Meet an innoFaither: Fallon Wilson
Meet Dr. Fallon Wilson, public interest technologist and digital inclusion leader and innovator. Fallon is Executive Director and Founder of the BlackTechFutures Research Institute, as well as Vice President at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, a civil rights public interest tech organization. Fallon, who lives in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC, leads at the forefront of the digital equity movement, driving research and advocating for policies that support digital infrastructure for Black people, and building opportunities for Black people to excel in the emerging tech democracy.
What faith(s), if any, do you practice? How does your tradition and/or spiritual practice inspire or influence you as an innovator?
I am a Christian. I practice Christianity, but I believe that there are multiple ways to know God. I choose Christianity. Others may practice other religions to find their path. Specifically, I come from the Black Church, which has a unique framing related to liberation and social justice. I also always see things through the lens of a Black feminist.
In my practice, I believe that you write the vision and make it plain. I believe in casting one's vision and writing one's story. I do daily affirmations on what I want to build. I have a set of affirmations that reflect what I'm called to, and I thank God and my ancestors to have these moments of this type of dreaming. This helps me when I'm building something new. It helps in my calling to build a national black tech ecosystem, my calling to build justice.
What are you currently working on?
At BlackTechFutures, we build digital futures for Black people. We operationalize that through our research index and building a Black tech ecosystem in cities, as well as through working with churches and HBCUs and other trusted anchor institutions within Black communities. We believe that if you level the playing field as relates to translating how this world is changing, then you can get mass adoption and creation of new types of emerging tech that you would not have had if you did not level the playing field of information and understanding so that everyday Black people can understand this world of tech. Thirty-nine percent of Black people don't even have consistent internet, so we need digital infrastructure in communities - access to high speed internet, devices, and training. There is no AI future without digital equity and there is no digital equity without racial equity. Anything that doesn't address that will always keep people from historically marginalized communities from being able to compete equitably.
I'm currently working on our Juneteenth Digital Opportunity Bible Study, which is in its third year. We're excited about it because it gives an opportunity on the 250th anniversary on our country's birthday to reflect on how Black people have literally built this country, and how if we had the AI and training data that reflected Black and brown people, we really could build a better country. Black people built this country once through enslavement. Now, we can build a better one through innovation. We're excited to bring thought partners, pastors, imams, and community organizers together to think about this.
The Juneteenth event is an in-person convening that we hold at Greater Grace Church in Detroit, MI, one of the largest African-American cities. We also simulcast it across the Black Churches for Digital Equity network of pastors and churches and partner with the Word network, so thousands of people can participate. We host a worship service in the morning, celebrating Black people and culture. We have a speaker–usually a pastor who thinks about justice and technology–share their thoughts about technology. Then in the afternoon and evening, we work with other partners to train people on machine learning, AI, and coding opportunities.
What can we find you doing when you’re not working?
Always dancing. Any kind of dance - African, salsa, interpretive, anything. I'm usually dancing somewhere.
What is piquing your curiosity these days?
What does global work look like in developing the tools or the governing structures we need for AI? And what does it look like in a larger conversation with people in the Global South leading these conversations? I'm obsessing about this. What does it look like for African countries who are often extracted to build our supercomputing or to annotate our large language models (LLMs). What does it look like for them, too, to be able to build the type of future they want with AI? We just put on a global summit in South Africa in February with leaders from ten different African countries. They need resources to scale and grow.
What is something you’d like help on?
We need funding support for our Juneteenth event because all the companies that were once funding us decided that they do not want to do diversity, equity, and inclusion anymore. This last year has been very hard for Black organizations. Black and brown organizations have lost tons of funding because of racism in our country.
What is something you can offer others in the innoFaith network?
We have a lot of amazing reports on how to build a Black tech ecosystem, how to support Black women in technology, and others that can support people's knowledge of how Black people experience the space of technology. You can download them on our website.
You can find Dr. Fallon via LinkedIn.
Meet an innoFaither is our series to introduce the inspiring optimists in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-rooted social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact. Or just meet some cool people. Find the full series at innofaith.org/meet-an-innofaither.