Tech for Humanity Summit

Pamela Zibuyile Dube is an accomplished international leader in academia, having attained numerous qualifications from various national and international universities. She is also the first woman to hold the position of Vice-Chancellor and Principal at CUT and the first female Vice-Chancellor in the Free State.

Sylvester Johnson is the founding director of the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities, and a nationally recognized humanities scholar specializing in the study of technology, race, religion, and national security. He is also associate vice provost for public interest technology at Virginia Tech, executive director of the university’s Tech for Humanity initiative, and faculty fellow for the Public Interest Technology University Network at New America.

Rashida Richardson serves as senior counsel, artificial intelligence, at Mastercard. She has previously served as attorney advisor to the chair of the Federal Trade Commission and senior policy advisor for data and democracy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Rashida Richardson is as an assistant professor of law and political science within the School of Law and the Department of Political Science within the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She specializes in race, emerging technologies and the law and is a senior fellow in the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund. Richardson’s research focuses on the social and civil rights implications of data-driven technologies, including artificial intelligence, and develops policy interventions and regulatory strategies regarding data-driven technologies, government surveillance, racial discrimination and the technology sector.

Jameila “Meme” Styles is the founder and president of MEASURE, a 501(c)(3) non-profit social enterprise that provides free data support to Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led organizations. MEASURE builds and deploys research protocols for and by Black, Brown, and Indigenous-led community organizations, and has strategic partnerships with the University of Texas, Texas Southern University, and more. Last year, Meme was named an MIT SOLVER for anti-racist technology in the United States and the DivInc Nonprofit Leader of the Year (2021).

Sareeta Amrute is an anthropologist who studies race, labor, and class in global tech economies. She is currently investigating sensation and social movements in the Indian diaspora in a book project called Securing Dissent: Activism and Cryptography in the Indian Diaspora. She has received a fellowship from the Russell Sage Foundation to support this scholarship. Her recent book, Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin, is an account of the relationship between cognitive labor and embodiment, told through the stories of programmers from India who move within migration regimes and short-term coding projects in corporate settings.

 Cordelia Yu, currently serving as the Acting Director of Experience and Systems Design within the Office of Regulatory and Oversight Systems at the General Services Administration (GSA). GSA, established in 1949, plays a pivotal role in managing and supporting the essential operations of federal agencies. Cordelia brings a wealth of experience to her role, having previously collaborated with 18F, a government organization dedicated to enhancing the user experience across various government services. 

Deborah Raji is a Mozilla fellow and CS PhD student at University of California, Berkeley, who is interested in questions on algorithmic auditing and evaluation. In the past, she worked closely with the Algorithmic Justice League initiative to highlight bias in deployed AI products. She has also worked with Googleʼs Ethical AI team and been a research fellow at the Partnership on AI and AI Now Institute at New York University working on various projects to operationalize ethical considerations in ML engineering practice. Recently, she was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and MIT Tech Review 35 Under 35 Innovators.

Andreen Soley is Director of the Public Interest Technology (PIT) program at New America, where she leads the PIT University Network (PIT-UN) and fosters multi-sector collaboration to grow the ecosystem for PIT products and entrepreneurs. She joined New America after 20 years of working in higher education and the nonprofit sector, where she developed and ran workforce development and career advancement programs with a focus on accessibility for low-income and public sector workers. 

Karissa Thacker, PsyD, is a positive psychologist who practices executive coaching and leadership development in the world of business. Known for her broad-based perspective and the ability to apply psychology to the practical daily issues that occur in organizations both large and small, she has worked with more than 200 large companies and served as a trusted advisor within AT&T, Best Buy, and UPS. Karissa is the author of The Art of Authenticity and a regular contributor to Fast Company magazine.

Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde, Ph.D. is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, healing facilitator, doula, and a Reiki Master. Her research and creative work are grounded in contemplative and ritual practices and respectfully approach the Earth and human bodies as sites of memory, and always with the understanding that memory never dies, is subversive, and can be recovered to transform transgenerational trauma and pain into peace and power. She is the inaugural recipient of the Ph.D. in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University.

 Alfred Ngowi serves as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research, Innovation, and Engagement at CUT (Cape University of Technology), steering the institution towards a future driven by innovation and global connectivity. With a passion for bridging research with practical solutions, he envisions CUT as a pioneering African university, shaping the future through technological advancements.