"I know that I can accomplish great things with the support of Hack.Diversity."
Hack.Diversity, the New England Venture Capital Association’s initiative to help diversify the ranks of Boston’s fastest growing tech companies, has selected 17 fellows from UMass Boston this year.
Fellows participate in an eight-month career development program with mentorship, connections, and internships at venture-capital-backed tech companies.
Overall, 75 information technology, computer science, and data science fellows from 27 colleges were selected, a 50 percent increase from the previous year.
“In tech, we face two major problems: a talent shortage and an extreme lack of diversity,” said Boston venture capitalist Jeff Bussgang when Hack.Diversity was launched in 2016. “It stems from a failure of overlapping networks needed to build a pipeline.”
Bussgang says Hack Diversity presents a solution to both of these challenges, bridging the gap.
UMass Boston and Bunker Hill Community College were the initial talent partners for Hack.Diversity and helped to shape the program. They still contribute almost half of the fellows.
Hack Diversity’s growing reputation is attracting talented, ambitious students ready for the big stage.
“I know that I can accomplish great things with the support of Hack Diversity,” said 2020 Fellow Erendira Corral, a fourth-year UMass Boston student majoring in IT with a concentration on business intelligence.
Corral has been working in the lab of Assistant Professor Brook Moyers as a McNair Fellow building predictive models from drone imagery data of rice grown under stress. To start her career, she’s also being mentored by Thespina Fletcher, a senior manager at CloudHealth by VMware, in the Student Entrepreneur Program in UMass Boston’s Venture Development Center.
“I actually learned about Hack Diversity through a classmate, a Hack fellow in 2018,” Corral explained. “She told me about her experiences as a fellow, and about the opportunities she was able to get after finishing the program. She also invited me to the first Hackathon at the Google office. I had a good time at the Hackathon. I enjoyed the good dynamic between the fellows, and I also enjoyed learning about their projects. I saw an organization that truly cares for the success of their fellows. That’s what attracted me to Hack Diversity. I strongly believe that working together makes us stronger.”
Here is the complete list of the 17 new fellows from UMass Boston:
- Amanuel Negash, Physics
- Christopher Lopez, Computer Science
- Christopher Monraz, Computer Science
- Danley Nemorin, Computer Science
- Darnell Browne, Information Technology
- Donahue Jeffers, Computer Science
- Erendira Corral, Information Technology
- Evelyn Wangai, Information Technology
- Eyosias Kibe
- Fikir Yilma
- Jarry Ngandjui, Computer Science
- Junior Correia
- Mickeyas Bekele
- Moise Germain
- Werner Ordonez Salguero, Computer Science
- Wilson Kameni, Computer Science
- Yosef Tefera, Information Technology