10 Black Tech Innovators driving change in AI, Fintech and STEM

# **10 Black Tech Innovators driving change in AI, Fintech and STEM** Did you know that Black founders receive less than 1% of venture capital funding, yet they continue to lead groundbreaking innovations in AI, fintech, and robotics? Black tech entrepreneurs represent less than 5% of startup founders, yet their contributions are reshaping industries. These 10 pioneers are breaking barriers and setting new standards in innovation. In this article, we will be listing out top ten black tech pioneers that have changed the game and are still making significant impacts. ## **Top 10 Black Tech Pioneers Who Are Changing The Game.** ### **1. KIMBERLY BRYANT**  Kimberly Bryant is an electrical engineer with experience at Genentech, Merck, and Novartis Vaccines. She founded **Black Girls Code** in 2011, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young girls of color in **STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).** Kimberly Bryant's personal experience with the lack of diversity in STEM fields, particularly for girls of color, directly inspired her to create Black Girls Code.   She realized that while she excelled in STEM subjects, she was a rare exception.  She recognized the need to provide young girls of color with the resources, mentorship, and support they needed to pursue careers in STEM.   🔹 **Key Achievements:** ✔ Grew Black Girls Code to **seven U.S. chapters** and an international branch in South Africa. ✔ Honored with the **Jefferson Award for Community Service** in 2012. ✔ Recognized as a **White House "Champion of Change"** for bridging the digital divide. ### **2. Dr Ayanna Howard**  Dr Howard is a robotics and AI expert, she is currently the Dean of the College of Engineering at the Ohio State University, becoming the first woman to assume the post.  Her books Sex, Race and Robots: How To Be Human in the Age of AI, and On The Job with a Robotic Engineer have enlightened many readers interested in robotics on how to begin their journey and become engineers. Dr Howard is the founder and president of the board of directors of **Zyrobotics**, a Georgia Tech spin-off company that develops mobile therapy and educational products for children with special needs. ✔ Named to **Forbes**  *[America’s Top 50 Women in Tech list](https://www.forbes.com/top-tech-women-america/list/).* ✔ Ellected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and was appointed to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC).  ✔ Recognized as a tenured professor in the college’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in Computer Science and Engineering.  Her work focuses on technological strategies in AI and human-robot interaction. ### **3. Regina Gwynn**  Regina is a brand & digital marketing executive with 15+ years of experience at the Apparel Group, she co-founded *Black Women Talk Tech,* a platform that enables black women to build the next billion-dollar business. Additionally, her organization helps women of color finance and build a career in technology.  Regina Gwynn's personal experience of feeling isolated and underrepresented as a Black woman in the tech industry led her to start Black Women Talk Tech.  She recognized the need for a platform where Black women in tech could connect, support each other, and share their experiences.  She wanted to create a space where Black women could find mentors, build professional networks, and gain visibility within the industry. ✔ Named to **Forbes**  *[America’s Top 50 Women in Tech list](https://www.forbes.com/top-tech-women-america/list/).* ✔ Named as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women by *Entrepreneur Magazine* and Top Ten Women in Tech by Essence Magazine. She currently sits on the Cabinet for Black Entrepreneurship in the City of New York. ### **4. Morgan DeBaun**  Morgan Debaun is the co-founder and CEO of **Blavity**, a media company focused on creating content for **Black millennials and Gen Z**.  She is recognized for her role in inclusive advertising and tech innovation.  Her clients include Nike, Microsoft, American Express, Capital One and Newell Brands. She is also a board advisor to American Airlines, Pepsico and the Black Economic Alliance. Morgan DeBaun's personal experience of feeling underrepresented and underserved by traditional media outlets, particularly when it came to issues affecting Black people, led her to create Blavity.  She wanted to create a platform that would amplify Black voices, celebrate Black culture, and provide a space for Black people to connect and engage with news and information that was relevant to their lives. Over the years, [Blavity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blavity) has played a very crucial role in serving multicultural consumers and becoming a global corporation. ### **5. Jewel Burks Solomon**  Jewel Burks is an  American tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist working as the first head of Google for Startups in the U.S. She is managing partner of the investment firm, Collab Capital, focusing on Black entrepreneurship.  She is also the co-founder of **Partpic**, a visual recognition technology company that allows users to save time and money searching for replacement maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) parts.  By allowing users to snap a picture of a part with a smart device, Partpic matches the user generated image with a part and associated specifications.  Jewel Burks is an advocate for representation for blacks in the technological industry. ### **6. Frederick Hutson**  Frederick is  an American Businessman, Founder and CEO of Pigeonly, a tech company that creates communication tools for incarcerated individuals and their families. Motivated by his sentence to Federal Prison, he started and launched his technology company that enables people to search and find incarcerated loved ones. Pigeonly makes it possible for subscribers to easily send letters, postcards, greeting cards, printed photos from any cell phone, computer or tablet with just a few clicks, saving lots of families over $2M/year in predatory phone fees per year.  