Kay Johansson

Kay Johansson is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Gracenote, a Nielsen company.1 He has been involved in efforts to remove exclusionary language from technology terminology, particularly racist terms. Johansson emphasized the importance of changing problematic nomenclature, stating, "There's no reason to have that kind of nomenclature. It's wrong. This is terminology that doesn't serve a purpose and it has negative historical implications. We needed to change this."1

Under Johansson's leadership, Nielsen has been proactively working to replace terms with racist implications, such as "whitelist" and "blacklist," with more neutral and descriptive alternatives like "allow list" and "blocklist".1 This initiative is part of Nielsen's broader commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the technology industry.