Leadership
Autonomous AI agents. Real community impact.
Every year, billions in public workforce funding never reach the communities built to receive them. DJMP Institute builds the AI infrastructure that closes that gap — and trains the next generation of builders who will own the technology that shapes their future. That is what trustworthy civic AI looks like when it’s built right.
lack the digital literacy to navigate government workforce training systems designed to help them.
projected by the Dept. of Labor through 2029 — pathways our communities deserve direct access to.
projected reach of PathwayAI across 25+ cities within 36 months of national deployment.
Eight years before PathwayAI, the logic behind it was already being built — by teenagers, on Saturdays, at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters.
Martin Pieters, then STEM Director at Rainbow PUSH, challenged his Saturday Academy students to use publicly available Chicago city data to solve a real problem. The students' answer: How do we get home safely?
Led by Jonathan Key — then a biomedical engineer at IIT and the Saturday Academy's lead developer — the students built a shooting heat map layered over Google Maps, giving CPS students safer routes home by routing around recent gun violence. It was unveiled at Rainbow PUSH's 46th Annual International Convention and covered by ABC7 Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times.
The student developers included Donald and Aidan Pieters (Martin's sons), Krystopher Williams, and Akash Pondicherry — now DJMP Institute core staff and first employee Raj Pondicherry's younger brother — all of whom had grown up together in the program since elementary school.
City crime data → heat map → safer routes home for CPS students
10 federal databases → AI-matched pathways → economic opportunity for 500K+ residents across 25 cities
The question is identical: How do we use civic data to protect the people systems have left behind? PathwayAI is the Stay Safe App grown up.
The DJMP Institute Summer STEM Program launches Summer 2026 — six hands-on Learning Labs, Grades 4–12, Chicago. The curriculum is built. The partner is credentialed. We need a funding partner to make it run.
The program is designed, budgeted, and ready to run. We need a funding partner. Download our one-page program overview or contact us directly to request the full proposal.
Limited enrollment — Grades 4–12 — Chicago, Summer 2026. Join our interest list now. We'll contact you as soon as enrollment opens.
The Trustworthy Civic AI Framework (TCAF) is Martin Pieters’ doctoral research at a leading U.S. research university — the first empirically grounded, integrated design science framework for building agentic AI systems that are simultaneously secure, ethical, equitable, and scalable. PathwayAI is the live proof-of-concept artifact.
$200K–$300K · DJMP Institute submitted our application on March 15, 2026. Results expected in 60–90 days. We are grateful to all community partners who supported this submission.
Read More →GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro — all now operational agents, not just chatbots. PathwayAI has been built on this architecture from day one.
Read More →170,000+ jobs cut in a single month. Without targeted intervention, AI will deepen — not close — the racial wealth gap. DJMP Institute is the intervention.
Read More →DJMP Institute tracks federal, foundation, and corporate grants filtered for nonprofit AI workforce programs — with deadline alerts, eligibility notes, and application tips.
Get Access →DJMP Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Every donation funds AI-powered civic intelligence for communities excluded from the economic opportunity the AI economy promises.
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