Tiffany Price is the Community Engagement Manager at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, an organization that aims to diversity the tech industry. Her past experiences include being a Fulbright scholar studying history curricula in Japan and an education policy researcher at a SRI International, a think-tank.
Women of Excellence Series: Your educational background is in education, chemistry, and international studies. What led you to become the Community Engagement Manager at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, an organization that aims to diversity the tech industry?
Tiffany Price: During my undergraduate years, I was a pre-medical student, like most of the other students at Emory University at that time. I thought I had some semblance of an idea of ‘what I wanted to be when I grew up’, but that has been something that has constantly evolved over the years. I went from being a biology major to a chemistry major. Due to a particular sub-interest in Japanese history and political science, I ended up adding the international studies major and a Japanese studies minor.
Upon graduation, I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do for my career, but my interests in Japanese history and culture took me to Japan for a year as a Fulbright scholar. There, I studied history curricula – specifically the presentation of Western ideas and World War II history in Japanese textbooks. After that year abroad, I continued studying in an education policy master’s program at Stanford, comparing the presentation of World War II history over time in both Japanese and US history textbooks. I left this program to do domestic education policy research at a think-tank called SRI International in Menlo Park, CA. There, I participated in studies of education reform, teacher quality, charter school reform, and other educational structures and systems.
After a while, my work as an education researcher left me feeling somewhat disconnected from community. So, after 6 years, I decided to shift toward something in the nonprofit sector. I was blessed to come across the San Francisco Foundation’s Multicultural Fellowship program, a 2-year opportunity focused on training mid-career folks of color for roles in nonprofit and philanthropic leadership. The networks that this fellowship provided me placed me in the path of, my current boss, Cedric Brown. Through another blessing, a role was created especially for me at the Mitchell Kapor Foundation (now the Kapor Center for Social Impact) to provide capacity building support to the nonprofits the foundation funded. I’ve been at the same organization for over 8.5 years – through organizational name changes, new titles, and shifts in program focus. As the organization has grown and changed, I have been allowed to grow and change alongside it. We have been committed to tech diversity and inclusion work for almost 4 years now.
Women of Excellence Series: As a staff member at the Kapor Center for Social Impact, you play a fundamental role in carrying out its mission of diversifying the tech industry. What inspires your commitment to increasing diversity in tech?
I grew up in rural Northeast Georgia in a small town where opportunity was not equally distributed across all races. My mother was a longtime school teacher in this town, and her reputation and the extra academic resources her profession made accessible to me opened doors for me that many of my black peers did not receive. One such door was the chance to take Japanese in high school. My high school principal had been my mom’s principal a few years prior and knew of me. That relationship and his knowledge of my academic performance through my mother brought me to mind when he was choosing who would get this unique chance to learn Japanese.
That one serendipitous invitation dramatically changed my life trajectory, my story. I realize how easy it would have been for me to not get that invitation. Had I not taken that class, I may never have taken my very first flight, which happened to be to Japan through a sister-city exchange program. I may not have been exposed to a culture so different from mine that it forced me to re imagine what the possibilities were for my life. I may have never studied international studies or Japanese history or gotten that Fulbright scholarship to study in Japan…a segment of a long chain reaction that started with one class.
Because of my own reality, I’m driven to create access to everything I do and have – conferences, information, scholarships, networks, etc. – to folks just like me who typically don’t get that access. Access matters. It mattered for me, and I don’t want to just leave it up to chance for someone else.
WS: The tech industry continues to grow and with this rapid expansion comes the need for the inclusion of a diverse set of voices and perspectives. In the next few years, what strides do you hope to see be made in terms of diversity in the tech industry?
TP: There are a lot of tech companies that believe checking the boxes of having a people-of-color ERG (Employee Resource Group) and a diversity and inclusion officer are proof that they care about creating a diverse and inclusive work environment. But, this approach, even after years of steep monetary investment in staff surveys and bias training, often leaves the diversity numbers in the same place. I hope that the tech industry and all industries can move beyond the check-box approach to tackle the underlying issues that truly impede diversity in the workplace – things more closely connected to work culture, hiring practices, and authenticity of a commitment to diversity from company leadership.
WS: Who has had the biggest influence in your career so far?
This is such a difficult question to answer as I’ve been inspired by all sorts of people throughout my career. Early on, my mother, as a Southern, civil-rights era woman, child of a single mother without a golden life who studied hard to become a school teacher, even getting a master’s degree in Education as a mother herself, taught me to always work hard and to never underestimate what God can do with my life.
My current boss shows me daily that you can have a fulfilling career while also being true to your values and making time for broader interests, personal philanthropy, artistic expression, constant growth, and skill building.
Daily, I meet inspiring women and people of color who have beaten the odds to create amazing start-ups, companies, or nonprofits that positively impact the lives of people.
The community of social justice heroes and persistent souls, and unsung heroes keep me wondering what I can do better, what else I can learn, and who else I can help along the way.
WS: What advice would you give young women of color who aspire to diversify industries like tech and/or work in philanthropy?
TP: Surround yourself with people who can speak positivity and encouragement into your life. Throughout life, there will always be naysayers, rejection, and distraction, so you will need all the help you can to not let that negativity change your view of yourself or your potential. Join networks of people who are on the same path you want to be on. I decided that I wanted to go to a coding bootcamp, and one of the first things I did was to check meetup.com for relevant networks, join the Women of Color in Tech Facebook group, and Women Who Code – Bay Area, and the Bay Area Blacks in Tech Facebook group, and whatever other network I thought would give me the support and resources I would need to jump that bootcamp hurdle.
I’d also recommend seeking out internship and fellowship opportunities that can create points of access into industries you don’t have a background in. I am in philanthropy because of the San Francisco Foundation’s Multicultural Fellowship Program. Growing up, I didn’t know you could have a job giving away money to nonprofits, so I never considered it as a career possibility. This program helped me connect the skills I was bringing to the table in education policy to grant making and the nonprofit sector in a way that would have been difficult without such a fellowship. The fellowship and the networks and connections it provided opened the door for me to the Kapor Center.
More and more, tech companies are coming up with internships and fellowships to create entry points for diverse candidates and technical talent with alternative education backgrounds (coding bootcamps, self-teaching, etc.) to get tech jobs. Examples can be found at Airbnb and Adobe.
WS: You are a self-proclaimed life-long learner. What are your go-to sources (eg. books, resources, etc.) that allow you to be constantly learning?
TP: This is a tough question as I have so many hobbies and interests. For example, I love photography, guitar, singing, coding, and so many other things. One of my go-to spots for online courses in a variety of technical and professional topics is Udemy. There, I’ve signed up for courses on coding and web development, project management, and product management. I also like CreativeLive for courses on my photography-related interests. In general, if I hear of something new that I want to consider learning, I look for a free online resource or book that could show me enough about the topic to gauge whether or not I want to make a more substantial investment to learn more. Another go-to resource would be folks in my circles who have expertise in the things I’m interested in. I reach out to these people for resources for everything from how to do a new knitting technique to deciphering which coding languages would be best suited for some coding idea I may come up with. The resources are everywhere around us.
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