Spend an hour with Toni Green and her father, Wayne, and the conversation keeps coming back to the word “community.”

Seated with guests around a conference table in the offices of BBT Connects – Toni is CEO, Wayne the chief technology officer – the Greens are emphatic about what drives the company’s mission and objectives as it begins a new phase of operations.

“We have 20,000 square feet here,” Toni observed of the company’s refurbished building on Birmingham’s north side. “We intend for every inch of it to be space where technology needs in the community are met.

“We’ve worked hard to make the building aesthetically pleasing and technologically functional, a place where people feel welcome and productive. Now we’re ready to provide resources that help build community and create opportunities.”

Toni Green holds a piece of the fiber BlackBelt Technologies and BBT Connects are bringing to underserved neighborhoods and communities. (Dan Bynum/ Alabama News Center)

Most immediate is a “tech academy” for children in grades 5-12, planned for this summer. While it’s expected that most participants will come from North Birmingham, the academy is open to students throughout Jefferson County. The goal: to use a summer camp-style setting to connect kids with the tools to develop knowledge and skills that contribute to academic success and open job and career paths. That’s the first step of the company’s plan for helping people of all ages learn to use the tools technology provides.

“For people who are underserved and underrepresented, the landscape of tech has to change,” Toni said. “We’re creating a place for digital fluency to happen, which impacts educational outcomes and workforce development. It affects economic prospects at every level.”

After getting the tech academy established, BBT Connects will begin to expand its offerings, including tech-based information, programs and services tailored to elderly members of the community. Plans also call for adding in-depth programs in subjects such as coding and AI solutions, as well as providing accounting, marketing and other services for community-based businesses. Meanwhile, BBT Connects is working to secure broadband service for all of the business district that surrounds U.S. 31 through North Birmingham.

More than two years has gone into launching BBT Connects and renovating the building to support its work. Much of the labor for the renovation has come from the Greens themselves, along with the company’s systems analyst, Isis Ramirez. In addition to the Greens and Ramirez, the BBT Connects staff includes Chief Marketing Officer Courtney Simpson and senior engineer Wadleste Merancin.

Responding to a question about the building, Wayne also spoke to his expectations for BBT Connects and its “community-forward” mission.

“It’s beginning to look like what we want it to look like.”

Making technology community-forward

The roots of BBT Connects date to 2001, when Wayne and his business partner, the late Deborah Works, co-founded IT consultant and service provider BlackBelt Technologies. The company’s name reflected – and continues to reflect – both its primary clientele and its commitment to engineering solutions for clients with tech needs, with a special focus on using technology to help underserved communities grow and prosper.

“Our name is BlackBelt Technologies because we identify with the clients we’ve been servicing for the past two decades,” said Wayne, who continues to serve as CEO of that company. “We are motivated to develop community-forward technology.

“What does that mean? It depends on the particular community and its needs, but it always starts with the same question: How do we bring technology to people and places that need it the most?”

Over the years, BlackBelt Technologies has worked throughout Alabama’s Black Belt region. The company’s client list includes the cities of Camden and Orrville in Wilcox County, and Selma, in Dallas County, as well as in the state capital of Montgomery. Much of its more recent efforts have been devoted to bringing affordable, high-quality broadband access to unserved and underserved areas of the Black Belt. BBT maintains an office at Selma’s Craig Field (the former Air Force base that now is an industrial park) and is renovating office space in Camden.

Last year, BlackBelt Technologies, Craig Field Industries and the Selma Housing Authority partnered to create the Community Connection Network Infrastructure (CCNI) to bring free high-speed internet – including streaming services, educational platforms and access to workforce development and training platforms, entertainment and expanded telecommunication capabilities – to public housing residents. The company designed the dark fiber model that enables the network.

Since being announced last summer, the partnership CCNI has expanded to include Verizon, the Black Belt Community Foundation and Alabama Power. Plans call for building out CCNI over time to serve rural communities across Dallas County and beyond.

Building for the future

Wayne acquired the North Birmingham building in 2015. It was available at a good price, and the location fit the mission of BlackBelt Technologies and what he and Works envisioned for the future of the company. With everything else going on, there were no immediate plans to renovate the building beyond rescuing it from the “pretty bad shape” it was in.

Then, in early 2021, Works died unexpectedly. In the wake of that loss, the vision began to flourish.

Wayne’s first step was engaging his daughter in discussions about the future of BlackBelt Technologies and how it might intersect with her life and career path. Looking back, Toni saw what she called “the connector” – the common thread that ran through her personal and professional experience and now seemed to be leading her to North Birmingham.

The BBT Connects offices in North Birmingham, where meetings, classes and other community-oriented activities are planned for this summer. (Dan Bynum / Alabama News Center)

BBT Connects offers both large and small meeting spaces. (Dan Bynum / Alabama News Center)

BBT Connects offers both large and small meeting spaces. (Dan Bynum / Alabama News Center)

Toni grew up on the east side of Birmingham. She graduated from the University of Alabama in 2006 with degrees in Public Relations and Spanish. Much of the early part of her career was in events and hospitality sales, first with the Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau and then its counterpart in Greenville, South Carolina. After returning to Birmingham, she worked in nonprofit administrative roles before joining Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School as director of student recruitment and community engagement in 2017.

