☀️ Announcing: May’s Responsible Tech Mixer and Celebration of BAD INPUT with Consumer Reports and Kapor Center!
All Tech is Human is thrilled to host a celebration of BAD INPUT, Consumer Reports' new short films on the biases in algorithms and datasets that result in unfair practices towards communities of color, often without them knowing. In partnership with Kapor Foundation!
Plus: The panel conversation will feature Nabiha Syed (The Markup), Crystal Grant (ACLU; featured in BAD INPUT), Lili Gangas (Kapor Center), and moderator Brian Vines (Consumer Reports).
Join us on Wednesday, May 31, at 6:00 PM at Betaworks in New York City! Registration is free but limited to first-come, first-serve availability. Once we reach capacity we will open a waitlist. Don’t miss out on your chance to convene with a diverse range of stakeholders and interests at the heart of the Responsible Tech Movement!
Nabiha Syed is the chief executive officer of The Markup. She oversees The Markup’s strategy, growth plans and business operations. Nabiha also oversees legal, communications, personnel and other operational matters.
Before joining The Markup, Nabiha was vice president and associate general counsel at BuzzFeed, where she counseled on newsgathering, libel, and privacy matters worldwide. Under her leadership, the company successfully defended against libel litigation arising out of the publication of the Steele dossier and initiated numerous notable access litigations. Prior to BuzzFeed, Syed co-founded the nation’s first media access law clinic, currently in its 10th year of operation at Yale Law School, and served as a First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times.
Nabiha has been described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine, and a “real reporter’s lawyer” by the Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press, which recognized her with an inaugural award in 2018. She is also a lifelong Girl Scout.
Crystal Grant is a Technology Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. Dr. Grant is a graduate of Emory University’s Laney Graduate School where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. After obtaining her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Emory, Dr. Grant served as a Mirzayan Graduate Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences. She next served as a Legislative Fellow in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office through the TechCongress Congressional Innovation Scholars program. Dr. Grant earned her undergraduate degree in biological sciences at Cornell University.
Lili Gangas is the Chief Technology Community Officer at the Kapor Center working to create new and more inclusive tech innovation ecosystems regionally & nationally. Her work is centered at the intersection of technology, economic justice, and action-driven partnerships to tackle pressing social and economic inequities of underrepresented communities head-on. Her areas of focus include emerging themes such as Future of Work(ers) and Equitable Cities, particularly as they relate to seeking out new economic development models with cross-sector partners. Lili believes that it is critical that we help prepare and upskill communities of color for the future, today. She leads with urgency to provide paths for East Bay talent to not only enter but also create tech in order to unlock upward economic mobility. She was a New America CA fellow focus on Tech for Good, was recognized as SF Business Times Most Influential Women in Business and SF Business Times 40 Under 40, and is an MBA lecturer at Mills College. Lili was recently a featured Salesforce Dreamforce and TEDxOakland speaker.
Before coming to the Kapor Center, Lili was an Associate Principal at Accenture Technology Lab’s Open Innovation team, based out of Silicon Valley, building bridges between startups and commercial clients. She was also a founding member of the Innovation Services team at Booz Allen specializing in crowdsourcing, prize challenges, and open data solutions at the federal level. Before that, Lili could be found in the lab working on software and hardware solutions for the aerospace industry as a Senior Multi-Disciplined Software Engineer at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.
Lili's community involvement is at her heart and purpose. All of her work is focused on engaging communities at different intersections to show that tech can be done right if it's inclusive of all people - whether it's locally in Oakland or across the US. She’s a proud immigrant from Bolivia and believes in meeting the community where they are at. She’s been an active Startup Weekend organizer – helping launch Women’s Edition, Impact Edition, and Latinx in Tech Editions. She also helped organize the first TEDxOakland. She is an advisor to tech-focused nonprofits such as AI-4-All.org and 1Degree.org. Lili holds an MBA from New York University Stern School of Business, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
Brian Vines is a Chicagoan by birth and a New Yorker by choice. After completing the Masters Program in Broadcast Journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication he worked with such outlets as CNN, NYC-TV, Brooklyn Independent Media, the internationally syndicated VJIAM show, and BroadBand Network3. In addition to reporting, show running and producing, Brian is also an Emmy Award- winning host and moderator of live events on topics ranging from contemporary memoirs to police brutality.
In his role at Consumer Reports, Brian examines inequities in the marketplace, in an effort to ensure fairness for consumers. For example, Brian has covered the growing trend of community fridges, refrigerators placed in public areas, stocked by the community and providing free food to those in need. His work helped shine a light on the increasing food insecurity brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic and the underlying inequities that created a need for this type of community intervention. Brian also looked at dietetics and how the cultural and language divide between healthcare professionals and the Black and Hispanic communities they served often made it difficult for these communities to receive the support they needed.