In this episode of From Chains to Links, Kelly Burton and Ifeoma Ike welcome pioneering startup founder Tiffany Norwood and Jaret Riddick, a research engineer with over 20 years in the defense industry. Together, we dive into the evolution of Black people in tech, the relationship between racial equality and national security, and the vital role of imagination and dreaming in ensuring that Black people fully embrace our divine right to innovate.
How are you?
I’m good.
We are feeling good.
I think so. It’s been a great couple of days. We launched something huge. Declaration ‘26. Everyone should head over to BlackInnovationAlliance.com and check that out. I know you are proud of that.
I’m so proud of it. I’m proud of our team because what we have been able to put out in the world is significant. We were talking about the fact that there’s been a whole lot of anger and frustration around Project 2025. No clock back. No counter vision for the future American economy and that’s what Declaration ‘26 offers, so we are proud of it. It offers a vision for an American future that’s inclusive and not exclusionary. That’s forward thinking and not backward. It’s like, “Let’s go.”
Thank you for that and thank you for pushing our team with consent. Oftentimes with innovation, we are afraid to say that, you know a leader by followers and I don’t have a problem saying that, “Kelly, I follow your lead and you put this out there because not only that was timely, but because it was necessary.” We are excited that our guests have even said that they have come across it. We just launched it. We are excited that people are excited to talk positively about what the future could look like and not reflect on what’s always here, which is negativity.
That’s why I’m so excited about our guest because we are talking about the future Black economy and future Black folks in this country. There are few people who are better equipped to navigate us to that conversation. Welcome, Jaret and Tiffany. Thank you so much for coming.
Thanks for having us.
We are so excited about this conversation, but we want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, provide our readers with some high-level understanding of your background, and it’s so hard for both of you because you have such amazing backstories but, Tiffany, I will let you go first.
Thank you. I’m Tiffany Norwood. I am a proud Black woman from a career and innovation space. I have been a serial tech entrepreneur. I started coding in the ‘70s. Licensed. My first computer software was in the early ‘90s. All in all, I have done nine startups, predominantly text startups spanning about 60 countries and they include the first satellite radio of which XM Radio that startup was our North American radio. I’d like to say as a Black woman, I raised the money for that startup nearly $1 billion back in the ‘90s. One of my startups included Next Generation Broadband in the early 2000s.
We developed all the technology to automate digital phone and broadband internet activation so they could go to Best Buy or wherever and buy cable modems versus needing tech to come to your house. I have three startups, one Tribetan, which is in the edtech innovation space. We do edutainment with two of our major projects, right now being Sexy, Black Genius, which is a live theater show that debuted at the Candy Center. Sold out. We will be coming back to the Candy Center and we are also going to be trying to bring it to the Apollo Theater as well.
This is an unhidden figure. I say unhidden, she’s like, “I’m here.” You and I have an opportunity to have lunch and I’m in awe.
He took notes on how to fight too. A fight will always be there. You know somebody can fight when they say fight with a smile. I had decades of practice. I always say, “The German Shepherd does not go around barking all the time.” They will bite when they need to, but otherwise, they are relatively chill because my first dog was a German Shepherd. If you are confident in your bite you don’t need to be barking. Come on.
Folks, don’t play with Tiffany.
They do but then they find out with a smile.
I’m Jaret Riddick and I am a senior fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology here in the city of Georgetown. Before I started though it was 9/11. It’s a day when we all remember where we were. I want to lift the name of I graduated from Howard University in Engineering back in the early ‘90s and I have a classmate who was at work in the Pentagon on 9/11 and lost his life. I want to lift his name, Major Clifford Paterson. As we remember the day and all that happened and everything that preceded that and how things changed, I want to lift his name because we die twice. On the day we die and the last time someone says our name.
I want to lift the name of Major Clifford L. Paterson. My goodness. Black Innovation Alliance has released Declaration ‘26. I always want to honor you guys because as you said, “There’s been so much conversation,” and yet, has anyone taken a step to do something? I remember when I first saw you, it was Black Tech Saturday during a conference and you held that at National Harbor. I felt the energy and knew there was something that I came to you and I said, “How do I get into Black Innovation?” I’m so honored to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.”
