Building Silicon Harlem: How Clayton Banks Is Bringing Tech Equity to Every Community #legacy

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

All right, all right, all right. Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we celebrate inspirational people making a difference in the lives of others. Today's guest is a true visionary in technology, innovation and community building. Clayton Banks is the founder and CEO of Silicon Harlem, an organization that has transformed Upper Manhattan into a hub of innovation by attracting more than $75 million in investments and forging powerful partnerships across the public and private sectors, universities and communities. Through Silicon Harlem, Clayton has championed access to broadband, smart city technologies and cutting edge fields like augmented reality, cloud and artificial intelligence. He has also taken on clean energy innovation, launching initiatives like virtual power plants to bring sustainability and resilience to underserved neighborhoods. Clayton's journey spans from early contributions in entertainment and media, helping launch iconic projects like south park to shaping the future of technology and equity in America. He has been recognized as one of New York's Tech Power 50, inducted into the US Library of Congress and honored by city leaders for his relentless drive to ensure everyone has access to innovation and opportunity. It is my honor to welcome my longtime friend and one of the most inspiring leaders in technology and community impact, Mr. Clayton Banks. Welcome to the show, my friend.

Thank you very much. Thanks for allowing me to be on here and very, very cool man, just to listen to, talk, talk. But more importantly, you know, we gotta say we went to college together. So for those who are listening to this thing of this. We were together and making a whole lot of mess back in college, but we are back in the day.

Back in the day. Yes.

And I'm so happy to be here with you. It really is. This is great. I appreciate all of what you've been doing, all the people you've been working with, all the things you're doing with your family, all that kind of stuff has made me so much happy. I'm happy to be here. You said some really cool things about me. I'll tell a little bit more though. But definitely, definitely. I really appreciate being here.

Yeah, well, you and I used to really frequent the basketball courts and some pick up ball back in the day. We were good friends from way back then. Not going to say what year because it'll date us, but we go back to our college days and it's such a pleasure to have you on.

Yeah. And what has happened as a result of that, of having that kind of relationship that we've had and so many things that we Both enjoy doing. It really helped me to understand as I got older and older and older and most that I could do with my life and what I could do with others. One of it is I figured out that as what we did, what we did at Bulletin, but it helped me to start thinking about digital equity, you know, And I've been reading a little bit about some of the work you're doing with schools and things of that nature. But also it became very clear to me that as world was moving, Internet came along and it showed me that broadband was a very important thing. It may be the most essential thing, but it needed to have to make sure that everyone is getting access to the broadband. So that became number two, and then number three was I started thinking about how can we be even better for communities, really. Right. So so much innovation is happening, whether it's AI, whether it's all types of technologies that are going on. We have to figure out how we can help communities get that kind of same action. And the more that we have in those type of communities, the more will be for all of us. So that's just sort of, I think a lot about how Alan and I did so much back in those days. Maybe we didn't see those kind of words and those kind of things, but we had this inside of us. And that's why I'm happy to be here right now.

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned some of this, but you and I go way back. Let's start with your story. What shaped your early perspective on equity, technology and opportunity?

