NAACP Hosts Tech Diversity Panel, Black-ish star at #NAACP106

The Youth and College Division held an exciting and informative dialogue this afternoon at the Center Stage in the Industry and Commerce show. The dialogue, entitled the Cyber Cafe: Diversity in Technology, gave exciting and new information on breaking into the technological work force as a minority. The dialogue, hosted by Youth and College Division , Director Sammie Dow, featured two successful young professionals, Sonja Gittens Ottley and Jewel Burks, who gave their insight on the topic. Sonja Gittens Ottley is a Global Diversity Programs Manager at Facebook, part of the Global Diversity Team. Ottley was also able to give advice to rising professionals in the the technological field as well as give information about some available internships and programs Facebook is sponsoring. Jewel Burke is co-founder and CEO of Partpic, an Atlanta based start-up designed to streamline the purchase of maintenance and repair parts using computer vision technology. Burke is also an Entrepreneur in Residence for Diversity Markets at Google. Burke was also able to give some insight on entrepreneurship as well as being active in your field while in school.

The Cyber Cafe also featured the young and brilliant, Yara Shahidi, actress and activist from ABC’s new hit series, Black-ish. Shahidi’s segment in the cyber cafe focused on youth and activism. Shahidi touched on how important it is for our youth to be actively engaged and concerned with today’s social issues. She commended our youth for utilizing social media as a tool to promote social activism.

The NAACP Youth and College Division commenced their sub-divisional meeting this morning for organization and election of committees for each chapter. The students congregated to hold an election of youth representatives to the national youth work committee to elect youth officials to conduct campaigns, rallies and initiatives to address the 5 games changers the NAACP has implemented. These games changers include Economic Stability, Education, Health, Public Safety and Criminal Justice and Voting Rights and Political Representation. These initiatives or “games changers” are set to maintain and materialize the original mission of the NAACP on a municipal level while engaging the youth members of the organization. We are eager to see what our youth has in store for us this upcoming year and we commend them for the work they have done this far!

Fanta Toure