Private Joseph Hammond, 95, walked two miles a day for a week to raise funds to buy Covid-19 PPE.
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Friday, June 19, 2020
Companies Across The U.S. Are Giving Employees Juneteenth Off
A bevy of companies and states are giving their employees Juneteenth off as the Black Lives Matter protests and police shootings have brought new awareness to the plight of African Americans in the U.S.
Juneteenth, a mix of the works June and nineteenth, is the oldest commemoration of the ending of slavery in the U.S. The unofficial holiday marks when Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed in Galveston, Texas, with news that the war was over the enslaved were now free. This happened two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
According to CNBC, companies across the country in technology (Google, Twitter), automobiles (Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Ford), banks (JP Morgan Chase, US Bank, Capital One) retail outlets (Target, Nike) and more have given their employees the day off.
Twitter and Square gave its employees the day off and will honor the day as a permanent holiday going forward.
Both Twitter and Square are making #Juneteenth (June 19th) a company holiday in the US, forevermore. A day for celebration, education, and connection.https://t.co/xmR3fWMiRs
— jack (@jack) June 9, 2020
Nike CEO John Donahoe said in a letter to employees last week that Juneteenth will be an annual paid holiday, CNN Business reported.
“At Nike Inc., we aspire to be a leader in building a diverse, inclusive team and culture. We want to be better than society as a whole,” Donahoe said in the letter, adding that celebrating Juneteenth is an opportunity “to better commemorate and celebrate Black history and culture.”
Multiple sports leagues and teams are also allowing employees to take the day off. Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced the league and all teams would observe the day as a holiday. The Orlando Magic, Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers, and other teams announced plans to give employees the day off. The NBA also has a list of events fans can participate in to learn more about the holiday.
Other companies giving employees the day off include Best Buy, Lyft, J.C. Penney, Mastercard, Postmates, Spotify, Workday, and Vox Media.
According to CNN, Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth an official state holiday, back in 1980. As of last year all but four states recognized it in some way. This year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam both announced plans to turn the day into a permanent paid state holiday.
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The Collective Marks Juneteenth with “Vote To Live” Campaign to Register 250,000 Black Voters
The Collective Political Action Committee has announced a campaign to register 250,000 African American voters on Juneteenth.
According to a release, The Collective, a group dedicated to electing black candidates, will launch its “Vote to Live” campaign, an attempt to register 250,000 African American voters. The Vote to Live campaign is a data driven voter engagement program to reach African American voters through digital advertising, mail, and text messaging. The effort includes a partnership with the Conference of National Black Churches.
The effort, funded in part by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will focus on the battleground states including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
The campaign comes as the presidential election draws closer and as part of the response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks. On Thursday June 18, The Collective will launch an extensive digital voter registration campaign using online ads aimed at reaching unregistered Black voters.
On June 19, from 7 p.m. through midnight, The Collective will co-host a virtual event with Axis Replay to promote social justice initiatives. The event will include entertainers and professional athletes including rapper Young Jeezy and social media personality Desi Banks.
“The Black vote is powerful and when we vote, we change the course of history,” The Collective’s Founder and President Quentin James said in a press release. “We are living in a time when people are protesting for change that directly impacts the Black community, but protesting is only a start, the ultimate protest comes at the ballot box. Vote to Live is more than registering new voters, it’s a call to action and a demand for change.”
According to The Collective, 90% of elected officials are white and 95% of all elected prosecutors are white. Despite electing the most diverse U.S. Congress in history in 2018, Black voter turnout was at a 20-year low in 2016. The Collective believes all African Americans have a voice, and their vote is part of that voice.
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Thursday, June 18, 2020
Bringing the predictive power of artificial intelligence to health care
An important aspect of treating patients with conditions like diabetes and heart disease is helping them stay healthy outside of the hospital — before they to return to the doctor’s office with further complications.
But reaching the most vulnerable patients at the right time often has more to do with probabilities than clinical assessments. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help clinicians tackle these types of problems, by analyzing large datasets to identify the patients that would benefit most from preventative measures. However, leveraging AI has often required health care organizations to hire their own data scientists or settle for one-size-fits-all solutions that aren’t optimized for their patients.
