Noelle RussellChief Executive Officer, AI Leadership Institute · 5x Microsoft Trustworthy AI MVP | 3.4+ million students | #1 Thought Leader in Agentic AI | AI-Powered Revenue Growth + Cost Optimization Expert ✨Best-Selling Author: Scaling Responsible AI | TEDx Sp

Black Friday: turning discounted Alexas into donated devices for seniors and underserved classrooms

12 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief talk, the speaker outlines a hackathon-driven project that leverages Black Friday discounts to purchase Amazon Alexa devices and donate them to underrepresented communities, including low‑income schools in places like Homestead, Florida, and seniors in assisted‑living facilities. The plan pairs each device with a concise playbook of activities that educators or caregivers can use to integrate voice‑assistant technology into daily learning and conversation, thereby creating new readiness and learning opportunities for groups that typically lack access to such tools. The speaker emphasizes that the effort is not a fundraising campaign but a coordinated purchase‑and‑ship operation, with specific locations to be shared during the hackathon.

Chapters

We're gonna basically buy Alexa devices. So, um, to help with readiness and learning opportunities for underrepresented groups, whether that's older people, whether that's young kids, right? Just imagine being able to equip an educator with an Alexa device to have in their room and then also giving them a, like a little playbook on things they can do with their students. And I'm not talking about like, I live in a pretty well affluent area. I'm talking about like Homestead, Florida. Like these areas that just, they don't ever even get the tech. They never get an opportunity to weave in technology into everyday conversation and expose their students. Same thing with people in, you know, assisted living and nursing homes. They just don't get exposure to this tech unless we bring it to them. So we will be raising, it's not really raising money, it's Black Friday. So you're gonna buy a discounted device and you're gonna, you'll buy a device and ship it to a location that I will be sharing with you during the hackathon.