He was formerly the Vice-President of Strategic Planning and Marketing for BGS Infosystems, Inc. (BGSI), an Internet startup firm who produces an Internet directory of African-related WWW resources called "The Universal Black Pages" (www.ubp.com). While with BGSI, Derrick authored the company's business and marketing plans, and also wrote strategic plans for BGSI's advertising, consulting, and electronic commerce operations.

Derrick earned his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with honors from Clemson University in December 1991. He then worked for The MITRE Corporation's (Reston, VA) Signal Processing and Advanced Technology Department for one year before beginning graduate studies at Georgia Tech, where he received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in March 1994.

During his time at Georgia Tech, Derrick was an active member of the Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA). He created the Information Resources and Technology committee in September 1993 to encourage students to use electronic mail and other emerging Internet resources like the World Wide Web. He served as BGSA president from May 1994 - May 1996, during which the organization became a leading advocate of information technology utilization.

Derrick also consulted at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia’s premier high-tech business incubator. While at ATDC, Derrick served as a reviewer for ATDC’s Faculty Research and Commercialization Program (FRCP), which provided startup capital to Georgia professors with promising intellectual property who wished to start companies. He also served as Webmaster for Netcelerate (http://www.netcelerate.org), ATDC’s online entrepreneurial community.

Derrick served as a 1999 Technology Fellow with the Enterprise Foundation (http://www.enterprisefoundation.org). As a technology fellow, his duties were to use information technology tools and training methods to improve day-to-day operations in Enterprise’s constituent community development corporations (CDCs). Establishing these relationships has allowed KnowledgeBase to continue working with several of these organizations after the conclusion of Derrick’s fellowship tenure to help these CDCs establish community technology centers.

His work received special recognition in September 1999, when Derrick was invited to a two-day White House briefing of the African-American Internet Constituency. Organized in the midst of growing public concern over the Digital Divide, the group invited to the briefing represents the vanguard that has already been working for several years to conquer this problem by creating compelling Internet content and by organizing substantive infrastructure-building and training efforts targeted at African-Americans.

Derrick is originally from Elloree, SC, a decidedly rural community. His personal mission to promote learning and development through computer and information technology is based on the experience of how much the tools accelerated his development. These experiences shaped his perspective and awareness, and endow him with the capacity to teach technology to uninitiated audiences in a manner that connects with their interests.