Eddie Washington is Finding ‘Genius’ Ways to Bring Diversity to Tech

This was originally published at Opportunity Lives. Eddie Washington refused to take no for an answer. Bouncing back and forth on the Chinatown bus from home in Boston to his desired workplace in New York City, he says he “begged” his way to a front desk gig at the Big Apple-based startup General Assembly. That startup has since exploded as a top-ranked training firm instructing hundreds of thousands of people on four continents in tech, business and design. Washington said his experience with General Assembly also allowed him to learn untapped coding skills that he later leveraged into his current role elsewhere. “So basically, the biggest lesson I learned about getting into the tech scene as a beginner is to stay persistent and ‘top of mind’ until the company you want wants you back due to happenstance,” Washington said in an interview. That tenacity formula worked again as he sought work with another startup, Genius, a crowd-sourced annotation platform for music and culture. Based in Brooklyn, Genius annotates everything from musical lyrics to political news, adding an extra layer of context on top of the text. Washington, who is African-American, is their lead recruiter and a public speaker on improving…
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