The Black Enterprise Network

Gwladys majored in Chemical engineering at UC Davis and is currently a human factors engineer at Boeing. Though at the time of this interview she was a materials and process engineer which she’ll be referencing later on in the episode. She discusses the importance of leadership and community and how it led her to where she is today. 

Nick Caldwell is a tech executive, speaker, angel investor and is currently the General Manager for Core Technologies at Twitter. 

He previously worked at Microsoft for 13 years as General Manager of the Power BI product, was Chief Product and Engineering Officer at Looker (acquired by Google) and VP of Engineering at Reddit

Nick’s charitable work includes being a board member for /dev/color: a non-profit whose mission is to maximize the impact of Black software engineers, and founding Color Code: a scholarship fund dedicated to future leaders of color in technology fields.

Tiffany Ricks has been in the tech industry for over 15 years with an expertise in software engineering and cybersecurity. Her love for cybersecurity originated when she worked at a company that built out technology for the United States Air Force and the Navy.

Currently the founder and CEO of HacWare, Tiffany is passionate about protecting companies from unethical hackers.

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In this episode, Sam and I talk about what is was like trying to learn how to code in Ghana, the reason why he's worked remotely for various companies outside of doing a traditional 9-5 at a tech company, and we get into balancing staying in a job for a steady income and eventually transitioning into doing something we're passionate about. 

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Jehron Petty graduated from Cornell University last year and instead of taking a product management job at Google he decided to follow his entrepreneurial passion. At just 23 years old, Jehron is the founder and CEO of Colorstack: a nonprofit that provides Black and Latinx computer science students with the support, community, and career development they need to reach their full potential in the tech space.

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Nikolai Francis has been in product for over 15 years. He comes from a family of engineers and currently works at WePay as a Vice President of Product Management. Compared to what's considered to be traditional tech products, Nikolai loves the payments space because of how interesting the problems are.

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Season 2 of The Black Enterprise Network is coming back this Summer and will feature 9 amazing black stories in tech! 

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In this episode I have a conversation with Daniel Jimenez: growth manager at SqlDBM and founder of Debtly. He talks about his deep interest in finance and how that interest sparked the founding of his company. We also discuss the difficulties that come with being a young startup founder and how you can outsource work without having what's considered a traditional founding team. 

In this episode I have a conversation with Darius Gant, founder of Tesoro AI an artificial intelligence startup, investment professional, as well as a former professional basket player. He talks about how his passion for basketball would change and evolve into passion for the tech industry: especially as founder and investor. He also shares the impact that artificial intelligence has on our society and how it can be used for more than just self driving cars, but also for social good.

Shason Briscoe is a Software Engineer at Survey Monkey and advocate for growing diversity in the tech industry, especially for the black community. He shares how he got interested in Silicon Valley and tech, what it's like to be an intern vs a full timer, and how he's had an impact on black tech and engineering communities.