If you step outside, you can likely smell the Black excellence in the air. And that is an indicator that speakers, attendees, and businesses are getting ready for AfroTech Conference 2023. Last year, the team went down to Austin, TX, and took over, proving the power of influence by Black entrepreneurs, technologists, and corporate baddies. Conference attendees were immersed in a deep, empowering, thought-provoking cultural experience packed with tools for leveling up each day. The specially curated schedule was doubly impactful with AfroTech speakers including heavy hitters: Mark Cuban, Touré Roberts, and Tanya Sam. From the wisdom and insight on the Main Stage to the consistent gems dropped at the Learning Lab to the innovative insight shared on the Product & Engineering, Executive, and Web3 stages — there were constant moments filled with “oohs and ahhs” as attendees digested everything the speakers gave out. But tapping in with AfroTech isn’t just for business. Those who work...

Alphonso “Fonz” Morris is a senior product designer at Coursera, one of the world’s largest EdTech platforms. We sat down to talk to him about his journey and his vision for the company and himself. The Beginning Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, Fonz made his way to the south in search of higher education at the historically Black Morehouse College. As a self-described “engineering-minded kind of kid,” his childhood dream was to become an architect. However, when he got to college, a computer science career seemed to have more potential than an architectural one. While at Morehouse, he also participated in a study-abroad program at Oxford University, where he studied art history and visited some of the world’s most iconic museums and galleries. Although he began his computer science degree at Morehouse, he later transferred to Georgia State after two years because he could no longer afford tuition. While he made this move purely out of financial necessity, he believes everything worked...

Kyle Woumn — a speaker at AfroTech 2019 and a software engineer at Twilio — is no stranger to technology or the culture. If you take a look at the engineer’s LinkedIn, his tagline says it all. “I came up with that tagline, ‘Creating Dope Technology For The Culture,’ earlier this year because I was trying to think about who I am and the kind of work I wanted to do and put out into the world,” Woumn said. The world of technology is not new to Woumn. As an only child, born and raised in a traditional nuclear family in Atlanta, GA, he has always been a creator. His intense passion for learning and technology prompted his mother to enroll him in STEM summer camps in the Atlanta area at a young age. He attended youth programs at Spelman College and Georgia Institute of Technology. His enthusiasm for engineering persisted through high school and he eventually enrolled at the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology to study computer engineering. However, he quickly found that his real...