Sue Black was born in 1962 in Fareham, Hampshire.[7] She left school and home at 16, the earliest legal age. She married at 20 and soon had three children.[8]
After her husband forced Black and her children out, she sought safety at a local women's refuge. She began a maths access course at night school that led to enrolling in undergraduate degree.[9] Black graduated with a bachelor's degree in computing from London South Bank University[10] in 1993, and obtained her PhD in software engineering[11] in 2001[12][13] for research on the ripple effect supervised by Robin Whitty[2][14]
Black ran a successful campaign over several years to secure funding for the restoration of Bletchley Park, the UK World War II centre for decrypting enemy messages.[5][21] In 2003 she started raising awareness of the site by creating a blog,[22] after visiting the site and noting the appalling condition of the buildings, seeing the Bombe machine being rebuilt, and hearing that over 10,000 people had worked there during the war. The photograph of one of the huts with a blue tarpaulin protecting the deteriorating structure helped galvanise interest and activism among concerned computer scientists. The initial outreach was followed up with an active Twitter presence that attracted even more followers and interested parties. Bletchley Park staff also engaged with other Web 2.0 (i.e. user-generated) technologies such as Facebook and Twitter.[23][24]
At the end of 2015, Black published a book about the process, Saving Bletchley Park,[5] initially funded via Unbound,[25] that became the fastest crowdfunded book of all time.[26]
everywoman says Black "embodies the traits of a modern leader", particularly in regard to social media use.[27] The BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones spotted early on that Black was making sophisticated use of Twitter (and other platforms) in her campaigning.[28][29]
Black set up Techmums, reaching out to mothers who wanted to understand what their children were up to online. Techmums offers free training in digital security, social media, the programming language Python, and so on, with the aim of increasing the women's confidence, breaking down the digital divide, and helping them escape poverty. The pilot programme was held at Bishop Challoner Catholic Collegiate School in London Borough of Tower Hamlets.[9] Techmums describes itself as "an e-skills accredited program of short, hands-on workshops" with a supportive online community.[30]
In March 2019 the Women's Equality Party announced that Black would be their candidate in the 2020 election for Mayor of London.[36] In February 2020, it was announced that Black was withdrawing as the party's candidate for health reasons, and was being replaced by Mandu Reid.[37]
Black was also one of the 30 women identified in the British Computer Society's Women in IT Campaign in 2014, who were then featured in the e-book "Women in IT: Inspiring the next generation" produced by the BCS.[41]
In 2015 Black was identified as the 7th[42] Most Influential Women in UK IT 2015, by Computer Weekly.
^Black, Sue (16 December 2014). "Bio + Contact". blackse. Retrieved 21 May 2016. Dr Sue Black left home and school at 16, married at 20 and had 3 children by the age of 23. A single parent at 25 she went to university, gained a degree in computing then a PhD in software engineering.
^Black, Sue (2001). "Computing ripple effect for software maintena.nce". Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice. 13 (4): 263–279. doi:10.1002/smr.233. ISSN1532-060X.
^"#techmums Founder Dr Sue Black's rules for elevating your personal social media presence". Everywoman. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2016. Dr Sue Black, Founder of Savvify #techmums – empowering mums to get excited about technology – and winner of the Inspiration of the Year award at the FDM everywoman in Technology Awards in March 2014, embodies the traits of the modern leader – engaged with her audience, transparent, open and authentic
^Cellan-Jones, Rory (18 March 2009). "Bletchley Park's social media war". dot.life A blog about technology from BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 21 May 2016. A vital component in this campaign has been what you might call the propaganda war – although one which has employed the most modern of weapons. Dr Black has assembled a significant crowd of supporters for Bletchley Park – geeks, history buffs, technologically literate celebrities – using all the modern social media tools.
^Cellan-Jones, Rory (30 December 2015). "OBE for Bletchley campaigner Sue Black". BBC News Technology. BBC. Retrieved 21 May 2016. Others had been battling for years to make the same case without much success, but in 2008 social media was just beginning to play an important role in campaigning, and Dr Black made full use of it.
^"About". techmums.co. Retrieved 21 May 2016. What is #techmums? #techmums is an e-skills accredited program of short, hands-on workshops that introduce mums to online security, social media savviness, essential computing skills, app and web design. In addition there is opportunity for mums to be introduced to simple Python programming to gain understanding of the computer skills their children may learn at school. #techmums programs are delivered via schools either directly by a #techmums trainer or by the school themselves. All mums enrolled onto the program are further supported by a dedicated #techmums online community.
