Latinas in Tech Are Our Mission

Latinas in tech? Que? Is that a thing? Si! For some people, Latinas are expected to be the maid or the taco truck lady, not the IT expert or programmer building digital worlds behind a computer. Pero like we DO exist and our mission is to make the “girl version” of the tv show “Silicon Valley” to inspire, support and train Latinas and ALL women of color who dream of working in tech.

Puerto Rican Writer/Director Melanie Feliciano saw the need for this mission in 2006, while working at a tech startup in Miami with all-male co-founders. When a co-worker kept asking her out and investors kept telling her things like, “I don’t do business with women, I only date them,” she felt like she had time traveled back to the 1970s.

“I got my coding skills in a women’s tech incubator circa 1999 in San Francisco, thanks to Lavonne Luquis Shelton, the “girl version” of Jeff Bezos,” says Melanie. “But 20 years later, he’s got billions and we got #metoo. It’s pure comedy!!!”

Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots first launched at Art Basel Miami 2009 as a performance art piece in a Wynwood warehouse. Seven women dressed in all black wore iPhones on their chests exhibiting videos that expressed their brilliant ideas. If the men were already looking there, it was the only way to get their points across and potentially change the conversation about diversity in tech long before the Google Manifesto or #MeToo movement came along.

Eventually Melanie headed to film school at American University in Washington, DC to shoot a live action web series starring Dr. Nutmeg, a mad scientist Latina working in tech and building Femmebots to brainwash the venture capitalists of Miami.

As soon as Melanie finished her film thesis, she headed up to New York and converted her idea into an animated web series thanks to a Kickstarter campaign and a ton of help from some of her closest friends and colleagues — some Latina/o, some not, but supportive of the cause. Eventually she pitched the “Turing Test” episode to Adult Swim in 2018.

“They said it was a great idea,” says Melanie, “but just make it funnier!”

Now that she has returned to her hometown Orlando, currently the largest Puerto Rican diaspora on mainland U.S., her goal is to make the series funnier with a new team of writers, characters, and of course using the latest in AI technology.