Poncelet

Students will learn to build heart rate monitors and radios, said Africatown IT Director Evan Poncelet.

While an influx of highly paid tech jobs has contributed to displacement in Seattle, Poncelet said the industry is also capable of “single-generation wealth building.”

“If you can create programs that get youth curious and invested in STEM,” Poncelet said, “then those same people can turn right back around and buy back the block.”

None of this mattered to Jean-Victor Poncelet.

Moldering in a Russian prison, Poncelet founded a new discipline: projective geometry.