Meme Styles

Jameila "Meme" Styles is the founder and president of MEASURE, the Austin research and data advocacy nonprofit she founded in 2015 to put lived experience at the center of evidence. MEASURE reports supporting more than 120 Black, Brown and Indigenous-led organizations and training more than 20 paid community evaluators. Its trademarked CARE model (Community, Advocacy, Resilience, Evidence) is a 12-step framework that puts community members at the front of research, design and decision-making.

Meme co-chairs the HBCU AI Conference & Training Summit at Huston-Tillotson University with former Indeed CEO Chris Hyams. The 2026 summit drew more than 500 attendees from 37 HBCUs, and the pair marked it with the co-authored Fortune commentary "AI is the most important civil and human rights issue of our time - HBCUs need to be in the driver's seat." The next summit is March 11-12, 2027.

She was a 2022-2024 Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council, building MEASURE Connect, a data platform for underrepresented organizations. She was named an MIT SOLVER for anti-racist technology and DivInc's Nonprofit Leader of the Year (2021). Her book, The House The 90s Built, was published in 2025.

Her earlier career includes anchoring NBC news in Alaska, working as an executive assistant with the U.S. Army in El Paso, a health and human services privacy officer role, and franchise ownership. She holds a BS in Communications, a Master of Public Administration with a national security concentration, a Cornell certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and a George Washington University certification in Performance Measurement (the PuMP method).

Speaking topics: community-led research and data equity; ethical AI and interrogative reasoning; HBCUs and the future of equitable AI. Verified example talk: "Using Data to Advance Racial Equity," SXSW 2022, with Candid CEO Ann Mei Chang.