Now the startup ClosedLoop.ai is helping health care organizations tap into the power of AI with a flexible analytics solution that lets hospitals quickly plug their data into machine learning models and get actionable results.
The platform is being used to help hospitals determine which patients are most likely to miss appointments, acquire infections like sepsis, benefit from periodic check ups, and more. Health insurers, in turn, are using ClosedLoop to make population-level predictions around things like patient readmissions and the onset or progression of chronic diseases.
“We built a health care data science platform that can take in whatever data an organization has, quickly build models that are specific to [their patients], and deploy those models,” says ClosedLoop co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dave DeCaprio ’94. “Being able to take somebody’s data the way it lives in their system and convert that into a model that can be readily used is still a problem that requires a lot of [health care] domain knowledge, and that’s a lot of what we bring to the table.”
In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, ClosedLoop has also created a model that helps organizations identify the most vulnerable people in their region and prepare for patient surges. The open source tool, called the C-19 Index, has been used to connect high-risk patients with local resources and helped health care systems create risk scores for tens of millions of people overall.
The index is just the latest way that ClosedLoop is accelerating the health care industry’s adoption of AI to improve patient health, a goal DeCaprio has worked toward for the better part of his career.
Designing a strategy
After working as a software engineer for several private companies through the internet boom of the early 2000s, DeCaprio was looking to make a career change when he came across a project focused on genome annotation at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
The project was DeCaprio’s first professional exposure to the power of artificial intelligence. It blossomed into a six year stint at the Broad, after which he continued exploring the intersection of big data and health care.
“After a year in health care, I realized it was going to be really hard to do anything else,” DeCaprio says. “I’m not going to be able to get excited about selling ads on the internet or anything like that. Once you start dealing with human health, that other stuff just feels insignificant.”
In the course of his work, DeCaprio began noticing problems with the ways machine learning and other statistical techniques were making their way into health care, notably in the fact that predictive models were being applied without regard for hospitals’ patient populations.
“Someone would say, ‘I know how to predict diabetes’ or ‘I know how to predict readmissions,’ and they’d sell a model,” DeCaprio says. “I knew that wasn’t going to work, because the reason readmissions happen in a low-income population of New York City is very different from the reason readmissions happen in a retirement community in Florida. The important thing wasn’t to build one magic model but to build a system that can quickly take somebody’s data and train a model that’s specific for their problems.”
With that approach in mind, DeCaprio joined forces with former co-worker and serial entrepreneur Andrew Eye, and started ClosedLoop in 2017. The startup’s first project involved creating models that predicted patient health outcomes for the Medical Home Network (MHN), a not-for-profit hospital collaboration focused on improving care for Medicaid recipients in Chicago.
As the founders created their modeling platform, they had to address many of the most common obstacles that have slowed health care’s adoption of AI solutions.
Often the first problems startups run into is making their algorithms work with each health care system’s data. Hospitals vary in the type of data they collect on patients and the way they store that information in their system. Hospitals even store the same types of data in vastly different ways.
DeCaprio credits his team’s knowledge of the health care space with helping them craft a solution that allows customers to upload raw data sets into ClosedLoop’s platform and create things like patient risk scores with a few clicks.
Another limitation of AI in health care has been the difficulty of understanding how models get to results. With ClosedLoop’s models, users can see the biggest factors contributing to each prediction, giving them more confidence in each output.
Overall, to become ingrained in customer’s operations, the founders knew their analytics platform needed to give simple, actionable insights. That has translated into a system that generates lists, risk scores, and rankings that care managers can use when deciding which interventions are most urgent for which patients.
“When someone walks into the hospital, it’s already too late [to avoid costly treatments] in many cases,” DeCaprio says. “Most of your best opportunities to lower the cost of care come by keeping them out of the hospital in the first place.”
Customers like health insurers also use ClosedLoop’s platform to predict broader trends in disease risk, emergency room over-utilization, and fraud.
