Dr. Claire Nelson (she/her)

Dr. Claire Nelson is a Futurist, Sustainability Engineer, Social Entrepreneur and Storyteller. As the only Black woman in her engineering classes at University of Buffalo and Purdue University, Dr. Nelson broke through barriers of gender and race to become the first woman engineer hired at the Inter-American Development Bank in 1981 and the first Jamaican woman to earn a Doctorate in an Engineering Discipline in 1989. She also became a pioneer in transforming the dialogue in inequity for Blacks in Latin America and for the voice of the Caribbean American community. For her leadership, she was commended in the US Congressional Record and honored as a White House Champion of Change.

What’s a challenge you’ve faced and how did you get through it?

I stuttered for most of my adult life. When I decided to fight for the rights of Black people in Latin America, I became the voice of the voiceless. I began to speak truth to power. Today I am a keynote speaker and count the UN, the OAS and White House among places where I’ve spoken about development with equity.

What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?

Having engineered the participation of the international financial institutions at the UN World Conference on Racism in 2000–2001. Additionally, I crafted the language for the section on The Role of International Financial Institutions and the Role of Transnational Corporations, which was included in the Durban Plan of Action adopted at the 2001 Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Abby Knowles (she/her)

Abby is the Vice President of Network and Technology at Verizon, leading a team of engineers that build and operate the wireless network. She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and attended University in Trinidad and Baltimore, where she majored in Electrical Engineering.

What’s a challenge you’ve faced and how did you get through it?

I had always dreamed about competing in track and field at the professional level after being a college athlete, but an unplanned pregnancy made me consider other options. After the initial shock, I quickly re-focused on my role as mother and my future career as an engineer. The support of my faith, husband, and family were vital as I found myself embracing a new future. I was truly blessed, not only with my first daughter, but also a second. I raised them with my husband, and they bring us so much joy!

What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?

I’m really proud of helping the teams I’ve led achieve more than they thought possible. Sometimes it was turning results around for the better, or taking already great results and shifting them into high gear. I’ve had many personal accomplishments, but nothing beats seeing others achieve amazing results.

Lesley-Ann Noel (she/her)

Lesley-Ann is a 2018–2019 Ocean Design Teaching Fellows at the d.school at Stanford University, where she co-teaches a class in which students apply a design lens to address global ocean threats and propose sustainable solutions. She recently completed her PhD in Design at North Carolina State University. Her research focused on design thinking at a rural primary school in Trinidad and Tobago.

Lesley-Ann is a former Fulbright Scholar and also a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. In her professional practice, she draws on the fields of design, anthropology, business and education to create product development and business strategy with stakeholders. Her research practice is guided by an emancipatory philosophy. She focuses on developing design curriculum for non-traditional audiences and promoting the work of designers outside Europe and North America. She has exhibited work at design exhibitions in Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Brazil, Germany, France and the USA. She has presented peer-reviewed papers at design conferences in the Caribbean, the US, the UK and India.

What’s a challenge you’ve faced and how did you get through it?

Over the last few years, my biggest challenge was uprooting my life and moving to North Carolina with my son to pursue a PhD in Design. Work-life balance was hard to manage. Even though I’m well-travelled and have worked in different countries, I had to deal with the culture shock of adapting to a new university culture, a new elementary school culture, a new American work and pop culture. I got through it all by maintaining openness and being flexible. I’ve just uprooted us again by moving to California for a year, and at the end of this year, we’ll be moving again. It’s not as easy as it looks, but I know both me and my son have grown enormously over the last 3–4 years.

What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?

I finished my PhD in just over three years. It’s not perfect, and it was hard work, but I’m extremely proud that I was able to complete it in the timeframe I set for myself. Before completing the PhD, I got a job as a teaching fellow at Stanford University. I see that as a really significant accomplishment.

