Janet Emerson Bashen

Janet Rita Emerson Bashen (née Emerson; born February 12, 1957) is an American entrepreneur, business consultant, and software inventor who is best known for patenting a web-based EEO software application, LinkLine, to assist with equal employment opportunity investigations and claims tracking. Bashen is regarded as the first African American woman to obtain a web-based software patent. As a result of her work with equal employment opportunity and diversity and inclusion, Bashen is regarded as a social justice advocate.
Raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Bashen attended Alabama A&M a Historical Black College and University but did not graduate, instead, she married her classmate, Ruffus Williams, an aerospace engineer, and moved to Houston, Texas. Emerson enrolled in the University of Houston and graduated with a degree in Legal Studies and Government. Williams and Emerson were divorced in 1988.
She married George Steven Bashen in May 1988. Thereafter, Bashen attended Harvard University and completed the Women and Power Program. Bashen is currently on the Women's Leadership Board at Harvard University. Bashen is also a graduate of Tulane Law School and is currently attending the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, at the University of Southern, California pursuing a Doctorate.
Family and education.
Early life and Ancestry.
Janet Rita Emerson was born on February 12, 1957, in Mansfield, Ohio to James Lucker Emerson Sr. b. (June 7, 1935) a garbage collector with the city of Huntsville, Alabama, until his retirement. Her mother, Ola Mae Emerson (1937– 2014) a Licensed practice nurse with Huntsville Hospital and the first Black nurse to work in the emergency room of the hospital. Emerson's family moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where Emerson went to a segregated elementary school until the fifth grade when she entered Fifth Avenue School, a previously segregated school in Huntsville, Alabama. Emerson comes from a Black mixed-race background.
Family life.
Emerson married George Steven Bashen in 1988. They have a daughter Blair Alise Bashen (born 1989) and a son Drew Alec Bashen. In 2020, Emerson's daughter Blair Bashen got engaged to her longtime boyfriend, three-time NBA basketball champion player Danny Green.
Career.
After graduating from the University of Houston, Bashen worked for an insurance company handling claims related to Equal Employment Opportunities. Bashen thought if you hire independent investigators to assess such claims, they would be more impartial. Bashen would later receive a $5,000 loan from her mother and in 1994, began her own company, Bashen Corporation, to investigate discrimination claims filed by employees.
As her company grew, Bashen became aware of the need for better ways of storing and accessing the data related to claims. With her cousin, Donnie Moore, a Tufts University computer science graduate, Bashen began developing a software. This was the genesis for the software LinkLine. In January 2006 Bashen was awarded a Patent No. 6,985,922, B1, making Janet Emerson Bashen the first African-American woman to earn a web-based software patent becoming a "part of an elite group of African-American inventors and scientists.
Congressional testimony.
In May 2000, Bashen testified before the U.S. House of Representatives that civil rights and employee misconduct investigations should be exempt from the Fair Credit Reporting Act.