build a professional network specifically for ambitious black professionals. BYP now has an estimated 30k profiles with an estimated 200k invested into the network!
Cierra McDonald - Principal Program Manager
Cierra is another superstar in the tech industry working in a field that is probably one of the most creative tech fields around, gaming. If you want a career in tech and want to have fun at the same time, then gaming is where you would want to be. Cierra, working as a game developer in Microsoft’s Xbox Advanced Technology Group mentions that there are lots of untapped opportunity in the world of gaming. It’s an area that most creatives don’t think about so there is tons of room for creative, technological, and professional advancement. It’s wide open for black women to enter this space. Just think, a career in gaming could give us the opportunity to create fun experiences on a highly interactive platform from our point of view!