Located in the city’s Titusville neighborhood, Holy Family provides college prep courses and an innovative corporate work-study program to a mostly under-resourced student population. For Toni, the four-and-a-half years working at the school and with students sharpened her perspective on meeting needs and creating opportunities.

“Holy Family’s mission is empowerment,” she said. “It’s preparing students from economically challenged families to leave high school prepared to continue learning and flourish in life. I saw that common thread of education, community and serving those who are underserved. Ultimately, that led to BBT Connects and where we are today.”

BBT Connects was established to fulfill “outward facing” functions of BlackBelt Technologies, Toni explained. The new company handles marketing, communications and administrative responsibilities, in addition to the community-forward initiatives now housed in North Birmingham, with the parent company freed to focus on engineering solutions that meet the tech needs of clients.

When Wayne urged Toni to take the job as CEO of BBT Connects, it seemed like a natural progression from her work at Holy Family and prior experience in sales and marketing.

“He always saw what this could be,” Toni said of her father. “He had the dream and the desire, and he had the patience and perseverance to make it happen.”

Toni came on board officially in June 2021. Nearly three years later, seated in the conference room that adjoins his book-lined office, Wayne recalled that when Toni took the job, and work began on renovating the office, he insisted on only one condition.

“Anyone who works in the building has to be from the community we’re serving,” said Wayne. “It’s reflective of the work we do and our commitment to helping people and communities reach their full potential.”

“Teaching people that tech is a tool.”

One of those people is Isis Ramirez. Born in Mexico, she grew up in Birmingham, attending city schools until enrolling at Holy Family during high school. During her senior year, she met Toni, then in her first year with the school. Toni was so impressed with Isis that after her graduation, she was hired to recruit Hispanic students for the school.

“Isis is an incredible person,” said Toni. “From the start, beyond her great technical skills, I saw her dedication to hard work and doing things right, as well as her determination to help create opportunities for people to better their circumstances. We just hit it off.”

During Ramirez’s three years at Holy Family, Hispanic enrollment grew from five students to 30. At the same time, she was attending the University of Montevallo, where she earned a degree in Computer Informatics in 2022. She and Toni had stayed in contact after Toni’s departure from Holy Family, and when she walked off the stage with her Montevallo diploma that June, a job at BBT Connects was waiting. She has worked on projects in Selma, Camden and Montgomery, and is looking forward to the first tech academy and other activities coming to the North Birmingham building.

“I love being part of this company and what it does in the communities it serves,” Ramirez said. “We are working in places where people have not been exposed to tech a great deal. Teaching people that tech is a tool, showing them how to use it, creates commercial benefits as well as helping the community.”

In the right place

The location of the BBT Connects building provides a fitting metaphor for the company and the vision behind it. Part of the city of Birmingham since 1910, North Birmingham had been established as a separate city in 1886 (though it would not be incorporated until 1902). A newspaper article the following year described its “tasty cottages and park unsurpassed in arrangement and taste by anything in Birmingham” and called it the “prettiest” suburb of the growing industrial giant to its south.

Industry was the lifeblood of North Birmingham; by the 1920s it was home to seven pipeworks and foundries, numerous railroad facilities, and what was advertised by boosters as “72 diversified industries.” The resident population was mostly a vibrant, stable mix of lower management and working-class families. The BBT Connects building would not appear until much later, but the corner it occupies was at the heart of 27th Street, then the community’s commercial hub, which was served by streetcar service from Birmingham.

Isis Ramirez, Toni Green and Wayne Green at the front entrance of BBT Connects. After more than two years of preparation, including renovating the building, the company is launching a summer “tech academy” for local kids in grades 5-12 — the first of numerous community programs it plans to phase in. (Dan Bynum/ Alabama News Center)

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin spent much of his childhood in North Birmingham in the 1980s. He recalls a neighborhood “full of families,” where people of all ages lived, worked and shopped, with a business district that included “my pediatrician, my dentist, several banks, retailers and two grocery stores.” It included North Birmingham Elementary School, where he walked to class from the family home a few blocks away.

But by the early 1990s, the ravages of industrial decline and demographic change were becoming evident. The elementary school closed in 2012, accelerating the deterioration of the surrounding area.

Wayne wasn’t aware of North Birmingham’s history when he acquired the building in 2015. He simply saw an opportunity to advance the mission of his company from the Black Belt to his own backyard. Likewise, Toni came to North Birmingham to pursue her passion for education and community service and is only now learning about the history of the neighborhood — information that only strengthens her conviction that BBT Connects is going to work in the right place at the right time.

Coincidentally, a recently announced plan calls for renovating the old elementary school into a senior living facility, creating the potential for synergistic opportunities with BBT Connects.

“We want our work to be reflective of the space we’re in,” Toni said. “Knowing this history only adds to the importance of what we’re doing. We’ll be able to reflect on that five years from now, when this building is bustling with continuous programming.

“I truly love Birmingham,” Toni added. “I have a heart for community, and for this community in particular. Being in a position to sell Birmingham, to sell this neighborhood and this space as part of where the city can go in the future, is an exciting challenge.”