It’s the stuff of science fiction: Doctors implanting a device in the human body to help those with mobility issues walk again, to quiet the tremors of Parkinson’s disease, alleviate chronic pain, or restore lost vision or hearing.
But for electrical engineer and entrepreneur Angelique Johnson it’s the work to which she is devoting her career. At her Louisville start-up MEMStim, Johnson uses 3D printers to develop an implantable device similar to cochlear implants to restore hearing loss. The goal is to make a product that is smaller, more flexible, and longer lasting.
“It’s a moon shot,” she says, referring to the massive scientific effort to land the first man on the moon. “It’s highly innovative what we’re doing, but I’m very invigorated and passionate about seeing what people could do with it one day.”
As an electrical engineer, such work makes perfect sense to Johnson. She says the human nervous system is essentially wiring for electrical information that flows between the brain and the rest of the body. The trick, she explains, is to safely hack into that system and deploy artificial stimulation. That’s essentially what pacemakers do by supplying a steady electrical charge to keep the heart beating in proper rhythm.
“It’s not as good as the way God created our bodies, but it’s well enough as an assistive device,” says Johnson.
But the thought of utilizing implantable or even wearable technology to restore body functions is uncomfortable for some, conjuring conspiracy theories of evil forces monitoring and even directing our every move. Johnson says current research is nowhere close to inventing an implantable chip that could control minds and bodies. Plus, she says many of our daily actions are already monitored, such as data and location tracking functions on cellphones.
“The nice thing is you can choose to get this technology or not,” says Johnson. “This is not something to be scared of.”
These devices do raise various social and ethical questions. For example, Johnson says some people in the deaf community don’t like the idea of a device to restore hearing loss because they think that implies they have some kind of deficit the way they are. Then there are questions of who will get the highly expensive devices once they are available to the public. Johnson says that ethics of these assistive products must be developed along with the technology, not after they’ve been approved for use.
Helping Other Female Entrepreneurs of Color
Beyond the challenges of her own start-up, Johnson is devoted to helping other women of color follow their entrepreneurial dreams. Just as a company has mission and vision statements, she says people should as well.
“I do whole workshop series on the ‘business of you,’ particularly for female founders or female innovators, because I feel like women oftentimes have so many roles that they’re taking on that they don’t have a freedom to really be who they are,” she says.
For Johnson the challenges started early. She was (and still is) only the third African American female to get a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. When she entered the program, she says she felt out of place because there was no one she could identify with or be a role model for her. She also experienced sexual harassment in her lab and dealt with a sexual assault at a professional conference.
“What kept me going was that this is going to happen, but it doesn’t mean it has to stop me from what my purpose is,” says Johnson. “These things may or may not happen to you. Discrimination may or may not happen to you. Any sort of sexual harassment may or may not happen to you, but when it happens, don’t let it change your character, and don’t let it change your purpose, and don’t let it change your path.”
As she launched her career, Johnson says people tried to pigeonhole her into working as a professor. She rebelled at that idea because she had more entrepreneurial goals in mind.
“People will be upset because you’re not fitting into their best hope for you,” she says. “But then I found when you live out the vision, the mission of your life and you go in another direction... then people, they come back around.”
In an effort to build her personal brand, though, Johnson says she agreed to outside commitments that ultimately didn’t fit with her personal mission. That’s a common problem for people starting out, she says, feeling that you need to network and be visible as much as possible to build your profile and make connections. But Johnson says being focused and selective in your commitments is a better approach.
“As long as you’re doing the activities, the missions, the passion projects, the businesses that align with who you are, the brand comes by de facto,” she says.
Like many people, Johnson says the COVID-19 pandemic caused her to step back and reevaluate the commitments in her own life. In the process she realized that one board she served on didn’t align with her life passions. She says the only fair thing to do for herself and that organization was to resign.
“I was just holding a seat... It wasn’t part of the business of me, how could I contribute in the best way to that?” Johnson says. “I realized I’m actually helping people by removing myself because… you want someone to do the work that’s called to do the work.”
In addition to overcommitting themselves, Johnson says entrepreneurs can stumble when they pursue an idea rather than a vision. She says ideas are things that could be done, like creating a specific product. But a vision, she says, requires a strategy, a plan, and a commitment.
“If you’re an entrepreneur, you keep going because you’re committed to the vision.” she says. “When you have a vision from God, it has to come to pass.”
