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18-year-old Howard University student picked to shine in Silicon Valley
World, meet David Hill Jr.
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are known for developing African-American talent, and 18-year-old David Hill Jr. is no exception. He’s a future technology mogul at Howard University’s College of Engineering program.
Earl Graves Jr., CEO of Black Enterprise Magazine, has been instrumental in providing leadership for students like Hill through the annual Black Enterprise Tech ConneXt Summit, a hack-athon attended by students from HBCUs around the country. Hill attended the summit representing Howard University.
“I greatly enjoyed engaging with industry leaders and learning about technology innovation at the BE Tech ConneXt Summit. The hack-athon was a great success,” Hill said.
At just 16 years old, Hill headed off to Howard University. According to blacknews.com, he was the youngest participant chosen by Black Enterprise to compete in the summit, which takes place in Burlingame, California.
We took note at this year’s BE hackathon. Check out our 5 tips for success: https://t.co/Rr8Gwo94Aj #TECHCNXT @blackenterprise pic.twitter.com/WFyjAgzn4v
— AT&T Small Business (@ATTSmallBiz) October 18, 2016
Besides the hacking, the summit had many distinguished speakers. Ryan Leslie, Grammy-nominated recording artist, multiplatinum producer and CEO of MZRT, was there to spread some knowledge.
According to blackenterprise.com, “students were charged with developing an infotainment in-vehicle iOS app within the Ionic Cloud framework.”
“The purpose of our mobile application software during the hack-athon was to create an infotainment platform that would serve as a travel companion and enhance the artificial intelligence experience with automobiles,” Hill said.
Hill has an outstanding resume. He has worked at Leidos Corp., Cisco Systems and the Otis Elevator unit of United Technologies Corp.
The reviews?
Hill received extremely high praise from those he has worked with. Brad Sellick, vice president of Otis Elevator, said, “David exemplifies the values and traits that we look for in our engineering staff. He significantly contributed to our digital transformation initiative, using Microsoft Azure IoT software and other software applications.”
Hill has accomplished a lot at such young age and we can’t wait to see what he does further down the road.
Stay undefeated, David.