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About Us
We are Black Californians researching, visualizing, writing, publishing, and dreaming about a thriving future full of possibilities for all Black Californians.
Mapping Black California takes an integrated, solutions-driven approach to using data as a tool for identifying and addressing systemic racism and inequity across every region and community in the state, with a particular focus on populations that are often overlooked or hard to reach.
Our goal is simple: provide reliable data that fuels real change.
We equip Black Californians and our network of partners with the information needed to drive policy change, strengthen civic campaigns, and support Black-led, Black-guided, and Black-driven social justice work in communities across the Golden State.
Team Bios
Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds
Founder
Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds is founder of Voice Media Ventures, publisher of Black Voice News, a Stanford University JSK Sr Journalism Fellow, and an advocate for community media. As second generation publisher of Black Voice News (BVN), Paulette is transforming the half century old weekly print outlet into a solutions-oriented data journalism and justice-focused community news organization. She is leading the transformation to data reporting through two BVN projects: Mapping Black California and DaHUB. Structured within a community mapping framework, Mapping Black California, encourages community collaboration around data and information by bringing together community media, community based organizations, and educational institutions. And as a JSK Journalism Fellow she is working on an information project to make solutions-focused data reporting accessible to smaller news organizations serving California’s diverse communities.
Candice Mays
Project Director
Candice Mays serves as Mapping Black California’s Project Director. Alongside a diverse professional background in grassroots nonprofit organization management, development, and grant making, she spent three years as a literacy teacher with the New York City Department of Education after receiving her M.A. in English Education from New York University. Her time as a public school educator inspired her pursuit of an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Fiction at the University of Miami where was a Michener Teaching Fellow and a M.F.A. Summer Award winner. Her research experience includes conducting cultural and historical analysis of Louisiana Creoles reflecting the content of her fiction which critically examines multi-cultural, African American existence in non-inclusive spaces. Having returned to Southern California and her beloved Riverside County, Candice seeks to humanize GIS by mining narratives from data on all things historical, Californian, and most importantly, Black.
Alex Reed
Project Manager
Alex Reed is a project manager for Mapping Black California and provides support as a data researcher and visualizer for its many initiatives. A proud CMU Tartan, she operates under the tagline A Jane of All Trades, where she works at the intersection of data and storytelling. She creates moments where a user, reader, or student may find themselves engaged with information they might have considered beyond their reach. She cultivated her interdisciplinary practice at institutions including The Andy Warhol Museum and Worldstage Inc, creating work that spanned stage performance, installation, and digital media. Drawing on these experiences, as a data activist Alex endeavors to address social disparities in education access, economic opportunity, public health, and environmental rights.
