Quincy Brown is the Tapia 2020 General Chair, Co-Founder of blackcomputeHER.org, and the Director of Engagement and Research at AnitaB.org. We spoke to Quincy about her career and her experience with the Tapia Conference.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the Bronx, NY. I participated in a gifted and talented program starting in the first grade with children from all backgrounds and was part of a multicultural cohort that was together until the 8th grade. This program helped me develop a love for math and science.

How did you get into Computer Science?

I attended the Bronx High School of Science and learned about Electrical Engineering at a Coast Guard Academy summer program. After high school I attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and wanted to be a hardware engineer. My previous exposure to electrical engineering combined with the fact that I was intrigued by circuits and circuit design, helped me to figure out that I wanted to major in Electrical Engineering. As an EE major, my first programming classes were Assembly and Fortran. When I graduated, I worked in private industry as an electrical engineer and began to do more software programming including designing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) designs for circuit board testing and missile and radar systems.

While working in industry I started a Software Engineering executive master's degree program at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. At the time my daughters were 3 and 6 years old and I thought I had my career neatly planned. However, a year in the program my job went through a reduction in force that left me suddenly unemployed. While trying to figure out what to do next I decided to pursue my interest in gaming and Intelligent Tutoring Systems by enrolling in the Computer Science PhD program at Drexel University. My advisors had backgrounds in computer science, gaming, and cognitive psychology. Through coursework and research, I became interested in how the brain processes information. My research focused on behavioral modeling and mobile learning and I focused my dissertation research on creating intelligent tutoring systems for handheld devices, e.g. Palm Pilots, and early handheld devices. Despite the challenges associated with having a young family while a full-time student, I was determined to complete the program and successfully earned my PhD in 2009. After finishing my degree at Drexel, I was a CI Fellow Postdoc at the University of Maryland College Park where I joined KidsTeam and learned co-design research methods while designing technology for kids with kids. During this time I learned a lot about the differences between how children and adults engage with devices, for example it was harder for children to press and drag on devices.