This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

This post was co-authored by Slack and their partners at The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA.

At Slack, we are committed to increasing the number of underrepresented individuals in the technology industry. Three years ago, as part of this effort, we began exploring how we could help bring formerly incarcerated individuals into the workforce through high-skilled engineering roles. We immediately sought out partners—people and organizations actively working toward this mission—and together with The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA, we co-created and piloted the Next Chapter, a yearlong apprenticeship program to train and mentor formerly incarcerated individuals.

This post shares a bit of our journey together; best practices as well as lessons learned. We’re encouraged by what we’ve learned so far, and the feedback and impact to date. We’re eager to continue these efforts and it is our hope that others will join us.

Opportunity for change 

While talent is equally distributed in America, opportunity is not. About 2.5 million people are currently imprisoned in the U.S. Once released, the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated individuals is nearly five times higher than that of the general population.

In 2016, Slack employees, including CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield, visited San Quentin State Prison, and engaged with The Last Mile, a nonprofit that prepares incarcerated people for successful re-entry into the community through rigorous business and technology training. During this visit, several incarcerated individuals shared that their primary need post-incarceration was to find employment in the technology sector. We realized there was a unique opportunity to help. With the tech industry likely to see an estimated 1 million U.S. engineering roles go unfilled by 2020, the private sector and companies like ours have an important responsibility to help create more pathways to high-skilled engineering opportunities for formerly incarcerated people.

From The Last Mile to Next Chapter 

We knew that for Next Chapter to be successful, we’d need to collaborate closely with our partners and lean on their expertise. These partnerships are essential—we could not have created or run Next Chapter without the help and guidance of The Last Mile, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and FREEAMERICA, each of which contributed specific knowledge and guidance.

We began with The Last Mile, an organization that aims to remove the wider cultural stigma around incarceration. Their work shows how, with equal opportunity, formerly incarcerated individuals can make a positive, lasting impact on their families, communities and the economy. With The Last Mile’s deep expertise, we were able to navigate the criminal justice system, educate employees and find the right partners to support the Next Chapter apprentices. They recommended three standout candidates who became the inaugural members of Next Chapter class and embarked on a year-long program at Slack. The Last Mile helped change the narrative and eliminate the stigma associated with the incarcerated by providing opportunities for Slack employees to engage with their programs, and helped us navigate housing, parole, and travel for Next Chapter apprentices.

In conjunction with The Last Mile, we also began to collaborate with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, an organization committed to racial equity, systems change, and to create conditions for all children to grow and thrive. An essential element for healthy children, families, and communities is quality employment and financial stability. Given the overlap between the families and communities served by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and people impacted by over-incarceration, the foundation recognized an opportunity to further its mission. With Next Chapter, WKKF funded job opportunities in a high-wage, high-growth industry, and seeded momentum in the sector to provide more opportunities for justice-impacted individuals. They also worked with us to address how we could not only support the apprentices, but work internally to make Slack a welcoming environment.

We also collaborated with FREEAMERICA, a campaign founded by John Legend dedicated to amplifying the voices of individuals impacted by the criminal justice system and those who are working to change it. By challenging stereotypes, breaking down barriers and uplifting solutions, they are helping to end mass incarceration and invest in just, equitable and thriving communities across the U.S. FREEAMERICA saw Next Chapter as a way to offer deeper education around these issues. From FREEAMERICA, we gained valuable insights into how best to educate our employees and the broader public on the issues surrounding criminal justice reform. Through an hourlong session with FREEAMERICA, Slack employees’ understanding and empathy for formerly incarcerated populations grew. FREEAMERICA also worked with us on the video we’re sharing today to help change perceptions and perspectives at scale.

Looking ahead 

After eight months of rigorous training, one-on-one coaching/mentoring and successfully completing the Next Chapter program, the three apprentices in the first cohort are now full-time Slack employees. They are valuable members of the Slack team and their unique experiences have contributed to helping build a robust product and an even more inclusive culture.

