ColorStack is pleased to announce the addition of Kavita Bala and Raquel Romano to our Board of Directors. Together, they bring a wealth of experience in academia and the tech industry that greatly enriches our organization. We are excited for them to help guide ColorStack as it grows and moves forward in its mission to increase the retention of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous college Computer Science students.

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Kavita Bala, Dean of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, has served on 60+ editorial boards, advisory boards, and program committees in vision and graphics. In addition to her work as Dean of CIS for Cornell, she is the co-founder of GrokStyle and has served as its Chief Scientist since 2015.

“I am excited to join the board of Colorstack because I believe in Jehron’s vision of creating a community (actually, a family!) across universities to support diverse students and set them on the path to success in computing,” said Bala. “As an academic, I know how critical this community is to retain and empower talented students both in school and in their ongoing careers. Colorstack is going to fundamentally change the landscape and I am looking forward to working with Colorstack to achieve its vision.”

Raquel Romano, Principal Software Engineer at Threadloom, is a former member of the #YesWeCode Advisory Board and past member of Watsonville Tecnología-Educación-Comunidad (TEC) Community Leadership Council (CLC) as well as the Anita Borg Institute’s Industry Advisory Board. She is also the founder of Latinas in Computing and was ranked among the 20 Most Influential Latino/as in 2014 by CNET.

“There’s been a need for a community like ColorStack in the computer science discipline for decades. I know I would have benefitted from ColorStack as a student, so I am privileged and excited to accept the invitation to join the ColorStack Board of Directors and to try to help create for current and future students what would have helped me and plenty of others in the past,” said Romano.

Bala and Romano join a group of outstanding board members consisting of Emily Cunningham (Senior Business Program Manager at Lyft), Makinde Adeagbo (founder of /dev/color), and Wahab Owolabi (founder of URx).