Brittany Linus, Class of 2024
Majoring in AAAS has allowed me to critically engage with the question: "What is Black technology?" Through class discussions, community engagement projects, and academic research, I explored Black interactions with and contributions to the development of digital technology, ecosystems, and the fandoms that thrive because of them. AAAS courses honed my understanding of Black digital rhetoric, teaching me to appreciate how every method of digital expression can declare, affirm, and protect one's Blackness. These explorations culminated in my creative honors thesis: a multidimensional exploration of the impact Black video gameplay styles have on digital landscapes. The greatest gift AAAS has given me is its holistic support—nurturing my multiplicity as a scholar, artist, and gamer. Through AAAS, I learned that knowledge is not just an institutional product, but a personal and communal process of reaching toward oneself to connect with others more intimately.
-Brittany
Brittany Linus (Class of 2024) Client Solutions Planner, TikTok
From your experience working/in life, what makes DAAAS different from otherdisciplines?
What sets DAAAS apart from other disciplines is its integration of thought, theory, and praxis. DAAAS champions not only understanding concepts intellectually, but also actively engaging with them in ways that connect to lived experiences. There is a palpable excitement from instructors around students’ personal uncovering of academic and community-led discourse, andan enthusiasm from both instructors and students to evolve that discourse into work that is culturally relevant and personally meaningful. In DAAAS, abstract concepts are not left remote—they are made intimate by being applied, questioned, and transformed through the lens of one’s own experiences, making scholarship rigorous because of its felt immediacy: a demand that ideas remain accountable to human lives.
What skills did you learn from DAAAS that you still apply in your life, work, and career today?
DAAAS equipped me with a set of analytical, cultural, and critical thinking skills that I continueto apply in my life and career today. By immersing me in Black discourse, movements, and initiatives related to digitality, the discipline sharpened my ability to interrogate media and digital representation, allowing me to recognize patterns of inequity, bias, and cultural erasure.This skill is invaluable in my role as a Client Solutions Planner, where my recommendationshelp shape corporate interactions with global communities by advocating for media campaigns centering culturally resonant, data-backed messaging and imagery on TikTok.This discipline has also strengthened my capacity for critical research and structured argumentation. DAAAS lectures, seminars, office hours, and coffee chats are platforms where I felt the most comfortable voicing and exploring objections in a safe, constructive environment. My professors—through their clear assignment criteria, student expectations, and classroom norms—taught me to combine care, evidence, context, and theory to analyze complex social phenomena with tact. I leverage this skill in client-facing pitch calls when upselling, objection-handling, interpreting performance data, and assessing audience behavior to provide strategicand responsive recommendations that integrate both qualitative insights and socioeconomic understanding. Lastly, DAAAS instilled a strong sense of cultural advocacy and ethical responsibility. Itreminds me that work in any field, such as advertising or marketing, carries social impact. This lens guides me to think about the ripple effects of the campaigns I am a part of, focusing on how corporate participation in community-led digital discourse takes up and changes digital spaces.
What was your intended major or career when entering Stanford? Why did you choose DAAAS, and how has it served you today?
I entered Stanford as a Human Biology major on the pre-med track with plans to minor in African and African American Studies. Even though my academic focus evolved from this starting point, the throughline that I found myself tugging on remained: my interest in Black digital discourse. By the beginning of my junior year, I decided it was time to commit to consistency. I declared DAAAS as my major and surrendered myself fully to the possibilities of digital scholarship. What first drew me to African and African American Studies was more than the curated catalogue of courses—it was the deliberate thoughtfulness of the instructors and administrators who shaped them. Their classrooms were not spaces of mere transmission, but of transformation. They welcomed students not only as vessels to be filled, but as voices to be heard: collaborators in an unfolding and ongoing conversation happening within and outside of the classroom. Each lesson felt alive, responsive, and intentionally tethered to the present moment. What was happening in the world outside our classroom was invited inside, urgently and insistently, so that we might grapple with it together. I never left class unchanged: sometimes with a new lens through which to see the world, sometimes with a reframing of knowledge I thought I understood, and often with a direct challenge to a belief I once held tightly. This pedagogy—rigorous yet flexible, rooted in structure, but open to interpretation—became a model for me. I have carried it with me across the country. In professional settings, when I host or facilitate client-facing meetings, I strive to recreate those same conditions: spaces both structured and fluid, where participants feel safe to bring their own perspectives, engage deeply, and co-create solutions. The intentionality, adaptability, and critical rigor I cultivated through African and African American Studies now guide me daily—allowing me to center diverse voices, foster meaningful engagement, and approach every challenge with both creativity, care, and hope.
What would you say to current or prospective students who are unsure what a degree in will DAAAS allow them to do?
There is an Igbo proverb that asks, “A ma ka mmiri si were baa n’ọpị ugboguru?” — who can say how water entered the stalk of the pumpkin? The answer is you. Once you’ve identified the source of your own water, it is you who can speak to its flow—and through it, growth becomes possible. This is what a DAAAS degree is: a source of water, with the knowledge, skills, and experiences it provides serving as the flow that nourishes your growth. DAAAS equips you to see patterns others might miss, to think critically about power and culture, and to imagine possibilities beyond what seems visible. It does not confine your future—it expands it, carrying its impact across disciplines and professions: law, medicine, business, technology, policy, the arts, and beyond. With this foundation, you learn, reflect, and grow while preparing to move thoughtfully in the world. You leave not only with expertise, but with a way of thinking—how to question systems, research rigorously, listen deeply, and engage across cultures. These skills flow through you into everything you do.Just as water seeps quietly into the pumpkin through its stalk, nourishing it from within in ways we cannot fully trace but whose effects we can clearly see, so too does DAAAS nourish you. It deepens your perspective, sharpens your skills, and expands your horizons. The growth it nurtures is not always visible in the moment, but over time it becomes unmistakable—in your confidence to lead, your ability to center diverse voices, and your commitment to act with creativity and care.
