Reginald Davis

At Elastic, being a technical lead means that I’m responsible for all of the technical decisions that our team encompasses. So when it's time to pick tooling, or how we want to architect or design things, I take on the technical decisions that come with those responsibilities as a leader.

So biology, I don’t really use that degree at all. But philosophy is all about questioning—asking “why?”. It's funny because I took a very hard turn into technology from my original studies, but I think now that we're in this world of AI and things of that nature, it’s very valuable to be able to understand how to question and break things down. As tech grows more complex, you've got to ask more and more questions and studying philosophy gave me a great lens to do that with.

Absolutely. I’m really passionate about getting more people who look like me or speak like me into the industry. I have a community called Tech for the Culture based here in Houston. We hold monthly events where we find other Black practitioners in the space who are willing to share their stories and their journeys and technology. We want to create a safe space for people to be able to talk about their experiences in technology and bring more people into the space by showing them that hey, you're not going through this journey by yourself.

Someone actually challenged me to do it. I had a former mentor by the name of Bonnie, and she ran the Angular Houston group and this is where I actually first started teaching myself how to program and become an engineer. She challenged me — she said “you should really give a talk” and I said “okay, whatever, I’ll give a talk”. I struggled all the way through it, but I guess people saw that I had a natural way of communicating and encouraged me, so I just kind of continued challenging myself to get on stage and communicate. I thought if someone saw that in me, maybe I should see it in myself.

Outside of the artists from Houston that people know, like Megan Thee Stallion and Drake who is like an unofficial resident of Houston, I would say an artist from Houston I think is really good that's kind of went under the radar is Maxo Kream. He’s from southwest Houston — one of the more questionable areas of Houston — and he gives a really authentic view of Houston. He’s one of my favorite artists coming up. Parental advisory warning though if anyone watching this checks him out.