At Epicodus, one of our top goals is to make coding accessible and affordable for everyone. We’re committed to making our program accessible to women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and other communities that have traditionally been underrepresented. We're proud of what we've done in this regard already, and also have a lot more that we'd like to be doing.
As part of increasing our efforts towards diversity and inclusion, we are partnering with TechTownPDX, a group of tech companies that "share a commitment to take collective action and be accountable regarding the underrepresentation of women and people of color in our industry." We’ve signed the Portland Tech Diversity Pledge, which states:
“We believe collective action and accountability are required to address the underrepresentation of women and people of color in our industry. Given our industry’s history of tackling profound challenges, we believe we must tackle this challenge, too.”
To this end, we’ve been working with TechTown on several projects:
We will be hosting a Portland Workforce Alliance Career Days visit for girls of color. This group will be visiting different TechTown offices to learn more about working in the tech community.
Several Epicodus employees have attended AllyShift workshops, which are designed to build up ally skills among employees. One of our employees, Rachel Bussert, has also been trained to be an AllyShift facilitator and has facilitated an AllyShift workshop with another company.
We attend monthly meetings where we discuss strategies to increase diversity in tech, participate in activities designed to share organizational successes and challenges, and actively work to partner with other organizations through TechTownPDX.
We are excited about these initiatives and look forward to continuing our partnership with TechTown!