Creating IT Futures Blog, 2/24/2012 (Julius Clark)

In IT Security, Clark Found His Stage.  Of all the new directors on the board of the Creating IT Futures Foundation, Julius Clark certainly has the most broadly defined IT career. 

And, to think, it started almost by accident.  Clark grew up in Boston’s Roxbury Madison Park neighborhood. During his high school’s junior year, a teacher casually invited him to sign up for the computer-programming course he was teaching. Julius went along. “I was intrigued.”

Turns out, programming was a fun challenge Clark had never encountered.

“There was this whole different level of thinking. You set your variables, and you didn’t have to play with the numbers anymore. We learned BASIC, Turbo Pascal, but he’d let us take breaks to play games on the computers. One of the most complex programs we had to write was to simulate the Space Shuttle launch sequence.”

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Network World, 11/17/2011 (Earl Pace)

IT Hall of Fame Seeks Nominations. IT trade group CompTIA is now accepting nominations for its 2012 IT Hall of Fame inductees. The hall recognizes IT Innovators and IT Channel stars. The Class of 2011 included Phil Katz, creator of the .zip file format, as well as Earl Pace, founder of Black Data Processing Associates. The CompTIA A+ Originators, those who developed a key certification program, entered the IT Channel wing of the hall this year.

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CompTIA Blog, 8/31/2011 (Stephanie Brown, Charles Eaton, Wayne Hicks)

Two Foundations Team Up to Provide Scholarships for Talented Minority Students. By the time she had graduated from Stanford University, Stephanie Brown had already completed internships with Fortune 500 companies Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Deloitte. She was only 21. Getting connected with BDPA in high school put Stephanie Brown on a learning track that led to a managing stint at Microsoft.

Says Brown: “Here I had all these awesome role models. It was a turning point in my life.”

Brown attributes much of her success to an organization that has been quietly helping African American students succeed going on four decades. Today with chapters in more than 40 cities, the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) has been helping middle school and high school students develop interest and acumen in technology fields such as IT in which minorities (and women, for that matter) tend to be under-represented.

Read the full CompTIA Blog post.

Diversity/Careers in Engineering & Information Technology, 6/1/2011 (Earl Pace)

Earl Pace joins IT Hall of Fame. Earl Pace, founder of Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA), has been elected to the Innovators Wing of the IT Hall of Fame.  CompTIA, the nonprofit trade association considered "the voice of the world's information technology industry," honored the inductees at its annual member meeting in Chicago on April 7.

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BusinessWire, 4/8/2011 (Earl Pace)

IT Hall of Fame Inductions Highlight Final Day of CompTIA Annual Member Meeting. Induction of the Class of 2011 into the IT Industry Hall of Fame and educational sessions on opportunities for technology companies in healthcare IT, security and cloud computing highlighted day two of the second CompTIA Annual Member Meeting here this week. The new IT Hall of Fame Class inducted Thursday includes the late Phil Katz, creator of the .ZIP file format, and Earl Pace, co-founder of Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA). Both men were inducted into the IT Innovators Wing of the hall.

Pace guided the expansion of BDPA’s activities from a Philadelphia-based organization to a national initiative. Today, BDPA is the largest U.S. professional organization representing minorities in the IT industry. Pace continues to promote the mission of BDPA, telling meeting attendees the organization “gives underserved youth the soft skills and expertise needed to move up in IT industry.”

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