Some people build careers. Dr. Carlotta Berry builds movements. As a tenured professor, endowed chair in electrical and computer engineering, robotics researcher, nonprofit co-founder, children’s book author, and romance novelist, she brings every part of herself to work every single day. More importantly, she uses all of it to open doors for Black women and girls who might otherwise never find their way into STEM.
In Episode 067 of the Lunch with Leaders podcast, Adaeze Iloeje-Udeogalanya sits down with Dr. Berry to unpack how she got here, why she refuses to stay in one lane, and what women in STEM can learn from her unapologetic approach to visibility, advocacy, and building communities that actually last.
Listen to Episode 067 now: Carlotta Berry, PhD: From Robotics to Representation
You Cannot Be What You Cannot See
Dr. Berry graduated from Spelman College in 1992. That same year, Mae Jemison went to space and became the first Black woman engineering PhD Dr. Berry had ever heard of. Think about what that means. She completed her entire undergraduate education without knowing a single Black woman held an engineering doctorate. She pursued the degree anyway, but she did it without a roadmap, without a mirror, and without anyone showing her that the destination existed.
That experience shapes everything she does today. She shows up on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and in-person workshops at Girl Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, and robotics camps precisely because she refuses to let the next generation navigate in the dark the way she did. She is building the visibility she never had, and she is doing it with intention and joy.
The results speak clearly. A junior in high school recently emailed her a photo of a robot he built and asked for her feedback. A student from her recent robotics camp wrote back to say she planned to build another robot. These moments happen because Dr. Berry made herself visible and findable. She did not wait for institutions to create representation for her. She created it herself.
Get on the Technology Highway or It Will Run You Over
Dr. Berry does not soften her message about AI and representation. She states it directly: if diverse voices stay out of the spaces where AI systems take shape, those systems will keep encoding the blind spots of whoever does build them.
The evidence already surrounds us. Algorithms misidentify Black faces. Health systems underdiagnose women. Hiring tools replicate decades of discriminatory patterns. These outcomes do not happen by accident. They happen because the people designing the systems lacked the lived experience to recognise the gaps they created.
Stepping away from technology out of discomfort or ethical concern does not fix any of this. As Dr. Berry puts it, if you step off the highway, the highway runs you over. So she stays in the conversation. She builds AI avatars of herself so that Black women roboticists show up in digital spaces where they currently do not exist. Also, She teaches communities about bias and how it enters algorithmic systems. She encourages everyone listening to move intentionally rather than reactively.
Her practical advice for women who feel intimidated by AI is simple. Start slow. Educate yourself about what platforms do and do not do. Work with professionals who hold the knowledge you need. Take one step at a time. The goal is not mastery overnight. The goal is engagement, because disengagement cedes the space entirely to people with different priorities.
Hear Dr. Berry’s full take on AI, bias, and diverse representation: Listen to Episode 067 here
Bring Your Whole Self or Burn Out Trying to Hide It
For years, Dr. Berry navigated a familiar tension. As a Black woman in academia, she knew that the same behaviour draws different evaluations depending on who performs it. A white male professor who sets firm boundaries earns respect. A Black woman professor who does the same gets penalised on course evaluations. The rules differ, and everyone notices, even when nobody names it out loud.
Her response was not to shrink. Instead, she leaned further into what made her distinctly herself. She built a teaching style rooted in authenticity, accessibility, and playfulness. She stopped trying to do her job the way her colleagues did it and started doing it the way only she could.
Tenure accelerated this shift. Once she secured her endowed professorship, she no longer needed to orient every decision around what the institution required for promotion. So she redirected her energy toward what she genuinely cared about: getting more Black and brown kids and more girls into STEM. She launched virtual workshops, built online communities and followed a parent’s advice and got on TikTok because that is where the kids are.
This connects to the work Dr. Wanjiru Golly explored in Episode 064 — Dr. Wanjiru Golly: The Power of Cultural Synergy, where she argued that every identity we carry functions as a strength once we learn to recognise it that way. Dr. Berry lives this principle out loud. Her creativity, her humour, her advocacy, and her technical expertise do not compete with each other. Together, they make her more effective than any single dimension of her work could on its own.
How Black in Engineering and Black in Robotics Came to Life
In 2020, while the world stayed home and watched the murder of George Floyd unfold, something significant stirred on social media. The Black in X movement was born.
It started with a Black bird watcher in New York named Cooper. A woman named Amy Cooper called the police on him for simply asking her to leash her dog in a park. The video spread widely. Black Bird Watchers emerged as a community in response. From there, affinity group after affinity group appeared: Black in Cancer, Black in Astro, Black in Computing, Black in Engineering, Black in Robotics, and eventually around fifty distinct communities across scientific and technical fields.
Dr. Berry co-founded Black in Engineering and Black in Robotics. Both grew from a clear recognition: Black engineers and roboticists were not absent from their fields. They simply existed in isolation, scattered across institutions as the only person who looked like them in most rooms. These communities named that isolation, connected people who did not know others like them existed, and built collective power where individual isolation had previously made progress nearly impossible.
Today, Black in Robotics funds graduate students to attend and present at conferences. It offers fellowships and tuition scholarships. It runs virtual workshops that reach participants across Africa who never had access to this kind of mentorship or technical education before. Dr. Berry has written recommendation letters for young people she met through the community when they were still in high school.
The scale of what these communities now deliver demonstrates something important. When Black professionals in STEM find each other, the results go far beyond emotional support. They generate funding, mentorship, career pathways, and opportunities that simply did not exist before the community created them.