Given the scope of mass incarceration in the U.S. and the projected growth of the technology sector as a significant source of employment, these efforts are just the beginning. While Next Chapter is still in its pilot phase, we are committed to further developing and scaling this program to serve more justice impacted people and help the sector seize the opportunity that this moment presents to provide more career pathways for this population. It’s complicated and challenging—there are no fast fixes or easy answers. However, recognizing and developing the talent in this population is critical and worth the time, energy and investment. We’re in it for the long haul, and we’re sharing our proposed blueprint so other companies can learn from our experiences and success.

Download: Next Chapter Blueprint for Action

We hope you’ll join us in this Next Chapter. For more information on Next Chapter, please reach out to Slack for Good at slackforgood@slack.com.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

At Optimizely, we love seeing customers being bold in driving impactful business results with their experiments. To celebrate these inspiring and creative ideas, we are thrilled to announce the finalists and winners of the 2019 Outperform Awards.

MOST DRAMATIC BUSINESS IMPACT

Summary: HP has been a strategic customer with Optimizely since 2015. In mid-2017, they developed aggressive goals for increasing experimentation velocity by expanding their program globally and set out to double their revenue benefits within two years. By defining a differentiated service offering for digital stakeholders across the company, there are now eight full-time members in the team supporting multiple functional groups across the Americas, EMEA & Asia Pacific markets.

After exceeding the two-year targets within the first 12 months, year to date HP has successfully executed over 1000 experiments marking year on year growth of over 65% in experimentation volume and are on track to deliver directly attributable revenue growth of over 30% for 2019.

Finalist:  Credit Union Australia, Chris Russell, Senior Manager Digital Optimization

MOST CUSTOMER-OBSESSED COMPANY CULTURE

Summary:  IBM has been undergoing a methodical digital transformation, injecting technology into business practices, in an effort to provide users the best experiences.

Championed by IBM Global Marketing, and led in large part by Ari & Suman’s efforts, experimentation began building momentum and grew from ‘none-to-ton’, with current adoption across 20+ BUs, 6,000+ marketers. Despite the rapid rate of adoption in a relatively short period of time, the internal cultural shift was perhaps the greatest challenge. IBM has always strived to be customer-centric, but an increasingly digital user journey required an otherwise traditional GTM model to adopt a deeper audience-driven methodology. This inevitably paved the way for a comprehensive experimentation program, powered by Optimizely’s technology in conjunction with IBM’s existing tech stack. There is still more to be done, but through Ari, Suman and team, IBM is evolving to meet market demand.

Finalist:  The Wall Street Journal, Peter Gray, VP of Product Optimization

MOST TRANSFORMATIVE INNOVATION

Summary:  StubHub uses Optimizely Full Stack to experiment deep in their product. By testing multiple iterations of their search engine algorithms, they were able to improve the conversion rate by 20% and increase revenue. StubHub also used Full Stack to test different versions of a new auto-pricing option for sellers. These improvements doubled the rate of sellers using the new auto pricing option which drove a significant lift in sell-through rate. Optimizely impacts StubHub’s whole business, and Marilyn and Todd are the heroes behind this innovation.

Finalist:  Hudson’s Bay Co., Ivy Lee, Director of Product & Insights

MOST INSPIRING SOCIAL IMPACT 

Summary:  Sierra Club, one of the world’s leading environmental nonprofits, has increased online donations by a 830% since 2015, and experimenting with Optimizely has been instrumental in fueling this growth. Partnering with Cro Metrics, they have used Optimizely to run tests around home page design, donation forms, and email signups. After seeing a dramatic improvement with their initial web and form tests (to the tune of two million dollars), Sierra Club has tripled the size of their internal team to nine and are running more complex tests like actions around advocacy, petition signups, and even encouraging members to write letters to Congress.

 Congratulations to all of the 2019 Outperform Award winners, finalists, and our customers and partner community for the outstanding work they have accomplished.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Education is a human right. We believe that all people deserve the opportunity to grow, access quality learning resources and build their skills. And this is especially true for the 70.8 million people displaced around the globe right now.

When people think of the needs that people fleeing conflict have, they often think of them in a hierarchy—food, shelter and water. But equally important is access to consistent, quality education. Education enables continuity, agency, development and a path toward employment. It creates agency among youth and adults, so they can make informed decisions, access services, advocate for their rights and build a new future for themselves and their communities.

