Jehron Petty isn’t just talking the talk — he’s leading by example when making the technology space more equitable and diverse.

Upon graduating from Cornell University with a degree in computer science in May 2020, Petty prepared to step into a career in corporate America, but life had other plans. Although he received an offer as an associate product manager at Google, his deep desire to build up his community lingered. It was not long before he gave up the Google opportunity to found ColorStack, a startup technology company on a mission to increase the number of Black and Latinx computer science graduates who go on to start rewarding technical careers.

“So I studied computer science at Cornell. I also like to help people naturally; my first instinct when in a group or a space is, ‘How can I help?’ And so the combination of those two things led me to be a very involved mentor while I was in school,” Petty shared in an interview with AFROTECH™. “I noticed other computer science students around me, many of them my friends, from Black and brown communities. They were dropping out of computer science or struggling with interviewing and getting jobs and things like that. And this is even at a place like Cornell, where you’d assume that everybody is, you know, skilled and capable to succeed.”

When he noticed the parallel between the confidence gap and underrepresentation in the space, Petty knew he had to curate something to solve the problem, and ColorStack was born.

“I did a lot of mentorship and support for students, helped them get jobs, helped them do well in the classroom while I was an undergrad, and the momentum just kept building, where the way I explained it is, like, we kind of just kept solving the bigger problem,” Petty explained. “First, I was supporting my friends. Then, I supported the computer science community, more at-large, with the club. And then students from other campuses wanted to help, so I started to support them in different ways. That’s how ColorStack was born.

Today, Petty continues to use his love for computer science and being of service to others. He will bring that energy to the 2024 AFROTECH™ Conference, to be held in November in Houston, TX, for the first time in the event’s history. 

As he prepares to lead a conversation about digital transformation, policy, and immersive technologies during this year’s conference, Petty stresses the importance of using technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality to foster inclusiveness in education for underrepresented groups in the tech space.

“With technology generally, things are more customizable, but with things like VR and AR, AI now augments, it can form an AR perspective. Tons of apps can point your camera at the thing, and it will explain it,” Petty said. “Or, with VR, you can kind of simulate real-world experiences and scenarios that, before that, if you weren’t in the room, or you weren’t in those circles, you wouldn’t get access to, so I think it allows, as I said before, a lot of those gaps to be filled where it’s no longer about being in the room, in the right conversations, in the right communities. You’re having the experience because you’re able to now simulate and learn things in the palm of your hands and with technology that’s free or close to it.”

Beyond building a community around workshops and connecting the aforementioned underrepresented groups with jobs after college, Petty says that through ColorStack, the goal is to help develop an avenue for them to grow their coding skills.

“We have this open-source product that we build as an internal membership portal, and we allow students to build features for it, fix bugs, and see the code itself,” Petty explained. “So now, as a ColorStack member, you’re not just getting an email and opportunities; you’re reading production-level code and have the opportunity to contribute to it.”

As he looks ahead, Petty envisions a world where ColorStack will partner with more organizations and more technical giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon. Beyond that, he wants to see an easier scaling of the organization’s impact measurement, which means that if ColorStack continues to grow past 10,000 or 20,000 members, it will be able to measure the impact in a very intimate way and in a way that continues to tell the story around what the company is looking to do for students.

“Lastly, I would say, we have a chapter, kind of a chapter network, where on campuses across the country, you can start a ColorStack club,” Petty said as he concluded laying out his vision for the organization in the future. “So in five years, I would love for it to be two; we will have 300 different campuses across the country to offer computer science where there’s a ColorStack club that is student-led at those schools.”

Beyond Petty’s conversation about the future of digital transformation technology like VR/AR, 2024 AFROTECH™ Conference attendees can also expect to hear dialogue about AI technology and how to use it to their advantage, along with a host of other panels, concerts, and networking opportunities.

The 2024 AFROTECH™ Conference will be held Nov. 13-16, 2024, in Houston. The Main and Executive Stages will return, but attendees have new stages and experiences to look forward to as well this year. There will also be opportunities for exclusive lounges, curated receptions (based on ticket type), and more.

Click here to snag a ticket, including General Admission, Corporate, Executive, Student, and All-Access. To learn about speakers and scheduling, click here.