Chineye Emeghara’s Outside the Binary: Black Women in Tech Scholarship

The area of technology I want to pursue is user-centered design and digital equity, specifically, building platforms and tools that serve marginalized communities and make tech more inclusive. My interest was sparked during the COVID-19 pandemic when my younger siblings transitioned to online learning. Our internet was unreliable, and my parents didn’t know how to navigate the digital systems their schools used. I became the one to troubleshoot, teach, and translate the tech world for my family. That moment made me realize how critical it is to create systems that work for everyone, especially those who are often left behind. It showed me that technology is not just about hardware or code, it’s about people, and the barriers that keep them from fully participating in the digital world. Outside of tech, another passion of mine is storytelling through poetry. I discovered it in middle school, during a unit on slam poetry. For the first time, I saw how words could move people, disrupt silence, and reclaim identity. As an Afro-Latina girl growing up in a mostly white, conservative town, I often felt invisible or misunderstood. Poetry gave me a way to speak truth and be heard. Over time, it became not just a creative outlet, but a form of healing and resistance. If time were no object, I would dedicate myself to learning music production. I’ve always admired how sound can evoke emotion and connection across barriers of language and culture. I would love to explore how to combine technology, sound, and storytelling to build immersive experiences, especially ones that uplift the voices of the people. I see my future at the intersection of creativity, technology, and community. I want to design systems that don’t just work, but belong to the people using them. Whether I’m coding a platform or writing a poem, my goal is the same: to create space, spark change, and leave people feeling more seen, heard, and empowered than before.

As a 6-year-old, I would get so incredibly angry when my brother would beat me in a game, to the point where I would start crying. Whether it was Mortal Kombat or Soul Caliber, I would spiral and start complaining that he wasn't being fair. One time, I got so upset that I slammed the controller onto the floor. It shattered open, revealing its beautiful but now damaged motherboard.  As a tech person, my brother was furious. He didn't want to speak to me at all for the next few days, and as a kid, I was confused why he couldn't just fix it. Still upset, he explained how the controller functioned and why damage to the motherboard was almost irreversible for someone as inexperienced as him. I was intrigued but still confused.  My love for technology started there. When I was in elementary school, I joined a coding/robotics after-school club. I also joined a Future Problem Solvers club in middle school, where we discussed how technology could be a game changer for many global problems. I loved learning how machines functioned and why they were built the way they were, but my love for Biology grew stronger. When I became a freshman in high school, I was conflicted about which one to choose: Science or Technology.  Diseases are devastating yet fascinating, and all the people around me (and myself) know how stubborn of a person I am, which is why studying virology and pathology to create effective treatments with little to no fatalities from them, no matter how long it takes, is the perfect path for me. I then discovered I could do both through Biotechnology. To be able to study how technology could potentially transform human life is what I wanted and still want to do. Making it as a Georgia Governor's Honors Program finalist in Biology gave me that starting position to dive into the field, and those 4 weeks made me sure of my decision to look into a career in that field.  If time were no object, I would love to learn martial arts. Martial arts require perfect physique, patience, and lots of time to learn. Protecting myself from danger through the hardest martial arts moves would be entertaining and worth gloating about.