That’s why on this Giving Tuesday, Pluralsight One is proud to deepen our partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a humanitarian, non-governmental organization that protects the rights of people affected by displacement.

Our Giving Tuesday campaign is focused on raising awareness for NRC’s children and youth education programs. And we’re asking you, our community and team members to join us in support of children and youth who have been displaced by conflict by making a donation to the NRC’s education programs, which we’ll match dollar for dollar up to $50,000. 

The NRC works hard to empower refugees and spread awareness about their situations by sharing stories from some of the most challenging and volatile places in the world. In 2018, the organization helped 8.5M people in need by providing them with life-saving resources like food, clean water, warm clothes, shelter, education and legal assistance to help them claim their rights.

Pluralsight One’s strategic partnership with the NRC was formed to help create sustainable social impact for displaced and crisis-affected populations around the world, while increasing the efficiency and efficacy of the NRC staff who serve them. We’re helping the NRC digitally transform and improve its ability to use data for decision making. We’re also focused on helping all displaced people gain access to education opportunities.

Together, we can ensure everyone has the ability to learn and develop the skills they need to create their own future and build a stronger global community.

Join us to ensure access to high quality education for refugees, internally displaced, and people escaping conflict this Giving Tuesday. Help us reach our goal by donating today at this link.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Pledgeling’s purpose is to build technology that allows companies of all sizes to integrate social impact into their core business. We joined Pledge 1% because we believe that giving back can and should be an integral part of every business.

We also believe that real change can happen if we put resources in the hands of nonprofits by making it as easy as possible for companies to give back and support their missions.

We’ve found a like-minded community in Pledge 1%, and are excited to be part of such an inspirational network of companies harnessing the power of business to create positive change in the world.

The Pledge 1% ethos is essential to Pledgeling, and below are some of the ways that we are actively giving back our time, products, and profit back to communities around the world.

While employee and customer engagement are essential, we fundamentally believe that a company can also give a portion of their equity, time, product, or profit to nonprofits who are working on causes around the world that matter most.

Giving Through Time & Product

We are first and foremost a technology company, and we feel strongly about giving back through our technology. We made the commitment early on in our company journey to provide our fundraising technology for free to nonprofits.

Our impact so far in 2019:

• Funding: Pledgeling’s technology platform has powered over $10MM in new funding sources to our nonprofit partners enabling them to further their mission. These resources have helped to accomplish the following outputs, including planting 325,678 trees, providing 1,735,160 meals to families in need, providing over 545,700 people with access to clean water and removing over 6,126 pounds of trash from the ocean.


• In-Kind: We have provided over $283K in-kind to support over 3,000 nonprofits, including text to donate technology, fundraiser pages, and access to our digital Impact Hub to track donations in real-time.


• Time & Training: We have invested over 4,000 hours of time, including allocating 2 full-time employees, to training and supporting our nonprofit partners on the best practices in fundraising and how to quantify their impact to improve their storytelling and ability to increase funding for their missions.

Giving Through Collaboration with Pledge 1% Members

Through the Pledge 1% network, we’ve partnered with other Pledge 1% Builders, including Box.org and DocuSign, to engage 178,000 attendees at the BoxWorks and Dreamforce to support nonprofit organizations including NetHope, PATH, Friends of the Urban Forest, The Wilderness Society, and Rainforest Trust through mobile donations. This is the potential of the Pledge 1% network, sparking collaboration between members to multiply our individual efforts into a cohesive collective impact.

Box’s Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel making a donation via Apple Pay to NetHope and PATH using Pledgeling’s Text to Donate product on the main stage of BoxWorks ‘19.

Giving Through Our Customer Network

In the spirit of Giving Tuesday, here are a few holiday partnerships that Pledgeling forged through our network of mission-driven businesses and nonprofits:

Cost Plus World Market launched a donation at checkout program with Rebuilding Together to ensure that people across the United States have a safe place to call home. All 276 Cost Plus World Market stores nationwide, consumers are able to make a donation benefiting their local community and see the real-time impact of their donations printed out on every receipt.

