‘Three large numbers, and three small.’ Those were the words – or some variation of them – that we heard round after round before Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon worked her magic on Countdown during Channel 4’s Black To Front day.
The task of presenting the numbers round was slightly different to Imafidon’s existing vocation. The 31-year-old is the co-founder of Stemettes, an award-winning social initiative dedicated to inspiring and promoting the next generation of young women in the STEM sectors. In addition, she is a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland and sits on the Council of Research England. A busy woman, you might say, but we were lucky enough to take up some of her time to talk about Countdown calculations, the future of artificial intelligence, and the privilege of being able to give young people an opportunity to better themselves and change the world around them.
You have previously been called a prodigy thanks to your early achievements. That label seems like a lot to place on a young person’s shoulders! Did you ever feel pressure to succeed?
Not really, I was just doing what I wanted to do at my pace, rather than having to wait or slow down. I didn’t take it for granted that I was going to pass my GCSEs or A Levels early. If I failed, I probably would have said, ‘Well, you weren’t supposed to be there in the first place!’
As we mentioned, you’ve achieved a great deal of successes in your life, but what’s your greatest achievement to date?
My greatest achievement has been with Stemettes. It’s the opportunities that we, as a team with me at the helm, have been able to create for young people. Some of the most striking achievements have happened most recently, with the certification academies. I obviously did exams early when I was younger, and Stemettes is giving young people the chance to get certifications in cyber, python and agile, for free. These are young people doing it in a group, who come from all across the world. Even during the pandemic they’ve been able to get online and attend lectures. For me, my pride is being able to pass opportunities forward to the next generation – and to do it en masse. These are priviledges that I had. I believe that if you give people the right circumstances and opportunities, they can thrive. There are so many barriers that we put in front of young people, especially girls and black people, when actually we should provide the opportunity and ask them to give it a go.
How does it feel being able to provide young people with these opportunities?
It’s life affirming. I was portrayed as a lone prodigy, but I know that many other people were capable of doing what I did if they had been given the opportunity. It’s great to do this for young people who will use it as part of a cohort. Then they go on to maintain those relationships and build a powerful network. This collaboration is so important – working together and having a shared experience.
What’s your advice to young black girls and boys who want to excel in academia?
My advice is to not feel as if this is something you have to do alone. Academia is a space that can end up feeling lonely if you don’t work hard. Make sure you have networks, friends and mentors who you can talk to and compare notes with. I’m currently chairing a fund for Research England and The Office for Students which provides £8m worth of funding for universities to improve the postgraduate experience for BAME students. There are a lot of folks who recognise that we do need young black people in academia. Channel 4’s Black To Front diversity day has been a year in the making.
What went through your mind when you got the call to be a part of Black To Front Countdown?
I was confused, I’ll be honest! I wondered how they even got hold of my number, and when they had ever seen me presenting any Countdown-style maths. I did four years of maths and computer science at Oxford University – not one day did they give us six numbers and ask us to make a three digit number with them. I haven’t even been a contestant!
Is it right to dedicate a single day to diversity on television? Shouldn’t we be seeing black talent on our TVs all year round and make it part of the everyday norm?
Initially, I thought, ‘why not, it’s Black History Month?’. And then I questioned why diversity could only happen in Black History Month – we’re black all year round. But I concluded that it’s important to take steps where you haven’t before, where you’ve been inactive on this front, and put your stick in the ground. This is the step we’re taking where we can prove a couple of things, experiment, and realise that seeing black people on screen shouldn’t be that big a thing. When we do things like this, Channel 4 doesn’t fall off air or collapse in on itself. So I’m hoping we’ll begin to see lots of different types of faces, not just on Channel 4, but across other channels. One step in a direction is better than inertia and inaction. And it’s not that I’m saying we should be grateful for scraps; I think we should dial up the pressure and see where we can go next now that we’ve accomplished this.
Shows like Countdown have been historically white-fronted. How do you hope viewers will react when they see an all-black panel?
Hopefully they will react like they would as if it were the regular Countdown panel. Maybe it will also inspire a couple of folks to apply to be contestants or further their love of maths and words, or even look into presenting on shows that tend not to have representation.
What are your thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence?
I have lots of thoughts on this. I’m a trustee of The Institute for the Future of Work, and so the future of AI in regards to the workplace is something that I end up talking about quite a lot. Nothing is inevitable. Anything that is predicted about AI is only a possibility; it’s something that might be accomplished, if not now, then eventually. But it doesn’t have to be accomplished. Just because we can build a robot that marries our grandkids, does it mean we should? A lot of the things that most people are excited about at the moment are based on statistics and data. So much of what is going mainstream now is based on statistics and data, which does make you think, ‘what are the foundations on which we are currently building AI?’ Given how things are, there are so many social inequalities across society, all of these issues, and that’s where the data has come from. We have to be smarter about how we use it to build what comes next, and that we don’t repeat the mistakes and injustices of the past. We have to be vigilant and appreciate that a lot of this is approximations based on how things have been. How can we get ourselves to a point where any AI that we are using or developing is improving the status quo, rather than maintaining it or making it worse?
This year, you completed the draft manuscript for your book, She’s In CTRL. What impact do you hope that this book will have on the world of tech?
I hope it will be the beginning of the end of the ‘we need women in tech’ phase. There’s so much that I know is coming upstream in terms of the next generation, such as their understanding of technology and what they want to do with it. Stemettes is for those aged 25 and under, but there are older people who contact me asking about what they can do. I tell them that there are so many other spaces that they can enjoy, be a part of and shape. I put the word ‘CTRL’ in the title, because these spaces can give you so much agency, and we need more people to have agency over this technology because it’s so far-reaching. So much of what we have done during the pandemic has been done virtual through Zoom and other platforms. Now that we have virtual bodies and virtual presences, it’s important we thoroughly question how much personal agency we have over them. We must say, ‘this time round, I will not be victimised, overpowered, treated like a second-class citizen or left out in the development of this technology’. We must also think to ourselves, ‘I will have some agency and understanding of what I do and do not want to be represented as.’
Fun facts
✓ Aged 11, Anne-Marie was the youngest girl to ever pass A-level computing
✓ By the age of 20 she received her Master’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford
✓ 2017, she was awarded an MBE for services to young women and STEM sectors
Follow Anne-Marie on Instagram.
