Nivia is a technologist with over 20 years of engineering and leadership experience. Her career path has included nearly every role in tech; but her true passion is inspiring people to do their best work. These days Nivia plies her trade as a Director of Engineering for Spotify's Music Mission. She is currently building a vision and team around empowering artists to creatively express themselves directly to their fans on the platform. Nivia gives back to the tech community by speaking at, chairing and attending tech conferences. Her hobbies include: mentoring Black engineering leaders; reading; and enjoying life with her spouse Andre and their feline overlord Zuko.

Melanie Akwule has spent the majority of her career transforming data from underutilized assets to actionable insights for her customers. After gaining valuable experience as a Senior Technical Product Manager in General Electric's Data Science Products division, she is now leveraging her gifts to build MINWO, an economic development tech company that advocates for the investment in and development of Black-owned businesses.

As a coach, Melanie helps entrepreneurs break down their 10-year vision into concrete steps to achieve them. Whether it's business or product strategy, clients come with their plans and she reminds them that focus is key. From creating user stories to building world-class development teams to running market validation studies, she focuses on tactical support to get founders moving.