Warner Music Group is donating ten trees for every employee towards replanting projects in the Amazon Rainforest as an end-of-year holiday gift. This will be approximately 40,000 trees planted with the help of One Tree Planted.

The Erdington spirits portfolio, including brands such as Macallan, Highland Park, Brugal and Partida Spirits are supporting eight nonprofits that align with each brand and their core values. Each of their bottles will be #WrappedInGood with hangtags on every bottle sold empowering their customers to select a nonprofit that Edrington will make a donation to on their behalf.

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Thank you to Pledge 1% for creating a community for companies around the world to meaningfully give back throughout the year. We look forward to the impact that will be achieved together!

Happy Holidays & Happy Giving from Team Pledgeling!

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Defy Colorado is a nonprofit organization that helps individuals with criminal histories — who they call Entrepreneurs in Training — create legal business ventures outside of prison. Within a growing network of three Colorado prisons, Defy runs a rigorous eight-month program focusing on reentry planning, employment readiness, entrepreneurship and character development, culminating in a Shark Tank-style pitch competition. Operating in concert with the Department of Corrections, Defy is demonstrating a model to reduce recidivism that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment.

Techstars has been a longtime supporter of Defy Colorado (along with its founding organization, Defy Ventures) because we support the mission of creating second chances through entrepreneurship. And we believe that we are uniquely positioned to help, precisely because of who we are. In fact, the first principle in the Techstars Code of Conduct is: “We give first.” That means that, at Techstars, we help others whenever possible by responding quickly to requests for help to intentionally create an ongoing cycle of virtue. We appreciate the help of others, respect “no” as an answer and share talent and business opportunities.

Breaking the Cycle of Recidivism

Defined as “a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior, especially criminal behavior,” recidivism creates a revolving door to prison and a legacy of poverty, dependency, violence and incarceration that is passed down from generation to generation.

Here in Colorado, the prison population is expected to increase by 20% by 2025. And of the approximately 9,000 individuals expected to be released from prison this year, more than half (54%) are estimated to return to prison within the next three years. Difficulty in obtaining employment and housing are two of the largest correlating factors.

Humanizing Connections

When it comes to our work with Defy Colorado, we’re focused on how we can bring Techstars’ unique insights and the power of our network to people with criminal histories, helping to break the cycle of recidivism. By collaborating with Defy to help people with criminal histories create legal business ventures, the Techstars Network is helping break the cycle of recidivism, and there are so many ways to get involved: employment readiness, character development, and entrepreneurship training inside prisons, as well as robust post-release services that include job placement and executive mentorship, startup incubation, and pitch competition judging.

Techstars Foundation advisory board member and Google employee Amanda West and Techstars’ EVP of Operations Scott Ford have each offered their expertise to help Defy’s Entrepreneurs in Training improve their ideas, hone their pitches and ultimately, to equip these incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals with the resources and connections they need to succeed in post-release life. Both Amanda and Scott were blown away — and inspired by — their experiences with Defy Colorado.

“These humanizing connections offer a very uplifting way for our network to get involved, both contributing to the rehabilitation of currently and formerly incarcerated individuals and impacting the injustices of our legal system,” West said.

That human connection is crucial.

“When discussing individuals with criminal histories, it’s easy to come in with preconceived notions or stereotypes, but actually sitting down and interacting with currently and formerly incarcerated individuals helps you realize that they’re just like you,” Ford said.

Best of all, it’s not a heavy lift to help out. Both Scott and Amanda noted how rewarding it was to make such a significant impact on someone with minimal effort. Sure, volunteering takes time, but everyone has the ability to help in some capacity.

Utilizing our network’s privilege in order to drive personal and economic growth for people with criminal histories allows us to drive a meaningful impact and provide a ray of hope. By harnessing the talents of the state’s currently and formerly incarcerated individuals as well as community and business leaders like Amanda and Scott, Defy Colorado helps individuals with criminal histories to defy the odds.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world. 

