The Intern Spotlight: Stephon Harris
How Stephon’s Curiosity Fuels a Drive for Community and Leadership.
Ask Stephon what his favorite activity as a child was, and he will quickly tell you “Playing with Legos” with a brilliant smile reminiscing that past. As a kid, curiosity and creativity pulled Stephon towards Legos, but as the years went on, these elements evolved into social entrepreneurship, community building, and a drive to support others along the way. Curiosity is at the very core of Stephon’s journey. It is the driving force behind his career as a Black man in technology, and a trait that he hopes future generations can embrace.
Community plays a significant role in Stephon’s life. His story begins in Missouri City, a small suburb outside Houston Texas where he was born and raised. Growing up with a large extended family meant Stephon was no stranger to being around people, which helped develop his interpersonal skills and subsequent leadership aspirations. As a high school student, Stephon was the student council president and was always vocal about administrative issues on his campus. As he reflects on these moments, he notes: “I grew up in Texas, and Texas does not do a lot of recycling. However, I was trying to champion the idea of recycling and green thinking throughout high school.” Advocating for environmental causes in high school was only the beginning of his journey.
In 2016, Stephon moved to Alexandria, Virginia to pursue a career in Software Engineering. While in the Washington DC area, Stephon co-founded Black Code Collective (BCC), a non-profit organization which seeks to help Black Software Engineers grow their skills and have a community around them” he says. Every year, the organization hosts various talks and events to foster conversations about professional development, salary negotiation, and navigating the workspace as a Black person. The organization has grown a lot since then, enabling many Black software developers to grow their careers in software engineering, a field that still struggles with underrepresentation. At the founding of the organization, one of its goals was to “provide a safe space and community for Black software engineers” as stated on its website. However, the organization has evolved over the years to become a space that not only supports Black people getting jobs in software engineering but also challenges some of the biases embedded in the domain. During the summer of 2020, the organization published a manifesto on its website advocating for Black tech workers. The organization clearly states on its website:
“Asking questions is a key way for all of us to learn and grow, but if we’re in an environment where we’re too nervous to ask questions, our growth can be stunted. Not only does this brief break from the reality of the workplace give minorities chances to ask questions and sharpen our skills, but being told that a question isn’t stupid and that someone else struggled with that same topic can be a sanity check. That support can inspire us to speak up when we’re back in our work environment.”
Creating such a crucial support system enables engineers from underrepresented groups to fully express themselves and to share experiences with peers in a space where their journeys are often starkly different from other individuals. For Stephon, co-founding Black Code Collective was simply a first step in the long journey that will follow. “The goal is not to have an end goal,” he says. “The end goal is to continue to build communities not just for Black people, but to provide different growth opportunities for a diverse group of people.” Co-founding BCC is amongst one of his proudest achievements so far in an extensive list of accolades throughout his career in tech, leadership, and community building.
For Stephon, leadership is about being vulnerable, allowing himself to learn, and listening to others. In college, he was a university ambassador for his school which allowed him to build his leadership skills, paving the path to being a community leader. But his desire to explore new things and take chances is at the center of his leadership style. “Like so many people, I’m a first-generation college student. I didn’t have anyone to walk me through all the hurdles in life, so my leadership experience came from putting myself out there and signing up for the various opportunities along the way,” he notes as he reflects on leading throughout the years. Stephon brought these principles with him to Black Code Collective where he led others by organizing various events like teaching high school kids how to code or organizing technical talks for members of the collective, allowing himself to step outside of his comfort zone into a vulnerable space where he could form meaningful connections with others. These leadership principles and values are also at the center of Stephon’s career as a Product Manager Intern at AMEX this summer.
While Stephon has an impressive career under his belt already, the path to his current success involved lots of pivots and changes throughout the years. Before joining AMEX this summer, Stephon worked as a tech consultant and later pivoted to software development. Curiosity has always been a driving force in his life, and it is what drew him to software development, but he later pivoted to Product Management where he realized he would have an even greater impact on others. “As a software developer, I had very little influence on what product or feature gets built” he notes. And so, pivoting into product management allows him to build products and features that bring value to the consumer. As a product manager, he can influence what is placed in products, an idea that stands at the forefront of his aspirations.
Stephon completed his undergraduate degree at Texas Tech University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems and is going into his second year as an MBA student at Emory University, Goizueta Business School. Stephon learned about his internship in graduate school through previous interns at the company — who praised the work culture and environment at AMEX. He has always been interested in the finance and tech industries, especially in building tools that can help consumers make strategic decisions about their money. Before his MBA, Stephon defined his professional mission as to help people around the world use tech to have more productive lives. This summer he got the chance to do that with the Amex digital labs group working on new product development with the emerging payments team. He enjoys the experience and the learning opportunities that have come out of it. He states, “This is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do, create applications that combine the technicality of software engineering with strategic business value.”
Stephon has no intentions of slowing down anytime soon even with an impressive career already underneath his belt. When looking into the future, he hopes to continue building products that impact global consumers, and in a more general sense, use technology and product development to help foster equity in the finance space. He aspires to one day become a Vice President of Product and he believes that his technical knowledge, passion for product development, and people skills provide the right combination to reach this goal. Stephon is inspired by other VPs within the Technology Business Unit at AMEX, who often have a global reach in the projects they undertake. Stephon is a self-starter and self-motivator, and much of his success today can be attributed to those traits. He would love to have a coffee chat with Anré Williams, the CEO of American Express National Bank and & Group President of Enterprise Services, who is also the only Black persons at the highest executive level of the company. His impressive career serves as an inspiration for Stephon.
Stephon was always curious about the world. Venturing outside of his family and community meant finding ways to explore other places. He started by joining a group in middle school that would give tours at different universities around the state, and with every tour came a new learning experience. These experiences sparked an interest in traveling for Stephon who has traveled through Europe and Australia; and has been to all four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. Through his travels, he has met many people who have influenced how he views the world. “People are genuinely good,” he states, “I find myself being more extroverted when I travel which helps me connect with people. Traveling has given me so much hope in humanity and influenced me to continuously put myself out there,” he states. These influences radiate in Stephon’s endeavors, and he continually pushes himself to achieve higher goals while encouraging others.
Success isn’t always guaranteed in his endeavors, but to Stephon, success means taking pride in the things that you do and stand for. “When I think about what defines success for me, I think about what makes the people around me proud. Personally, pride is a huge measure of success,” he notes as he reflects on his upbringing in Texas. Success also means taking pride in personal achievements, regardless of the scale. And as a community builder and leader, Stephon understands that success can take many forms, and his advice to young Black individuals pursuing a career in tech: “Know that no one has it all figured out. Whenever you feel like you’re not good enough remember that persistence and curiosity will get you a long way.”
