Episode #46: Ben Bowen on How Bias in Tech Impacts Indigenous Communities
In this episode, I’ll be sitting down with Ben Bowen, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Shared Path Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation in Australia. Shared Path is a social enterprise that aims to incubate indigenous entrepreneurial talent and business skills. They develop small enterprises and micro-businesses to use as training grounds for indigenous people to develop their own capacity and their own enterprises. That enables indigenous communities to positively impact social issues and achieve economic independence through business development and community capacity. Access to tech and skill in working with it also gives them the freedom to stay on their ancestral land, rather than having to relocate to cities to find work.
Ben is an indigenous Australian whose ancestors were the original inhabitants of what’s now known as Sydney’s inner west. He has been a professional athlete, a corporate coach and facilitator, and a designer of innovative health and education programs. Ben will share the Shared Path backstory and talk about some of the embedded biases in the tech industry that affect indigenous communities, the indigenous success model (and what we can learn from it to ensure much needed collective change), and the opportunities and empowerment that technology has been bringing to indigenous communities who are adopting it (Like language preservation and remote access to jobs). Stay tuned for that and so much more.
Key Points Discussed:
The standout moments that changed his life and now drive who he is and what he does in the world (04:25)
Promoting the meaningful education of indigenous kids so they can take advantage of local opportunities to grow their communities (06:25)
How the idea for Shared Path was conceived and how they have leveraged technology to achieve their mission (10:35)
Helping the wider community rediscover relevant and valuable but forgotten indigenous wisdom (16:48)
Why it’s critical to free ourselves from the systems that make it more difficult to change and be adaptable (22:01)
The massive impact of bias in tech on indigenous communities (24:22)
Technology to the rescue: How indigenous communities are continuously empowered by the technologies that they adopt (31:44)
Riding the Covid wave to better represent indigenous communities and link them with the rest of the world regardless of their location (36:40)
Employing technology to facilitate cultural preservation (41:15)
Reflecting, Inspiring, and Growing: The power of the indigenous success model (46:29)
Seeing past our deficit and bias to see indigenous communities as who they really are (50:44)
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