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Keynote Speaker
Quincy K. Brown
Dr. Quincy K. Brown is the Director of Space STEM and Workforce Policy at the National Space Council in the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Quincy was previously a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and before that the Head of Programs at AnitaB.org, a global organization dedicated to the development of women technologists. Quincy is co-founder of blackcomputeHER.org, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting the advancement of Black women and girls in computing and technology in education and in the workforce. She was previously Program Director for STEM Education Research at AAAS where she focused on pre-service STEM teacher education, innovation and entrepreneurship. She has also served in the Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor and a AAAS S&T Policy Fellow as the NSF focused on CS and STEM Education.
For six years she was an assistant professor of computer science at Bowie State University. There she conducted HCI research and examined the design of intelligent tutoring systems and the design and usability of mobile devices and use of mobile devices in emergency situations by first responders. She completed her PhD as part of the Vision and Cognition Lab of the CS Department at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa While completing my doctoral studies she was a National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellow and a Bridges To the Doctorate Fellow. As a GK-12 Fellow she taught and developed STEM curricula for middle school students.Quincy began her career in industry as a test and software quality engineer at Nokia, NEC, and Raytheon. Her research has been supported by Google, DOD, DHS, and the NSF.
Omar H. Ali is Dean of Lloyd International Honors College at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A historian of the global African Diaspora, he infuses performance and play into the culture and curricular offerings of his campus through workshops in improvisation, interdisciplinary course offerings, and programing that emphasizes the power of play and practical philosophy in people’s learning and development. A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University, he was named Carnegie Foundation North Carolina Professor of the Year.
Omar H. Ali
Plenary Speaker