Part 2: Kamau Bobb, Google's Global Lead for Diversity Strategy

A Keynote from the 2020 To Code and Beyond event at NY's Cornell
Tech.


Kamau Bobb is a national authority in STEM education. He is the
founding Senior Director of the Constellations Center for Equity
in Computing at Georgia Tech. He is an engineer and science and
technology policy scholar whose work focuses on the relationship
between equity for students and communities of color in the STEM
enterprise, large educational systems, and the social and
structural conditions that influence contemporary American life.


He brings to his current position a wealth of experience as a
former Program Officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
At NSF he was responsible for $30 million annually of investments
targeted on improving computing and STEM education. In that role,
Bobb worked at the highest levels of the federal government to
help shape the national research agenda for effective means of
delivering equitable and quality computational education to all
students. He has worked with members of the Office and Science
and Technology Policy in the Obama Administration to set the
national strategy for STEM education at both post-secondary and
secondary school levels. He was selected as a member of President
Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper STEM + Entrepreneurship Taskforce to
help U.S. cities craft strategies to engage young men and boys of
color in the STEM landscape.


Prior to his federal appointment, Bobb was the Director of the
STEM Initiative for the University System of Georgia, a
collaborative effort with the governor’s office to improve STEM
education across the 30 public institutions serving approximately
325,000 students in the state. Bobb brings to STEM education a
fierce commitment to equity as an indicator of justice. He has
addressed and advised numerous leading tech sector companies,
universities, and k-12 schools. His writing on STEM education and
culture has been featured in The Atlantic, Black Enterprise, The
Root, Edutopia and on the Obama White House Blog. His national
and state leadership have contributed to a STEM education agenda
that is more honest and reflective of contemporary social and
cultural realities. Bobb holds a Ph.D. in Science and Technology
Policy from Georgia Tech and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives
in Atlanta with his wife, Lisa, and daughter, Sadira.


Notes from the episode:


Register for CS4All NYC's Men of Color Lunch:
https://cs4all.force.com/s/lt-event?id=a2af4000001BKiuAAG


Cornell Tech's K-12 Initiative:
https://tech.cornell.edu/impact/k-12/


Kamau Bobb at SXSW Edu, 2019: https://youtu.be/ghnS4k3dCfg


Constellations Center for Equity in Computing at Georgia Tech:
http://constellations.gatech.edu/people/kamau-bobb


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