As I said, I’m now serving as a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. This is an AI and National Security think tank that is working on data-driven and evidence-backed recommendations for policymakers in the AI space. I have been at the think tank for about a year and a half, I’m there as a senior fellow. I was telling someone earlier when I was first approached I didn’t know what to say or fellow was.
I talked to a friend of mine and she said, “There are not many Black folks who have that title,” and said, “When a Black child hears your name and that title, their trajectory may change it. That made me say, “I have to pursue this and figure it out.” The first time I saw you guys, you had Andre Perry on your panel. He was one of the most noted. One of the most noted think tanks. I know Andre Perry. I’m having a great time there at the think tank. They are doing amazing work. We had our internship program, we brought HBCU and MSI interns. Again, this is about training the next generation of technical policy experts and producing a lot of content. It’s something I will discuss.
I want to say what’s wild about both of you, and I’m glad what you said about the little child because I was sitting here like, “What?” When people say that I hate this question now, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Who says, “I want to write a play called Sexy, Black, Genius.” I want to build a platform for robotics.
What we love about having these interviews is seeing how creative we have always been, but then it’s allowing this Veil to continue to be lifted for people that are reading to be like, “I didn’t know I could do that or I didn’t know I could go that path.” I want to thank both of you for the risks that you took to pursue maybe what wasn’t there before you started and also the risk to endured. They say people who are, “I worked on the hill for a smooth two years.” They say when you work in the federal government like every six months is a year. When you say twenty years like thank you for sustaining and for still contributing to that field. I wanted to say that.
There is a gospel song that says, “I don’t look like what I have been through.” I looked up and it was twenty years and I had always looked at the bios of people I admired and the government and they had been outside. People say, “You can leave in twenty years and before you retire.” All these nice federal rules you can take advantage of, and so I did that.
As far as the risk-taking, the risk was my parents. I’m the middle child so I was always off on my own and allowed me to pursue things that we didn’t have a blueprint for. My dad tells a great story about one time trying to teach me how to do something with my hands, and he said, “Are you going to just go to school for the rest of your life?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You did.” The risk-taking is important but giving people space to do that when we don’t have a blueprint is something that’s not easy to do, but if we are successful, then we get people like Tiffany.
Also, I say that we look at things more as professional goals and careers. Whereas for me, starting on this tech path and the ‘70s. I had a very unique journey because I was the first of a lot of things, but I was the only one. I have looked for others and my generations starting in tech and flying for my first patent in the ‘80s and being a successful Black female self-made Tech entrepreneur. I was the only one. People say that in the world because I have been to 60 countries. All my startups have been global. I was pretty much the only successful Black female tech entrepreneur of my generation starting then.
I’m happy to see that there’s a funnel now for investors and investment bankers I say. I’m very hopeful for the future of seeing more and more women, and more women of color being successful on this path, especially because we are talking about wealth generation. By saying that for me, I believe in the human potential from cradle to grave and that your best role model is your imagination. If I was looking to see something external before I would do it, then I wouldn’t be on this couch now because I wouldn’t have done anything that I did. I didn’t have role models back then.
Your best role model is your imagination.
I feel that your imagination is how God prays to you. Other people will say it’s unrealistic, which is my least favorite word. For them, it would be unrealistic. Raising $1 billion in your late twenties. I might add micro braids down. They would say that that’s unrealistic, but for me, it was very realistic because God had put the vision in my head, and I almost knew step by step how they would do it. It took me less than a year. Anyway, the moral of that story is, ladies, don’t let people tell you how to wear your hair. People think the moral is money, but it is not. It’s you being your true self all the time in leaning into your power even with your hair.
Can you give us a little bit of perspective because being Black in tech is cool? You both got into tech when it wasn’t about being cool. It was something you were passionate about. Can you talk to us a little bit about the evolution of the Black experience within the tech space? What have been some of your big takeaways? You all have no idea how far we have come.
My colleague who sent me Declaration ‘26. We have had a lot of conversations about this and the initial one, I was meeting him for the first time. We were supposed to talk for 30 minutes and 4 hours later, we were still in Panera. At the end of that conversation, we came up with the notion that we believe that technology can be a key to the unfinished business of civil rights. When we think about ourselves as a generation, we stand on the shoulders of giants. The Civil Rights Movement afforded us opportunities, and in those opportunities, many of us captured technology as a path forward.