Stop Doing Everything for Free
Every mission-driven woman in STEM needs to hear this part of the conversation clearly.
Once Dr. Berry became visible through her advocacy work, organisations flooded her inbox with requests. They invited her to speak at events where they charged attendees. They offered exposure as compensation. Likewis, they expected her to fly at her own expense in exchange for the privilege of appearing on their stage. She received requests that framed her intellectual labour as a gift she owed the world simply because she cared about the mission.
She built a business in response. Not because her passion disappeared, but because she recognised the truth clearly: unsustainable generosity produces burnout, and burnout eventually produces absence. An absent advocate serves nobody.
Her framework now mirrors something she heard about Oprah Winfrey: decide at the start of each year how much pro bono work you will do, which organisations align closely enough with your mission to warrant free labour, and where your limit sits. Once you reach that limit, the answer is no.
She applies the same rigour to Black in Robotics. Every potential sponsor submits a diversity plan before any funding relationship begins. The sponsor’s values must align with the community’s values, because misaligned funding creates problems that cost far more than the money was ever worth.
For women in STEM doing mission-driven work, the lesson transfers directly. Your intellectual labour holds value. Your preparation, your expertise, your platform, your time, all of it costs something. Protecting that value is not greed. It is sustainability.
STEM Does Not Look Like One Thing
One of the most energising moments in this episode arrives when Dr. Berry describes her conversations with young women who love art and fashion and believe those passions disqualify them from engineering.
Her response is consistent and immediate. Let’s talk about wearable electronics. Also, let’s talk about integrating LEDs into fabric. Let’s talk about computational design, technical communications, and every space where creative passion intersects with engineering skill, because those intersections exist and they produce some of the most innovative work in the field right now.
She also challenges the credentialing mindset that pushes students into majors they do not love. Students who enter engineering because their parents demanded it or because they heard engineers earn good salaries rarely thrive long-term. The ones who build remarkable things are the ones who would tinker, create, and problem-solve even without a salary attached. That intrinsic motivation is not a luxury. It sustains a long career through every difficult stretch that every technical path includes.
The story you tell yourself about who belongs in STEM shapes what you pursue. As explored in Episode 062 — The Story They Tell: Transforming How Decision Makers See You, the narrative decision-makers carry about you determines what opportunities reach you. Dr. Berry actively rewrites the broader narrative about who STEM belongs to, so that the next generation inherits a more expansive story from the start.
What Dr. Berry Is Building Right Now
Dr. Berry currently works on three children’s books, a mobile robotics textbook for McGraw-Hill, and a romance novel that spent two years in draft form and is finally getting attention during summer breaks from teaching.
Each project reflects a different dimension of who she is. The children’s books bring robotics and representation to young readers who need to see themselves in STEM stories. The textbook serves her academic community and the students who will carry the field forward. The novel honours the storyteller she has always been, long before she stood at the front of a classroom.
She makes no apology for the breadth. Every piece of it serves the same mission: making STEM visible, accessible, and genuinely welcoming to people the field has historically ignored.
Connect with her on LinkedIn at Carlotta Berry PhD, on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter at @drcaberry, and through her website at Noire Stemminist.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Black in Engineering and Black in Robotics?
Dr. Berry co-founded both organisations as affinity groups that support Black engineers and roboticists through mentorship, virtual workshops, conference funding, fellowships, and community building. They grew from the Black in X social media movement that emerged during the pandemic and now collectively include around fifty distinct communities across scientific and technical fields.
How does Dr. Berry approach combating AI bias?
She argues that diverse voices must participate actively in the spaces where AI systems take shape. Rather than stepping back from technology out of ethical concern, she advocates for intentional engagement. She uses AI tools herself, builds AI avatars to increase Black women’s visibility in digital spaces, and teaches communities how bias enters algorithmic systems and how to challenge it.
How does she balance mission-driven work with financial sustainability?
She sets intentional limits on pro bono work at the start of each year, decides in advance which organisations align with her mission closely enough to warrant free labour, and holds that limit firmly once she reaches it. Everything else requires payment. She also runs a for-profit business to create a clear mechanism for compensating intellectual labour that previously went unrewarded.
What does she tell young women who love art or fashion but feel excluded from STEM?
She invites them into the intersections: wearable electronics, technical communications, computational design, and any space where creative passion meets engineering skill. STEM does not look like one thing, and she challenges anyone who says otherwise.
How can someone get involved with Black in Engineering or Black in Robotics?
Find both communities online, follow their channels, and attend virtual workshops. Graduate students can apply for conference funding and fellowships. Companies interested in sponsorship must submit a diversity plan demonstrating genuine alignment with the communities’ values.
Conclusion
Dr. Carlotta Berry built her career by refusing every story that said she should be smaller, quieter, or more conventional. She showed up fully in spaces designed for a narrower version of who belongs there, and in doing so, she created pathways for thousands of people who needed to see someone like her before they could imagine themselves in those spaces.
Her work reminds us that visibility is not vanity. The professor who shows up on TikTok, the roboticist who writes romance novels, the academic who co-founds nonprofits during a pandemic: none of these things distract from serious work. Together, they are the serious work, and they require someone who understands that changing a field demands being seen by the very people you want to bring into it.
Take action. Share what you are building. Find the communities that see and support people like you. Do not let anyone put you in a box that was never built to hold all of who you are.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Carlotta Berry: Episode 067 — From Robotics to Representation
Connect with Dr. Berry:
- Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter: @drcaberry
- Noire Stemminist
