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Michaela Barnett spent a lot of time as a teen picking up trash. I was the kid in high school that, during the fun days, I was separating everyone s picnic detritus, like no this should be recycled, she said.
Though she s still just as concerned about the environment, Barnett has focused her energies away from trash and further upstream.
She founded KnoxFill, a zero-waste way for Knoxville consumers concerned with sustainability to get the home cleaning and hygiene products they need.
Instead of picking up trash, she wants to stop some of it from ever being produced. Waste doesn t happen at the point of disposal, Barnett told Knox News. It happens at the point of purchase and generation.
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Cybersecurity pro Michaela Barnett didn’t see people like her at DEF CON and the other security industry events she attended. Neither did her sister, Alexandria Barnett.
“We found that so many people had that experience of not seeing ourselves represented,” Alexandria says.
The twins set out to change that. Michaela founded Blacks In Cybersecurity (BIC) in January 2019 with the goal of highlighting and elevating the Black community in the security profession by offering a range of activities, from online forums and to conferences, meet-ups, seminars and group outings.
“We really strive to be that family of resources to advance people in the field, to create a network and to affect culture, because when you think of cyber, you’re thinking of a white man in a hoodie, you think of DEF CON, where you don’t see many people of color who are too often on the outside of that culture. We’re hoping not to have that schism anymore,”