Value Dixon has delivered to Fortune 100 companies, while building for Detroit on the side.
De'Lon Dixon got his first computer in the third grade and never looked back. But a couple of years ago, he was ready to leave Detroit for Miami, warmer weather, a louder tech scene, the usual reasons talented people go. One weekend changed his mind.
He stopped by Black Tech Saturdays, a monthly gathering in Corktown for Black founders and creatives, and had a conversation with co-founder Johnnie Turnage. He stayed. He decided the tech future he wanted to build could be built in Detroit, for Detroit.
Now he runs Think Technologies, a Black-owned AI startup, while also leading enterprise customer experience at Glassbox, where he has delivered over 100 million dollars in value to Fortune 100 companies. Through Think, he built Black Tech Saturdays' Tech Connect AI chatbot and launched UThink, online micro-courses that teach people to use tools like ChatGPT, Canva, and Google Analytics, aimed squarely at older adults and underserved communities getting left behind by the digital shift.
"He almost left Detroit. One conversation made him stay and build it instead."
The digital divide is usually described as a problem for governments. Dixon treated it as a product to build, teaching the people most likely to be shut out of the AI era how to actually use it. That is the difference between talking about access and shipping it.
This is the builder ANF exists to spotlight. Stay, build where you are, and bring the people around you along. Dixon chose Detroit, then went to work closing the gap.
He almost left. Instead he is building the future here, for the people usually left out of it.