���Ĺ���ý

By Joe Arney

Three words you do not want to tell Shamika Klassen: No, you can’t.   

Klassen (PhDInfoSci’24) vividly recalls attending a seventh-grade math and engineering camp where she got to hear from a scientist who described what a PhD was. To Klassen, who’d fallen in love with technology, it sounded like a dream opportunity.

“But then he ended his little speech with how it’s really hard to get a PhD, especially if you’re a minority—so you shouldn’t try,” Klassen, who is Black, said. “So, I raised my hand during the Q&A. I said, ‘My name is Shamika. I just wanted you to know, I’m getting my PhD.’”

More than two decades later, Klassen’s mic-drop moment arrived in May, when the first-generation student graduated with a PhD from CMCI. In doing so, she became the university’s first Black student to earn a doctoral degree in information science—a discipline she discovered almost by accident, but one that prepared her to join Google’s Bay Area offices as a user experience researcher.  

“As I got older, that excitement I had about technology turned into curiosity about how it was falling short of these aspirations and dreams and imaginations that we had for it,” the soft-spoken scholar said. “I wanted to be part of the bridge between where technology is and where it could be.”

Klassen studies where technology misses its professed ideals, and the kinds of people it leaves behind. Specifically, she invites Black women, femmes and nonbinary people to imagine a better, more equal future—part of a concept she calls technowomanism, which she said is “me asking how we can use ethical frameworks that are rooted in the Black feminism traditions when we’re talking about technology.”

For instance, an early project compared Black Twitter to the Jim Crow-era Green-Book; both offered Black users a sense of community in unfriendly places. As she interviewed participants about what a real Black Twitter—a social network designed by, and intended for, Black users—could look like, she started asking larger questions about the research ethics of public data.

“It was a great opportunity to talk about the history of research in Black communities,” Klassen said. “Instead of just parachuting in, extracting data and leaving, could we build relationships with these communities, and be more honest and sincere about our intentions?”

That kind of ethical perspective is why her doctoral advisor is so eager to see what Klassen accomplishes at Google.

“As an ethicist who spends a lot of time critiquing big tech, one of the things that makes me feel better about everything is when people like Shamika go to work in big tech,” said Casey Fiesler, associate professor of information science. “Because having people who care so deeply, and who have different kinds of perspectives and lived experiences, is how change starts to happen.  

“I think Google is exceptionally lucky to have her, and the rest of us are exceptionally lucky to have her at Google.”

Klassen knows a thing or two about luck: She considers herself fortunate to have been raised by a single mother, Mary Shelton, who worked tirelessly to support her four children, of whom Klassen is the eldest.

“She has been the most incredible figure in my life,” Klassen said, sharing a story from her Stanford days of being invited to give a talk at a math camp in Texas, but without enough time to visit her San Antonio home.

“My mom got off work at the post office and drove straight to San Marcos from San Antonio—in her uniform—so she could see my talk,” Klassen said. “We didn’t have a lot of money. But we did have that incredible support from someone who made all kinds of sacrifices that helped me get where I am today.

“I hope she’s proud of me. But I also hope my mom and the rest of my family can see my story and be inspired to do something that they want to do.”

At Google, she’s trying to inspire others to rethink technology. The job is, she said, “the opportunity of a lifetime” and follows an internship where she studied assistive technologies that use artificial intelligence to better understand how to help people with disabilities.

“I want to be able to center marginalized voices in the design and development of technology,” Klassen said. “And I know that being a voice in the room advocating for these things is a big responsibility.”