Tash Jefferies
Co-Founder of Hirekind.io
Tash is the Co-Founder of Hirekind.io, which specializes in helping women and people of color get hired in tech roles. As a mentor to both 500 Startups and Runway Incubator, she loves helping underrepresented people to get a strong footing in the tech community. Tash is also a digital and social media specialist with a chemistry and biology degree who has been featured in TEDx, The Huffington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She is originally for Nova Scotia in Canada, but makes San Francisco her new home.
1. What’s a challenge you’ve faced, and how did you get through it?
A big challenge for me, being a woman in the sciences and in the tech world, is not having many mentors, especially those who look like me (women or people of color) throughout my career. At times, there are just some challenges that it would have been nice to convey challenges to a mentor who can relate, understand, and empathize with them, on an experiential level.
One of the biggest ways I’ve learned to overcome this is to forge relationships with mentors of any background, if they were willing to:
a) accept me as I am, and
b) show me ways to develop professionally and personally without preconceived notions of who I should be.
I also learned to build relationships and relate to people of any background, understanding that most times we have more in common than not.
Because of the challenges I’ve experienced with finding mentors that look like me, I reach back, and do my best to mentor as many young people — especially young women and youth of color — as I can.
2. What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?
I’m proud of the Diversity and Inclusion work that I do every day with my startup, helping women and people of color to develop their technical careers. This work is rewarding on so many levels. Working with skilled individuals who most times are overlooked or forgotten, and helping them find a company who values them — this is definitely at the top of my list.
3. What’s something that’s been on your mind this Black History Month?
Much of the media wants to keep relating stories and events that still focus on the negative and what’s wrong with the state of our movement forward as a community.
I say, let’s leverage who we really are — adaptable, insightful, resourceful and beautiful people with a long legacy of strength and resiliency.
Let’s choose to lead the way and show our youth what’s possible, and see the possibility and abundance available to us all. The opportunities are here. No more asking — let’s take them!