At Nextep, we want to empower our employees to give back to the community through the Nextep Charitable Foundation. This is why we joined the Pledge 1% movement and are committed to giving our time, dollars, and expertise to organizations in need.

This year, we got even more serious about our volunteer efforts. In addition to giving employees eight hours of paid volunteer time each year, we created Nextep Gives Back Days. Twice a year, all ten of our offices set aside their to-do lists and volunteer with the rest of their team. It’s a great way to rally our people behind Nextep’s culture of giving, while also sending out hundreds of volunteers to lend a hand to organizations in our communities.

 “We created the Nextep Charitable Foundation to encourage our employees to give back to the community,” said Brian Fayak, Nextep’s founder and CEO. “The addition of Nextep Gives Back Days is our opportunity to bring together the entire organization for one day to serve our neighbors and make a big impact on a handful of deserving organizations.”

 From local food banks to community shelters, we’ve packaged meals, built furniture, and organized homes. Our main focus for Nextep Gives Back is to serve children and families and to break down the barriers holding them back. We’ve found incredible partners to serve who share the same mission.

However, Nextep Gives Back Days are not solely focused on our volunteer time. We also make a monetary donation to each organization we serve. In 2019, we donated $17,000, served 873 volunteer hours, and impacted 15 organizations. But those are only the donations from our two Nextep Gives Back Days. Giving back is a year-round initiative for Nextep. Since joining Pledge 1%, we’ve donated $200,000 to organizations in need, served 2,800 volunteer hours, and serviced 10 nonprofits with free services.

Our employees have had an overwhelmingly positive response to Nextep Gives Back Days. Not only do we have nearly 100% employee participation, but our people also talk about their experiences giving back throughout the year.

 “Nextep has allowed me the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than just collecting a paycheck,” said Carrie Henry, benefits account manager. “Giving back to the community is a rewarding feeling and something I have always felt I was missing out on due to time constraints.”

 Our partnership with Pledge 1% and the addition of Nextep Gives Back Days have made a difference in our culture and in the lives of our people, which is why we are ramping up our efforts in 2020. We have big volunteer goals to meet, days of giving to plan, and many more organizations to help. To learn more about our philanthropic efforts, visit nextep.com/foundation.

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

What happens when 500+ professionals spend one hour collaborating to creatively support one nonprofit’s success? In May of 2019, New Relic did just that.

New Relic is the industry’s largest and most comprehensive cloud-based observability platform built to help customers create more perfect software. The world’s best software and DevOps teams rely on New Relic to move faster, make better decisions and create best-in-class digital experiences. As a new member of Pledge 1%, New Relic has committed to leveraging our platform and talented employees to create partnerships and programs to enable nonprofits in their digital journeys. This means not only continuing to provide free licenses of our platform, and discounts to the nonprofit sector, but digging in and understanding nonprofit challenges so that we can better enable and support them.

This spring, our product organization gathered for our yearly offsite, a technical conference and opportunity to engage with one another out of the office. We were thrilled to leverage this gathering to support our NewRelic.org social responsibility program – enabling employees to give back time and talents to a nonprofit partner who was using our product through our free and discounted licenses program.

At the event, we were joined by Jared Chung, Executive Director of CareerVillage.org, a community where students get free personalized career advice from real-life professionals, and also.a recipient of New Relic.org’s product donation program. We invited Jared and CareerVillage.org to engage in an (never before attempted at this scale) exercise to leverage our technical talents, professional advice and passion to help this charity. 500+ employees participated in a session in which nearly 400 gave career advice on their digital platform while the other 100 participated in pro bono round activities. These activities included assessment of current usage of New Relic’s Application Performance Monitoring capability, design thinking activities around the organization’s toughest challenges, live content moderation and UX bug review and ticketing. When we all worked together to bring advice and technical assistance to this nonprofit customer, we not only had a huge impact on their organization, but we created their “biggest day ever,” which is exactly what our product was designed to support.

For CareerVillage.org, knowing that 500+ people would be using their platform at once amounted to their biggest digital moment; it was no less important to their mission and success than when retail customers need to keep their websites running during Cyber Monday. It required them to bring on additional servers, and spend days testing to ensure that their site would be able to take the volume of users we were about to throw at them. This is part of what we at New Relic are inspired and excited to support for the nonprofit sector.

