Black Enterprise, 10/7/2013 (Khalia Braswell)

Digital Undivided Champions Diversity in Tech With FOCUS 100. Digital Undivided isn’t waiting for permission to change the current tech landscape, which is largely (and unapologetically) young, white and male. In fact, Kathryn Finney, managing director at Digital Undivided, mobilized to flip the script, creating the FOCUS 100 technology conference which brings together tech companies with black women founders/co-founders, angel and venture investors, leading corporations and those invested in the future of tech.

Sponsored by Google, the Global Hack allowed students, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts alike to code their way to the grand prize, which included $500, Nexus 7 tablets and Rasberry Pi systems. Graduate students Khalia Braswell, Aqueasha Martin and France Jackson, as well as Wanda Eugene, PhD, won the hackathon with an app that allows users to identify healthier ingredients for recipes and places them on a leader board where they will be ranked by others who also have the app. The more points a recipe earns, the greater the reward.

Braswell sent out a celebratory message on Twitter after the win: “We won our first hackathon!!”

Read the entire Black Enterprises article.

NOTE:  Khalia Braswell is a BDPA Charlotte chapter member.

Dreams Keep Me Awake, 7/31/2013 (Khalia Braswell)

Khalia Braswell

White House Tech Inclusion Champion for Change. Watching this live broadcast was very inspiring! Fortunately, I was familiar with quite a few of the organizations on the panel including Black Girls Code, the National Center for Women In Technology (NCWIT) and Digital Undivided.

In 2008, I was a recipient of the Aspirations in Computing Award from the NCWIT. As a result of receiving this award and my involvement with the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA) High School Computer Competition, (I was on the 2008 Charlotte team which placed 5th), I will be attending the BDPA Conference in two weeks in DC to sit on a panel for NCWIT!

Read the full Dreams Keep Me Awake blog post.

North Carolina State University, 1/22/2013 (Khalia Braswell)

Khalia Braswell (r)

Computer Science Future Students. "Field of Dreams", a popular movie in the late 1980’s, coined the phrase “If you build it, they will come,” meaning that people don’t realize they want or need something until it is right in front of them. Today’s most relevant way to build a field of dreams is to integrate technology into subject matter, which is just what NC State computer science students Khalia Braswell and KaMar Galloway have done. Their collaboration with Dr. Fay Cobb Payton on a critical healthcare outreach effort is changing mindsets, increasing communication and bringing people together to talk like never before.

Read the rest of this NC State University article.

NOTE: Khalia was a member of the 2007 BDPA High School Computer Competition (HSCC) team trained by BDPA Charlotte chapter.

Creating IT Futures Blog, 9/27/2011 (Khalia Braswell, Stephanie Brown, Julius Clark, David Gottlieb, Reginald Jamerson, Dennis Rankin)

Julius Clark

It's Time to Show IT Off. The thing is, if material success is important to a person, then a kid could do a lot worse than to follow a career in information technology (IT). For example, it was recently reported that mobile app developers are pulling in six figures — whether they had a college degree or not.

Six figures for someone in their 20s! Hey, that seems like rap star status to me.

Julius Clark thinks so, too. Clark is the president of the Charlotte (N.C.) Chapter of the Black Data Processing Associates (BDPA), a professional technology organization formed in 1975. I was introduced to Julius over the summer when Creating IT Futures Foundation partnered with BDPA's own foundation to award $10,000 in scholarships.

Read the full Creating IT Futures Blog post.