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Paul:
What do you get when you take a Jackson native who went to school for her undergrad at Mississippi State, who left for more schooling in a big tech job, who has brought her education, talents, and money back to Jackson to make a difference? Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call the podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places, and events that make the City With Soul shine. Today, we visit with the founder of the Bean Path, applied science manager for Amazon artificial intelligence, and founder of the Jxn Tech District, tech evangelist, Dr. Nashlie Sephus. That last one, tech evangelist? Well, Dr. Nashlie explains.

Dr. Nashlie:
I remember when I first told my family I was doing this. "So you're going into Christian science, is that what it is?" And I was like, "No, no, no." So to evangelize basically means to go where no one's gone before and share information. But what it means in the tech world and the tech industry is someone who, again, goes where we don't normally go and spread news and information and awareness about technology. But in particular, my focus and specialty is artificial intelligence and machine learning. My background is in computer engineering and software development. And my team currently at Amazon Web Services, we focus on responsible AI. So how do you do AI but also do it responsibly? And so auditing all of our systems, all of our services to ensure that we're checking for biases. We're also being transparent about what works, what doesn't work, and things like that. And then just educating our customers on how to better use our products. I do a lot of traveling. I do a lot of visiting, trainings, research as well.

Paul:
You work for Amazon. They purchased a company where you were the chief technology officer called Part Pic. So if I were to hop on Amazon right now, would I still see evidence of your work there?

Dr. Nashlie:
Absolutely. The shopping app is the technology that we worked on and developed. And of course, it's been on the several iterations and improvements since then. But we were first the startup company that I was CTO for was in Atlanta, Georgia. And we were acquired towards the end of 2016, and so we joined Amazon at that time. So it's been over six years for me having been there, led teams and worked with several individuals and other technology since then. But basically, you can go to the Amazon shopping app, which I do. I would say I do it way too much. And click on the little camera button next to the search bar and just point your camera at something and it will take a picture and then recognize what's in that picture and then search for that on the Amazon store.

Paul:
You are a Jackson native. And I've kind of buried the lead here. You have this major project happening here in Jackson, Mississippi, your hometown, the Jxn Tech District. If you had to pitch this project, what would you say to somebody?

Dr. Nashlie:
So the Jxn Tech District, which is led by the nonprofit, the Bean Path, which has been around for almost five years giving tech help, skills, and exposure, we're building a tech hub that not just puts a gap in a digital divide like most tech companies and tech hubs do across the country. We're doing the opposite. We're bridging the digital divide with social, economical, and cultural bridge initiatives. And so that includes bringing companies, that includes having programming for youth for the most vulnerable populations, our senior citizens. We also do training, there's a housing component. There's a food component because we're in a area where we lack a lot of options to fresh food, which is crazy because we're downtown. But we're doing a lot of things to try to change that, even providing cultural events and amenities for residents that already live in the downtown area. And just creating more of a community, which leads to a lot of things. The workforce development, it leads to having healthier people, healthier lifestyle, safer areas. Also, more of a community style throughout the city.

Paul:
I saw where you said the Inc. Magazine, and I'm quoting here. "It's clear that people don't expect anything good to come from Jackson. So it's up to us to build something for our hometown, something for the people who come behind us." Unpack that a little bit.

Dr. Nashlie:
Half the battle in doing this project is trying to figure out, how do we get resources? If we ourselves don't put our money where our mouth is, then you really can't rely on anyone else to come into a place that only thing they hear about our negative things on the news. They see water crisis, they see political issues, and people really just sort of stray away. That has been my experience whenever I have conversations about where we are. We have a harsh past. But I know the people here, we know that we have a lot of great folks here. We know we have a lot going for us.

And I would love to be able to showcase that more through something like a tech hub, which I think, when it unifies people, it helps people advance. It helps the state advance. And it helps us really reach our potential in terms of innovation, which we've only scratched the surface in a place like Jackson where we have needs, we have issues that we can solve with technology. And if you just empower those people with the right tools, then watch what we can do and become a model for people all over the country.

Paul:
Yeah, because the talent is here, right?

Dr. Nashlie:
Actually, there's something called the brain drain, which you may be familiar with, which I am a product of. I was educated here. A very intelligent group of folks, I know they come from here, they feel like they have to leave the state in order to get the opportunities that they have in order to make the amount of salary that they want to make. And unfortunately, that has been the case in the past, but we're trying to change that.

Paul:
Where is the project currently? I know it's been in the making for years, and I know you've said that the summer of 2020 with COVID and the George Floyd killing really helped kind of change the landscape. So what's the current status of the Jxn Tech District?

Dr. Nashlie:
Despite a lot of the issues and the things that were happening at that time, we're able to now acquire 21 acres of land and eight buildings total since then. We have since raised over a million dollars in private equity and over a million dollars in philanthropy dollars from various companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Kellogg Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, so much to the point where we opened our very first project we completed last year. It was ironically an old parts warehouse company, used to be called the Oliver Van Horne Building. And we renovated that building into our makerspace, which is Bean Path's headquarters. We do afterschool programming, we do day programming, we have membership, so you can get access to all the equipment like the laser cutter, the 3D printers, the woodworking, even the sewing machines, the embroidery machines. And we're teaching people how to use these tools to create trades. And how do you really get back to that hands-on making, which in hand leads to more creativity that leads to people being more interested in tech?

The word STEM, when they put the A in it, it becomes STEAM. So science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. And so once you entice the people with the arts, then you take them a little bit further. Also, things like AI. So my background is AI, which I'm very passionate about. And so I want to make sure that we're ready and we're understanding, we're aware of the tools and the technologies that are coming and that are out there, and that we're a part of it and not just sitting on the sidelines.

Now, of course, we have following phases coming up that include housing. We also have some more food places coming. Our next project, which is our three buildings coming up, the big barn over there, which is my favorite building, we call it the Bean Barn. They actually called it the Bean Barn before we moved into it. It used to have soybean, and so I said, "Okay, this is meant to be." So we're at the Bean Barn and we have a workforce development program we're working on as well as a smaller barn. We're doing a restaurant in that building. So yeah, lots of things come down the line. I'm so excited about it.

Paul:
You are all about community. You love the community, you love the city, you want to contribute to it. So I have to ask, why is that your passion? Why do you want to continue to make Jackson, Mississippi such a special place?

Dr. Nashlie:
I believe, like you said, wholeheartedly, I know there are people like me that are from Jackson that want to see this happen as well. I just had a lot of things aligned to where I was able to come back and do it when I did. But I've also been in the world where I've been in the tech industry. I've had a successful startup company. I've worked for corporate America. I've also done research and studied abroad. And everywhere I go, they were advancing. It just seemed like everybody was so far ahead. And when I would come back home, it seemed like two different worlds. And so I wanted to be a part of that change and do whatever I could to contribute to that problem. And after a while, you just get tired of not seeing the progress. And so you have to be the change that you want to see.

Paul:
That's tech evangelist and founder of the Jxn Tech District, Dr. Nashlie Sephus. We'll put links to her work in the show notes. Soul Sessions is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization from Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Rickey Thigpen. You can learn more about us on our website, it's always up-to-date, online at visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf, and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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