Some years ago, Maurice Kuykendoll was simply an attendee at the AFROTECH ™ Conference. Now in its eighth year, he will approach the annual tech affair as an official speaker on the Executive Stage. It’s not lost on him that when he attended the conference, he was responsible for global expense management at insurance company Prudential, with one of its largest expenses being technology. During the transformation, he notes how vital the event was to his leadership development. “I was transforming my team simultaneously, so it was an area of development for me,” Kuykendoll said in an interview with AFROTECH™. “So, a couple of days at this conference, where there’s Black people, and they know all about technology, I was like, ‘I’ll go and see if this can be one of the things I put on my calendar every year to make sure that I am developing this essential part of what’s going on in the world.’” After sitting in many rooms alongside founders and talking to them about their latest...

Amid the Virginia Military Institute’s (VMI) fierce probe of racism in its ranks, last week VMI officials announced the interim appointment of Retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, the first Black leader to serve in its 181-year history, The Washington Post reports . Maj. Gen. Wins — the 57-year-old two-star general — will serve as interim superintendent until the board can appoint a permanent chief to run the nation’s oldest state-funded military college in Lexington City, Virginia, BET shares . Gov. Ralph Northam ordered an independent investigation on the Virginia Military Institute after several Black cadets stepped down over racial bias for what Northam and other officials describe as “the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism,” according to The Washington Post . Amid the investigation, Maj. Gen. Wins is expected to take over for the school’s longtime superintendent, retired Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III, who resigned from his position following those reports...