Bringing People of Color into the Tech World

×

Expand

Photo Credit: Tom Jenz

I met Nadiyah Johnson, the owner of the custom software company, Jet Constellations, at the Sherman Phoenix coffee shop, the art and business hub off Burleigh and Fond du Lac. This is central city territory, heart of the Black community. Johnson is a small slender woman, maybe a couple wafers above five feet tall, but right away she acted 10 feet tall. She took over, saying it was too noisy due to the Sherman Park relaunch event and suggested we walk up to her office.  

Three blocks later, we entered the office, the glass door announcing Jet Constellations. We stepped into a dark interior, with a space for her desk in the center of a busy room. One wall had become a blackboard with messages scrawled in handwriting and illustrations. She came across confident, controlled, informed, and enthused. She looked 19, said she was 29, but acted 39. I could tell she had perfected her concept of a woman, but there was still the girl in her.

Tell me about your background, your family, where you grew up, and what your neighborhood was like. 

I grew up in Mayflower Court on the North Side, a central city neighborhood. I went to Golda Meir Elementary School, Samuel Morrison Middle School and then Rufus King High School. My mother has been a business owner for 25 years, Cynthia Johnson All State Insurance, and her office is right adjacent to this building. She had a big impact on me. When I was around eight and she started her business, she’d take me to Juneteenth Day and African World Festival, and I’d help her pass out brochures. This was my first insight into the world of business, how to treat people, gain customers. My father is a software engineer at Children’s Hospital. In my sophomore year at Marquette University, I was majoring in International Politics. As a hobby, I got very good with the Rubik's Cube. My father thought I’d be good at algorithms. He introduced me to computer science. Took me a while to master the language, but I ended up getting my degree in computer science. I went onto get my masters degree in computational science at Marquette.

At a young age, you became highly skilled in computer science. What was your first job?

I worked at GE Healthcare in Wauwatosa. Stayed there for four years, while starting my own business, Jet Constellations, on the side. Around 2017, there was this narrative among a few Milwaukee corporations to make Milwaukee a tech hub. But when I attended these events, I noticed there were no Black people and very few women. I had also noticed this pattern in academia and in the corporate world of tech. Few Blacks, few women. I was kind of fed up. I went full time at Jet Constellations. Our goal was to be more inclusive, get more Black and brown people involved. We quickly evolved into a software company.  

As I understand it, you are involved with Black and Brown entrepreneurs who want to create tech start-ups. 

Yes, people that have a hard time building their apps and websites because they don’t have the tech skills. As of today, Jet Constellations is a custom software company. We help clients through the phases from ideation to a minimum viable product, the first version of their apps. Then, we try to introduce them to the network of our investors, allowing them to raise funds.     

How might a potential tech businessman or woman come to you? 

Folks reach out to us through social media, Facebook, Instagram, phone call, or email. A good example is a company called Secure Bridges run by a Black woman entrepreneur, Shayvon McCullum. Her goal was to fight sex trafficking in Milwaukee. Her agenda was to provide resources for young women. I reached out to Shayvon and suggested I could help her reach more people.

Together, we built a pitch deck or PowerPoint presentation to potential investors. In a pitch competition, she was awarded Crowd Favorite and third place. Now she could see herself as a woman in tech. We still work with her, and she secured another investment for product development. There are so few Black-led tech startups here in Milwaukee. We have that model, and we can replicate it, and we are helping create an ecosystem of Black techies.

You are collaborating with American Family Insurance. I believe your STEAM & Dream program is designed to prepare students of color for careers in STEM fields through practical courses and having mentors for the students. How does it work in a practical sense?

Jet Constellations has another program, the Milky Way Tech Hub. This program deals with social impact and focuses on getting Black and brown people involved through education, entrepreneurship, and community. We partnered with American Family Insurance, the Sherman Phoenix and Connect Business Consulting, and we launched this program called STEAM & Dream. It’s a great example of community and corporate collaboration. STEAM is the acronym for science, technology, engineering, arts and math. We put together a virtual curriculum to help students transition to e-learning, electronic learning. We’ve handed out over 300 laptops and are reaching over 800 students in Milwaukee with our virtual curriculum.   

How is American Family specifically involved with the Milky Way Tech Hub and STEAM & Dream?

American Family has provided resources to get different programs off the ground. Connect Business Consulting helps with the project management.

Let’s say I’m a student or a young person who wants to get a tech operation going. What do I do? Do you set up an educational program for me?

We will soon be launching our STEAM & Dream master class, an eight week program. This is a Hybrid program in partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools. We will be serving 17 students that are paid to participate in the upskilling program. This is one example of the programs we have to offer. If you are not super technical we have other programs like our hip hop architects, which educates young people on the fundamentals of architecture including tech design formatting for buildings and houses.

Who pays for these educational programs? The students? Their parents?               

No, the classes are free for the students thanks to American Family Insurance.

Let me read a quote from you I found online: “It bothered me to see that there was a bunch of white people coming together to shape this narrative about my city while there was a whole other city that I lived in that they weren’t addressing,” I think you were referring to the notion that Milwaukee is one of the worst places to live and work for Black people. Currently, you are involved in overcoming that problem, right?

I’m big on speaking truth to power. That quote was in 2017 when I observed non-diverse groups shaping the narrative about my city while seemingly not prioritizing Black and brown communities. A great narrative is for a city to be an established tech hub in America. On Google, if I type in the words “Milwaukee and Black,” lots of specifics show up like Milwaukee is the worst place for Blacks to live.

These are negative narratives. It’s difficult to create a tech ecosystem without addressing why a lot of Black and brown people prefer to either leave the city or don’t want to come back here and live. In my small way, I am creating a tech hub that centers around the Black and brown community. This means equipping the city with the tech resources to tackle social and educational problems and also partnering with the private sector. That is our model at Jet Constellations.  

Milwaukee Public Schools are controversial. Black and Brown students do not do well in MPS, lagging way behind suburban schools, and there are a number of reasons. Maybe there aren’t enough practical courses that would lead to practical jobs. Is it possible for MPS to include more courses in the building trades, computer programs, coding, and so on? 

I think it’s important for more schools to realize the importance of computer science in their courses, and then collaborate with community organizations to integrate that curriculum. For example, we partnered with Pilgrim Lutheran, a Lumin charter school. We did four weeks of educating 20 students on data science.  I was the facilitator. We even awarded $1,000 to some students for pitching their ideas. They could now see themselves as not just users but producers of technology. I’m grateful to now carry out similar programming with MPS starting this June.  

Your office is located in the heart of the central city. You not only talk the talk, you walk the walk. You see what’s going on in the Black community from criminal behavior to dysfunctional families to juvenile unrest. Can you talk about this ongoing controversial subject in Milwaukee? Racism, diversity, social justice, and lack of inclusion for Blacks and people of color? Do you have ideas on how to overcome racism and prejudice?

Since the unrest over the George Floyd incident, it feels everybody’s saying Black Lives Matter, but I think what is most important are not just banners and slogans, but actions. Actions are extremely critical to advance in the right direction. From the big tech companies to local businesses, corporations have to figure out their DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion. Action means what is already being done and how can we amplify that work. In 2021, we are past talking about racial issues. It’s time for action. At least in the tech world, it’s time to work as partners, and that is what we are doing through the Milky Way Tech Hub and Jet Constellations.