Afua Bruce is a leading public interest technologist who has spent her career working at the intersection of technology, policy, and society. Her career has spanned the government, non-profit, private, and academic sectors, as she has held senior science and technology positions at DataKind, the White House, the FBI, New America, and IBM. Afua has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering, as well as an MBA.
Afua is co-author of the book “The Tech That Comes Next: How changemakers, philanthropists, and technologists create an equitable world”. The book, which is co-written with Amy Sample Ward, came out in March 2022.
What was the spark that led to you and Amy Sample Ward writing the book?
My background is in computer engineering — I started my career off as a software engineer. Since then I've worked in the private sector, in government, with nonprofits, and in academia. In that work, I think deeply about how communities can use technology more and how we can really use technology to help strengthen and empower communities.
My co-author, Amy Sample Ward, leads NTEN, which is a large nonprofit tech organization. Through their work NTEN helps nonprofits use technology thoughtfully. They also navigate relationships and conversations with private sector tech companies to bring to bear how we can strengthen nonprofit technology.
Amy and I wanted to think about how we can do tech differently and how we can change the way that we relate to tech, as far as concerns funding, development, and use especially when it comes to the social impact sector. We've put our thoughts into the book and tried to imagine how we can build a more equitable world and what role technology could have in it.
The book seems to speak to stakeholders within the PIT space, as well as readers who are new to public interest tech. What are you hoping that readers will take away from it?
We wrote the book with the intention that you didn't have to be a technologist to understand it. In fact, you don’t even have to be in the PIT space to understand it. One of the things that we want people to take away from the book is that wherever you sit, you have a role to play, and you have opportunities to really help us to imagine and then to build a more equitable world.
You can participate in those conversations about technology, whether you're developing it, whether you're using it, or anything in between. You have a role to play in those conversations, in really centering equity, communities and values, and then deciding when and how to use technology as appropriate.
I’ve heard you talk previously about working towards community-oriented technology solutions. How would you like to see that emphasized more in PIT education environments?
In educational PIT environments, starting with a conversation about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion is really important to get into the right mindset. Start asking questions: how do we bring in diverse people? How do we address the concerns of a diverse group of people? How are we building equitable solutions? How are we doing in inclusive ways?
Those discussions need to happen throughout the project. Addressing equity, addressing justice, addressing diversity isn't just a box to be checked or a single activity you add at the end of your project. I’d really like to see an understanding that these activities have to be built in throughout the design and development and deployment processes.
What do you see as the role of an educational organization like the NYU Alliance, or other members of PIT-UN, in the fight for equitable tech solutions?
Well, folks like myself, who have formal education and have been in the field for a while have learned a lot on the job. We’ve largely developed into public interest technologists through our life and job experiences to date. So, what's exciting about educational spaces, such as the Public Interest Technology University Network, is that we can actually train people to do this work. The lessons we’ve learned, good and bad, don't have to be relearned over and over again.
We can actually instill that training from the start. We can bring framings from all sorts of researchers, authors, and practitioners to the classroom that can help us think about how we build the tech that comes next. We can use our experience to help ground people as they start their careers, whether they go into academia, whether they go into government or to the nonprofit space, or even if they go into the private sector. We can teach them to take these concepts and figure out how to embed them in the work wherever their work takes them.
Was there one example of advocates using technology towards achieving a more equitable solution and extending their mission that you found particularly illuminating during the process of researching the book?
We probably quote three dozen people in this book. And each person represents phenomenal work that's being done today. That’s what’s really exciting about writing a book, you get to learn and write about what's coming next.
If I had to highlight just one, I might choose DataKind and John Jay College. John Jay College is a four year institution, and they partnered with DataKind, a nonprofit that does data science and AI for other nonprofits and government agencies around the world. Together, they built a model that can help identify students who are at risk of dropping out after completing three quarters of the credits needed to graduate.
After using this model for two years, John Jay College credits the model with an additional 900 students graduating at a cost of only about $250 per student to the university. There's a tremendous impact there, which is great. But what really stands out for me from this example is the transformation that John Jay College went through. Speaking with the John Jay College staff, they really emphasized how the project empowered them to have technical conversations with other vendors, and to make more informed choices about other technologies that were offered to their university. They were empowered to have different conversations with their funders to allow funding for different activity streams.
Working on this project gave the John Jay staff clear opportunities to establish new collaborations between different departments within the university. Universities can often fall victim to having pretty defined silos. But through this project, they were able to break down some of those silos, and develop new working relationships that are still in place today.
When technology is implemented and executed well, a lot of impact can be had, and not just on the mission itself. Here, the project ended up shifting some dynamics within the John Jay College staff to allow for the building of collaboration and breaking down some academic silos.
What is one thing that people can start with if they are interested in building a corporate or educational culture where questions of equity and fairness are centered?
Well, I would of course say read the book! I think the book is useful because we've structured it around five main roles that society has. Each chapter ends with 25 questions to start conversations for each of those roles. I’d really encourage people to go through some of those questions.
Going back to why is really important. Consider the overall mission of the organization, but also the purpose of any tech solution that has been proposed. Ask what is the purpose? Who have we spoken to about this? Who have we not spoken to about this? You want to make sure that you're engaging communities in these conversations.
I'd also encourage people to ask questions like: who benefits if this solution works well? Who is harmed if this solution works well? Who benefits if the solution fails? Who is harmed if the solution fails? Asking questions about your purpose and execution is absolutely essential.
What is something that makes you excited about the future of PIT?
Seeing the interest that smart, talented people have in PIT at universities. I’m so glad to see so many students being interested in the field. I think this is a shift that we've seen over the past couple of years, from people dabbling in it or falling into it to really making a conscious effort to get involved in PIT.
The excitement of students today in pursuing careers and education and jobs and organizations of their own in the PIT field gives me great hope for its future. It makes me optimistic about the ability of this work to grow and have an even greater impact than it has now.
