Hi!
Hi! I’m Dr. Nikki Stevens. I am a researcher, a technical architect, and an open source community member. I am currently a postdoc at MIT, and was previously a postdoc at Dartmouth College.
As a researcher, I have a PhD in the Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology (broadly, a Science and Technology Studies program). My research focuses on how software engineering practices reinforce systems of power. In other words, my research explains, from the code and database up, how data is biased or algorithms can cause harm to people. Read more about my current research.
As a technical architect and software engineer, I held titles like Vice President of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Technical Lead, and CTO. I did work for brands like Playboy, Refinery29, Sony, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Country Music Television, RedHat, and Globalgrind. My work has been featured in Style Magazine, and won awards from SXSW. You can see my technical/industry CV on LinkedIn.
As an open source contributor, I have been a member of the Drupal open source community for over 13 years. In that community, I founded and led a multi-year diversity, equity and inclusion initiative Drupal Diversity and Inclusion that is still running under new leadership. I am the founder and co-maintainer of Open Demographics, a project that helps open source communities evaluate the demographics of their communities. For my open source work, I have received recognition from The Drupal Community, RedHat, and Google. See more open source projects.
I’d love to hear from you if you want to talk about any of the above, or if you have questions about how to be a trans person in academia.
