Announcing our Partnership with Bridge School
CrowdRiff is thrilled to announce that we are a Supporting Partner of Bridge School this year. Bridge School is a not-for-profit organization committed to upskilling women, agender, and nonbinary tech professionals through free advanced education in front end development, back end development, and product design. The promotion of inclusivity and advancement of underrepresented groups in tech are long-held values at CrowdRiff, and we are excited to support Bridge School’s mission.
While our formal partnership is new, Bridge School has already had a significant personal impact on the team at CrowdRiff. Two of our developers, Kara Barleta and Heather Pierce, are graduates of Bridge. Hilary Hacksel, our Tech Lead, has been involved with Bridge as a TA, Instructor, and Lead of Student Experience.
“Feeling confident and secure in your technical knowledge can be tough as a woman from a nontechnical background,” Heather says. “Bridge School fosters an environment where there are no dumb questions, and every time I took a course I feel like I levelled up as a developer.”
Hilary feels that her time as an instructor at Bridge improved her own skills as a developer. “Teaching others really solidified certain concepts for me. When people ask you questions, it actually highlights what you don’t understand.”
Both Heather and Kara think their time at Bridge helped to set them up for success at CrowdRiff.
“As a woman of colour, the representation in the network you build at Bridge and the organization’s drive to foster inclusive spaces is very inspiring. I met Hilary when she was the Lead of Student Experience at Bridge during my time as a student. When I found out she was at CrowdRiff, I knew it must be a special place. Little did I know that CrowdRiff had developers who are involved in other inclusive tech communities; some as instructors and mentors at Juno College, and others as speakers at meetups like GoTO, which is a testament to our culture of learning and mentorship.” — Kara Barleta
Fifty percent of the team at CrowdRiff identifies as a woman or nonbinary, and we believe that our strongly-held values of equity, inclusion, and a learning mindset foster a more collaborative, innovative, and creative team.
“CrowdRiff is definitely a good place for Bridge grads,” says Heather, “not just from a technical perspective — Bridge teaches a modern stack that we use here at CrowdRiff — but you also see women developers at every level here.”
Hilary echoes this sentiment and credits Bridge with her training around speaking in an inclusive way, being mindful of pronouns, and awareness of the discrimination that can happen in tech. She’s carried this into her role as a mentor and leader at CrowdRiff: “We have a really inclusive group of people here, and we enable every member of the team to grow in the ways they want, by working to offer opportunities to our team and boosting their confidence to take on new challenges.”
Over the past four years, Bridge School has helped hundreds of tech professionals to upskill in software development and product design. The organization is largely supported by volunteers and partnerships with organizations who are working to build a better future for tech.