It has become one of the largest inmate services providers in the country. ✔ Recognized by Yale, Columbia University, the White House, [CNN Money](https://money.cnn.com/2014/09/17/smallbusiness/pigeonly-prison-startup/index.html), [New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/business/smallbusiness/released-from-prison-and-starting-a-company.html), [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hollieslade/2014/08/21/how-this-man-built-a-3m-business-a-year-on-from-four-years-in-prison/), and many more. ### **7. Iyinoluwa Aboyeji**  Iyin Aboyeji is a Nigerian entrepreneur. Co-founder of Andela and former managing director of Flutterwave, a payment technology company that is helping to build the financial infrastructure for Africa.  He is currently the CEO and General Partner of Fund for Africa’s Future (popularly known as Future Africa), a platform that provides capital, coaching and community for mission-driven innovators. In the same way, Andela provides training for African software engineers, and has provided over 100,000 African software and tech professionals. ✔ Recognized as one of the Top 100 Most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2019. ✔ Also recognized as a world economic forum Young Global Leader and a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree amongst other awards and recognition. ✔ Led Flutterwave to become one of the fastest growing payment technology businesses of all time, with about $2 billion across over 50 million transactions.   ### **8. Odunayo Eweniyi**  Odunayo is the Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer of [PiggyVest](https://www.piggyvest.com/), a Nigerian fintech startup that helps people save mone Her experience seeing the challenges many Nigerians faced in saving money and accessing financial services led her to start Piggyvest. She recognized the need for a platform that would make saving easier and more accessible for people in Nigeria, particularly those who were unbanked or underserved by traditional financial institutions.  *She has won award as “The Forbes Woman Africa", The Future Awards Africa Prize for Technology, and SME Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Wealth and Society West Africa.*  She also founded 99Startups, 500Dishes and FrontDESK. ### **9. Mark Dean**  Mark Dean is one of the top black tech pioneers of all time.  Dean joined IBM in 1979, he sparked a whole new environment of IBM-compatible peripheral devices. He is one of technology's greatest innovators. Co-inventor of the Personal Computer (PC).  He developed the Isa bus with his partner Dennis Moeller, led a design team for making a one-gigahertz computer processor chip.  Dean has worked in various research positions and in 1999 assembled a small team of engineers and scientists to work on building a more powerful, energy-efficient supercomputer named **Blue Gene**.  He became vice president of worldwide strategy and operations for IBM Middle East/Africa business. ✔ Appointed as the **John Fisher Distinguished Professor** in the College of Engineering, University of Tennessee  ✔ Named Black Engineer of the Year in 1997 ✔ The National Inventors Hall of Fame elected Dean and colleague Dennis Moeller for their work on the ISA bus. Later on, he worked in collaboration with the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  ### **10.  Lonnie G. Johnson**  Mr Johnson is an inventor and aerospace engineer, his contributions to tech include projects for the Air Force and NASA, including work on the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the stealth bomber program as an aerospace engineer. As an entrepreneur, he also invented two popular children’s toys; *the Nerf Gun a*nd *Super Soaker* which are bestselling toys, generating over $1billion sales*.*  His current work includes a new generation of rechargeable battery technology and also the Johnson Thermo-Electrical Converter (JTEC), which converts waste heat to electrical energy and can be run reversely as a cooling device.  *He was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal on two occasions and received multiple awards from NASA.*   *He was the first flight test engineer assigned by SAC Test and Evaluation Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base in 1987*. He also introduced the Johnson Stem Activity Center, which introduces students from diverse and unstable communities to **STEM**. Later on, he returned to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he worked as a systems engineer after leaving the Air force. Extensively, these are a few other early black tech pioneers you should know of,  they include:  **Gerald A. Lawson**- Created the first video game cartridge system. **Marc Hannah**- A Co-founder of Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI)  He is mostly known for making 3-D chips and for the creation of computer programs like Personal IRIS, Indigo, Indigo2, and Indy graphics.  **Valerie Thomas**- is an American data scientist and inventor. She invented the [illusion transmitter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_transmitter), for which she received a patent in 1980. She was responsible for developing the digital media formats that image processing systems used in the early years of NASA's Landsat program. **Marian R**-  she patented the technology that allowed cellphone users to donate money to organizations using text messaging. She developed this technology during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it revolutionized how people donate to charitable organizations when a natural disaster occurs.  and a few more…. However, the technology industry still has a lot of work to do to embrace black starters in tech and STEM. People of color still face challenges due to the state of diversity in tech.  Black innovations are to be encouraged and invested upon, in order to encourage more development in black nations, especially in Africa.  Knowing, and understanding the origin of black technology goes a long way in helping young tech aspirants become gurus.  “You can also read about How Mentorship Can Help Close the Tech Gap for Black Professionals. In summary, [black tech](https://inblacktechwetrust.com/) professionals have been evolving sporadically for a very long time now. The technology industry has continued to experience tremendous groundbreaking technologies from black entrepreneurs. However, more opportunities and recognition needs to be made for people of color as well as treating each innovation with integrity, and trust. Looking to support Black-led innovations? Follow these pioneers on LinkedIn and check out platforms like [Black Founders](https://blackfounders.com/), [Code2040](https://www.code2040.org/), and [AfroTech](https://afrotech.com/) for mentorship and funding opportunities. ##### ***Which of these pioneers inspires you the most? Share in the comments!***