About Kuma

Anthony “Kuma” Washington is a data architect, founder, writer and poet. He is the Founder and Managing Director of NBLK, a data engineering, architecture and governance firm working across New York and London, and founder of NNX Business Solutions. Under NBLK he has built OKRA, DNTL Desk and White Label House, and founded the NBLK Tech Fellowship. For more than twenty years he has designed data architecture and governance for public and private organizations, with a deep focus on education and public policy.

For Washington, the writer and the architect are the same person doing the same work. Writing is how he sees a problem clearly; data and systems are how he builds the way out. One brings the eye, the other the structure, and both serve people. That is what he means by service by building: work that builds rather than breaks, systems people own, and a commitment to being there for the work because it is part of who he is. Social impact is not separate from his work — it is embedded in how systems are designed and who they are built to serve.

Alongside his firm, Washington is a long-term civil servant and education analyst and serves on the Board of Directors of the Baruch College Association. His work has taken him to the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan and Bermuda, and he has helped startups grow from first idea to steady footing.

Before data, there were words. Washington has taught at every level, from preschool to college creative writing. A poet and spoken word artist, he is a founding member of the Black Poets Collective. As a teacher, he guided his students from writing and editing to publishing their own poetry collection, Urban Transcendence, and he has opened that same path for others many times since. He is also the author of The Founder’s Magic Glasses, a free field manual for self-funded founders.

Service runs through all of it. He runs the NBLK Tech Fellowship and the NBLK Build Grant Awards for small businesses, has served as a United Way spokesperson, has volunteered with the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity and the Boys & Girls Club, and has advocated for people in prison. He is a Ponce Bank Small Business Bootcamp winner and a National Urban Fellow.

He holds a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College as a National Urban Fellow, a certificate in Applied Data Science from MIT Professional Education, and the Data Wise certificate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a Certified Human Rights Consultant and a Certified Anti-Trafficking Consultant.

Outside of work, Kuma is a runner and a lifelong house head.