A living lab in podcast form — exploring the movement, ownership, and cultural meaning of data across platforms, borders, and generations.
New: Me>We>World, an on-demand workshop. Opens November 13.
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 25 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.
Share Your Feedback (3 Quick Questions)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.
Season 1 — Episode 2
Data is the new culture, so why is your relationship to your data so important to your past and your future?
Season 1 — Episode 3
Technology is a parallel universe. How much of our lives exists in the data?
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.
Join on SubstackSubscribe for reflection prompts, discussion guides, and community conversation.
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 and LinkedIn for behind-the-scenes and community highlights.
On-demand workshop · Opens November 13, 2026
Trace your data: how your data shapes you (Me), the people you belong to (We), and the systems being built around us (World). Leave with a data sovereign practice for the world you want to build.
Who it's for. Educators, artists, technologists, organizers, healers and researchers. Anyone who has ever been misnamed or missed by a system.
How your data shapes you.
The people you belong to, and the data you share.
The systems being built around us, and where you stand in them.
Format. On-demand, at your own pace, in a private Me>We>World space on Skool. Opens November 13, 2026.
$49
Tell me when pre-orders openLed by Melissa Howell, systems strategist and social impact leader with 25 years' experience across 40 countries.
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.
Coming next
A 6-week guided experience for practitioners and institutions.
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.