Well, if you can go back in the back, as you remember, I also was very much into everything at the school. Right. So it was sports, it was certainly working and all that kind of stuff. But also I was really focused on how do we make sure that everyone is getting the same kind of access, even at our campus. I can remember, I hope I don't scare everybody here, but I got into more and more conversations with so many different types of people. But there was a particular thing that happened at our campus. You may or may not remember this, but there was some really rough people that wanted to be on our campus to do sort of events and things of that nature. And I would hear about some of it, and it didn't seem like the right thing to do. It was from the Ku Klux Klan, and the Ku Klux Klan quite in a lot of ways felt like, why not we should just do a thing on your campus? And I had a big issue about it, and to the point where I had to Go to the president of the school and all sorts of stuff. And I ended up getting scared in some ways because they were so. They're going to shoot me and stuff like that. But it was very important to do something like that, you know, and we were able to win, to not let them do that on the campus. And I'm just saying that to say that when you're at, you know, that kind of age where you're willing to do damn near anything, I try to do the best I could. And what that does, it allows me to create a new sort of way of thinking of where I'm going to live in my life. A lot of it was. I always felt like I was not mad about nothing. I was great. My parents were excellent. I grew up in a beautiful situation. But I did find a lot of people that were not. And I did not realize how different everything could be. So school was that part. After school came into jobs. And I call myself, in a lot of ways, lucky. I've just been lucky. I mean, really. I mean, that's a little much to say. But I'm just saying, you know, when I graduated, I thought to myself, I don't want to just get a regular old job. And there was a lot of companies that would come after me and all that kind of stuff. But then I came out of the school with what I wanted to do, which was technology and more importantly, even this, like, information and how I can help people and all sorts of stuff. And I had all these jobs coming at me, and I said no. I told my parents, they were a little scared. They're like, what are you doing? And I found a job that I wanted to do. It was really around not only technology, but also how we could help more people talk correctly to get something through. So I was working with this company, a small company. It was on the beach in Santa Monica. I'm in Santa Monica. I'm like, where else would I be? And it was just one of these great things. But more importantly, the next lucky thing for me was the company was being broke down. Actually, it wasn't broke down. The lady who owned it was getting married. And so she was like, oh, we're gonna get married. I'm gonna shut down for a while. I'll come back later. At some point. She never did. And I was like, oh, I gotta go find me another job. And at this point, I ended up going to a major, major company back in those days was a Fortune 50 company, and I loved it. But somebody called me. I was about Three or four years in. And somebody called and said, hey, man, Clayton, do you know about this thing called hbo? I was like, yeah, I know what hbo. It was early, but he was, as hbo, you should really come out and hang out that. I'm like, wait a minute. I met Xerox. It's a Fortune 50 company. Why would I be going to that dingy dinky thing called hbo? And the guy simply said one thing to me. He said, you know, I'm at hbo, man. They give me a credit card and I can take people to go to the ball games. I can go to the basketball. We can go eat and drink. I said, what? Really?

Sign me up.

And I. I said to myself, oh, God, I thought I would be at Xerox for a long time, but I said, okay, I'll go over there to hbo. And HBO said, the guy who was there says, hey, hey, man, right now we don't have any spaces, but I got a friend over at Showtime that would probably, you know, should go talk. And I was like, what? Isn't that. You're like, aren't you guys going against each other? I couldn't believe that. I said, you got. I go over to Showtime and not only did I get a job right then, but they gave me a credit card. And more importantly, that first day I met the lady who ran the whole thing said, hey, by the way, I got these tickets to go to the Los Angeles baseball. And I was like, you gotta be kidding me. And I was at the game of the one where that guy was. Do you remember who that is?

Kirk Gibson, of course.

You got it, man. And I was like, I will be here for free. I don't care what I love to see, so I'll keep going. But, you know, if you have any questions, you want to say, do, but I'll get to the next extra lucky stuff, I gotta tell you.

Yeah, let's do that, you know. And again, you and I had in many ways very similar paths. I considered myself lucky in all the opportunities I got. I think, though both of us have always tended to be hard workers. I always call, you know, luck is where hard work and preparation meet, basically. And so, yeah, you can call yourself lucky, but there's a lot of hard work that goes into being lucky.