Now to think about where we are and all this the justice movements. Whatever you want to speak to, technology can play a role in changing the scale and how we think about these problems, but we have always been present. If you think back to the Industrial Revolution and how they rolled out. The first Industrial Revolution, which is water and steam power. Black folks were in slavery.
Second Industrial Revolution, which introduced electricity to manufacturing. At that time, we were in the Jim Crow. Third Industrial Revolution, the Computer Age, Civil Rights Movement. This fourth Industrial Revolution is about the Internet. This is the first time we have been in a position where we have at least on paper free and fair full participation of Civil Society, so it should mean something different. If you look back on all those ages, we had inventors. We had Garrett Morgan and The Real McCoy, we had innovators in the computer age and then we sat here with Tiffany.
We have had evidence that in technology, we can be leaders. We can be inventors, founders, and discoverers. Now perhaps we can deal with scale. That it’s not just a breakthrough. I had that same experience being always the only one never deterred me but it was always the only one, and so now the difference can be that we can scale because there’s democratization.
In the space of emerging technologies, many of these are at Ground Zero where there is no declared leader, either regionally or domestically. There’s so much opportunity now. For having pioneers like Tiffany and others who have done the work, we now have a little bit of a road map as some blueprint. Now in this fourth Industrial Revolution, we are on the precipice of the fifth with the things we have to see in AI. The sixth will come very soon. I predict that it will be an emerging BIO in AI.
We now have some blueprints so can we go at scale? The growth opportunity and all of these emerging technology areas are in the underrepresented groups that have not been shepherds of technology before. Here we are with a significant opportunity with a significant pool of talent, and dealing with scale will bring something very different in this Industrial Revolution that we didn’t see in the past.
For me, I have lived the transformation. When I was born, Martin Luther King was still alive. I’m a product of the late ‘60s. I was the first of my family born with all my civil rights. I will say this for everyone, especially the Black and Brown Communities, the opportunity is yours to see because in the beginning having resources like computers or access to technology was so inaccessible that by nature when something is a scarce resource especially back in the ‘70s, we didn’t have access to it.
This goes to following your passion and your calling, whatever that may be. When I was a kid, I knew I was supposed to be in tech and tech wasn’t even a big thing for regular people. I had an imagination with it. My parents had yet to get me a laptop. I started with a book paper and pencil teaching myself to code because you only need a computer to know if your code is right.
From that, as a self-taught coder, I was able to matriculate to Cornell College of Engineering as an Electrical Engineering Computer Science major in 1985. That in itself is so much opportunity for our community also. I will also say when I was there, a lot of people didn’t want me. Even with a University as open and inclusive as Cornell, there’s always 1 or 2 people. I used to come out of the Engineering lab. When I got back to my dorm room, my phone would start to ring. When I picked it up, there would be silent breathing. It didn’t take long to make the connection. It was me being in the engineering lab and so then I would have a friend escort me home, a fellow engineer because who knew where that would continue to go.
Fast forward, I’m back at school and I’m back at Cornell Engineering. I’m getting my Master’s of Engineering and Systems Engineering, for many of the reasons why you said. The experience that I’m having as a woman, as a person of color, and the number of people, who are there in not necessarily systems engineering, but collectively at Cornell Engineering is phenomenal. The dean of Cornell Engineering is a Black man, so that has been a tremendous amount of change. The fact that we have the Black Innovation Alliance that you and you existed is a huge change because you can do anything with the week.
The access to money. I met Luka who was a guest on one of your other shows. Black VCs and all these young Black VCs so that at every stage of a startup, you have access to Black Capital and Female Capital because that’s going to be how you raise more and more money. I will say to give a shout-out as well. The first internet entrepreneur network solutions was a Black man that we talk about, Thomas Edison with invented electricity, but it was a Black man Lewis Latimer who invented the filament that would last for an extended period, and then also patented the manufacturing so that we could manufacture on scale.
