Systemic Bias is Designing Our Future.

This platform documents the scholarship, programs, and public engagements of Dr. Jakita O. Thomas, whose work sits at the intersection of computer science education, learning sciences, and the lived experience of Black women and girls in technology. What you'll find here is not a survey of the field. It is a record of building inside it.

Areas of Inquiry

Four threads run through this body of work. Each one informs the others, and none of them stand alone.

Research & Publications

Peer-reviewed studies on computational algorithmic thinking, game design pedagogy, and the structural barriers shaping who gets to build technology.

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Initiatives & Advocacy

Programs including the Vivian Thomas Summer Intensive and the Black Women in Computing community — long-running efforts that turn scholarship into practice.

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Speaking & Engagements

Keynotes, panels, and convenings on algorithmic justice, equity in CS education, and the future of intersectional technology design.

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Insights & Perspectives

Essays and reflections from inside the academy, including pieces on navigating academia as a woman of color and the application of skills in real contexts.

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Why Intersectional Computing

A facial recognition system that misidentifies darker-skinned women at rates an order of magnitude higher than lighter-skinned men is not a bug. It is a design choice — one made by omission, by training data that didn't include those faces, by teams that didn't think to check.

Intersectional computing names this gap and works to close it. The framework treats race, gender, and other social positions not as variables to control for but as analytic lenses that reveal how technology actually behaves in the world. According to reports from across the field, products tested against intersectional benchmarks catch failures that single-axis audits miss entirely.

The implication for practitioners is direct. Build with the most marginalized users in mind, and the system tends to work better for everyone. Build for the assumed default, and you ship the assumptions with the code.

From Research to Community

Programs like the Vivian Thomas Summer Intensive exist because research findings need somewhere to land. Middle school girls of color spend weeks designing games, learning computational thinking through projects that reflect their own questions and communities. The intensive is named for a Black surgical pioneer whose contributions went uncredited for decades — a deliberate choice.

The Black Women in Computing community operates on a different scale and timeline, convening scholars, practitioners, and students across career stages. In practice, sustained community is what allows individual careers to survive environments that were not built for them.

Engage This Work

Whether you're an educator redesigning a curriculum, a researcher seeking collaboration, or an organization booking a keynote on algorithmic justice, there is a path in. Start with the writing, attend an upcoming talk, or reach out directly.

Contact & Booking About Dr. Thomas