➰ Black History is Infinity Before compliance became software—before HR dashboards tracked cases in real time—workplace discrimination investigations were buried in filing cabinets. Janet Emerson Bashen looked at that system and refused to accept it. Born in 1957 in Mansfield, Ohio, Bashen did not enter technology through Silicon Valley’s promise of scale and disruption. She arrived through the quiet, grinding machinery of civil rights enforcement. In Equal Employment Opportunity investigations, she watched discrimination claims move like smoke—visible, harmful, and impossible to contain. Files lived in cabinets. Evidence lived on paper. Accountability depended on who happened to be watching. In 1994, from her living room in Houston, Bashen founded the Bashen Corporation with one client and a $5,000 loan from her mother. As caseloads grew, she partnered with her cousin, computer scientist Donnie Moore, to develop LinkLine—a web-based case management system built specifically for Title VII discrimination investigations. It was among the first digital platforms designed to intake, track, and manage EEO claims at scale. In January 2006, U.S. Patent No. 6,985,922 was granted, making Janet Emerson Bashen the first African American woman in United States history to hold a software patent. The company scaled rapidly. By 2002, Inc. magazine named Bashen Corporation to its Inc. 500 list after reporting a 552 percent increase in revenue. Her client roster expanded to include Fortune 500 corporations, federal agencies, and major institutions. In 2000, she testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on regulatory issues affecting discrimination investigations, contributing to broader national conversations around accountability and compliance. But the patent is only part of the story. Bashen digitized oversight—and in doing so, reset the expectations for institutional accountability. Today, every modern HR compliance platform—every intake portal, reporting dashboard, and corporate case management system—operates in a landscape she helped define. The expectation that discrimination claims should be trackable, transparent, and auditable did not emerge organically. It was engineered. Janet Emerson Bashen did not wait for venture capital or institutional permission. She saw structural weakness in the enforcement of civil rights law and built the technology to strengthen it. 📍 Follow along as we continue honoring the builders, the breakthroughs, and what comes next.