Community Spotlight: Tiffany Price
Tech workers from across the Bay Area have joined TechEquity’s network and are giving their time, skills, and financial support to make their communities more equitable. We’re proud of our growing community full of smart, passionate, engaged citizens and we want to show them off!
Meet Tiffany
Tiffany is the Community Engagement Manager at the Kapor Center, where she helps ensure smooth processes and facilitates partnership development. She also serves on the board of advisors for /dev/color, a non-profit that supports Silicon Valley Black software engineers, and serves on Galvanize’s/Hack Reactor’s Scholarship Advisory Committee. Tiffany, an Oakland resident and transplant from Georgia, enjoys photography, singing, and cooking when she isn’t focused on helping underrepresented communities gain access to careers in tech.
What is your professional passion these days?
As of late I’ve been thinking about how I, in the various roles I have, can help elevate the profiles of the amazing people of color (POC) in my networks who are working in tech. There are the POC superstars of tech who get quite a bit of attention from the media and tech community. I think more about the unsung heroes of tech — those who don’t happen to have the platform to shine appropriate light on the strides they are making in the tech world.
One of the ways I have been creating space to showcase this talented pool is through a conference called Tech Intersections, which I co-lead with Idalin Bobé, Maira Benjamin, and Ellen Spertus. This conference is all about creating space for womxn of color in tech to celebrate each other and to share their wealth of knowledge in a space that is explicitly for them.
What does it mean to you to be a responsible citizen while working in tech?
No matter what sector you work in, it’s easy to live in a ‘bubble’ without thinking about the implications of your job or existence on the greater community.
Just as it’s important, for example, for big industry to consider their impact on the physical environment and the communities they disrupt when they move into rainforests or international domains, it’s important for the tech industry to consider how they (1) positively and negatively impact the communities in which they are located, and (2) directly engage with those communities to alleviate the negative and amplify the positive.
For tech companies to enter an area and not work authentically to understand and connect with the history, systems, and people within the places they land, does a disservice to all of humanity.
How has TechEquity impacted civic participation?
TechEquity Collaborative has urged and has created pathways for the tech community to be engaged in the local and state policies that are affected by the tech sector. It has brought and kept issues like the housing crisis and wage inequality to the forefront of conversations in the tech sector amongst both tech workers and tech leaders.
Through its Giving Circle program, Tech Equity has helped me directly connect with local issues like tech diversity and inclusion, immigration, early childhood education, and housing. I have been able to use that space to learn more about how these issues show up in Oakland and the broader Bay Area, while also giving me and the other Giving Circle participants the agency to help support local organizations who are making a positive impact in those issue areas.
Why is it important for the tech community to become more civically engaged?
The tech community controls a lot of resources that, either passively or actively, affect trends in our society. To house all that wealth and to do nothing civically ensures that problems like gentrification and wealth inequality will continue to decimate diverse communities and broaden the gaps of access and opportunity for people of color. That’s not the type of world I want to continue living in.
Join members like Tiffany
We are organizing the tech community to advocate for a tech-driven economy in the Bay Area that works for everyone. We believe the tech industry can and should generate widespread opportunity instead of inequality and displacement. Join our growing community today!
