Robin Walker: Building Futures in Technology
Late last summer, we met up with entrepreneur, former technology manager, and nonprofit leader Robin Walker at her business space in Springdale. In two adjacent storefronts in a shopping plaza, Walker runs a suite of organizations: one a technology support company (Technology Tailor Made) and one a nonprofit that aims to build careers in technology for minority youth (Camp BYOC). That nonprofit started as a short summer program for a handful of teenagers – as “Build Your Own Computer Camp” – and has expanded to become a wider range of programs including coding, multimedia, and robotics.
We talked with Robin after 2022’s summer camps had wrapped up, and our conversation focused on her passion for teaching young people about technology and her career as a Black woman in technology (including two decades at Procter & Gamble as an Information Technology manager).
Interview by Suzanne Wilder. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
Tell us about this space that we’re in.
This is our BYOC camps and clubs space. BYOC stands for “Build Your Own Computer” and this is a nonprofit organization that I started back in 2014. It was a part of my Technology Tailor Made [business], and we’ve evolved into a nonprofit to teach young people computer and engineering technologies.
I am a computer information systems person, so when I retired and started my own business, I wanted to do something to give back to our next generation. So I started this to teach them what I do – I build computers. We teach them how to build computers. I’m a coder, so we teach them coding. We’ve added many subjects to our curriculum; circuity, robotics, multimedia graphics, web design. So a lot of this is out of what I know and do, and I want to help young people dabble, explore, try it out to see if they are interested, what they like, what they don’t like.
We have two camps. We have an explorer camp for our younger kids, and we have an engineering camp for kids 12 and up. We start at age 9, and we go up to age 17. So they can try many subjects and see. And if they want to go further, we have more advanced classes that they can come back and take. The camp started as a summer camp. It was two weeks, and it was really only building a computer at the beginning. But we’ve evolved; we now have eight weeks of different topics. So June and July are full of activity, where we have many kids coming in and learning all of these technologies.
We also have a graduation. This year [2022] we had our biggest year yet, with 117 kids and provided lots of scholarships. We raised a lot of money – a lot is relative, but it was a lot for us – so that more kids could have the opportunity. Our focus is African Americans and other minorities. That’s because I’m African American, and I know our community needs access to these types of programs. As a woman, I’m also very interested in advocating for young women in the program. So that’s what we do in this space. We will have multiple classes running at the same time. That’s why we have this size of space. I’d like to go even bigger, more classes offered simultaneously. One day we will get there too.
Let’s talk about your career and your path in information, technology, coding, and all of those things. What was your path into the field? How did you get started?
I am from Norfolk, Virginia. I went to Norfolk State University, and I majored in math. I loved math all of my younger years in school. I knew that I was going to major in math. I took a class in coding; it was called programming at the time. I fell in love with computer technology, and I said, “This is for me.”
When I graduated, I was hired by Procter & Gamble to be a systems analyst. So I moved to Cincinnati and did that for many years. I was coding, developing new applications, supporting applications, and of course moving up into management and all of that. I learned so much about the world of tech. I knew I loved coding, but there were so many other things I learned in my journey at P&G. I decided that when I left P&G, that at some point in time, I would start my own business and create a technology company. In doing that and meeting people, talking with people, seeing young people come into the store, I thought, “Oh, I should teach them what I know.” Which is how BYOC came into existence.
What changes did you see in the technology industry over that time? Did you see more representation with women or minorities? Did the culture around that [women and minorities in technology] change?
We worked very diligently on that, to change the culture. When I started, there were only a handful of minorities in tech at P&G. And part of our group of minorities tried to change that. We worked with management to recruit more and retain more. We would recruit, but then we would lose people very quickly. It was a continual work. Really I tell people that I had two jobs – one was to do the tech work, the other was to work on the culture, to work on bringing in more minorities, more African Americans, then working on the system to retain them, to support them. It was a very big learning [curve] for me, and something that has stayed with me ever since.
Even now, you’re still working with technology. What have you seen in terms of gender (evolving in technology organizations)?
In terms of gender, yes, there has been some growth. Not nearly enough. I do know in general, in Silicon Valley, minorities, specifically African Americans, make up 2-3% of the [technology workforce] population. Those are the same numbers as it was when I first entered the workforce. There have been some improvements here and there, but not nearly enough.
What made you decide to go out on your own? What was the catalyst?
I have been an entrepreneur all my life. When I was 9 or 10, my mother had my sister and I walking through the neighborhood with a book of greeting cards and knocking on neighbors doors to sell greeting cards. It started very early. I was selling Avon at one point. I was selling candy bars. At one point, I had my own candy store across the street from my home. It was something my sister and I came up with. My mom made custom draperies. And in the back of the store, there was this space. One summer, we had this bright idea to create a candy store. I went and talked to the distributor… and he let me! That was a great experience. I did not realize until many years [later] that I actually wanted to do that full time. The more I understood about myself, the more I realized that doing this full-time is what I really, really want to do.
Was there something leading up to 2014 that made you think, ‘now is the time’ [to start the camps and nonprofit]?
Every spring, I got this urge: “Do a kids camp.” March and April, I would feel that and I would think, the summer’s just a few months away, I don’t have time, I’m getting my business going, blah blah blah. One day I was talking with a customer, and I thought to myself, I’m going to do this kids camp. That was in 2013. I said, I don’t know how I’m going to fund it. I certainly can’t do this by myself. So I started calling colleagues and said, “Will you help?” I talked to customers and said, “Will you help?” People said, “Yes, we will help you.”
We got a small team together and put together a curriculum. Then I had to start looking for kids. I had to look for money. I got a little bit of money. The store’s been invested in this since the beginning. We used space at the back of the store, and we had nine students, and at the end of the two weeks, they built a computer that they got to take home. That was the goal.