I never used the word until recently because my brother said something. My brother, Willie Banks, for those of you who want to know. My brother, Willie Banks, Olympian, a world triple jumper. I mean, wonderful guy. And I love my older son than I am my older brother, but I love what he's done, and he's done so many great things. So we were just recently talking about the Olympics and I have some ideas for him and the Olympics and all this other stuff. And he said something. We had about four or five people on a call and out of nowhere, first of all, his name is Willie Banks. His name is Willie Banks, but from me, he's my brother. I call him William. I've never ever called him Willie. I call him William. But we had this, so a phone call, and for the first time in my life, I used his name Willie because I felt like those people don't really know who he is. So I said, let me use the name that everybody who knows him by the word Willie. And my brother was quiet. He had never heard me say Willie. So he's like, he was completely freaked out. But at that same call, what he said when we were talking about the thing we were going to, you know, we were sharing with him, he said to everybody in the call, said, you know, my brother, he's talking about me. He's like, you know, my brother is a very lucky guy. And at the first time I had the result, like, is he trying to say something crappy? That I'm just lucky? What is that? You know, I didn't say anything, but I was like. But after I got off that call, I gotta tell you, to everybody, but particular from you is that I am lucky. I have met how you said it is much better in terms of it does take tough, it is work, it is, you got to do what you're going to do. But I do have to say, I don't know how he actually said it from his head, but the way it says from me, I am lucky even to this very moment to be with you. Right now, I feel lucky to be here.

So I want to jump into Silicon Harlem because this is a very important initiative for those who don't know what is Silicon Harlem and what was your vision when you launched it?

Well, it's a great call. So there's a wrap up to it, right? So as I was working at Showtime, Showtime then took me to New York because that's where the main thing was happening. So I was pretty well known at Showtime and thought I was a big time. So they wanted to send me to the big areas. I got to New York and boy, oh boy, it's like, that's just my spot. I mean, because I'm a crazy dude that's always half fast, I gotta talk a lot. And that's everybody in New York. So I was like, this is my spot. I was loving that, doing the boxers, doing all this stuff still, and all these type of things that you and I love in terms of sports. So at any rate, from Showtime, I decided to go into a company that is a brand new thing, never been done before, turn television all around, which was doing video games through tv. So we did that. And that was very strong after that. And that was just lucky that I got, you know, from that perspective. But then the next thing, I got to a point where I was pretty good at all of that and. But it was like, the next thing, what am I going to do next? So I'm going to push it up a little bit so I can get close to your point is I got real deep into technology. I created something where back in the day where we had those discs, you.

Know, remember when you first started working at that?

Yeah. So I actually went over to Switzerland and I was checking out stuff. Over in Switzerland, I met this dude. He was a really good, interesting dude, right. He's just like a scientist. And so I went and hung out with him. And he was like. He liked beer, and he liked a lot of beer. And so this guy would take a disc, you know, a CD rom, and he put it in a machine, but he wanted to cut it first. I said, what are you doing, man? We were both drunk at the same, but he was boom, boom, boom. And it almost killed his machine. But it tried to work. And so we ended up working it. And it became what we call a digi card. And it was a major thing, Millions of dollars that we were made until the world changed. As the world changed is when I started thinking, with all this technology, how come there's not a lot of this happening in upper Manhattan? We got it downtown. You see it in different places and everything, but nothing was heading in Harlem. Even me, I was doing all of it downtown. I said, wow. And I lived in Harlem. And I was like, hey, I've got to see if we can do more of that in Harlem. So I created this idea before the name. I said, let's just do a meetup. Let's do a meetup. If I can get some people to come together, talk about technology, it's usually like, you know, 15, 20 people in some sort of a meetup. Well, when I did this, I had a friend of mine who had a great building that was getting built. It was under construction, but I needed a free place. I wanted to did this construction. 500 people came out. I said, whoa, what happened here? 500 people. And I realized I wasn't the only geek in town. And so we ended up had to create something. And that's how Silicon Harlem got created. I said, let's create Silicon Harlem. And it may sound a little bit much, but it was absolutely a critical right move. And so everyone has all throughout of New York and even all different states and countries and cities and all kind of stuff have come to know over the many times now, 12, 13 years now. And I gotta tell you, so many people, I thought I was the only geek up here. But I gotta tell you, there's a lot of people that are doing great, great things. And I think Sultan Harlem has been very helpful for those who realize they can get their ideas out, get things done. And we're seeing much more of it. And I'm going to continue to go with it. Of course more and more people are going to be involved and doing their own things. But for us, it's been really a game changer for upper Manhattan and throughout, I think other places around the entire country.

You know, you've said technology is nothing without people. How do you balance innovation with equity, making sure no one is left behind in the digital revolution?

