Toiné Houston

Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Toine Houston is a STEM leader and music artist. Growing up, she felt disjointed from her peers as a child without married parents. She always says that despite this, “they helped build that foundation of excellence for me.” A straight-A student since high school, Houston attended Illinois State University before transferring to DePaul, where she graduated in the top five percent of her class with a User Engineering Degree, the only black woman there to do so. She also completed her master’s program there.

Houston worked for several different industries, including private, public, and the government. Her nine-to-five is being a leader in STEM, working as a lead user experience engineer/consultant for a company called Sales, a position she loves. Houston can see herself in this job- a career that allows her to be innovative and use research insights to build amazing things- for the rest of her life.

STEM isn’t Houston’s only talent. She spent over fifteen years doing theatre, another love, and made a hobby out of writing poetry. For a while, she had a nice balance between STEM and art. About ten years ago, she met a man named Ty Heels, who presented the opportunity for Houston to put one of her poems into a rap album. Today, Houston gets to consider both her position in STEM and her work as a performer as jobs, with self-taught animation being her hobby. “And I was just able to now say I’m an internationally known recording artist,” she says. Houston has performed in the United States and the United Kingdom, getting to experience touring as an artist before the Covid-19 pandemic began. All her experience in working as a professional has boosted her confidence in her art. “Like I’m, I think I’m pretty good. Yeah.” More than “pretty good,” some- or many- might say.

Houston also has a podcast called The Wrap-Up Experience that she started with one of her best friends, Asia Robeson, another lyricist/actress. Something Houston finds in both art and STEM is not seeing a lot of black women Houston says that she wanted it to infuse not only their experiences as black women in user experience (which is less than eleven percent), but she wants to do it in a way that embodies the entertainment and musical things they do. The Wrap-Up podcast is a play on words; it’s “wrapping up” different experiences they’ve had in small packages. They also deliver in rhymes and raps, something Houston has never seen before. “So instead of us waiting,” she says, “let’s be creative.” After releasing four episodes, Houston recognizes that people are resonating with it- women of color, women in STEM, and those who deal with microaggression and Imposter Syndrome, for example- but has pulled back releases for now to redo branding/marketing. Even so, she has big dreams for the podcast, including doing Ted Talks about it.

Back in the early nineties, Houston looked up to Lauren Hill; she still does. She was also a Queen Latifa fan, as well as MC Lyte, Monie Love, and others. Out of everyone, though, Lauren Hill stayed with her all these years. “But it was something about Lauren that was just so different,” Houston says; storytelling is what stuck out to her about Hill, although she considers Chris Brown to be her celebrity crush.

A few favorites of Houston’s are neo-soul (favorite genre of music she listens to), cheddar cheeseburgers (favorite food, with Chicago-style pizza coming in second), and Chicago (favorite city to live in- no surprise there, as Chicago is where Houston says she always ends up).

Houston encourages readers to not give in and to be “very unapologetic about the mark you want to make in this world.” That’s “mark” in the singular form. “Because all you need is one.” Houston is adamant about having thick skin to deal with all the rejections; keep going, she says, stand strong “who you are as a creative.”

You can find Houston on her website, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.