There was Patricia Bath who’s one of my favorite innovators and she patented and invented, and she had also gone to Howard University. Laser cataract surgery. She was a sight activist inspired by Martin Luther King and many people are able to see for extended periods of time in their lives because of a Black woman. The list goes on and on. One of the things that’s different now is that there are enough of us in a variety of different roles in the ecosystem from research to actual startups to compiling communities, that we can get these stories out and let the current and future generations know that we have always been there. It’s part of your birthright.
A lot of what we are trying to figure out is how we leverage innovation for wealth creation. We talk about the ways that wealth has been created in this country and one of the things that I’m on my soapbox about these days. We are still talking about housing as a means of wealth creation and housing doesn’t mean wealth creation if you bought your house in 1983.
If you are buying a house now, you already have some measure of wealth when the average home price is $380,000. It’s all about getting in on the ground floor. That’s how you build wealth. When it comes to all the emergent technology, what is the ground floor that we should be paying attention to? Where is the real opportunity for us to leverage emergent technology in innovation to drive wealth creation?
The defense department awarded Howard University a $90 million IDIQ contract. Without going into what that is, this is the biggest research-based contract that’s been awarded to HBCUs. That contract is to establish a University Affiliated Research Center at Howard, which is a consortium of nine HBC universities. A University Affiliated Research Center is a UARC, and this is an acronym that is very important to go to. There are about fourteen UARCs. Several of them are very well-known Johns Hopkins, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Penn State ARL, and Applied Research Laboratory which do billions of dollars of business with DOD, as an exclusive customer.
For years, folks have gone around and I said, “HBC should be involved.” To have this UARC now from the Air Force established with an HBCU is a huge thing. I worked with the senior executives in the Pentagon to establish that. When Lloyd Austin came to Howard to announce it. That’s how important it is. The Secretary of Defense came to Howard to announce this. He quoted Truman. It was an amazing quote from Harry Truman that he had said at the Howard Harry Truman speaking at Howard commencement that we need all of the talent in America. Truman said that several years ago and this could be no more true now. We have this real opportunity in the way that Tiffany was talking about it to pull this talent. I haven’t written it, but I’m going to write that the growth opportunity for us in terms of talent is in these underrepresented populations. They have not been stewards in advancing emerging technology.
The National Science Board put out this great graphic, this Missing Millions graphic with ages talking about 2030 demographic goals and the gap that’s there. The people are there. The talent is there. The question is, are our systems capable of bringing this talent into the technology ecosystem in mass? We don’t want to talk about one-offs and passion projects, but doing it in mass. This is part of the work that I’m doing now.
I’m looking at the Place Space Innovation policy because the United States is spending $80 billion on this Place Space Innovation policy. When I say Place Space Innovation, this is looking at innovation hubs. How do we place money in places to attract industry in certain areas? We are spending this money, but as I have started to look at this, I said, “Here’s an opportunity because the narrative around Place Space Innovation is for Left Behind communities, it’s about equity. I said, “Here’s an opportunity first to think about how we bring talent from these underrepresented communities through different pipelines.
Rather than the K-12 pipeline. It could be more locally rooted. We have all of these resources, but once I started looking at the literature, what I found is that these Place Space Innovation projects have focused on land deals and real estate deals. I’m doing this research now with a student. I said I would give him a shoutout. Here’s your shoutout.
In the Place Space Innovation space, people have not thought about how this can connect to talent. What I’m looking at now is that this talent gap is now a national security issue because we have competitors on the world stage, who are producing more in number and who are determined to take over many of these emerging technology areas where there’s no critical mass now.
Where we have talent that’s being left behind, we are losing in the strategic competition and so it is of critical importance that we get this talent in any way that we can Place-based innovation may present an opportunity to do this but we don’t have the metrics. People are designing these things only around land and real estate deals, and I have been told by someone who’s in this space, I can’t get my mind around how we do this successfully and bring the Legacy. The people of Legacy Community alone have found it shocking.
You are going to love Declaration ‘26.
It’s all up in your lane. It’s all up in your business.
Yeah, I haven’t been ready, but the reason I’m doing the work is to support folks like you who are doing that. What I found is that the data has not been collected. We don’t have metrics and frameworks so we can’t have the discussion in the way that we need to, and there is such a critical national security issue here that to continue to have the divisive conversation around these diversity issues is health-aiding and abetting the enemy if we want to say it that way. I have an op-ed that I did about this diversity as a national security asset.
