A New Chapter for NextBillion.org: Lessons Learned & What’s Next
From a side project to an early-stage startup
In April 2015, I met Kartik Sawhney. It was the first time I had ever met a visually-impaired engineer in the tech industry. Kartik’s story is nothing short of extraordinary — he was rejected at India’s top tech university due to disability and got into Stanford on a full scholarship to study Computer Science with the support of a mentor. He also returned to help the same Indian university change its laws to accommodate for visually-impaired students. Kartik is now a full-time software engineer at Microsoft.
In 2016, Kartik and 3 of us co-founders launched a project to support one of the largest underserved populations in the world — people with disabilities. We named it ‘NextBillion.org’ after the 1.3 billion people with disabilities globally that navigate daily barriers and fight social stigma to participate in a world that wasn’t built for them.
We started with a mission to empower students with disabilities to reach their full potential.
Our Impact
- 100+ students supported: We have mentored students with visible and invisible disabilities such as ADHD, Tourettes, Muscular Dystrophy, Stutter, Visual Impairment, Epilepsy, Nystagmus, PTSD, Deafness and Hearing Impairment, Anxiety, Depression,Chronic Illnesses, Physical Disabilities, Bipolar Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Rheumatoid Arthritis, OCD, Anosmia, Aspergers, Autism, Cancer, Crohn’s Disease, etc.
- 20% of our students have since landed jobs or internships in the tech industry.
- 75% of our students said that the community & mentorship was a life-changing experience for them.
- 48 universities and colleges: Our students come from colleges, universities and post-secondary institutions from across U.S. and Canada.
Every single day, we’re proud to support some of the most prolific and talented university students who represent an immense, untapped potential to impact the technology industry. And, we have just touched the surface.
As with any movement, progress takes a village. We are grateful to have had the support of 100+ industry mentors, 30 launch partners (businesses, universities and non-profits) and our advisors. We’re also thankful to have received support from Queen Elizabeth II (via Comic Relief), Roddenberry Foundation, National Disability Mentoring Coalition, Stanford BASES and Slack Canada.
PS: NextBillion.org is in this month’s legendary FastCompany issue (with Arlan on the cover!), as one the Honourable Mentions for Innovation by Design 2018.
Three lessons we’ve learned along the way
As a social enterprise, we want to build a business that can 10x the support provided to students with disabilities in tech. Here are 3 learnings from our journey so far:
1. When we support a minority, we support the larger community
While we focus on helping students with disabilities get jobs, we learned that many students without disabilities also faced some overlapping challenges in navigating employment. By making resources for students with disabilities, we’re also making resources for the larger student community. We’ll be releasing guides, here on Medium, to help students in tech land internships & jobs.
2. Testing one hypothesis at a time
We have learned to evolve based on our community’s needs. We’ve launched numerous ‘experiments’ to test variables such as medium of support, form, duration, geography, industry, education level, age group, mentorship goals, etc. Our first experiment was a 12-week mentorship program open to any person with disability globally while our fourth experiment was a 4-week resume-building program limited to post-secondary STEM students with disabilities in Vancouver, BC. With each iteration, we’re seeing better impact in helping students get jobs.
3. Setting audacious goals
As a new startup in the diversity & inclusion space, our goal is to make personalized employment support accessible to every post-secondary student with disability in US and Canada. While setting audacious goals has led to many raised eyebrows, it has also connected us with the right people who believe in the scale of our mission. One of our values as a team is “Fail Big” — we want to challenge convention, go outside our comfort zones and aim high.
Our current audacious goal is to mentor 500 students with disabilities by August 2019. If you want to be a part of it as a student or mentor, join us!
To reach and mentor 500 students in the next 12 months, we have some announcements to make:
1) Making mentorship accessible
Today, we’re officially launching The NextBillion Student Community — our goal is to help any student with a disability (physical, mental health, chronic, etc.) get an internship or job in tech. Each invited student receives 1-on-1 weekly mentorship, an action plan to work towards a job or internship in tech, and introductions to mentors & inclusive employers. Apply here as a student or sign-up to be a mentor.
2) Hiring Program for Employers:
We’re launching a private beta hiring program with a few Fortune 500 companies (to be unveiled soon) to help connect them with upcoming talent in the disability community. If you’re looking to hire student- or graduate-talent in engineering, data, design or product roles — email us here .
3) A New Blog:
We’re also excited to launch the NextBillion.org Blog here on Medium — to share progress updates, success stories of our students, career stories of mentors, and resources for helping students get into tech.
That’s it for this update. As always, thank you for supporting our audacious mission! 🚀
NextBillion.org is a community for any student with disability to get access to internships, jobs and personal mentors in tech.
