Symone Campbell is the In-House Research Fellow at Siegel and an adjunct professor at Howard University’s Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics, where her research focuses on the intersection of race, technology, and digital media to examine the impact of educational platforms on Black students. Following her two-year fellowship at Siegel, she recently announced she will join Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) as a Lecturer to help shape the inaugural Master of Science in Technology, People, and Policy (MTePP) program. We sat down with Symone to reflect on the work she’s accomplished during her time with us—specifically her recent launch of the Black EdTech Database, a community-powered hub designed to document, connect, and elevate Black-led contributions shaping the future of education and AI. In this Q&A, Symone shares the historical roots of culturally relevant education, the critical role of out-of-school learning environments, and how she hopes this living database will foster a more connected, sustainable ecosystem for founders, researchers, and educators alike.
Congratulations on launching the Black EdTech database. Can you tell me more about this project and how it came to be?
The Black EdTech Database is a community-powered hub designed to document, connect, and elevate Black-led contributions shaping the future of education and AI. It brings together the people, ideas, and innovations across the Black EdTech ecosystem, from research and technology development to policy, workforce, community-based learning, and cultural knowledge.
My research always focused around education and race, and in grad school, I was really focused on what forms of Black-centered educational media were out there. [I was] thinking about Black theories and applying that theoretical approach to some educational media platforms like print, audio, and visual media that had been established throughout the late 1800s and 1900s, newspapers, magazines, radio shows, television shows, etc. I carried that into my Communications, Culture, and Media Studies PhD program at Howard University. When the pandemic hit, I did a deep dive on various social media platforms to see if there might be Black-owned edtech platforms students were engaging with since online schooling was the new mode of learning. [I also looked at whether] there were any Black parents talking about the schooling of their children not being culturally relevant, or if it was, what digital materials were they using. I found a list of Black-owned edtech companies, but of that list, only three of them were ‘culturally relevant.’ I ended up studying those three platforms for my dissertation, and that led to me getting into this world of edtech, tech policy, digital infrastructure, and now what we know as AI in education.
Ultimately, this started from an inquiry around Black-oriented print, audio, and visual educational media, and wondering what does Black digital educational media, “edtech,” look like? What does that mean? What are the implications of this work?
How did you determine what is “culturally relevant,” and what is the importance of ownership when it comes to Black-owned edtech?
Culturally relevant education and pedagogy have roots in practice, particularly within Black-oriented education, dating back to the 1800s, and some scholars would argue even earlier. In the 1990s, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings formally developed culturally relevant pedagogy as a framework for understanding effective teaching for Black students, while also helping bring Critical Race Theory into the field of education.This helped further establish culturally relevant pedagogy and race-conscious approaches to education as areas of study. Within my work, I applied many of those tenets to digital education platforms.
Dr. Patricia Collins was one of the first to really theorize about education, traditional media, and Black students, she called it Black-Oriented Educational Media. But again, that was from the 1990s and early oughts. I started to think about it in the context of edtech in the 2020s. It had been a large gap of time, so I did refine it to reflect digital media and the current phase of Black-oriented educational media which is Black-oriented edtech.
There’s a lot of Black-owned edtech companies, which is important to ensure that we have diverse and cultural perspectives within the digital innovation space.
Why is centering Black-led innovation and culturally grounded edtech important to you and was there a specific moment that sparked your interest?
Personally, as a Black woman, I know how important culturally relevant education was for me growing up, and how intentional my parents were in putting culturally relevant content and educational materials in front of me. Growing up in Syracuse, New York and being part of the public school system, my teachers were pretty intentional about that as well, and I know how much it shaped my understanding of the world and myself. When I don’t see that same level of intentionality reflected in educational materials in today’s classrooms, it makes me think, wow, there’s so much that’s being missed.
How do you see the Black EdTech Database changing how founders, funders, and educators connect with one another?
I hope it helps us move from silos to a more connected ecosystem. When Black-led work is easier to discover, founders can find researchers, funders can identify promising innovation, educators can discover new tools, and community organizations can build new partnerships. Especially because this is such a niche field, I see the database as a shared infrastructure that strengthens the entire ecosystem of edtech.
Beyond apps and software, the database includes community learning spaces, research, and other initiatives. How do you decide what fits within the broader umbrella of Black edtech?
Siegel’s work has really helped me think about how intertwined infrastructure and edtech are. When you think a bit more deeply about the edtech field, there’s an entire ecosystem of founders, funders, developers, designers, deployers, researchers, educators, policymakers, and so many others. If these groups are centering cultural relevance or advocacy in their edtech work, I see them as fitting under the broader umbrella of Black edtech. I think anyone committed to expanding Black edtech and strengthening cultural relevance across the digital education ecosystem is part of this community.
You described the database as a living, community-driven resource where sustainability is key. How are you designing it to enable that, and how do you encourage people to genuinely shape how it grows over time?
All of this is central to this space being sustainable. I think my role has been to steward this work and get people to think about how important it is, but I’m interested in the community and how they ultimately will shape it. Right now the database is in phase one, where we’re taking submissions. When we launch the actual database, I’m committed to including my colleagues in thinking about what is the most accessible way for people to get this information.
Based on the submissions and feedback you’ve received so far, what is something you’ve learned or uncovered that surprised you?
This work is more global than I initially thought. I recently spoke at The Innovation with and for a Purpose (IP) Summit which was hosted in Jamaica and there are so many people committed to this work in the Caribbean, on the continent of Africa, and it’s very aligned.
Two other things that I noticed. One, a lot of the submissions are actually coming from current or former educators, whether they are in the research space, or founders. I think that’s reinforcing this idea that educators need to be at the table when tools are designed, developed, and deployed. They have lived experience. They know what they’re talking about.
The next is more than half of the submissions so far have noted that they are not just tools for the classroom, they’re also to be used outside of the classroom. I think that’s something for the edtech industry to think about, because so often we see people are developing tools, and they want school districts to adopt them so easily. But a lot of learning happens outside of the school, especially in cultural contexts. Even thinking about winter break and summer break. How can we make sure that students have access to these tools, especially if it’s so important with the cultural relevance aspect? So, thinking about libraries, community centers, religious institutions, and the wider community where students are learning outside of school has been something I’ve been reflecting on more from the submissions so far .
What do you hope the Black EdTech Database looks like in two to three years, and what impact do you hope it will have?
Success would look like teachers, parents, and anyone in need of these tools being able to find them from the database and it being open access and public. On the research front, collaborating with other researchers in the field to continue developing this work , and thinking about it though different frameworks is important. This field is niche, but I think it deserves an intentional level of inquiry. I’m excited to see where that might go.
I’m also really hoping that founders can collaborate and find other founders. The funding space is competitive, but with this space being so small, how can we share resources amongst each other and work together? On the policy front, I think there’s an opportunity to advocate for AI regulation, especially within education and for K-12 students—using this database to inform and strengthen the policies and regulations that are being developed, especially around the realities and needs of Black learners and communities.
If you could describe the energy of the Black EdTech community in three words, what would they be?
Transformative, collaborative, and innovative.
What should people read, watch, or explore next if they want to better understand Black EdTech?”
A great place to start is the Black EdTech Database at symonecampbell.com/blackedtechdatabase, where I’m continuing to map the people, projects, and organizations shaping this space. I’d also point people to my recently co-authored article, “Our Stories in the Code: A Tradition of Black Education and the Ethics of AI Learning Technologies,” published in FREEDOM: A Journal of Research in Africana Studies, Vol. 3. And for a broader look at others doing this work, I developed and chaired a SXSW EDU panel on Black EdTech, which brought together several voices across the field.
