(Virtual) Culturally-conscious Workforce Development: Community-based Approaches to Supporting Microbusinesses

Abstract: Building digital capacity among microbusinesses will require more than just providing broadband access; it will also involve more “culturally-conscious” approaches that leverage community assets and navigate within businesses’ context-specific ways of working. Through interviews, participatory action research, and assets-based community development, this research uncovers the systemic nature of barriers to digital engagement among resource-constrained microbusinesses. The talk will describe examples of community-based interventions to ameliorate these challenges, such as the development of a Community Tech Workers (CTW) program that has recruited and trained Detroit residents to provide technical support to over 200 local, primarily Black-owned, businesses. Reflecting on lessons learned, I will pose broader questions about how HCI can inform more “culturally-conscious” approaches to workforce development.

Bio: Julie Hui is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI). She studies and develops socio-technical systems that support workforce development, particularly in under-resourced contexts. At the moment, she is researching how technology impacts the work of microentrepreneurs, platform workers, and small manufacturers. Her work contributes to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), social computing, and learning sciences. Currently, her work is funded by the National Science Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, and the University of Michigan Center for Academic Innovation, among others. Prior to her current position, she was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UMSI. She completed her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University where she was funded by the NSF Graduate Research Program Fellowship. She received a B.S. in Physics with a Minor in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2011.

Zoom: https://uci.zoom.us/j/94056994344?pwd=4p8V9uraBVNzdJFQR7LXGPxAa1NIRc.1