Kamilah Taylor (she/her)

Kamilah Taylor is Co-founder & Senior Engineer at Swaay, Inc., writer, and public speaker. She has worked in iOS and robotics at LinkedIn, Wolfram Research, and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kamilah is currently working on an app that aims to foster thoughtful conversation online while reducing polarization and toxicity. She is also currently consulting for an AR app and is an advocate for encouraging more underrepresented minorities to choose STEM as a career field. In her free time, she tries to eat at all the restaurants in San Francisco, buys too many books, indulges her wanderlust, and watches too much TV.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I first started to consider a career in tech during high school, when I took a robotics class. I remember loving that I could see the physical result of my program. My robotics teacher was one of those teachers that encouraged me to be confident and chose me, alongside two other students, to represent our school at a competition that was being held at Georgia Tech.

The next year, I took AP Computer Science and while I loved the content, I had a hard time with some of the guys in the class. I actually almost decided against computer science as a major in college based on that experience.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

I had a huge fascination with Ada Lovelace when I was younger, not only because she was the first computer programmer and a badass in her own right, but because she was one of the few women we learned about in a math or science class.

3. Where is your hometown?

I was born in Kingston, Jamaica, but I kind of have multiple hometowns. I moved to the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia when I was 10 years old and went to middle school and high school there. Then, to the surprise of a lot of my friends and family, I moved back to Jamaica and went to college there. After that, I moved to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois for graduate school. Moving has been a constant theme in my life.

4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

I had some challenges getting the schools that I attended in Georgia to let me into the more advanced classes, but those were for the most part, external struggles. I didn’t really have massive struggles with school until I started pursuing my PhD. I ended up dropping out of the PhD program in my third year. That experience is one that I’m still processing — learning how to move past failure and learn from the experience is probably the most important lesson that I could have learned in my twenties.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

It’s actually related to my PhD as well. I’m proud that I figured out how to move on and grow from my failure. That moment when I realized that this was the path I needed to go down for myself, I felt like I’d hit rock bottom. I was crashing on my friend’s sofa, and then I lost two friends in the following months to suicide and cancer.

Now, I look at my life in 2018 and there’s no way that I would have accomplished the things I have, made the friends that I have, and been able to help my family along the way if I’d stayed in the PhD program. It’s a good reminder that it’s okay if I fail — I’ve failed before, survived, and thrived.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

I think a lot about how we treat junior developers in this industry — both in terms of letting them in, and how we treat them once they’re here.

7. Favorite food?

Oxtail with rice (Jamaican style), or anything Italian, or anything chocolate (as long as there’s no coconut). Yes I may really like food.

8. Favorite book?

This is like Sophie’s Choice. How about my top three? Harry Potter (yes the whole series, so I’m kind of cheating), Pride & Prejudice, and Year of Yes.

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Something that has some hardcore physics, like working at CERN or NASA. Physics feels to me like that love that got away. Perhaps that’ll be my next career!

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Don’t worry about being labeled bossy. Stand up for yourself in all aspects of your life.

Raquel Small (she/her)

Raquel Small (she/her) is a Paralegal at Google on the Litigation team and Head of Community for Women of Silicon Valley. She is also a newly minted Master of Communication Management from the University of Southern California.

Originally from the NYC area, she is the child of a proud Jamaican mother and a Panamanian father, and she believes empowering women and people of color is the only way to make society better.

In her very limited free time, she likes to bake, try new restaurants, and exercise because of all the baking and dismantling of the patriarchy. She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband Eric and her cat Foxy Cleopatra.

1. When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?

I have always been interested in technology. When I was in high school I was big in the Live Journal community and taught myself HTML, PaintShop Pro and a bit of CSS so that I could sell journal templates. I spent an inordinate amount of time on the Internet and always assumed that I’d have a job that was related to it. When I got to college, I took some pre-law classes since I was dead-set on becoming a lawyer at the time. One class in particular, Cyberlaw, completely changed my life. The class was all about the law surrounding the Internet and specifically about how far the law lagged behind. After that class, I knew that I wanted to be an intellectual property lawyer specializing in copyright law on the Internet.

2. Who is a role model that you look up to?

My mother is the most amazing woman I know. She came to America from Jamaica at only 12 years old, completely alone, to live with her aunt and uncle. By age 15, she was completely supporting herself and eventually landed a job at the United Nations where she’s been for almost 40 years.

