Ex-NFL QB Colin Kaepernick highlights his AI company with Maryland county schools

Colin Kaepernick appeared at a pair of events in Maryland Thursday, hoping to connect his artificial intelligence business with the school systems of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

Mr. Kaepernick, once quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, spoke at the Montgomery County Public Schools superintendent’s administrative and supervisory meeting about “driving change and championing justice,” the school system posted on social media.

It’s been nine years since Mr. Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem at NFL games to protest what he called racial injustice and police brutality. He became a free agent in 2017 and was not signed by another team after that. In 2019, he reached a settlement with the NFL and withdrew a grievance alleging that he was blackballed by the league.

Christina Chester, a director of psychological services for the Montgomery County school system, said on X that Mr. Kaepernick also spoke about his business, Lumi AI, which its website calls a “groundbreaking platform that empowers creators by providing them with the tools needed to independently create, publish, and merchandise their stories both digitally and physically.”

Mr. Kaepernick told attendees that as part of being exceptional, he thinks “about this idea of embracing the discomfort, pushing your boundaries, around being willing to say, ‘I don’t know,’ to make sure that we are accomplishing the goals we want to accomplish together,” as caught on video by Cara Grant, a health education supervisor for the Montgomery County school system.

Later Thursday, Mr. Kaepernick showed up at a reception in Ocean City, Maryland, for Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy.

Mr. Kaepernick said, “AI is not some distant future. It is changing careers. It is changing the economy. It is changing industries. Now, we need to be at the forefront of it. Our students need to be at the forefront,” as reported by Maryland Matters.

The news site also quoted Prince George’s County Board of Education Chairman Branndon Jackson as saying, “This is a great opportunity to partner with Colin Kaepernick. … I hope you all support us in this great effort, because we want to make sure that our kids can read on grade level, because we have some of the brightest scholars in Prince George’s County.”