There would be no Bridge without Avery Francis.

There would be no Bridge without Avery Francis. Period. She was the first to raise the idea, and she made critical contributions in the first year of Bridge’s existence.

In those early days, Avery, Abdella Ali, Yuri Takhteyev and I worked so hard to found Bridge. As the project grew, my communication with Avery began to break down, and this was my fault. I didn’t keep her up to date. I should have reached out to her. I should have talked to her. But I didn’t. It was a failure of my early leadership.

When Bridge moved from a Rangle project to incorporate as a non-profit, we needed to clarify current leadership roles. I asked Avery to update her title to reflect her current involvement in the new, non-profit organization. We wanted our community to understand who was an active volunteer or staff member so they could ask questions about Bridge, and we could answer appropriately.

I didn’t communicate this request well. Not as a co-founder of Bridge, a friend, nor as the organization’s CEO. And Avery was hurt. By me, a white woman afforded many privileges which are amplified within tech leadership, who did not see or appreciate the full extent of the harm I caused to Avery. I sincerely apologize.

I have reached out to Avery to apologize personally.

— Emily Porta, CEO, Bridge School

What We’re Doing

Bridge puts our community first. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of our immediate measures:

• The leadership team is focusing on diversifying the Board of Directors, and the Executive team itself. We will ensure this is high priority. We will be immediately adding two seats to the Board for student/alumni representation and will be actively seeking a woman, agender, or non-binary person of colour for these roles, so that community representation is at our highest level of decision-making going forward.
• We are hosting a community video chat this week with our executive team where we will be answering all questions the community has in an open format.

From this experience, I learned about the unspoken, hidden dynamics of a white woman in a leadership position.

When the group that originated Bridge came together and started working, the last thing on my mind was who was doing what. And in principle that seems fine — now I know that it isn’t, because those who are further marginalized in our society and in the technology industry have had to constantly deal with being sidelined. It’s not enough to “treat everyone the same”, of course. I thought I knew that. But I didn’t put it into practice with Avery, and I absolutely should have. I will do better at this going forward.

Committing to Black Lives

As protests continue supporting black lives in America and around the world, we encourage all other organizations to take this moment to reflect on what they are putting into practice for the black community and other equity-seeking groups. Here is a list of what we’re doing so far:

• We have donated funds locally to Black Lives Matter Toronto and Justice for Regis, and will continue to monitor and assess groups to donate to that are providing on the ground support for the Canadian and American black communities.
• A key area of focus in our Strategic Report, completed earlier this year, already focuses on further reaching out, engagement with, and help to the BIPoC and non-binary communities specifically, and we will follow through with that as planned.
• We have a Code of Conduct that we will review and update to more explicitly demonstrate support for black folks in tech as well as all equity-seeking groups.
• We are reaching out to anti-racist training organizations this week to provide training for our community and our leadership (and taking on any costs associated with that training).

Committing to Equity

What is the organization’s official position on equity? For hiring, for programs, for board recruitment?

Equity is one of our core values, and always has been. For our student applicants we have always had many individual processes in place to help ensure diversity, and we will be examining where we can improve for hiring and board recruitment. We will be reaching out to a Board diversity specialist to ensure all best practices are followed and not grow the board without the added representatives being people of colour. We will take action on all of these points by the end of the summer and report back to the public.
In addition:

• All programming events will have a requirement to maintain a diverse representation of speakers.
• We will pay all speakers we invite to talk to the community.

How do issues related to equity and inclusivity show up informally?

Everything Bridge does centres around inclusivity and equity, it’s our mission and vision. While we work to get this right, sometimes we fall short. And we learn from these moments, not just the surface level lessons but the deeper ones. We acknowledge the role leadership plays in fostering a feeling of inclusion and equity, and we believe the best way to ensure proactive work is done is to ensure the diversity of the very people providing our services, both the volunteers and our staff.

If someone has an issue or complaint, what is the official process for them to be heard?

The current process is to contact one of the staff or leadership team that they feel most comfortable in contacting. We will now be instituting a way to anonymously provide feedback to the executive and a clear process on following up with that feedback and reporting that to the community as a whole (unless the person includes they do not want the followup shared).