"The median net worth for White households in Greater Boston is $247,500," Andrew Singleton, the Tufts Laidlaw coordinator, told our cohort during an early session. He asked us to guess the figure for Black households in the same city. Nobody in the room got close. For non-immigrant Black households, it was $8.
That number stayed with me throughout the summer. Boston is one of the wealthiest cities in the US, with many of the best universities in the world. It became a running joke between us Laidlaw Scholars whenever we would see a new university just because of how many there were. From Harvard, the oldest university in the USA, to MIT, Northeastern University, Tufts, Boston University, I could keep going. However just because there is proximity, that doesn’t mean there is access. The Timothy Smith Network strives to give exactly that to youth from the Roxbury Area, a historically Black neighbourhood in Boston.
Their mission is to bridge the digital divide, by running programs such as the Boston Design Academy, which has a key difference to many other summer programs in the US. Instead of the high-schoolers having to pay to attend, they were paid to attend. This initially surprised us, but the reasoning behind it made a lot of sense. If the interns weren't being paid to attend, many of them would have had to spend their summer working a job instead. Because of this, they weren’t just students attending a summer program. They were interns, and they were being paid for their time. That gave them a different sense of responsibility and ownership over their work.
There were three programs running simultaneously at BDA over the summer, based at the Tufts Medical Campus in downtown Boston. The Digital Design Intensive (DDI) focused on having interns design a video game, a digital avatar, and a website. Elevating Agricultural Technology (EAT) focused on developing innovative technologies related to personal gardening and agriculture. Finally, there was Tech Your Health (TYH), the program in which I was an instructor, centred around creating a prototype to address a health problem. We had James Tukpah, a PhD student from Northeastern University working in a lab focused on autonomous vehicles, as our lead instructor in TYH. Whenever any of us encountered a problem we couldn't solve, we'd call James, and somehow, he would figure it out.
The intern’s prototypes needed to include a 3D modelled component, an electronic circuit, and code. At the beginning of the six-weeks, most of these interns had never done any of these things before. During the first three weeks, we as instructors taught. I taught the Health module, @Arthur Blanchard the 3D modelling module, and @Matvey Bondarev the electronics module. By the end, they all had prototypes.
I taught the first module, the Health module. I introduced the interns to human biology and different systems in the body, including a little field trip to one of the Tufts Medical buildings, where they got to see some interesting props, including a skeleton, bringing what they were learning off the page and into reality. I then introduced them to research, ideation, and design thinking, which they would use to develop their ideas before they began building.
From the first day, I had a slightly crazy, although perhaps obvious, realisation: if we didn't do anything, nothing would get done. We had been given a lot of freedom to create what we thought would be best for the interns, but that freedom also meant that we had to take responsibility for making the program work. It was on that first day that I understood why this was called a Leadership in Action program.
We had to be flexible constantly. Plans changed, lessons had to be adapted, and technical problems could affect the entire schedule. A 3D print might break, and reprinting it meant moving to the back of a queue that could last days because everyone needed to print their work. We couldn't simply follow the original plan and expect everything to work out.
A great example of things not working out happened when I ran an ethical debate around a genuinely hard question: should a surgical robot be allowed to make an in-the-moment decision during surgery without a surgeon confirming it first? I split interns into interest groups (surgeon, patient, hospital administrator, robot manufacturer) and let each group decide their own position rather than assigning one, then structured it like a policy debate with speeches and rebuttals.
It fell apart almost immediately. Groups flipped positions between rounds, some had nothing to say because they hadn't tracked the previous group's argument, and at one point a member rebutted their own teammate. I had to stop and remind them they were on the same side. At first I was quite upset with the interns and how they’d handled this experience, but with some further reflection, I to admit to myself that the failure was also mine. I'd handed them a structure that was too heavy for a first attempt at this kind of exercise. It was a useful, humbling reminder that good leadership sometimes means starting smaller than you think you need to, and building gradually from there. I should have met them where they were, instead of getting too complex too quickly.
The interns came in with very different levels of experience. Some had extensive experience with 3D modelling and printing, whilst others were discovering what a 3D printer was for the first time. However, one thing that consistently amazed me about all of the interns was their sheer creativity. They came in with bright ideas, from an artificial voice box to restore speech after a laryngectomy, to smart walking sticks for blind users, to a medicine-reminder box designed to help people with conditions such as ADHD or memory difficulties take their medication consistently. Our job as instructors was to help them scale these ideas into working prototypes which could be built in just three weeks. Sometimes, this meant focusing on only one component of their much bigger idea.
Despite the challenges, it was incredible to see how motivated some of the interns were and how much they learned in such a short time. By the end of the program, they had gone from having ideas on paper to presenting working prototypes. The final showcase was held at Franklin Cummings Tech Institute, where the interns were able to demonstrate what they had built. Seeing them explain their projects and take ownership of their work was one of the most rewarding parts of the summer. It made the long days of adapting and problem-solving feel worthwhile.
I was also incredibly grateful to work alongside the other Laidlaw Scholars. We came from different academic and personal backgrounds, and I learned a lot from seeing how they approached challenges. We would compare experiences, share ideas, and talk through the difficulties we were facing. It was reassuring to know that everyone was figuring things out together. Outside of the program, getting to discover and explore the Boston with them was another highlight of the summer. Especially the Red Sox game we went to together. None of us really understood baseball very well, but we cheered when everyone else did!
To finish this off, one moment that particularly stayed with me involved two of our interns, both girls in this summer program which was predominantly male, as STEM spaces often are. They were working on a bracelet-based stress predictor, and at one point they began comparing their project to some of the more visually impressive prototypes around them. They started to lose confidence in their own idea. I spent time helping them see that their idea was valuable in its own right, and that they should be proud of what they were building. They finished the summer with a prototype they were proud of, and a newfound confidence in themselves.
When I looked around me, I realised that this was what all of the other scholars and the staff of the Timothy Smith Network were giving these young people: the confidence to believe that they could have ideas that matter. This is so incredibly crucial, because with that confidence, they can feel capable of putting themselves out there, taking ownership of their ideas, and believing that they belong in these spaces. By giving them access to resources, support, and people who believe in their potential, we were helping them see themselves not just as people who could use technology, but as people who could create it. And I think that is something they can carry with them long after the summer is over. I definitely will.