Stepping up for Covid-19
In March, ClosedLoop began exploring ways its platform could help hospitals prepare for and respond to Covid-19. The efforts culminated in a company hackathon over the weekend of March 16. By Monday, ClosedLoop had an open source model on GitHub that assigned Covid-19 risk scores to Medicare patients. By that Friday, it had been used to make predictions on more than 2 million patients.
Today, the model works with all patients, not just those on Medicare, and it has been used to assess the vulnerability of communities around the country. Care organizations have used the model to project patient surges and help individuals at the highest risk understand what they can do to prevent infection.
“Some of it is just reaching out to people who are socially isolated to see if there’s something they can do,” DeCaprio says. “Someone who is 85 years old and shut in may not know there’s a community based organization that will deliver them groceries.”
For DeCaprio, bringing the predictive power of AI to health care has been a rewarding, if humbling, experience.
“The magnitude of the problems are so large that no matter what impact you have, you don’t feel like you’ve moved the needle enough,” he says. “At the same time, every time an organization says, ‘This is the primary tool our care managers have been using to figure out who to reach out to,’ it feels great.”
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Klobuchar tells Biden to pick woman of color as VP, withdraws consideration
Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced on Thursday evening that she has withdrawn her name from consideration as Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden‘s potential running mate, and has urged him to instead choose a woman of color.
Klobuchar, who once launched her own bid for the presidency only to become a surrogate for the former vice president, shared the news during an interview with MSNBC, the New York Times reports. The Minnesota politician said she called Biden on Wednesday evening to inform him of her decision.
READ MORE: Biden’s VP pick may be impacted by nationwide protests
Many considered the senator’s prospect of clinching the vice-presidential nomination a lost cause after the police killing of George Floyd on May 25 in her home state of Minnesota. Klobuchar’s record as a prosecutor in the state came under great scrutiny as criticisms of the criminal justice system and law enforcement became more pronounced as tensions raised over racial violence and systemic racism in America.
“I think I could have functioned fine and there’s a lot of untruths out there about my record and now is not the time to debate them,” Klobuchar said.
Klobuchar has been considered a frontrunner on the shortlist of women candidates for the VP position after Biden on more than one occasion vowed to pick a woman as his running mate. If Biden were to take Klobuchar’s advice and choose a woman of color, he’d likely choose from a crop of Black women whose names have been floating around for months.
READ MORE: Joe Biden shares video message at George Floyd funeral: ‘We can’t turn away’
Some of those women include former presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia candidate for governor, and Rep. Val Demings. Even Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has been mentioned as a consideration as leaders on the local and federal level work to repair cities and the country amid deep racial wounds after the several unarmed Black people were killed by police, as well as the racial disparities exposed by COVID-19, which has disproportionately devastated Black communities.
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NYC inmate captured after escaping Rikers, jumping in East River
An inmate at New York City’s Rikers Island attempted to escape by swimming across the East River, but was captured by two correction officers who jumped in after him.
Jail officials are investigating how Arthur Brown,37, was able to make the daring escape near the George R. Vierno Center, located in the back of the island. He reportedly tried to swim across the channel to LaGuardia Airport.
Brown, who is being held on assault charges, was thwarted by K-9 Correction Officers Gregory Braska and Larry McCardle, who pulled him from the Rikers’ shoreline Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily News.
The “detainee climbed a recreation yard fence and ran to the shoreline. An investigation is ongoing,” according to a spokesperson from the city’s Department of Correction.
READ MORE: Transgender woman’s Rikers Island death was preventable, family says citing new footage
Union @NYCCOBA1 says correction officers Larry McCardle and Gregory Braska apprehended inmate who they say made a run for the shoreline on Rikers Island. @NY1 pic.twitter.com/xkxyhMgtSr
— Dean Meminger (@DeanMeminger) June 18, 2020
Officers McCardle and Braska “immediately jumped into action to bring the inmate back into custody without any regards for their own safety,” Elias Husamudeen, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, said in a statement.
