Dr. Deana Brown
Adjunct Professor
Contact
Bio
Dr. Deana Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Talawa.ai, a VC-backed startup building accessible AI infrastructure for emerging consumer brands, and an adjunct professor at Â鶹¹ÙÍø. She has more than 13 years of experience as a hybrid product development and UX research leader for global products and services. Brown is often found in-field learning about people across Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and South America.
Previously, she spent over a decade at Google as a Strategic UX Research Manager across Search, Maps, Ads, and Commerce. She was a founding member of the team that built food ordering with Google and later founded an internal startup at Google's Area 120 innovation lab — a precursor to the now-launched Pomelli by Google Labs. She advises startups across the U.S., Latin America, and Africa through Google for Startups. Brown also founded the Black UX Network, a global community of over 1,000 product and design professionals. A native of Jamaica, she is founder of the Azarae Foundation, a nonprofit enabling access to education and opportunities for Caribbean youth.
Dr. Brown received a PhD in Computing from Georgia Tech, where she focused on designing technologies to solve socio-economic challenges around the globe. Her research earned her prestigious fellowships and awards from companies including Intel and Google. Her work is published at top venues such as ACM CHI, UbiComp, CSCW, and IFIP.
Areas of Expertise
- User Experience Research
- Hybrid Product Development
Education
- PhD in Computing, Georgia Tech University