I would love to hear from Tiffany how you are looking at this for a lot of reasons, especially since by force. You have had to be a pioneer. Some people assume that when you are the only you want it to be that way. As you were speaking, Jaret, we have been talking a lot about the concept of security. Always push for diversity, but also get underneath this diversity umbrella to let people know like, “This is the reason why diversity is connected to all of our well-being.”
Tiffany, as you are thinking about this ground floor that is necessary to be created, I’m also interested in how you are thinking of the narratives. That also needs to be translated in mass to the public around, not just this is good to have or even within our communities when parents are trying to figure out how to support their kids and move along. What are the ways that you are thinking about both the tools but also the narratives, the stories that also have to be told in mass?
That’s a lot of what my edtech company Tribetan does. I had first founded it several years ago because people were very curious about my journey and story and they were like, “How did you do it?” Being a good engineer, which Jaret appreciates. We always have systems and algorithms. I started publishing and speaking on my method which I call the Tribetan Method of Mindset and Skill sets to bring imagination into reality. The tagline of Tribetan is the science of turning imagination into reality. We teach every one of every age. Youngest ten year olds are 102. We have also started going into senior home facilities because to your point I believe in the human potential and I believe that the best way to win and, It’s not belief. It’s evidence-backed now that there is more diversity you have. The more you win.
The more diversity you have in innovation, in sports, and whatever I came back from the Olympics, you are going to win. Sometimes I even say, if the US did not get rid of slavery, would we be the country we are? The answer is no because we can look at models like South Africa, which I went into doing during my satellite radio days to help Nelson Mandela in the ‘90s. You cannot be the top at anything if you are only pulling from a pool of one type of person or thing. It’s not possible.
To me, part of the success as a country and community is activating everyone on these innovative and entrepreneurial skill sets and considering it literacy the way we do reading, writing, and math. People didn’t learn to read and write all to be Frederick Douglass or Emily Bronte or any of the other famous writers. It wasn’t about profession. It was about success in life success as a country and success as a company. When I speak to fellow CEOs they say well, “Who do you think in our organization needs this type of literacy?”
I was like, “Your organization needs to know how to read and write?” It’s critical to the future because in the future the most successful people and companies will be those that can take ideas and start to bring them into reality. Everything else is being commoditized, including coding. Then we go back to Kelly’s original question which is effectively where are the opportunities right now and how should we be looking at that as a community?
I understand this because I’m coming off of the Civil Rights Movement and Jim Crow before we were more conservative and played a bit safe because it was survival mode. If we think about what survival mode is like now back then it was even crazier and to the gratitude of our parents and grandparents, we did survive and our ancestors. We lived, and we succeeded. Even coming off of slavery like that period of the Emancipation Proclamation there, where we come from, there were people in the same lifetime that were slaves and business owners that were slaves and ran for office. They were slaves and sued their former slave owners. They didn’t wait for future generations to do that. I asked us all to be bold and creative and to take the leap of faith.
Every success that I have had has been when there has been a disruption either computers coming along and disrupting, then the internet coming along. I was one the first on the internet because I was an engineering student, so we had access first, but that came along in exploring it. The whole broadband and social aspects of exploring digital media exploring. The Metaverse and that tech exploring that and now Artificial Intelligence coming of age like I licensed my first software related to our artificial intelligence in ‘92, but now it’s come of age.
This is a time to be as bold as our ancestors who ran for office after being slaves for half of their lives to step up and take a chance because that’s where we are going to win. That’s also part of the entertaining message of Sexy, Black, Genius. It’s on us that we have walked the path already like the two of us in a variety of different ways to put the systems in place. Hence what you are doing with the research and the data and evidence-based.
With you all, I can’t wait to read it and to have this manifesto and this approach and algorithm. It’s up to the rest of us as well to make the steps. That’s why I’m getting my Master’s in Systems Engineering because I want to change the world, but I’m being smart about it. You have to have a system that stays behind for it to stick.
If you close this out, tell us about your book.