“These two brave officers immediately jumped into action to bring the inmate back into custody without any regards for their own safety,” he added. “We proudly salute them for their bravery and for reminding the public the critical role Correction Officers play every day in maintaining public safety.”
The two officers suffered minor injuries, while the inmate was reportedly taken to the prison infirmary for evaluation and had no known injuries.
Brown has been arrested 31 times, mostly for petty crimes, Daily Mail reports. On May 13, he was charged with second and third-degree assault and bail jumping. He is scheduled back in court on July 21.
It was initially reported that two inmates had escaped but a headcount confirmed that nobody else went full-on Shawshank Redemption like Brown.
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CJ Pearson, conservative teen raises $160k to help black businesses
A beloved Black owned business in downtown Atlanta that was damaged during violent protests has received a huge donation thanks to teen conservative CJ Pearson.
The popular YouTuber teamed with The Georgia Association of Minority Entrepreneurs on Thursday to present the owner of Wilbourn Sisters Designs with a $10,000 check, WSB-TV 2 Atlanta reports.
The funds will help cover the significant damages done by rioters weeks ago during protests over the killing of George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police.
Pearson, 17, president of Last Hope USA, which promotes civics education, said he was inspired by his parents to pay it forward and give back to the community.
READ MORE: Atlanta cops booked and officially charged in Rayshard Brooks killing
On our radio show @thecjpearson gave away $10,000 to Wilbourn Sisters Designs, a staple black-owned business in #atlanta damaged during #GerogeFlolyd protest. Today he showed up with the check. 🔥@shelleywynter1 @wsbradio @scottbakerjr @DJCrystal20 pic.twitter.com/DCcI6QkJZe
— MalaniKai (@MalaniKai) June 18, 2020
“I think it’s so important that we put actions behind our words,” he said. “Let’s show that black lives matter by supporting these black-owned businesses that were adversely affected by these recent events, and not intentionally.”
While several businesses were vandalized during the riots, Wilbourn Sisters Designs on Peachtree Street was reportedly hit the hardest. Owner Janice Wilbourn said the donation will allow her to do more than sell clothes.
“We’ll be teaching here,” she said. “It will be more of a learning center.”
Pearson decided to take action and help the most vulnerable because “it’s so important to put actions behind our words,” he said. Citing the recent #BlackoutTuesday event on social media, Pearson added, “Posting a black screen isn’t enough. We need to go do something.”
I’m in the city of Atlanta today. Many storefronts boarded up. pic.twitter.com/lTduADrwCH
— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) June 18, 2020
In related news, Pearson, who will turn 18 on July 31, recently criticized Democrats for pushing to defend police departments, rather than present solutions to the rising racial tensions in the country.
“You have Antifa going into black communities and burning those communities to the ground. That is an issue. They are using his death to do that,” he said during the Centennial Institute’s webinar on Thursday.
Pearson called the idea of defunding police “not even a serious argument.”
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State department official resigns over Trump’s response to racial tensions
Mary Elizabeth Taylor, the first Black woman to serve as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, is parting ways with President Donald Trump after being with the administration since day one.
Taylor, 30, submitted a five-paragraph resignation letter on Thursday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, saying the president’s handling of racial injustice and the anti-racism protests “cut sharply against my core values and convictions,” according to The Washington Post.
The publication obtained her resignation letter, which stated, “Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character. The president’s comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions. I must follow the dictates of my conscience and resign as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs.”
READ MORE: Trump claims he made Juneteenth ‘very famous’
Mary Elizabeth Taylor, in the admin since Jan '17, writes: "The President’s comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions. I must follow the dictates of my conscience and resign" https://t.co/DpTJJXy4wZ
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) June 18, 2020
Taylor, a lifelong Republican and Trump-loyalist, was the youngest person in history and only Black woman to serve in the post, which she was appointed to in 2018.
She previously worked as the White House’s deputy director for nominations before joining the State Department. Prior to Trump administration, she served as aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“I am deeply grateful to you, Mr. Secretary, for empowering me to lead this team and strategically advise you over these last two years,” Taylor wrote in the resignation letter to Pompeo. “You have shown grace and respect in listening to my opinions, and your remarkable leadership has made me a better leader and team member. I appreciate that you understand my strong loyalty to my personal convictions and values, particularly in light of recent events.”
