Generative AI has dominated our conversations and reshaped how we work, learn and create. In a recent article published in the Afro American Newspaper titled “Shaping the Future: Black Leadership in Tech Regulation,” Hassanatu Blake and Symone Campbell’s central argument isn’t about AI’s technical capabilities. It’s about safeguarding intellectual property and building regulatory infrastructure that protects Black technologists’ ideas, stories and data.
Their argument reveals what truly matters: our lack of infrastructure to prepare people for tech-enabled futures. Organizations like ED2Tech, a global EdTech and workforce development firm, and platforms like Braid, an open-access vocational storytelling network, demonstrate that preparing people for tech-enabled futures requires investing in inclusive infrastructure through foundational systems, relationships and processes.
Without intentional investment in inclusive digital infrastructure, we enable the exclusive few who are architecting our technological future. We need infrastructure that serves us. Why Inclusive Digital Infrastructure Matters Inclusive digital infrastructure is not simply about access to devices or internet connectivity. It’s about creating the conditions for communities to participate as creators, decision-makers, and beneficiaries of technology. This infrastructure is essential for three reasons: survival, growth, and sustainability. First, communities need inclusive digital infrastructure to survive in a digital world.
Digital systems now mediate access to essential services in education, health, employment, and civic participation.
Without intentional design that centers the needs of marginalized communities, these systems replicate, amplify, and deepen existing inequities, and benefit only a privileged few. Second, infrastructure enables growth. When communities have meaningful input into how technology is designed and deployed, they develop agency and capacity. Communities become innovators and leaders that shift technological development toward solutions that serve its people.
The open-access vocational storytelling Braid platform demonstrates this through its 650+ beta testers and student cohorts called Braid Camp. The students co-own project management, research, design, and development. The innovation is the infrastructure of values and co-creation processes.
This inclusive infrastructure produces confidence, belonging, vocational pathways and innovation for communities. This leads us to the last reason: sustainability. Technologies built in isolation from community input often fail because they don’t address real needs or respect cultural contexts. Infrastructure rooted in co-creation, partnership and authentic participation is more resilient, adaptable and impactful.
ED2Tech exemplifies this when partnering with Blossom Academy on public service leadership training. ED2Tech brought public servants together to co-design governance frameworks addressing real challenges. By breaking down silos and translating concepts into culturally relevant applications, ED2Tech’s collaborative networks approach creates sustainable systems built with and for the communities they serve, ensuring long-term relevance and adoption.
To build an inclusive digital infrastructure, we must have intentional work across three interconnected areas:
We need rigorous investigation into how technology affects marginalized communities to inform and influence policy. Too often, research exists in academic silos, disconnected from decision-makers and practitioners. Inclusive infrastructure bridges this gap, ensuring the evidence collected shapes the policies and practices governing technology development and deployment. The goal is to design with communities from the outset to generate actionable insights that drive systemic change.
We need intentional spaces where technologists, educators, policymakers and community members establish knowledge infrastructure through networks, norms, and shared frameworks. Innovation for Equity (IFE) creates structured convenings where educators, technologists, and community leaders build sustained networks to move collective wisdom into practical frameworks that shift how entire systems approach digital inclusion.
We need intentional pathways for people from marginalized communities to enter technology fields as creators, not just consumers. Goodie Nation pairs hands-on skills development in design and coding with community accountability and cultural grounding. This model creates pathways where emerging technologists from underrepresented backgrounds enter the field as changemakers equipped to build technology that serves their communities.
These three pillars form the foundation for inclusive digital infrastructure. What’s required now is intentional investment and scale:
- Centering community voices in every decision about technology design, development and deployment by including marginalized communities from the beginning, as the primary asset in tech innovation.
Host co-design workshops where community members shape product requirements or conduct participatory research that positions communities as knowledge producers.
- Executing effective feedback loops where research truly informs policy, practitioners shape practice and developers remain accountable to communities. Create regular convenings where developers report back to communities on how their feedback shaped product changes. Build transparent mechanisms where communities can flag harms and track how issues are resolved.
- Building partnership ecosystems that create genuine power-sharing and dismantle power structures that dishonor different forms of expertise. Share strategic plans and budgets to include decision-making authority with communities. Create revenue-sharing models where communities benefit financially from platforms built with their knowledge. Cooperation Jackson exemplifies this by building cooperative economic structures where communities collectively own and govern the technologies and platforms that shape their futures.
We have a choice: build the infrastructure that serves us all or continue to build technology for the few.
Raymar Hampshire, MPP, is a founder of Braid, an open-access vocational storytelling platform and knowledge network. Hassanatu Blake, PhD, MPH, MBA is co-founder/president at ED2Tech and associate clinical professor and inaugural director of Global Health Undergraduate Program at University of Maryland.
