Kesha Williams: The Spelman Woman Teaching Big Tech How to Build AI Right

Let me tell you about Kesha Williams.

There’s a Black woman from Atlanta who built a Minority-Report-style algorithm that predicts crime — and then decided her real mission was teaching other people to build technology better than she was ever given the chance to. Her name is Kesha Williams, and she’s now running her own AI company.

The Work

Kesha is the Founder and Head of AI at Keysoft, her own enterprise AI and cloud advisory firm in Atlanta. She helps companies actually implement AI and machine learning — not just talk about it. She’s an AWS Machine Learning Hero, an AWS Ambassador, an Alexa Champion, a HackerRank All-Star, and a LinkedIn Top Voice.

Before starting Keysoft, she was a principal engineer and cloud/ML architect at Slalom. And before that, she did something genuinely wild at Chick-fil-A: she built “Live Plan Eat,” the award-winning Alexa skill that lets you plan meals with your voice. A Black woman from Atlanta taught an AI to help you figure out dinner — and won awards doing it.

She also created SAM, a machine learning algorithm inspired by Minority Report that forecasts the likelihood of crime — a project she’s presented around the world, and one that taught her early the weight of building this kind of power. That’s part of why her real love is education now.

The Roots

This is an HBCU story all the way. Kesha got her B.S. from Spelman College — class of 1996 — and a master’s degree in 2007, plus a Harvard Business School Online certificate in organizational leadership. She’s built her whole career in Atlanta.

She founded Colors of STEM, a diversity organization, and she’s taught for Black Girls CODE and Code.org. She’s a WomenTech “Mentor of the Year,” won the Ada Lovelace Award, and created LinkedIn Learning and Pluralsight courses that have taught tens of thousands of people machine learning and prompt engineering. She’s on the board of Women in Voice.

Why It Matters

Here’s why Kesha matters right now: everyone wants to use AI, but hardly anyone knows how to build it responsibly. Kesha Williams is one of the people — a Spelman woman, an AWS Hero — who’s out here making sure the people building this technology get taught properly, and that they understand the power they’re holding.

She went from teaching Alexa to plan dinner to running her own AI company. And she’s bringing a whole generation of Black technologists with her.

Quick facts:

• Founder & Head of AI, Keysoft (Atlanta)
• AWS Machine Learning Hero · AWS Ambassador · Alexa Champion
• Built award-winning “Live Plan Eat” Alexa skill at Chick-fil-A
• Created SAM, a predictive-policing ML algorithm
• Spelman College B.S. (HBCU) · founded Colors of STEM