Words Matter: The evolution of our mission statement
PDXWIT has spent nearly a decade building community, disrupting problematic systems and holding tech accountable. In early 2020, when our leadership team experienced a shift, we realized it was time for an update. It was a chance to reset and hold ourselves to the highest standards around equity, access and inclusion.
Our mission statement for many years has been “We encourage women, non-binary and underrepresented people to join tech and support and empower them so they’ll stay in tech.” This mission statement served us well for a long time and still captures some of what we do, but it is problematic. It felt incomplete and no longer reflected who we are and where we are going. Some reasons why:
We created an unintended ranking by naming some populations (women and non-binary) and grouping together other vastly different populaces under the blanket term “underrepresented.” This is erasure, and we acknowledge our mistake and refuse to continue to perpetuate that common pattern.
While “encourage” isn’t a bad word, encouragement is simply not enough. Encourage implies that our whole community is well-resourced and has access to the tools, education and connections needed to work in tech, and they just need a little friendly encouragement. Unfortunately, that is not the case. When you lack access to the internet, a computer, or even a smartphone, you need more than encouragement.
We reflected on other ways in which our mission statement fell short but instead of focusing more on that here, we want to look ahead at how we got to our new statement. In order to get to it, we worked backwards, allowing our current programs and future initiatives to inform the words we use to describe our organization. We realized there were three common threads that ran through all we do:
We are creating access to technology through our scholarship program, our community fund, and our free events stacked with recruiters and job opportunities.
We are dismantling inequities, starting with our own. Our organization, one rooted in equity and inclusion, has perpetuated internal inequities in the past and we endeavor to be transparent about dismantling each and every one. We vet the companies who use our job board and require specific equity information from companies who partner with us.
We are fueling belonging by upholding brave spaces where there is no need to code switch. Our mentorship programs create meaningful, lasting connections with industry leaders. The podcast highlights the humanity of the contributors in our community, and our events bring everyone together.
PDXWIT operates with a consensus-based decision-making model. Once the board landed on the new proposed mission statement based on the themes of creating access, dismantling inequities and fueling belonging, it was time to put it in front of our staff team of four to review and share feedback. We made adjustments based on that feedback and then shared it with our 140 volunteers. We got fantastic suggestions as well as validation that we were on the right track. While this approach took longer and got messy along the way, we believe it was the only way to ensure an equitable process. Which brings us to today, sharing this new mission statement with you:
We are building a better tech industry by creating access, dismantling inequities and fueling belonging.
To our beloved community (and reason we are here): will you join us in this mission of building a better tech industry? We sure hope so.