And they wanted to come back the next year. So they did! I said, let’s go to California! And visit companies like HP and Google and Facebook, and we found a way to do it. We also had new kids come through to build a computer. We added coding. Each year, we added more. It started as two weeks, then we went to four weeks, then it went to six weeks, and then I said OK, let’s map out the whole summer. We started with 12 and up, and I said, let’s try younger kids. And it worked! So we offer them fun and challenging, but not as challenging, topics as the older kids.
You have the eight weeks in the summer. Do you also have classes during the school year as well?
Yes, we added Saturday classes in 2017. We teach only a couple subjects October through March. There are four segments, and each segment is five weeks. We generally will have fewer students. Maybe five to 10. Last year, this past winter, we had 10 to 15. We had a bigger group this year. Then we’re getting ready for the summer.
And how have you decided what topics to expand to?
Well, the first year, we asked the students. A couple of years, we’ve asked, “What else do you want to learn?” And they all said robotics. We weren’t doing anything in robotics; I’ve not personally done anything in robotics. Jasmine (Robin’s daughter, who also helps with BYOC) had not done anything in robotics. She decided, I’m going to explore this. Which led her into circuitry electronics, and she created the curriculum. She has built that whole side of the camp on her own.
Coding was kind of a natural next step. And multimedia, because I do web design myself, I thought, well, let’s teach that as well. And a part of that is graphic design. And let’s throw in 3D modeling while we’re at it. So we call it multimedia. There are other things I want to add that we have not yet – drones, AI, virtual reality.
Tell us a little bit about outside of this. What else is important in your life?
I’m also an artist, dancer, and singer. I play piano. That was a very big part of my life when I first moved here. I participated in singing groups, primarily gospel. I had my own group, Living Water. My mom was a professional singer – Margie Day. So I come from a family of artists.
I never aspired to be a professional singer, but I love music, and I love to sing. Dancing was more of my gift. I was with a liturgical dance ministry. That’s what I’m very, very passionate about. That filled a lot of my time and activities in years past, before all of this. Expression and movement, I love movement. I’ve loved it all my life.
What advice would you have for a young person who wanted to get into technology? Where should they start?
Research. What are the areas [that interest you]? I believe you have to find your passion. Find what you like. There’s so many areas in tech. Some people love coding, some people hate coding. There’s coding in everything. You can’t do anything without coding. But you don’t have to be the primary coder to be successful in tech. There’s data science. There’s AI. What interests you? What makes you feel energized? That’s true whether it’s a tech career, music, anything! What energizes you? When you’re energized, you’ll go after it. You’ll give it your all. You’ll do your best.
Tech requires math and science. We tell our kids this [in the camps]. That’s one of the first questions I ask when they talk about wanting to come to the camp: How do you feel about math and science? If you’re not interested in science, this is not the place. If you like math and science, it’s a natural for you. When I was in college and I took that coding class, I was hooked. I didn’t have to think any further [about] what I was going to do. I didn’t know how I would use it in the real world and industry, but I knew I was going to do something in tech. And that’s what you want to look for. Where you get excited about it.
That’s why it’s really powerful to have these experiences (like the camps) where you’re learning a skill that you can carry forward into something. And test that out.
I feel I just stumbled on it. When I was in the sixth grade, I fell in love with math. And when I went to college, I majored in math, because no one talked to me about engineering. I might’ve gone into engineering but no one told me. I stumbled onto coding, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is it!’
There was no one to say, try this, try that. And that’s what BYOC is here to do. Try all these different things, find out what you like, and then let’s build on that. And if after trying it you say, I don’t like tech – that’s good too, to know what you don’t like. There’s a world of opportunities.
Realistically, the work may be very different. Coding will exist. But if you had said 15 years ago, in a technology organization – the future is all apps and subscriptions, they would have said no, people love our website and software. Or people love this disc that they download (software). Things evolve. For a teenager to be able to dabble in it, to figure out those things, it’s really cool.
That’s why taking them to Silicon Valley is important to me. They can see Facebook. We walk down the streets, and it’s like Candyland. They’ve got shops, restaurants, playtime areas, all these amenities. They (technology workers) work very hard. For the teeangers to understand – I can work in this type of environment… It’s a different culture out there than what we typically see here. For them to say, “I could be here. I could be one of those engineers.” They go home and say, “I want to work here; I want to do this.” We’re giving them options.
What are your hopes for your organization or yourself in the next few years?
What I hope for is that I can see the outcomes of this work: that this work has been instrumental in the lives of young people, where they are doing things they want to do, that they’ve learned in tech, where BYOC gave them a start. And I’m starting to see it, but I want to see it bigger and more and more. I want to see BYOC nationwide. I want this organization to be a household name. You want to learn tech? Go to BYOC. That’s what I want to see.
I want to go international as well. But I want us to have the resources, the money, to have the ideal set up, the ideal location, where all the bells and whistles are in place for young people to learn. And that’s what I’m working towards. This to me is a good beginning.
Tell us about an influential woman in your life.
My mom. I still hear her words. She passed on in 2014, in the fall, right after our first camp. I had been talking with her about wanting to do this. My mom had a performing arts school for kids. She had been a professional singer. She trained kids – some of them are now on Broadway and other places – to sing, act, dance. She understood the whole thing about kids. She always reached out to kids, to help kids. She understood what I was trying to do. I still hear her words from when I was young: “You can do anything. Find a way or make one.” Things she would say to encourage and inspire me. I did not know how much she knew until I left home. When I was a kid at home, she was just mom. When I came to P&G and I would talk to her about things in the workplace, and she understood and could relate, I was surprised. She had a wealth of experiences in show business that she could understand. The conversations became more meaningful and valuable. She could give me advice. She’s been my hero for a long time.
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