 “New Relic was a major driver of the biggest day in CareerVillage.org history. Thursday May 9th, 2019 saw the most career advice provided to students since the site launched: over 1200 pieces of advice in 24 hours,” Jared Chung shared.

Keeping a charity’s website up and running on Giving Tuesday, (when $400M of donations were made online in the US alone last year), or ensuring that 500 professionals can use the CareerVillage.org platform at once – these are the biggest moments for nonprofits, and these are the moments that New Relic is uniquely positioned to support.

 For more information about the NewRelic.org program – and how we’ve operationalized our 1% pledge of time and product – head to www.newrelic.org

This story was submitted as part of the #Pledge1Gives GivingTuesday campaign, which celebrates the many ways our member companies are having an impact around the world.

Increasing Access to Innovation

Silicon Valley Bank is the bank of the innovation economy, helping innovators, entrepreneurs and investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB has long believed in the power of giving back, and became a Pledge 1% member in 2017. Through programs in its offices around the world, SVB seeks to support its communities with time and resources. Aligned with the company’s role as a champion of innovation, it recently launched Access to Innovation, a new initiative to expand opportunities for underrepresented individuals at all career levels in the innovation economy.

“We believe everyone should have equal access to great careers and business success,” Greg Becker, CEO of SVB, said. “The innovation economy, the ecosystem we help fuel, is full of opportunities. Through a range of programs, partnerships, volunteering and financing, we have a companywide goal to increase access to innovation for everyone.”

Why is SVB doing this?

Tech companies report that it is challenging to find people with the skills needed to grow their businesses, and it is hampering how fast they can innovate. SVB believes there is talent to be found in nontraditional places. SVB also believes that a diverse workforce makes companies stronger.

The numbers help underscore the size of the challenge:

• 83 percent of tech executives are white


• 47 percent of U.S. startups have no women in executive roles


• <1 percent of venture funding goes to African-American founders


• 12 percent of venture dollars are invested in startups with a female founder

Core focus areas

SVB’s Access to Innovation program has distinct goals and partnerships in three areas to increase diverse representation at all levels:

Educational Opportunities: Training emerging talent and creating workforce opportunities for individuals without four-year degrees. 

Connections and Funding: Developing networks, partnerships and events to bring founders and investors together to increase funding for female and minority entrepreneurs.

Representation in Leadership: Increasing representation of female and minority founders, investors, and board members.

Recent examples of progress

• With the goal of increasing the talent pool available to its clients, this year SVB identified one of the most needed entry-level positions among its clients: business and data analytics. Working with EdTech startup, Pathstream, it introduced a business and data analytics certificate program to be offered through community colleges. The program teaches high-demand skills such as SQL, Tableau, and Python. The four-course certificate program is up and running now at Cañada College and Foothill College in Silicon Valley and is scheduled to expand to additional U.S. cities in 2020.

Students in the SVB Business and Data Analytics Certification course met for a development roundtable in San Francisco

• Teaming up with Year Up, SVB encourages urban young adults to reach their potential through a corporate internship and support for transitioning to a job in technology. SVB hosts interns throughout the year and asks its clients to mentor and host Year Up interns as well. Today, 26 former SVB interns are now working full-time at the bank or leading tech companies in a variety of roles, such as information technology, cybersecurity, global operations and project management.

AfroTech Cup Semifinalist team. From left, Erik Young (Audios), Crystal Evuleocha (Kliit Health), Ty Lisha Summers (Spendebt) and DeMarcus Williams (Director, Startup Banking, Silicon Valley Bank). Photo credit: Semharyohannes

• SVB was thrilled to partner this year with AfroTech to create an onsite career village for prospective clients and employees to engage with SVB and its clients. The bank also supported the AfroTech Cup, which offered prizes to founders of early-stage startups. Shown above are this year’s incredible crop of semifinalists – Audios, Kliit Health and Spendebt.

Learn more about  Access to Innovation to join with us to build a more inclusive and diverse tech workforce ready to invent the future.