Speaking of innovation. First off, the Sexy, Black, Genius and I hope when it comes out starting with Black History Month, people come because right now our campaign and project is Vote Like a Boss. When you open it up, it’s me as a strong Black woman. I want everything to be disruptive. Vote Like a Boss, it’s using the Tribetan method to be innovative when we get out the vote. Looking at a mindset around self-worth and self-actualization having a winner’s mindset versus a loser mindset. It’s about stepping on the field of play as you will have to do. If you want to be successful in anything business, school, or sports life, it’s about taking your ideas seriously.
If this episode ain’t a commercial for that book. I don’t know what it is.
I hope people get it. Relational organizing as a term has been, it came, it got exploited, it got taken out even from its origin which was like with us. What I hear from you is that people often see relational organizing as limited to our very loyal, but limited Black institutions like the church, the barbershop, and the bus stop, all of which of where we are.
When you are talking about skits and persuasion, there are tactics that we use every day to get our votes and our voices outside of elections. It reminds me of Kelly has a lot of different thoughts about why democracy works and doesn’t work. Our team way back in the day before we were pink cornrows, started as Black and Brown people vote, which was like the concept of the outcome isn’t a person. The outcome is there’s always something to net and there is something for us and you. The fact that as an engineer with a systems mindset, like allowing people to see themselves, that what you do is enough to get what you deserve is powerful.
In the concept and to conclude on the spirit of deservedness we are building and we are moving in this force as BIA with this birthright of innovation. We have the right to innovate. For people that are reading this, you need to know both of them are moving their heads like bobblehead dolls when I said right to innovate. I want to very quickly, 60 seconds like when you hear right to innovate, what makes you shake your head so vigorously? What does that mean for us when we say the right to innovate?
Part of the work that I’m doing is to change the Senate from needing a diverse Workforce that looks like America to we need a diverse Workforce that mitigate susceptibility. A great power competition with very capable near-peer adversaries. Everything that you are saying about what Black people have done, to me, is core to our success in the future against some very tremendous forces that are developing and are moving against us domestically but more, so they are moving against our neighbors in the global South and they are Black and Brown. They are South America and Latin America where we see those forces at work and tremendously at work on the content of Africa.
We have work here to do to lead the change, and so the work that I’m doing now is premised on the fact that vulnerable communities create susceptibility in this great power competition, but can’t take base Economic Development to mitigate that susceptibility and create more owners, founders, and discoverers and technology, and what do the metrics measures and mechanisms look like that allow us to be able to design in that way and ultimately it seems like conventional wisdom. If we have more technology, we need to have measures so that we can lead the policy discussion and show where we want to have an impact. When we are investing, we are investing in the right places in the people in the right structures to bring these things about in the future.
For me, the reason why I was nodding is that I feel that right is beyond country. It’s a god-given because effectively innovation is imagination taken seriously, and we all have the right to imagine. We imagine our freedom. We imagine this brave new world that we live in as a country. Martin Luther King famously said, “I have a dream. I have a road map or a protocol or a plan.” As entrepreneurs and founders, it always starts our imagination. It’s like this thing that we can’t let go of and we bring into reality. We all have that right. We don’t even have to say. It exists. We are always telling kids to stop daydreaming. I’m telling kids and adults to daydream and do it. It’s more than about the economy. Life and death are at stake because a cure for cancer exists in someone’s imagination right now that we are not taking seriously.
That’s amazing. Thank you all. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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Thank you all so much. Thank you to our guests for joining us in our conversation. Every episode leaves me so full but so recommitted and determined to continue to drive these conversations and service and center these conversations that are all about how we leverage innovation to drive well creation self-determination, and economic independence liberation in the Black community. Thank you all for joining us. Next time we are going to get back into it and we will see you then. Thanks, everybody.
With a global and unique perspective on everything, Tiffany Norwood is considered one of the top innovators and tech entrepreneurs in the world. Seeing patterns of opportunities, Tiffany often creates years into the future and has been a pioneer in multiple industries from digital broadcasting, broadband internet, digital music, ed-tech, eSports, and more. Her start-ups have impacted billions of people in more than 150+ countries. She is known worldwide as a changemaker. Tiffany was recently named the 2022 Entrepreneur of the Year by Cornell University, the first black woman to receive this lifetime achievement award in its nearly forty-year history.