Well, it starts early, you know, it really has to start early. Everyone should have access. So one of the things that I did early on was, you know, if I could figure out three critical things. Do you have Internet? Do you have a computer? Are you getting good school?

A lot of people get none of them. There are lots of people don't have any of that. I mean, a lot of us, we're lucky in a lot of ways. We've had it. So you don't even think that somebody couldn't have that. That is true. I've been to a lot of schools. I went to a lot of schools. I talked to a lot of people and there's a lot of people that haven't had the access. That is not an issue of the mind, it's the access. In New York, a beautiful opportunity is I walk around the city of the Harlem and kids are running around with these bikes, crazy bikes. They're tricked. They pop them up in noise and popping wheels and everything else. And I'm going, wow, now, yeah, you can be kind of scared. But I'm looking at them like these kids have made their own bikes. They make it work. They're not hurting nobody. They're just having fun. Why aren't they at NASA? I mean, really, they have that kind of skill. So my job is to try to get those kind of people, all kind of people, to get access. It's not an issue here. It's an access. I believe that big time. I'm a big believer in that, is that people are just not getting the access. If you get it, it makes all of us better. It's not just for that person. It makes for everyone. So that's a big part for what I do.

Yeah. Well, let's talk more about technology. Beyond AI and quantum. What technologies excite you most right now in terms of their potential to drive social good? And I throw in the social good there because you and I have always been focused on that.

Well, I'm glad you mentioned all of this because what you said is very important, right? So technology, there's so much about it. But what you said at the very beginning, it starts with people. And that is absolutely true. I always try to tell people that because people are losing their minds around AI and things of that nature. And a lot of people who maybe not have access as much, but they hear about something like AI, a lot of people will go, oh, I want to be AI. I want to do AI. I want to do AI. Well, what a lot of times you have to do is learn a little bit about. More about these things, right? So AI is not just AI. AI literally comes down to how do you know how to create, right? So it's still coming from a person, it's still coming from people, it's still come from the history, it comes from all of that. AI has been around since the 40s. A lot of people don't realize how long this has been. What we've done is we've put it on the. On top. Now, AI has been around for a long time. So I just use that as an example. And I think there's so many new technologies that we haven't even hit yet. There's other countries that are doing even a little bit more. But one of the key things that I've done for many years is try to help more and more young people, very young, learn how to do one simple, very, very important thing. Learn how to code. So you gotta learn how to code because the AI is coded. Who did the coding? You know, these are the type of things that have to be talked about. We're looking so many new things that are coming on. And the question is, what does it require? It requires skill. If you want to be like, get money from it, right? You got to learn how to do certain things. If it's. You just want to use it like Chap GPT or something like that, that's fine. You know, there's a lot coming on, more and more about that, by the way, because a lot of kids were doing it in college. So much chat GPT. There's new things that have to now, like figure out if it's too much chat GPT or not. So the teachers are like, ah, you got too much chat GPT. I mean, you know, you can find it out. But you know, to me it's like, you know, these are tools for you to use. But if you want to really make some money, yeah, it's a good idea to learn how to code. And I guarantee you, or at least understand the coding.

I mean, a lot of coding will be taken over by just giving simple basic language instructions to AI. But it's still important to understand where the technology gets its logic. And that's where coding at least understanding coding comes in. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah, I mean, that's true, I agree with you. But I would say that, you know what, we're looking moving forward in the future, you still need to have people. There's too many problems. You know, I was working years and years and years ago doing cars, right? Cars without people, right. We were working on this, we were quite a bit and we were like, oh, we got it working, we got it working. We were doing in Arizona and we're like, oh, we got this car. And so we were testing some things, so we had the car drive and we'd have people walk across to see how the car would react. And this particular case, it was, wow, it was stopping. It was great. It was so absolutely wonderful. And we said, let's keep it going. And this person was coming through that was a African American. And the car kept coming.

