Fostering a Safer Community: One Year Later
Dear Techtonica Community,
Last year, we committed to taking action to foster a safer, more supportive environment, especially for our Black community members. Now we want to share an update. The journey hasn’t been easy, but we believe in its importance and are pleased with the results of our efforts so far. As promised, we:
- Required Techtonica’s white staff members to complete Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy workbook to confront how we’ve upheld systemic racism
- Are holding all-hands meetings with the advisory board, participants, and staff every other month to improve communication and transparency
- Strengthened the participant feedback process
- Developed a staff feedback and review process
- Reviewed our policies, performance evaluation and communication, partnership accountability, and complaint escalation processes
- Updated our website to clarify fiscal sponsorship, our business model and budget, the role of our advisory board, and Techtonica’s program impacts
More specifically, we’re very pleased about:
- Moving from timed testing to weekly technical interviews — this way, participants become accustomed to technical interviews and receive immediate feedback
- Holding weekly meditation for participants
- Implementing a pre-req with optional study groups to help applicants join at similar levels
- Our new staff feedback framework that provides several avenues and regular space for giving and receiving vital feedback
- The difficult conversations we’ve had and the lessons we learned about having those conversations earlier and with a clear communication template
- Having weekly staff meetings to address any safety concerns quickly, brainstorm new ideas, and make steady progress towards our goals
- Checking in with participants in the midst of difficult current events
- Taking turns leading staff meetings
- Holding stand-ups, casual staff chats, and team-building activities to bring us closer together and invite collaboration as we work towards Techtonica’s mission
- Adding one of our graduates to the board
These changes have had very positive results on our participant survey results, with the ratings improving in every area except pace, which still averages and rounds to “3—about right” in our weekly surveys!
One participant recently wrote in the weekly survey, “I am amazed at all that I’ve learned throughout this entire program. I’ve built my confidence, and achieved something that was only a dream of mine 5 months prior. Reflecting on that always leaves me in disbelief. I’m so thankful for Techtonica. [The Techtonica team] and all my cohort-mates have made this process one of the most invaluable experiences of my life. ❤”
With these promising results, we will stick with our commitments and continual consideration of how we’re doing so we can adjust as needed and make the experience we provide better and better.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the effort — we truly appreciate your patience, advice, honesty, vulnerability, creativity, and encouragement.
Humbly yours,
