Robert S. Shumake PhD completed the Harvard Data Science Initiative Agentic AI Intensive

What the program covers

Presented by Harvard Data Science Review, the intensive is concentrated training in agentic AI — autonomous systems that plan, reason, and execute complex tasks without continuous human direction. The curriculum spans AI agent architecture, prompt engineering, multi-agent systems, and deployment of AI across business operations including content generation, customer acquisition, data analysis, and strategic decision-making. The certificate is not granted for attendance: participants must ship a capstone project.

The capstone

Shumake's capstone studied the HDSI curriculum and rebuilt it for communities that will never set foot in Cambridge — entrepreneurs across Africa and incarcerated people in the American prison system. Not everyone can go to Harvard; everyone deserves access to the education Harvard provides. Free AI courses are now deploying through his seven religious universities and, for federal prisoners, through the Sacred Study Beyond Walls program.

The Smart Money Black AI Executive Program

The capstone became a four-week course with a personal AI Executive Coach, designed for entrepreneurs with no technical background. It launches at the National Business League's 126th Annual Conference — themed "Economic Sovereignty" — August 19–22, 2026, at the Hilton Atlanta Hotel, before more than 1,000 Black business owners. The National Business League is the nation's oldest Black business organization, founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900. Participants receive AI training, 1,000 Manus AI credits, a feature in Smart Money Black Magazine, distribution across 10 newspaper platforms, and an international travel certificate on graduation.

From Ford janitor to Harvard AI graduate

As documented in his Amazon #1 bestselling book Climbing Your Inner Mountain: Ten Steps to Reaching Any Goal (Take the Land Publishing, 2013), Shumake began as a janitor at a Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit, spending three years listening to business audiobooks while pushing a mop cart. He earned $194,000 in his first year in real estate, $600,000 in his second, and one million dollars in his third. By 2011, Black Enterprise ranked his firm, Inheritance Capital Group L.L.C. of Southfield, Michigan, tenth nationally among the largest Black-owned private equity firms, with $200 million in capital under management across two funds, independently verified by KBL L.L.P., Certified Public Accountants and Advisors.

"The same methodology that took me from sweeping floors at Ford to managing $200 million works in AI. The constraint was never intelligence or capital. It was access to information. This program eliminates that constraint."