What was your favorite memory of DAAAS during your time at Stanford?
The love I have for DAAAS is shaped by a mosaic of experiences that revealed a part of myself Ioften keep private because I did not see it reflected in the world I came from: my deep appreciation for experimental art, video gaming, and fanfiction writing. When this underbelly was exposed—through the natural closeness that comes with sustained connection—I was not ridiculed or dismissed. Instead, I was welcomed, embraced, and given opportunities to explore and reflect on these interests in ways I hadn’t imagined. DAAAS invited me into Black worlds I didn’t know existed and taught me how to thrive in them. More importantly, it showed me that my passions, however unconventional, had a place within a community that valued creativity, intellectual curiosity, and cultural expression. One memory I hold particularly close is being invited by Dr. Katie Dieter to attend the 7th Annual Rex Nettleford Arts Conference at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica. Under Dr. Dieter’s guidance, we engaged in workshops, art exhibitions, and panel discussions exploring interdisciplinary arts in the Caribbean. We immersed ourselves in Jamaica’s rich artistic traditions and explored meanings of Black diasporic identity through a Black Studies lens. The experience culminated in a collaborative panel between AAAS and EMCVPA titled “Re-imagining Black Diasporic Identity through the Arts,” where we shared digital archives of our creative projects. Being invited alongside my fellow creative, Osadolor Osawemwenze, as a part of this program was a demonstration of trust, affirmation, and love from DAAAS to us. DAAAS created spaces where I could fully exist, creatively and intellectually, and for that, I will always be grateful.
What do you hope or envision for DAAAS in the future?
I envision DAAAS building on its intellectual legacy by deepening the bridge between scholarship and career preparation. This could take the form of a professional coalition network for students, partnering with initiatives such as Management Leadership for Tomorrow, Sistas in Sales, Baddies in Tech, and more. In this way, DAAAS becomes a heart beating with opportunities that pulse through its institutionalized arteries into the arts, business, technology, law, policy, and beyond. After all, DAAAS introduces students to a network of mentors, programs, and communities that extend their impact well past the classroom. In the future I see, DAAAS is not only a site of cultural and historical inquiry, but also a launchpad for professional leadership, innovation, and impact across industries.
What challenges did you face in your career with DAAAS major or minor degree?
The greatest challenge I faced in declaring African & African American Studies as my major was figuring out how this commitment would translate into tangible professional opportunities, particularly as a low-income student. Like many of my peers, I had to confront the fear that my academic passion might not align with my goal of financial stability. I turned this challenge into an opportunity by actively balancing my Black Studies coursework with extracurricular initiatives like Consult Your Community and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which enabled me to develop highly valuable technical skills, such as data analysis, media planning, and digital strategy—gaining hands-on exposure to corporate America without stepping away from my engagement in Black Studies. Scholars like Darlene Clark Hine, Ruha Benjamin, André Brock Jr., Rayvon Fouché, and Adam Banks equipped me with analytical frameworks to interrogate media representation, examine structural digital inequities, and highlight the cultural innovation of Black communities. By combining these technical skills with critical insight, I can evaluate the efficacy of digital campaigns not only through metrics, but through their sociocultural impact—ensuring that performance and branding strategies, messaging, and in-app brand engagement honor community creativity and epistemic authority. This convergence of skills and scholarship reflects the balance I maintained throughout my education: integrating rigorous corporate competencies with the analytical lens of Black Studies to approach professional challenges thoughtfully and responsibly.
As a Client Solutions Planner, I lean on my Black Studies background daily. Global communities shape culture in real time on TikTok and I work to ensure that the campaigns my clients run on our platform center authenticity and cultural relevance for diverse audiences. Concretely, this means (1) offering feedback on ad creative previews to strengthen cultural resonance, (2) advocating for economic opportunities that elevate Black content creators, and (3) expanding language and targeting metrics to reflect the nuances of intersectionality that fuel creative communities through challenges and trends. Given my proximity and ability to not only see data, but also understand what the data is saying and can be used to advocate for, I am able to stand in solidarity with others having the foundation of Black Studies as a critical edge. In this way, what began as a personal challenge became a professional strength: the critical lens I cultivated in Black Studies now enables me to navigate the digital economy with both rigor as a sales professional.
What are you currently doing for a living?
After graduating, I moved across the country to New York to begin my professional career in sales at TikTok. Advertising sales here is built on two arms: Client Solutions and Brand Partnerships. I work as a Client Solutions Planner within TikTok’s Beauty & Luxury portfolio, serving as the optimizing operational hand behind the planning, development, and execution ofin-app advertising campaigns and branding presence. My sales team is one of the original Retail vertical teams at TikTok, which has placed me among some of the most competitive, sharp, and welcoming professionals in the business. Thanks to the adaptable nature of my role and the openness of my team, I’ve been able to expand beyond campaign planning into data-driven,multimedia storytelling opportunities with clients—developing client-facing sizzle reels, quarterly reviews, and creative product trainings that bring our (upsell) strategies to life.