READ MORE: READ MORE: Trump claims he made Juneteenth ‘very famous’
Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
Taylor’s resignation comes amid increasing civil unrest and racial tension over police brutality and injustice.
“Leader McConnell appreciates Mary Elizabeth’s service to the Republican Conference and our nation,” said David Popp, a spokesman for McConnell.
Taylor’s mother, Kristin Clark Taylor, also made history when she became the first Black woman to serve as the White House’s director of media relations under President George H.W. Bush.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to catch heat over his response to the protests that have erupted since the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Taylor’s decision to leave over the president’s actions comes after a member of the Defense Science Board, James N. Miller, submitted his resignation after Trump’s controversial Bible photo op.
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Letter from President Reif: MIT marks Juneteenth
The following email was sent to the MIT community today from President L. Rafael Reif.
To the members of the MIT community,
I write on the eve of a day that holds tremendous meaning for many African Americans: Juneteenth. It marks the day in 1865 when the people held in slavery in Texas were finally told – two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation – that they were legally free.
In honor of Juneteenth, many organizations in Greater Boston are offering free educational programming online, including the Royall House and Slave Quarters museum in Medford, the Boston Globe, the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts.
Some in our community have celebrated Juneteenth every year, all their lives. Others are still learning about its origin and significance. In this time of national turmoil over systemic racism and brutality, I would like Juneteenth to be a day when all of us take time to reflect on the momentous opportunity before us. Painfully and tragically, history has opened a door; each of us, and all of us together, have an opportunity to help drive lasting progress on racial justice and equality, for our community – and for the nation.
In the coming week, I will share an initial picture of both our strategic action plan for diversity, equity and inclusion, currently in development, and a range of immediate policies and investments MIT will pursue to address systemic racism at the Institute. In this work, we have been consulting closely with student leaders from the MIT Black Students' Union, the MIT Black Graduate Student Association and the Academic Council Working Group, as well as a number of our African American staff and faculty, and we will continue to broaden this outreach. Community involvement will be critical to its success.
In 1866, when Juneteenth was first celebrated, MIT had just started to teach its first students. As we have begun to learn from the students, staff and faculty who brought to life the course called “MIT and the Legacy of Slavery,” the history of the Institute is, like the history of the United States, entwined in racial injustice.
We must use this opportunity, together, to invent a better MIT.
Sincerely,
L. Rafael Reif
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Taco Bell apologizes to worker fired for BLM mask
Denzel Skinner, a longtime Taco Bell employee in Youngstown, Ohio was trying to make sure he was keeping himself and the store’s customers safe by donning the required mask while working.
READ MORE: Publix bans employees from wearing BLM gear, masks
As reported by WKBN, while store policy required that he wear the mask the company provided, Skinner says he couldn’t breathe in that one. An air conditioning outage in the store made it that much harder.
Since he had his own mask that covers his mouth and noses as required, he thought that would suffice. But the mask had a Black Lives Matter graphic on it and Skinner was told that he’d be fired for wearing it. He refused to take it off and considered his job gone, ultimately walking out.
Skinner posted an angry video to YouTube to share his experience.
Warning – graphic language.
Skinner, a night manager at the store who’d been there for eight years, knew that Taco Bell didn’t have a policy about what was written on the mask, as long as he was wearing one. As it turns out, Skinner was in the right.
In a statement sent to Newsweek, the company said they were sorry.
“We believe Black Lives Matter. We were disappointed to learn about the incident that took place in Youngstown, OH.
“We take this very seriously; we have been working closely with our franchisee that operates this location to address the issue.
“Our Chief People Officer and Yum!’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer spoke with Denzel last week to apologize and discuss the situation.
“Our goal is to ensure our policies are inclusive and keep our team members and customers safe. While our policies at restaurants do not prohibit Team Members from wearing Black Lives Matter masks, we are working to clarify our mask policy so this doesn’t happen again.”