Tiffany first became a CEO while a junior at university, filed for a patent at the age of 19, licensed her first software code for a multibillion-dollar bank merger at the age of 24, and by the age of 27, Tiffany did something that no other entrepreneur has done since– she raised over $670 million dollars to fund a start-up called WorldSpace. As early space entrepreneurs, WorldSpace used that money to launch three satellites into space; build the first-ever global digital radio platform, including XM Radio; support the development of MP3/MP4 technologies; and, at the request of then-President Nelson Mandella, invest in a new generation of solar-powered satellite radio receivers to help in his campaign for truth and reconciliation.
Tiffany is one of few global serial entrepreneurs and one of the first successful black female tech entrepreneurs. With a career spanning 35 years, 9 start-ups, and multiple exits, she has personally worked in more than 50 countries. Tiffany believes in the potential of all human beings regardless of race, age or gender and encourages everyone to take their imagination seriously, like she did as a young girl.
“Your best role model is your own imagination” -Tiffany Norwood
Although predominantly a frontier technologist, Tiffany’s ventures have ranged from the first one-strap backpack; to the automation technology behind self-install kits for broadband internet and digital phone activations; to a healthcare clinic in Ethiopia that has treated thousands of patients. She also led some of the first-ever digital content licensing deals, with Michael Bloomberg at Bloomberg News, and Phil Kent at CNN International more than twenty years ago and set the stage for a new digital content revenue stream that redefined media. Tiffany was an early collaborator with the Fraunhofer Institute on their MP3 and MP4 technologies.
And she hasn’t stopped. Currently, Tiffany is transforming education and disrupting sports and healthcare, as the Founder and CEO of Tribetan, a Co-Founder of SimWin Sports, and most recently a co-founder of Elfkare. Using technology, music, video, and animations, Tribetan is teaching the world how to be more innovative and entrepreneurial for success in business, school, and life. SimWin Sports is the first-ever digital sports league platform, with tokens, online betting, and esports fantasy tournaments. SimWin announced its new platform at the 2022 SuperBowl. And Elfkare, which launched in 2023 is using an AI digital assistant to support everyday caregivers taking care of family members.
Tiffany was the first in her family to be born with all of their civil rights and attributes those rights to her success as an innovator and entrepreneur. In 2020 she published her first book, Vote Like a Boss: An Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Innovation, Leadership, Creativity, Storytelling, and Voting. Making the case for voting as an important life skill.
Tiffany is a highly respected and sought after global speaker on entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. She has spoken around the world, including venues like the US Patent and Trademark Office, the Newseum, the European Parliament, Cornell University, Yale University, the Italian Parliament, Platform Summit, Intel, the Creative Business Cup, KPMG UK, Georgetown Law School, the United Nations, ABC News, and many others. Her most iconic performances are “The Power of We”, “The ROI of Faith ” and “Hermione Rising”. These talks make the business case for unity, trust, and practice. Tiffany is also a US Speaker on Entrepreneurship and Innovation for the US State Department.
Tiffany describes herself as a self-made black woman of faith, who creates new realities, loves travel, speaks bad Italian, and practices servant leadership. Tiffany has 13 godchildren, is an avid yogi and athlete, loves spicy food, and spends her free time with friends and family. Someday she plans to go to space.
Tiffany is currently a Master of Engineering candidate in Systems Engineering at Cornell University, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and Blockchain. Tiffany also has a Bachelor’s in Economics with a concentration in statistics and computer science from Cornell University, where she also rowed Varsity Crew her Freshman year. She has an MBA from Harvard University.
Dr. Jaret C. Riddick is a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Prior to joining CSET, he was the Principal Director for Autonomy in the Office of the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)), serving as the Senior DOD official for coordination, strategy, and transition of Autonomy research and development.
As Principal Director, he created a DOD-wide initiative on trusted Autonomy, led efforts to advance Autonomy for undersea warfare with allied partners, and provided key strategic analysis to support development of the newest DOD university-affiliated research center (UARC). Prior to OUSD(R&E), Jaret served in executive leadership roles in the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), where he established a 200-acre robotics research collaboration campus and led ARL Senior leadership efforts to establish the research competencies of the Laboratory.
He has also served in leadership roles in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, and the former Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University.
