In Seattle, there is a pervasive narrative that the city is divided by the haves and have-nots; the rich and the poor. According to the narrative, tech employees are the haves and the working class, many of whom are union members, are the have-nots. But is this narrative accurate? There are plenty of well-paid union members out there, and many tech workers face challenges in our city. Does believing in this dubious divide get us closer to achieving shared economic prosperity? What about a shared sense of belonging and connection?

We partnered with MLK Labor to debunk this narrative and instead offer a way to build bridges across sectors. Our new partner helped create the first Ion cohort in which organized labor was represented alongside tech and government. “The Ion Collaborators is a great opportunity for leaders in the labor movement to get to know people who work in tech,” head of MLK Labor Nicole Grant said. In coming together to learn from each other and create projects for a greater good, the members of this cohort challenged the binary of the haves and have-nots. Interestingly, there were echoes of this theme in each team’s projects as well. This time around, WTIA did not choose topics for the teams to tailor their goals to. (This open-endedness was reflected in this cohort’s team names: I, O, and N.) The result was a more diverse set of projects; a testament to the creativity that can flourish when we set our sights beyond improving economic disparity alone. 

Cohort 5 experienced a few other firsts as well. For the first time in Ion history, each team had five instead of the usual six months. They also conducted interviews with people outside of their own teams during the exploration phase. Something we noticed was that this cohort conducted more follow-up interviews, which helped them validate and refine their ideas. 

We asked a representative from each team to discuss their projects with us and how their work will continue to make an impact. 

I-Team

The goal of this team was to raise awareness about slavery in the fishing industry.

“32% of the fish that we purchase as consumers has probably been sourced using slave labor,” said Monique Nichols, I Team member and program manager at Microsoft. And that statistic might be an undershoot. “There isn’t a really good way to get a firm grasp on how widespread the problem is because the people who are doing this aren’t being monitored.”

Like her teammates, Nichols wasn’t aware of this issue until she began conducting interviews with community members. “During the exploration period we realized there were so many great causes out there, but this one seemed the most impactful and most approachable,” she said.

The team put together a panel discussion called “Bait and Switch” to raise public awareness about the issue in a city in which the fishing industry looms large. Panelists included experts from the field like Alexandra Pearson, impact producer at Vulcan Productions which recently released a documentary about this very problem. Eric Weaver, whose company Transparent Path is using blockchain to improve the traceability of fish imports, and Mar Brettmann, Executive Director for Business Ending Slavery & Trafficking (BEST), were also on the panel. The audience was primarily recruited through word of mouth.

“It wasn’t a one and done deal,” Nichols said. “We wanted to generate energy in that room. To vocalize to the audience to go and tell somebody and encourage those people to tell somebody. I think we passed on a lot of inspiration…Everyone became well equipped to go off and advocate for change.”

The I-Team faced their share of challenges, but according to Nichols, open communication helped them push through to the end. 

“It was super hard [to execute], time-wise,” she said. “We felt some cabin fever and got a little stir crazy towards the end, but that’s why we became so tightly knit. We each made an effort to ensure that the team still had enough of us.”

O-Team

Look around any golf course and you’ll see that the sport has a problem attracting young people, especially young people of color. 

“And people who are lower income,” added Linda Hyland, O-Team member and founder of the Kitsap Community Network. “It’s just not accessible, price-wise.” This inaccessibility goes beyond keeping urban youth from perfecting their swing—it means they miss out on valuable resources playing golf can offer, like college scholarships.

The O-Team’s project idea arose out of an interview with a former employee at one of the region’s largest private golf courses and a chance encounter on the golf course with Rajah, a golf coach from a local organization called First Tee. First Tee partners with more than 200 local elementary and middle schools in the Seattle area to introduce young people to golf and teach them about the culture of the sport.

“[Rajah] the coaching session said he went through First Tee when he was younger, and told us about the impact golf had on his life,” said Hyland. This conversation inspired the O-Team to dedicate their project to working with First Tee, Jubilee Reach, and the YMCA to initiate new outreach and support for programs to get youth from underrepresented groups into golf. 

“We introduced First Tee to the YMCA in hopes of sparking a partnership that would be beneficial to both organizations,” Hyland said. The team also gave First Tee marketing ideas and tips on how to connect with the community. They also interviewed kids, parents, and golf coaches to learn more about barriers of access to golf and the benefits of playing it, and used their talks to create a quote bank for First Tee to use in marketing and sponsorship materials.

Hyland said the collaborative nature of the project pushed her outside her comfort zone.

“For me, a major takeaway was that asking for help – not just giving help – is key to moving forward with something,” she said. “I think a lot of times when people want to make a community impact, they focus on themselves as being the solution. At the end of the day, the community is the solution. There isn’t one point of failure. You have to work together.

N-Team

The construction industry is facing a devastating epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it has the highest suicide rate of any other industry in the country, and that rate is on the rise. The N-Team chose to bring awareness to this issue, which hits home for many in a city dubbed “the crane capital of America” three years in a row.

“There’s a lot of momentum and energy around worksite injuries. Why the lack of focus on suicide?” asked N-Team member Jasika Bawa, who is a product manager at Google and a volunteer crisis counselor. “The number of suicides is five times greater than all construction fatalities combined.”

The N-Team designed a visibility t-shirt and banner, and worked with experts in the space to leverage existing designs for hard hat stickers and wallet cards. They also created a professional-quality video about the issue, which was shared by Preventconstructionsuicide.com.

“We knew we wanted to lean on the shoulders of giants rather than reinvent the wheel,” said Bawa. “[Getting the video shared] wouldn’t have been possible without breaking down boundaries and leveraging the different backgrounds on our team.” 

Bawa shared an anecdote about attending a Sisters in the Brotherhood meeting led by team member and carpenter Mandy Richardson, which she attended to seek input on the project.

“I can’t imagine a scenario other than Ion in which a person from tech crosses paths with a carpenters union meeting,” she said. “Everyone on our team had different things to bring to the table.” 

Bawa believes that change doesn’t need to be sweeping or comprehensive to be effective.

“There’s real energy, creativity, and passion among regular individuals to make a difference. You don’t have to have a ton of money or a specific skill set to be powerful and affect change. Change doesn’t need to be really sweeping or comprehensive to be effective,” said Bawa. “If we can get even one person to question the stigma of suicide…that’s the change that matters. It doesn’t need to be a nationwide campaign. I think that small efforts can really go a long way.”

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This cohort created projects that addressed not just the material aspect of shared prosperity, but other elements that make up a great community. People broke out of their predefined roles of what they can and can’t do so that they could discover what was possible together.
Read more about the projects here.