We caught up with the brilliant and insightful April Barker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

April, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

Tech Queenz is a new and exciting small business and online community whose mission is to encourage and empower Queenz who are breaking into the area of Technology. Our target market is women of color, young and old who are starting a new career in technology. Whether launching from High School graduation or pivoting mid-career by way of bootcamps and online learning.

We provide a “Tech Queenz: A Journal for the Journey” notebook that we give away to high school Seniors and also at Tech events and sell online at Amazon.com.

While we love and support all Queenz in Tech no matter the background and demographic, we knew early on through the doors that were opened to us by way of Google’s Tech Equity Collective and Black Genius Academy that far too often we would find ourselves being the only women of color at the Tech Table in meetings and organizations.

Tech Queenz Co-Founders are Shanice A. Kuykendall, Diamond Bolling and April Barker. We all participated in a career exploratory app called Black Genius Academy that allowed its users to learn about three tech career pathways, Cyber Security, Software Engineering and UX Design. There was a Bootcamp at Hackbright Academy that we all appplied for and got into and that is where we met officially and became capstone project partners.

For those who are unfamiliar with what a Bootcamp is, it is a fast and furious short term learning opportunity provided throguh a learning institution that ends with a project or test and a certification in a field. We connected as a group for the final project and decided to keep working together after we graduated with a certificate in UX Deisgn.

We represented the underserved community that our app Idea for “HealHer Foundation” was created to serve. Women who were on the verge of burnout and needed free or low-cost resources asap. Each one of us had a non-profit idea for an app that would serve women in a different way but we ended up going with Diamond’s as her non-profit was thriving and she had recently won the title of Ms. Plus Greenville. We knew that the app was a great idea that would resonate with all who heard it, no matter the gender. Everyone knows someone who has been on the verge of burnout with no help in sight.

We were trucking along in the class and with our assignments with a combined 8 kids between, three full-time jobs, two-non profits all with the added career training bootcamp that wae two nights a week for four hours and five hours on saturday and that was class time, not study and project work.

One day, one of us opened up about feeling like quitting the class and it opened the floodgates for the feelings of burnout to be put on the table and the encouragement to be passed around to one another like a heaping helping of a home cooked meal.

Creating the HealHer app was empowering. While it is currently in the development stage after going through the UX design process, we are sure that once completed it will be one of the most downloaded and utilized app amongst women of all fields who have experienced or are on the verge of burnout.

Tech Queenz is on a journey to create and design more products that help women in Tech stay encouraged and continue the career journey that will change their lives and the lives of those who will carry their legacies. We can be found on Instagram at @techqueenz.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

After two layoffs in four years the writing was on the wall that I needed to pivot into a new career or gain some new skills. along comes the opportunity to Beta Test the Black Genius Academy Career Exploratory App from Career Karma. This app allows users to listen to recordings about three career paths in tech: Software Engineering, Cyber Security or UX Design.

After completing a UX Design Boot Camp while applying to jobs in the field, my Capstone Teammates and I decided to create a UX Deign Firm taking on opportunites to freelance and collaborate to build or design portfolio. With my first business, Empire of Dreams being a publishing company, I decided to pull out my publishing skills and create a journal to sell with the company name of Tech Queenz.

Tech Queenz is a digital space created & cultivated for Queenz in Tech building careers, confidence, legacy and peaceful domains.

We are on Instagram and sell our journals on Amazon or you can DM us for bulk order discounts, signed copies @techqueenz. $1.00 from every purchase goes to Heal Her Foundation. The non-profit organization run by our Co-Founder, Diamond Bolling.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Wow! I love this question because one of the biggest lessons right now that we are learninginthe tech industry is to embrace the new. Artificial Intelligence is not going anywhere. I know this is a touchy subject, especially in the black community and especially in the church community and especially in the non-profit community and I am a member of all three.

Breaking into a career and now being a Founder in the tech space, I had to unlearn or deconstruct my mindset about working through personal problems, being honest about what I dont know and also being willing to learn it quickly, Networking.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

This business has one journal that is available for sale on Amazon or through Instagram. We also are working on other journals, and t-shirts. Another supplementary revenue stream is that we hire out freelancers and do freelance work for UX Design projects, website building, logos, Ai generated products, Useability surveys and other UI and UX projects and services, just ask us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.techqueenz.com
• Instagram: @techqueenz
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/april-barker-77a51217?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

The Look Creator’s Studio- April Barker Headshot
Athlete Turnt Designer- Tech Queenz Logo