U.S. Navy veteran Jameeka Green Aaron has technological expertise that stretches over 25 years. In 2024, she was named the Chief Information Security Officer at Headspace — a mental health app with over 70 million users — but her work goes far beyond consumer identity safety and data breach recovery.
As a mentor in the U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program and board member of the National Urban League Young Professionals and the National Society of Black Engineers, Green Aaron is a vocal activist who consistently uses her platform to advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech.
“Every single time in this country [that] there has been a false arrest for AI identification, the person has been Black. Every single time,” Green Aaron emphasized in a speech at the University of California, Berkeley.
“It’s never been more important that we understand the importance of diverse perspectives and representation in technology,” she cautioned her peers.
“AI is built on representation. That could be really great for us, or it could be a really awful future for us … It is my job to make sure that people understand the risks that are at hand.”
Despite a high proficiency in digital literacy, Green Aaron has never lost sight of the human beings behind the screens. Throughout her career, she has stressed the importance of thinking about the “users” of the technology, rather than the tech itself.
“My job is to protect people,” she said. “My job is not to protect databases. It’s not to protect technical resources. It’s not to protect nameless, faceless things.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2025 Technology Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
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