I was like, oh, the point was, whoever created, you know, I don't think anybody was trying to be messy about it. It was just the way it was created. Didn't take it in that there's other people that look different hues. And so it was easy to fix it. But it was like my point of to what you're asking is every types of people should be involved in this. If it's the same old people doing the same thing, we're not going to get everything. There was another war situation. I talked to a lot of people in an event. I had asked people in an audience, I said, who knows what a box braid is? You know, box braids, like braids. And most of us men, we wouldn't know any of that. But there's A lot of people didn't know what that was. And again, that's one of those things that comes from African American type of kids that learned about box braids. It's braiding hair. At any rate. I'm saying that to say to your point is that there's so much that needs behind this. This isn't just AI is going to be only by itself. It's got to continue to have human beings.

And I think, yeah, there's got to be guardrails.

Yeah, we have to. And even from the perspective of so many things are being, you know, you can actually be hooked. Right. In other words, there's a lot of problems that can happen. So I think you still got to have a provide of a lot of people, different people from different resources. But it's got to be people that are pretty much within your community. You know, you can't look for somebody who's in another country or another place to do your business. You got to make sure it's in.

Your country, frankly, or even in your community in general. Speaking of community, I want to talk to you about clean energy projects like virtual power plants. Silicon Harlem is really involved with bringing up these kinds of opportunities for underserved communities. Can you address that for me?

Yeah. I mean, a big part of it is also, you know, the air, the water. There's so many issues that we're dealing with here and not just in New York, but all over the country for a lot of ways. One of the things that we found is the weather in and of itself and the population in certain areas. In our particular area, like Harlem and Bronx has the largest number of people in the country with asthma. And the reason is because of the way the air is coming in this area where there's more trucks in that area, there was more from boats. And it's easier to get into the city of New York through those areas. Bronx and Harlem. Bronx and Harlem are right, like together. So as you're coming in, you don't want to go to bridges and take money or pay money to get in. You come through that area and all that smoke coming out of those cars next, you know, I don't know. Did you ever have asthma, by the way? I had.

I did. I still do.

I remember that. Yeah, I remember too.

So it's manageable. So not bad. But yeah, to your point, environmental factors are crucial to preventing those kinds of ailments.

Exactly. And there's much more to be done and there's more that can be done there. And I work A lot with the universities. From that perspective, a lot of kids that are coming get where they're focused on in a lot of ways. It's a lot easier to do it that way. My perspective is to work with young people that are at college because they got to do something. So I talk a lot about that. The water that has to be dealt with, even from an eating perspective, the eating that's going on in our community has been really terrible. So we are trying to work very hard on that. To your point about the air, that's like getting people sick all the time. So we're making some movement. We are really are. We're getting people that are moving on it. We're working with the city, we're talking with the mayors, we're working with the people on what needs to be done. And there's a lot of us now that are really figuring out that we have to do that. We're reducing the amount of cars coming in parts of areas. We're making a big difference from that perspective. I can't wait till we get much more, even driverless vehicles. I know a lot of people don't love that, but I believe the driverless, if you look at driverless. I was working up in San Francisco just a couple of months ago. Nobody gets hit. Nobody gets. There's no accidents, there's nothing. I was in a car for most of the day. I loved it. And I got to tell you, it will make a big difference. Your grands and the ones who haven't even been born yet will be going, why would I drive a car.

That will come? I bet you that'll be best for us, for sure.

I want to talk to you about some of the impact you've had on young people. There's many young people that have gone through your programs that have gone on to finish college and thriving careers. What does that mean to you personally?

