I am an associate professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland, College Park, where I am the founder and director of the Community Research and Design Collective. Currently, I'm a visiting researcher at Google Research.

In my research, I explore and design technologies used by geographically-bound communities to address social issues by considering social, cultural, and economic contexts as well as socio-technical infrastructures. The goal of my work is to co-design sustainable technologies, practices, and policies with community organizations that aim to counter structural oppression using equity-centered, justice-oriented, assets-based approaches to research and design. My current projects focus on issues such as equity in AI/ML tools, community safety, education, political efficacy, and economic development in communities that have been historically oppressed and resourced-constrained due to unfair policies and State violence. Most of my work has been situated in Chicago, where I have had the pleasure of partnering with several amazing community organizations.

I received my Ph.D. from the Technology and Social Behavior program at Northwestern University, which is a joint degree in Computer Science and Communication. I received my Masters in Computer Science focusing on Human Computer Interaction from the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before attending Georgia Tech, I received two Bachelors of Science degrees from Spelman College in Computer Science and Mathematics. Prior to returning for my Ph.D., I was an User Experience Engineer at IBM.

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Recent News

• Sept/Oct 2022:  I was a guest editor for the Sept/Oct issue of ACM interactions magazine. We defined the purpose and the content of the issue in our welcome.  I co-authored several articles in the issue about assets-based design, Black and Chicana feminism in design, and designing a community asset mapping toolkit with a lens towards power.
  
• Sept 2022: Delighted to speak at Tapia 2022 on a panel about service.
  
• Aug 2022: Our paper, A Method to the Madness: Applying an Intersectional Analysis of Structural Oppression and Power in HCI and Design, was accepted and is currently in press for TOCHI. Co-authored with Drs. Yolanda Rankin and Jakita Thomas, this paper describes the role of power in HCI and design research when building technologies and introduces a framework for us to critically interrogate systems of power and oppression with a lens towards equity when engaging in community-based research. 
• June 2022: I joined the iSchool at the University of Maryland College Park as an associate professor with tenure. Here is the press release.
  
• June 2022: Also, I joined Google Research as an visiting researcher working on the Responsible AI team.
  
• May 2022: Our paper, Unpacking the Complexities of Community-led Violence Prevention Work, was accepted and presented at CHI 2022.
• May 2022: I co-organized the CHI 2022 Doctoral Consortium. It was exciting to hear about the excellent student work happening in HCI and design!
• April 2022: Delighted to be a speaker on a panel, "Surveying the Landscape of Inclusive Programming to Make Space for Black Women" at BlackcomputeHER.
• 2021-2022: I have given several talks including at Harvard University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Washington.
• Oct 2021: Our paper, Applying a Transformative Justice Approach to Encourage the Participation of Black and Latina Girls in Computing, was published in ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE).
• Oct 2021: My article describing my research, Using black feminist epistemologies and activist frameworks to counter structural racism in design, was released in interactions magazine.
• March 2021: Our paper (with Caitlin Martin), “Impact and Resilience: A Survey of Youth-serving Organizations During the Pandemic” was accepted to the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Annual Meeting and Conference.
• March 2021: Our paper “Sustaining Community and Relationships with Black and Latina Girls in an Out-of-School STEAM Learning Program During a Global Crisis” was accepted to the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Annual Meeting and Conference. This paper is co-authored with several graduate students in my lab, Technology for Social Good Research and Design Lab, my post-doc, Naomi Thompson, and my co-PIs, Denise Nacu and Nichole Pinkard.
• Feb 2021: Our paper “Amplifying Community-led Violence Prevention as a Counter to Structural Oppression” was accepted to CSCW 2021. Delighted to co-author this paper with some of my amazing graduate research assistants (Jessa Dickinson, Maddie Shiparski, and Alejandra Gonzalez) and community partners (Jalon Arthur and Angalia Bianca).
• Nov 2020 - Jan 2021: Honored to give talks at University of California Irvine, University of Colorado Boulder, and University of Maryland College Park during their speaker series. My talk was titled, “Countering Structural Oppression through Co-Design with Residents in Resource-Constrained Communities.” I gave a similar talk at DePaul University for their Design Histories Series, where I discussed history, power, and structural oppression and how we as designers can counter injustice and inequity by taking a community-driven, co-design approach.
• ​more news...

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