Geeks Give Back at the GeekWire Awards: Meet four inspiring organizations using tech for good

The Pacific Northwest is home to countless people applying technology to good causes and working to improve the sector, our community and the world.

This year, we’re excited to celebrate four of these efforts as Geeks Give Back honorees at the 2023 GeekWire Awards.

The recipients are: A Way Home Washington, a nonprofit using tech to tackle youth homelessness; Brilliant Black Minds, a program from the startup Karat to provide interview prep for Black engineers; Ganaz, a public benefit corporation serving agricultural workers and employers; and Mentors in Tech (MinT), an organization helping community college grads land jobs.

The 2023 honorees join a laudable cohort of previous winners, most recently including the Black Boardroom Initiative, Coding Dojo and CovidWA.com.

The Geeks Give Back Award is presented again this year by BECU.

The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Our Geeks Give Back honorees were selected based on community nominations, along with input from awards judges.

Continue reading to learn more about this year’s four honorees.

A Way Home Washington

A Way Home Washington is using robust data and analytics to help solve one of the most tragic elements of the homelessness crisis: kids and young adults who live unsheltered. The organization has a particular focus on youth who are racially diverse and/or part of the LGBTQ community, as they are over-represented among the homeless population.

The nonprofit has multiple programs including:

Designated “anchor communities” in which they form coalitions of organizations that interact with homeless youth to coordinate their outreach efforts. There are anchor communities in 10 Washington counties.
A fund issuing grants of $2,000 or less to youths in need. Some 93% of young people utilizing the fund are still housed a year later.
Providing local organizations with technical expertise to better use their data around homelessness.

“Regardless of where any young person lives in Washington, if they are in need of a safe and stable place to live, we have systems in place so they never have to experience homelessness,” said Julie Patiño, executive director of A Way Home Washington.

Brilliant Black Minds

Just 5.7% of all software engineers in the U.S. are Black, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The effort to increase diversity in these roles requires initiatives starting in the education system to on-the-job the support.

Brilliant Black Minds is a program targeting the middle of the pipeline: prep for engineering job interviews.

Karat, a Seattle startup offering technical interview services for companies, launched the effort in 2021. Brilliant Black Minds provides Black job seekers nationwide with interview practice, peer interaction, and mentorships.

Karat connects eligible candidates from the program to hiring partners including Citigroup and Amazon Prime Video for first round interviews. The company works with Howard University and other historically Black colleges and universities, the National Society of Black Engineers and others to promote the program.

More than 3,500 Black engineers are in the Brilliant Black Minds community and participants have done more than 4,000 practice interviews. The effort even won financial support from tennis star Serena Williams.

“At Karat, inclusion is not just a buzzword, but a core driver of innovation. We are proud of Brilliant Black Minds’ success at empowering underrepresented engineers to advance in their careers and thrive,” said Crystal Moore, vice president of Brilliant Black Minds.

Ganaz

Launched six years ago, workforce software platform Ganaz has grown to serve more than 250,000 agricultural workers in the U.S. and Mexico and 100 employers in the sector.

“We founded Ganaz to make life better for farm workers, and we do that by building technology that agricultural employers love and can’t live without,” said co-founder and CEO Hannah Freeman. “We build our tools to help both workers and employers prosper, and that kicks off a virtuous cycle that helps agricultural communities prosper as well.”

The Seattle company’s software offers employee on-boarding, training, communication and analytics tools. The business is targeting farm workers, growers and food processors.

One of its newer offerings is a Mastercard Payroll Card that allows un-banked workers to access digital banking. Employers save time and money by scrapping paper checks, Freeman said, and workers can save up to 10% of their salaries by avoiding check cashing fees and high remittance fees.

The company, which is a public benefit corporation, has raised $10.4 million from investors and has 23 employees.

Mentors in Tech (MinT)

Mentors in Tech or “MinT” team: community manager Erica Thomas Chen (left) and founder Kevin Wang. (MinT Photos)

Community colleges offer relatively affordable degrees and serve students in wide-ranging racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. In Washington state, these institutions of higher ed have been ramping up their computer science courses, offering multiple four-year degree options.

Yet graduates from the programs struggle to get hired.

So three years ago, former Microsoft manager Kevin Wang launched Mentors in Tech (MinT) to help prep community college enrollees.

MinT has a three-pronged approach:

Matching students with volunteer mentors over a school year. Participants receive mentoring/mentee training.
Facilitating capstone projects in which students serve as interns with companies.
Encouraging companies to recruit its students.

Nearly 500 students have participated in the free program, which is available nationwide. Currently 190 college students and about 170 experienced tech mentors are involved with MinT.

“Our current effort is working with more local partners looking for an overlooked and untapped talent pool right in their backyard,” Wang said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the identification of Ganaz team members.