How Africa News
Devin Jackson made the journey from selling tickets to tourists in Times Square to becoming an engineer who impacted black neighborhoods while working for numerous major organizations.
Jackson tried to come up with ways to solve the problem by giving back to society after becoming discouraged by the depressingly low number of Black engineers in the American computer industry. He co-founded the nonprofit “We Build Black” in 2017, which organizes meet-ups, workshops, and training sessions for aspiring Black engineers.
Jackson told ABC News, “I became a software engineer and realized that I need to share the blessings with everybody around me, and you know, show my community essentially those freedoms.” He also shared that he used to feel annoyed about the fact that certain opportunities were not afforded to the Black community. Though he wanted to complain, he rather resorted to concretely taking action to make an impact.
“We Build Black” has a mission to empower the Black community to achieve socio-economic change through technical education and professional appointment. According to the organization’s website, they create opportunities for Black technologists to network, share skills, give and receive mentorship, and discover their next employer.
By supporting the current community of Black technologists and establishing entry points into the field, they hope to create a more just and inclusive tech sector for themselves and the next generation.
Jackson, according to The Business Insider, never attended high school or college. Instead, he made a living off the streets of Times Square by selling graffiti t-shirts and comedy tickets. Later, he abandoned the streets to attend coding seminars. He studied for numerous professional IT skill certifications while attending boot camps for Python and data analysis thanks to scholarships. He remarked, “I was like, I’m never doing anything else except for this. It was nuts.”
