Ariana The Techie is a 3x tech founder and a 15-year full-stack software engineer and product manager. Currently, she is a full-time business coach for non-technical and technical startup founders, pastors, and business owners around the world.

 

In 2021, at the age of 26, Ariana became the 4th Black woman in the world to raise over $1 million in the blockchain industry by securing more than $3 million within a three-month timeframe. 

 

Ariana sits on the Board of Trustees for the Museum of Contemporary Art of North Miami-as the youngest trustee and philanthropic donor in the history of its institution. She is the Co-Chair of the institutions Finance committee and the Chair of The Institution largest annual fundraiser, The MOCA Gala

 

Ariana’s journey as an entrepreneur began at just 18 years old, when she ran a baking company for three years in her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. To this day, Ariana remains a passionate baker—she loves competing in baking competitions against her grandmother, taking local classes in French cuisine, and creating new seasoning combinations for her well-loved honey baby back rib recipe.

 

She previously attended Tuskegee University, where she majored in electrical engineering before deciding to drop out after her sophomore year to pursue her passion for building generational wealth through entrepreneurship. She completed a coding bootcamp to continue her technical education. While at Tuskegee, Ariana landed engineering internships with companies such as Honda Manufacturing—building software for the Honda Pilot, Acura MDX, and Honda Odyssey. She became the first HBCU intern at Exelon Nuclear's Byron, Illinois plant and later served as a software engineer at General Electric Aviation. Since 2015, Ariana has been an official NASA Grant Scholar due to her outstanding academic performance while at the Illustrious Tuskegee.

 

Since the age of 23, Ariana has been a keynote speaker for some of the world’s largest tech conferences, events, and universities. She previously served as the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Dalilah Cann, a cannabis-tech startup based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she helped build an Amazon-style digital marketplace for cannabis products. During this time, Ariana also co-founded the Black and Brown Cannabis Guild, one of the first organizations in the U.S. to develop a program for marginalized communities to build businesses in the cannabis industry. While at the Guild, she helped to expunge over 400+ records for individuals facing minor cannabis-related offenses—with support from Cooley Law School and strategic partners in Grand Rapids. While this was a key moment in her tech journey, Ariana no longer supports the consumption or promotion of cannabis products.

 

Ariana is the host of the Women in Tech with Ariana podcast, which has reached over 30 countries in just three years and ranks among the top 5 women-in-tech podcasts on Apple Podcasts. She is a 2017 Apple Worldwide Developer Scholar, where she learned to build iOS applications in one week and beat hundreds of hackers worldwide to earn her place. She is also an HF0 Fellow—part of the prestigious HF0 Residency, a founder accelerator program where only 13 software engineers are selected from thousands of applicants to build startups and raise venture capital within 13 weeks, backed by the world’s top venture capitalists.

 

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