When Data Moves
Like We Do
A living lab in podcast form — exploring the movement, ownership, and cultural meaning of data across borders, platforms, and generations.
A living lab in podcast form — exploring the movement, ownership, and cultural meaning of data across borders, platforms, and generations.
About the Initiative
It lives in our bodies, our communities, our migrations, our memories, and our futures. And too often, it moves without our consent.
Data Diasporas creates space for dialogue with dreamers, builders, and disrupters — centering educators, artists, technologists, organizers, healers, and youth as knowledge-holders.
Hosted by Melissa Howell — Systems strategist, social impact leader, and philanthropy advisor with 22+ years' experience across 40 countries designing equitable workforce and learning ecosystems.
It carries history and inherits bias. Every dataset reflects the assumptions of the world that built it — and the communities it chose to overlook.
It migrates, fragments, and gains power in transit. Displacement is the default condition — not a conditional risk.
What happens when the census misses you? What does it mean to be counted but not seen? Where does your data go after it's collected — and who decides?
The Podcast
We're not just talking numbers — we're unpacking power, identity, policy, memory, and future-making. Solo storytelling, interviews, and narrative episodes.
Introduction
Meet the show, the mission, and the questions we're here to explore — from who gets counted to the afterlife of data.
Season 1 — Episode 1
Where does data come from, where does it travel, and who gets to bring it home? A journey through data's diasporic life.
Join the Movement
If data has ever misnamed you. If systems have ever missed you. If you've ever lived between worlds — your voice belongs here.
Reflection prompts, discussion guides, and updates. No spam.
Each episode comes with guided prompts designed for personal and collective sensemaking.
Live community conversations and virtual events where your questions shape the dialogue.
Voice memos, guest features, and community contributions — your data story matters.
Connect with us on Instagram, Fanbase, and LinkedIn for behind-the-scenes and community highlights.
Insights & Articles
Essays, frameworks, and field notes from the intersection of data, diaspora, and design. Where the podcast plants seeds, this is where they grow.
New essays and frameworks arriving soon.
Get NotifiedThe Flagship
A 6-week guided experience where the podcast plants the question — and the Lab is where we learn to answer it together.
Each week pairs a public podcast episode with a short private audio reflection — context and synthesis from Melissa.
Participants map a system they touch — an app, a dataset, a foundation strategy — and name the world it's building.
A capstone artifact you can use: a World-Building Canvas, a redesigned policy, a public essay, or an audio reflection.
Podcast + prompts. Asynchronous. Sliding scale or sponsored.
Full Lab experience. Live sessions. Certificate of completion.
Cohort-based. Private sessions. Applied to your systems. Advisory.