That is a great question. And it's one of my favorite things to talk about because for many, many summers, particularly for the last 10, 12 years, I always have kids in my office, about 20 kids a day. And most of them come from a tough situation. You know, they didn't come rich, they didn't come a lot. They don't have a lot of access. You know, it's tough. And the way I look at it is this is a place where you're going to be completely comfortable, you're going to be okay. No one's gonna yell at you or any. All that kind of stuff. One of a good idea is One guy, I met him actually at a school, and I said, hey, man, on the summer, you should come over with me. He was like 15, 16 years old. 15 years old. And so he stayed with me like two straight years, you know, he's like, hey, I want to be here again you, Mr. Banks. I want to come back. And then I said, well, you know, he didn't think he was going to be college. He was like, I don't know. Nobody goes to my family go to college. I said, listen, man, I got to help you. Well, it turned out he was not only pretty good with Internet, but he also was a pretty good gamer. So I said, hey, man, there's some colleges where you can learn some cool stuff and gamers and all kind of stuff. So I got him school down in Florida. He knocked out four years, graduated, sent me a note. He said, Mr. Banks, thank you so much. You changed my life. Now I'm working with dc, I'm with the government, and for the first time in my life, and my mom is. She has a house. First time he bought her mom a house. And I was like, wow, man. But that's what we need. We need people to give a shot, give them some real help and they can get it done from there. I got many of those, by the way. That's just one example. There's a lot of them I know of everything I definitely know, you know, you talked about some of the things that you know about me. It's really about those kids. That's the one I love the most. The most important thing for me is when they come back to me because they. Most times when you talk with a kid, you may not ever see them again. But I have to tell you, there's been quite a few that come back to me and say, hey, well, I want to work with you, Mr. Bank, and I always give them a job. Or I just want to let you know where I'm doing now and here's where I'm at and all this other stuff. So that's what we all should be doing, right? As if you can, is where, for sure.

Well, let's dovetail into my favorite question that I always ask everybody. And it's our final question. When you think about legacy, what do you want to be remembered for?

I hope Silicon Harlem stays around like Silicon Valley as we get older. And people who are younger don't know what is Silicon Valley. They don't know who did it, who, how it created. And I don't care if nobody ever knows me either. But I do know one I'd love to see Silicon Harlem stay and to grow and to make sure that it creates enough for everyone, no matter what you look like, no matter what you talk about, no matter where you're from and all that kind of stuff. We would love for people to create their companies in the area of Silicon Harlem, or at least say that they are associated to Silicon Harlem. I think that's a big, big opportunity. It's not about me. Glad that I was part of it, but I look for the future to be something that could make a major, major difference. And I think it'd be the Silicon Harlem across the entire world. You look at my hat here, it says Durban. Durban is a area in Africa. It's a small, beautiful place. And wow, what if it's Silicon Dublin? You know, I mean, Silicon X, Silicon X all over the place. Because why not create that opportunity that did so great at Silicon Valley and now we're doing here at Silicon Harlem? I'd love to see that created all over the place so that everyone at least feels like they have a shot at something and create your own business. Because I'm hanging out in Silicon Harlem, you know, that kind of thing. So I just think that's great opportunity, like you're doing with, you know, some of the schools and that kind of stuff. It's just giving people a shot. So I think that's one of my favorite things for the future to one of the things that you were asking, some stuff. But one of the things I didn't mention, which is Quantum, if anybody's on listening to me, if you're hearing of this, within the next two to three years, Quantum will be as crazy as AI is. Everybody living right now. So get on it early now. Learn. No, Quantum is real. It's been around for a long time, but now it's coming up out like we did with AI. AI was a long, long time ago, but it came out all of a sudden. So that's what we know. If you really want to be, you know, a lot of great situation. Take a look at Quantum.

Gotcha. Well, my man, Clayton, thank you for joining us for the incredible work you've been doing to build bridges between technology and community. You are showing the world what's possible when innovation is inclusive. Super proud to call you my friend and I appreciate you coming on the show.

I hope we do it again because I'm not finished. So next time, next time. The next time we do, I'm going to tell you about some very specific technology that most people don't know about. So we're going to do that. That's the hangout.

Because you can't get rid of me that easy. So we'll definitely do that a second time. I'd love to have another follow up episode. That'd be awesome.

Yeah, you're gonna love this one.

Well, that's a good teaser and we'll tease that out later on and refer back to this episode. But again, thank you for joining us. I want to also thank our audience for joining. And until next time, I'm Alan Pavloski signing off for Legacy All Stars.