READ MORE: Ohio bride faces backlash after cancelling wedding photographer for BLM support
Skinner appeared at a protest in his support last week according to Newsweek.
“If it takes me losing my job where I’ve been for eight years to fight for change, then that’s what it takes,” Skinner said.
Although he worked for the company part-time for eight years, he’s never been eligible for paid leave or vacation. He told WKBN he’ll spend time with family while figuring out what he’ll do next.
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Nigerian Civil War Survivor Earns Ph.D. From Howard University at 73
Obtaining an advanced college degree is no easy task and depending on the field of study, it can take years to complete. For Florence Nwando Onwusi Didigu, age was not going to stop her from receiving her Ph.D. in communication, culture, and media studies from Howard University.
The 73-year-old Nigerian-born student worked as a Sasakawa and Annenberg Fellow overcoming numerous obstacles to get to this point from battling sickness and dealing with family deaths.
“In my second year at Howard, and very close to my screening test, I lost my mother and my father within months,” said Didigu in an interview with the Howard Newsroom. “I had to return to Nigeria each time to perform the demanding burial ceremonies for each. I was completely deflated, both physically and emotionally, but I persevered because my father always wanted me to be a ‘Doctor.’”
Her dissertation titled, “Igbo Collective Memory of the Nigeria – Biafra War (1967-1970): Reclaiming Forgotten Women’s Voices and Building Peace through a Gendered Lens,” is a testament to that strength focused her story as a a Igbo women who survived the war.
“The day the Nigeria-Biafra War ended, I, like everyone was wallowing in anxiety and fear about what would happen to us as the vanquished,” she said, according to Howard Newsroom.
“A very optimistic gentleman came over to me and asked: ‘Why are you so sad; can’t you see you have survived this terrible war?’ I stood up, even though the Nigerian Airforce was on its last bombing raid, and leaped up in the air in mad glee, repeating to myself and others: ‘Yes, I have survived, I am a survivor!’ This powerful survival instinct in me, which I call daring, and God’s help, are what made me overcome all personal challenges during my doctoral program and get to where I am today!”
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NASCAR Appoints Brandon Thompson to Lead Diversity Efforts
NASCAR announced Wednesday the appointment of industry veteran Brandon Thompson to the newly created position of Vice President, Diversity and Inclusion.
According to a NASCAR release, Thompson will lead the sanctioning body’s strategy for diversity and inclusion as well as programs and initiatives designed to champion and enhance diversity across NASCAR, including teams, drivers and pit crew as well as fans.
Previously, Thompson served as the managing director of the NASCAR Touring Series. Thompson will be based in Charlotte, N.C. He will report to Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Content Officer, Jill Gregory.
Gregory, is excited about Thompson’s new role and knows he will be successful at it.
“Brandon is an established and well-respected leader in our sport who will help NASCAR realize its vision in creating a more diverse industry,” said Gregory. “This new position and Brandon’s appointment reinforces our steadfast commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for our fans, industry and employees.”
The sport has made several attempts to show its an inclusive sport. A day after Bubba Wallace said he’d like to see the sport ban the confederate flag at events, the sport fulfilled the request.
In his new role, Thompson will oversee the existing team of NASCAR employees tasked with creating multicultural programs and initiatives. One of which is the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Program
Thompson will oversee an existing team of employees responsible for multicultural programs and initiatives including the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Program. The program provides opportunities for women and minorities to pursue career opportunities in NASCAR in the driver’s seat and on pit crews.
“NASCAR has made significant progress in the areas of diversity and inclusion and we now have an opportunity to build on our momentum — both as a company and industry,” Thompson said in the release. “It is with great passion and energy that we will champion our sport as accepting and welcoming of all individuals interested in being part of the NASCAR family.”
Thompson began his career in motorsports in 2003 as an intern at Nashville Superspeedway. Thompson applied for the internship through the NASCAR Diversity Internship Program. The 17-year industry veteran now becomes the first diversity intern to join the league’s executive ranks.
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