Kamilah Taylor is a Jamaican software engineer; she is known for advocating for women and people of color in the tech industry.
Early life and education
editTaylor was born in Jamaica, to parents Ashley Hamilton-Taylor and Delta Taylor.[1] Her parents still reside in Jamaica, where her father is a computer science lecturer at University of the West Indies, and her mother is a teacher at St. Andrew's Prep School.[1]
In Taylor's earlier years, she attended Mona Preparatory School in Kingston, Jamaica until the fifth grade. She completed middle school at Holcomb Bridge and attended North Spring Charter high school in Atlanta.[2] Both of which were magnet schools centered around advanced math and sciences, as well as performing arts.[2] She obtained a bachelor's degree in math and computer science from the University of the West Indies.[2] She also earned a master's degree in computer science with a concentration in robotics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[2]
Career
editTaylor's career started at Wolfram Research, Inc directly after completing graduate school.[1][3] In late 2011, she applied to LinkedIn and joined the company in 2012 as a software engineer.[1][4] Taylor led the infrastructure and flagship app integrations on the LinkedIn Learning app.[2][5] In 2017, she was noted as one of Business Insider’s most powerful female engineers in the United States for her work with LinkedIn.[5] Taylor was involved via Google chat in the Girls in ICT Caribbean hackathon, which was held in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados — International Girls in ICT Day in 2017.[2]
An engineering manager for Uber tried recruiting Taylor for a developer position at the San Francisco startup. However, she declined the position due to a major sexual harassment controversy with the company. The female manager replied telling her that “sexism is systemic in tech”, which then sparked some backlash via Twitter.[6][7][8]
References
edit- ^ a b c d "Kamilah Taylor - A Jamaican link at LinkedIn". The Jamaica Gleaner. 2015-09-13. Retrieved 2024-11-05.
- ^ a b c d e f g "Jamaican named among most powerful female engineers in US - Jamaica Observer". Jamaica Observer. 2017-04-29. Retrieved 2024-10-18.
- ^ Dickey, Megan Rose (2015-11-08). "POCIT: 7 Black Engineers You Need To Know". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-11-08.
- ^ a b Holmes, Tamara E. (2020-10-23). "The Future 10: Get To Know These 10 Black Women In Tech". Essence. Retrieved 2024-11-08.
- ^ a b Bort, Julie. "The 43 most powerful female engineers of 2017". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-11-12.
- ^ "Why engineer Kamilah Taylor turned down a job opportunity at Uber". Mic. 2017-03-24. Retrieved 2024-11-12.
- ^ Shen, Lucinda. "Manager Tries to Defend Uber by Saying "Sexism is Systemic in Tech"". Fortune. Retrieved 2024-11-12.
- ^ Levin, Sam (2017-03-24). "Uber manager told female engineer that 'sexism is systemic in tech'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-11-12.