She worked herself to the bone to put me into the best schools and extracurriculars and taught me to work hard and never take anything in this life for granted. Currently, she is working in Sierra Leone for a few months and has spent several months in the Philippines, Georgia, and Zambia helping to build women’s health centers. She is the most fearless woman I know and always taught me that independence is a woman’s greatest asset.

3. Where is your hometown?

I was born in New York City but grew up in a small town right outside of it called Englewood, New Jersey. Sometimes it’s hard for me to admit that I’m a Jersey girl but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate it. We have amazing beaches, thousands of malls and the best Taylor Ham, egg and cheeses you’ll ever have. I even got married on the Jersey Shore (not the fist-pumping part).

4. What is a challenge that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?

After studying for the LSATs four times and actually working up the nerve to take the test twice, I applied to law school in 2014. I applied to eight schools, but got rejected from nearly all of my top choices. My whole life, I had been told how smart I was, what a great lawyer I would be, and I truly believed that I had checked all the right boxes and taken all the right steps to achieve that goal. In hindsight, that was an incredible amount of hubris on my part.

Getting rejected from the top schools essentially shattered my dream of being a lawyer, which was something that I’d held on to for over 10 years. I did get into some schools and I could have chosen to go to those, but a small voice inside of me told me “this isn’t right”. I had worked so hard for this moment and I wanted it to be completely perfect. I was unwilling to accept anything less, so I decided to listen to that tiny voice and not go after all. It was immensely scary to give up on something I had put so much of my time and resources into, but I know it was the right move.

At some point, the dream transitioned more into a status symbol than something I actually wanted to do. In my job, I worked with lawyers daily and saw how much they loved their role — which was something that I never felt. In hindsight, I had plenty of signs along the way that law school wasn’t for me, but I chose to ignore them because I thought it was part of my “process”. I struggled for a long time with feeling like I had failed (which was honestly a new sensation for me) but in the end, I know I made the right decision.

5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?

I am immensely proud of receiving my Masters of Communications Management from USC this past May. After the whole law school debacle, I re-grouped and decided to get my Masters in something that felt more familiar to me — Communications. In reflecting on why I chose not to go to law school, I realized that whatever career I chose needed to be something that my personality fit into, not the other way around. While I’m sure I would have been a fine lawyer, I think I would have always felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Getting my Masters while working full-time was one of the most time-consuming, emotional things I’d ever done. Working in litigation, the job is extremely deadline driven and there were times when I would work a 13 hour day only to turn around and have to work on a paper due that night. It pushed me to my mental, emotional, and physical limits at many different points, but somehow, I made it through.

6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?

I have been thinking a lot about self-care. It has become such a buzzword lately that it seems like it’s lost a lot of its meaning. I read an article recently that said something to the effect that if you find yourself looking for ways to self-care constantly, maybe it’s time to rethink your life. Self-care is meant to be a momentary relief from a crazy situation, not a way to escape your daily life. I’m trying to look for more ways to have the kind of life that I don’t need self-care from.

7. Favorite food?

Pizza — it’s good even when it’s bad.

8. Favorite book?

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. The protagonist of the story, Francie, always showed such resilience much like the titular tree that grows through concrete. I’ve read it four times and always find some new nuggets of wisdom.

9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?

Growing up, my dream was always to be a tornado chaser after I saw the movie Twister. I loved science when I was younger but it fell out of favor for me once I realized how much math was involved. Tornado chasing is incredibly dangerous but there is something about the high-risk, high reward nature of it and being that close to something so deadly that always excited me. I think it’s why I like rollercoasters so much!

10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Just do it the right way — not the quick way. It’s tempting to want to just get things over with and move on to the next more exciting thing but if I have learned one thing over the years, it’s that the process is the reward. There are so many things that I missed out on because I was just looking to leave the job or hand in the test that I get upset when I think about how I didn’t take advantage of those opportunities to learn and grow. It feels torturous in the moment, but it really does yield better results.