Find Your Way Forward: Black. Female. Founder.
By Nicole Bishop, 2018 Camelback Fellow & Founder of Quartolio.
It was boxy, big, and beige. A blinking cursor on a beveled screen reflecting back my intrigue. This was chapter two of my founder origin story; finding an old computer in the basement, some decades ago.
Chapter one opened years earlier when a tick took up residence in a curve on my left ear for a few days, leading to decades of misdiagnosis, the wrong medications, and confused doctors.
In 2016, I founded Quartolio, an insight automation platform that helps doctors and scientists understand how diseases and other scientific concepts are connected, why they’re important, and how they can help. Synthesis, our proprietary suite of AI algorithms, computes on the collective intelligence in the documents produced by scientists and doctors around the globe.
Fast forward to chapter three. While studying Sociology in college, I got my first computer. It was still boxy, big, and beige, but this time I would know what to do with it. Trial and error, I taught myself computer hardware, networking, took a stab at security, and later my passion: code.
Learning to code, and falling in love with technology was not in my plan, and certainly not in my coursework. But I decided to embrace the pivot and pursue my passion. I started a web consultancy, building websites and strategies for clients who were often surprised to find a Black woman on the other side of the success of their projects.
The perception of what a technologist, or founder who dropped out of college to build tech looks like is mainly white, and male. But this is my story. After 15 years in tech, building for others, I decided to build something impactful for myself. Within 30 days of my return from Seoul, South Korea where I attended the MIT Global Entrepreneurship program, Quartolio was born.
My journey to founder has not been linear or obvious, but at every milestone, and every mishap, I’ve found my way forward, guided by passion and a commitment to level up. I never stopped learning, self-taught Artificial Intelligence, and built a platform that accurately recommended drugs for COVID-19 treatments based on historical coronavirus research alone; a milestone acknowledged by the World Economic Forum and its partners.
Entrepreneurship empowers; with the ability to forge your own path, and write your own story. After years of confused doctors, I met one that had done research on Lyme disease, and she changed my life. Prior to the right diagnosis, a number of doctors suggested that I go to research facilities for answers, so I built a tool that would connect them all. Inspired by the milestones of Katherine Johnson, Marie Maynard Daly, and Gladys West, my story is the intersection of scientific and technological knowledge, democratized.
Globally, we are faced with a pandemic that has claimed more than two million lives. Nationally, we are faced with recovery from a pandemic response that has disproportionately altered and taken the lives of BIPOC.
Part of that recovery is a woman who knows what it is to be the first; Kamala Harris, who just made history as the first woman, first Black woman, and first Indian woman to help lead the United States. Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside President Joe Biden, has nominated health and science teams that value the role of scientists, doctors, and data in getting the pandemic under control. With Quartolio, our team will do its part by releasing the Coronavirus Core, our solution for automated insights on global COVID-19 research.
Like the Black women before her, first in their fields of science and technology, my message to Vice President Kamala Harris: Your milestone is our bridge.
See you on the other side.
Learn more here about Nicole Bishop and Quartolio.
Find out more about all of the CBV Fellows by clicking below: