fellows

Meet the 2024 Lewis Latimer Fellows.

What do an autonomous robot designer, an astronaut who is also a geology professor and artist, an olfactory healing researcher, an inclusive AI entrepreneur, and a health and wellness innovator have in common?

Each is a member of an elite, year-long inclusive innovation program called the Lewis Latimer Fellowship Program, a diverse group representing various backgrounds and perspectives.

The 2024 cohort, supported by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, features Adrian Burrell, Tiffany M. Griffin, Sidney McLaurin, John Pasmore, and Dr. Sian Proctor. Each of these remarkable people brings unique innovations and insights to their respective fields, making significant contributions that are reshaping their industries.

  • Adrian Burrell is a third-generation Oakland artist utilizing photography, installation, and experimental media. His work examines issues of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, Inviting moments where collective storytelling could be a site for remembering.

    Burrell has lived and worked on four continents. He is a US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Stanford University (MFA). At Stanford, he lectured, served as Black Graduate student community outreach chair, and was a visiting Artist with Stanford's Institute for Diversity in Arts.

    He was in residence at the Black Freedom fellowship in Salvador, Brazil, in 2023, was a resident at SF FILM, was a YBCA creative cohort fellow between 2021 and 2022, and was awarded the renowned Black Rock residency in Dakar, Senegal, in 2022. His solo exhibition, "Venus Blues," opened at the Minnesota Street Foundation 20,000 square feet space in October 2023. His first solo exhibition was on view at the ICA San Jose, California, from September 2022 through February 2, 2023.

    Burrell's work has been featured in the New Yorker, Black Star Film Festival, PopUp Magazine, Photo Ville, the Pingyao International Photography Festival China, and SXSW, among others. In 2021, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired "It's After the End of the World Don't You Know That Yet." This collective self-portrait examines normalized violence inflicted on black lives.

  • Tiffany M. Griffin is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Co-Owner of Bright Black, a North Carolina-based social enterprise that pioneered the art of using scent to share positive stories about the beauty and brilliance of Blackness. Since launching in 2019, Bright Black has gained national and international notoriety, attracting the attention of Beyonce, Zendaya, Jordan Peele, Nike, and others.

    Uniquely, Bright Black synthesizes cooperative economics theory with revenue-sharing practices to amplify their social and economic impact through strategic partnerships. These collaborations have included partners such as the NBA and WNBA, Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and have resulted in over $30,000 in donations to social organizations working to improve the lives of Black people around the world.

    Before founding Bright Black, Tiffany was a Strategic Advisor in the Center for Resilience at the US Agency for International Aid (USAID), where she helped to spearhead the Agency’s first resilience policy and corresponding programming and evaluation frameworks. Before her work at USAID, Tiffany was a health and safety nets policy staffer for Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico. Tiffany has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she focused on decision-making as a conduit of racial discrimination. She also has dual BAs in Psychology and Communications from Boston College.

  • As the Founder & CEO of Latimer.ai, John founded and launched the inclusive large language model (“LLM”) Latimer.ai. Latimer is building the premier online Artificial Intelligence resource for accurate historical information and bias-free interaction for Black and Brown audiences.

    Unlike other LLMs, Latimer builds its training platform using licensed content from esteemed sources, such as the recently announced exclusive partnership with New York Amsterdam News. Using licensed content improves data accuracy and the fairness of economic sharing between content creators, owners, and data deliverers. Latimer's construction is a Retrieval Augmented Generation model ("RAG" Model), which has several key advantages.

    John served as co-founder and CEO of the venture-backed, video-based travel platform VoyageTV which raised $10 million in an A-Round led by Syncom Venture Partners. It was sold to Next 1 Interactive in 2013.

    He recently served as a partner at the Family Office, TRS Capital, and at Movita Organics, an organic supplement company led by filmmaker Spike Lee’s wife, Tonya Lewis Lee. John sits on the Board of Directors of Outward Bound USA. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the State University of New York and a B.A. in Computer Science from Columbia University.

  • Sidney McLaurin is the CEO of Fleet Robotics. Sidney and his co-founders started Fleet as a simple, automated mobile robot platform to help industrial companies proactively maintain large industrial structures. Starting with the maritime industry, their collaborative robots live permanently on commercial ships and help simplify inspection, maintenance, and cargo operations. The robots are best known for their novel walking ability on vertical surfaces in harsh conditions — even underwater while the ship is in motion.

    Sidney incubated the concept for Fleet while he was a Partner at Material Impact, a Boston-based venture fund. Before the fund, he worked at Lime where he joined as its first GM in 2017 and helped scale the company from a single market to the global presence it is today.

    McLaurin credits his interest in climate to growing up around the outdoors in Mississippi. He is a mentor and advisor for a variety of folks within the climate startup ecosystem, including the formation of a new start-up incubator in London. Sidney is an engineer by training — he started his career at Siemens in Industrial Automation and holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Florida. He transitioned into climate entrepreneurship with an MBA and an Environmental Management degree from Duke University.

  • Dr. Sian Proctor is a Geoscience Professor with the Maricopa Community Colleges, an Afrofuturism Space Artist, and an Astronaut. She is the Chief Inspiration Astronaut of Space2inspire and founder of The Proctor Foundation for Art and Science. She was the mission pilot for SpaceX Inspiration4, the first all-civilian orbital mission. She is the first female commercial astronaut spaceship pilot and the only African American woman ever to be a mission pilot. She is also the first African-American commercial astronaut, and the first African-American to paint in space.

    She currently serves as a member of the National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group representing the Maricopa Community Colleges. Her motto is Space2inspire where she encourages people to use their unique strengths and passion to inspire themselves and those within their reach. She uses her unique artistic style and poetry to share her love of human spaceflight and to bring her EarthLight experience down to Earth. She believes that we need to actively strive for a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive (J.E.D.I.) space both on Earth and beyond.

Ready to Apply?

The Lewis Latimer Fellowship Program can change your life.