Women in Tech, Mentorship and Practical AI with Shaneeka Abram

Welcome to a special edition of the AGI podcast. We are celebrating Indiana's Historic Women in Tech Week, which actually has only been around since about 2024. But I couldn't be more excited to have Shanika Abram, who I'm going to let kind of introduce herself, because Shanika and I had all kinds of fun technical difficulties to even get together on this call. So introduce yourself and tell us about the work you do, Shanika.

Yes. So, of course, my name is Shanika R. Abram. I am a, I would say, a 20-year tech professional. So, I have a background in software development. I am a certified Google developer. I have been coding and developing websites and building software since the early 2000s. Mainly in the corporate space with implementations or people buying software and then we're training their company data and then building out software for them. I also own a full service marketing agency where we specialize in getting businesses in front of the right people at the right place at the right time. And as of now, within the last couple of years, I've switched over into AI education since everyone is now having the access to the learning language models like CHAT, GPT, and Gemini that didn't have it on the corporate side since it's more popular now. So I am training on AI prompt engineering. I'm also going into companies and teaching their employees on how to ethically use AI, making sure that they're using their company AI tools instead of their personal ones. So AI safety is a huge thing that I like to focus on. And then I also love to be able to show people how to use AI as a tool in their businesses to grow and create revenue.

And you do a lot out in the community too. You are involved in the nonprofit space and community education space. I just, I have just scrolled through your LinkedIn and see that you're out there, you know, helping other Black American business owners do things. Like, you've got a lot of cool stuff going on. So I think you're being humble.

Yeah, so my biggest thing is just to make sure that I leave my mark here in the world and I leave everyone better, leave people in places better than what they were when I encountered them. So that's my main goal.

That's an awesome philosophy. So let's start with like how you got interested, because I have like this big from a meta from a meta reason, right? Like I have three daughters, so I want I want to see more women enter this space for that reason alone that I just want to, you know, I care about girls and women. and having a balanced workplace but also like when we're talking about some of these security issues and this becoming kind of the Oppenheimer moment with AI and this technology having the power to be equivalent to you know nuclear arms or if used in certain ways like you just don't want a bunch of adrenaline filled like tech bros making decisions on stuff like that without having you know some females who probably care about their kids and the future of humanity a little bit more than so Like, how did you even get interested in the tech space? And was it difficult for you to become a leader in the tech space as a woman? Or do you feel like that path? Like, how could we