Strategy
Our 2024-2026 Strategy
TechEquity was founded in 2016 to answer a simple but ambitious question: what would it take for the growth of the tech industry to benefit everyone?
Tackling that question still drives our work today and is reflected in our 2024-2026 Strategic Plan. We arrived at this strategy by evaluating the last three years of our work and choosing how best to leverage our unique skill set, positioning, and experience. All of that has helped shape and sharpen this strategic plan.
While we remain nimble to address emerging issues, our strategic plan is anchored in our ongoing three core initiatives: the Contract Worker Disparity Project, the Tech, Bias and Housing Initiative, and the Housing Data Initiative. To deepen these projects we will conduct original research, collect and amplify the stories of the people impacted by these systems, develop policy and industry recommendations, and focus on the implementation of policies and industry standards to ensure meaningful impact for generations to come. During this period, we also plan to incorporate two new program areas: the Tech, Bias, and Labor Initiative and the Capital Markets Initiative.
OUR VISION
We envision a world where the tech industry is responsible for building widespread economic prosperity, and is held accountable for the economic harms it creates in our communities.
OUR MISSION
We raise public consciousness about economic equity issues that result from the tech industry’s products and practices, and advocate for change that ensures tech’s evolution benefits everyone.
Our Theory of Change
To achieve our vision of a world where tech is responsible for creating widespread economic prosperity, and is accountable for its harms, we:
1. Raise public consciousness about emerging areas where tech companies create economic inequity.
We identify emerging economic equity issues within the tech sector and those caused by tech sector products and practices. We bring these issues to wider attention through public education, narrative campaigns, and original research that deepens our understanding of the impact of these practices.
We believe greater transparency is an effective tool to empower those who have been harmed and to hold accountable the companies that cause that harm.
2. Articulate and advocate for regulation and the adoption of industry-wide standards to address the harms and opportunities we identify.
Based on the understanding we have about these issues, through research that centers the experiences of the people most affected by new technologies, we articulate a positive vision for optimizing opportunity and mitigating harm through changes in public policy and tech company behavior.
We engage with policymakers and tech companies to apply these changes across the tech industry.
3. Support implementation and enforcement of these regulatory agendas and industry standards.
We follow through to ensure that the regulatory and industry behaviors we advocate for are effectively implemented.
We place a particular emphasis on ensuring the collection and publication of data that can help the public hold lawmakers and corporate actors accountable.
Where We Focus
Issue Areas
We prioritize the economic issues that have the biggest impact on building a more equitable society and improving people’s prosperity: where they live (housing) and the conditions under which they work (labor). These are also areas where tech is playing a significant role in determining outcomes.
Geography
While our work has national and global implications, we are of and from Silicon Valley’s backyard. We believe our work can have the most impact when it is done in the tech industry’s birthplace: California. As the fifth-largest economy in the world, the home of most of the largest global tech companies, and a place where bold policy change is possible, we believe operating in California allows us to have an outsized impact that scales beyond our borders.
Public Policy and Industry Change
Our strategy to influence tech company behavior is to invest in changing the public conversation and advancing regulation that moves the entire industry to action. In parallel, we leverage our connections to the tech industry to develop tools that help companies adopt and implement better practices so that when the industry context shifts, they have access to the resources they need to implement change.
Partnership and Collaboration
We sit at the intersection of many movements and organizations that are doing important and interrelated work to build economic equity. We deeply believe that our work is more powerful when it is done in partnership with others. Since our earliest days, we have envisioned our role as bridge builders between our movement partners, the tech community, researchers, impacted people, and community members who are pursuing a more equitable economy and a more accountable tech industry.
The Full Plan
Download the full strategic plan here: