Reflecting on Two Years of Community Work

Growing QTBIPOC Design, Yellow Glitter, biases, Ben Bohmer, and enjoying life

Dec 16, 2022

Midjourney: a beautiful new world, creative, ethereal, digital art, 4k

Hi friend,

Over the past two years, I’ve been focused on developing my many projects, including QTBIPOC Design - a nonprofit organization empowering queer BIPOC creatives in the tech industry.

What started off as a small idea for a monthly meetup group has turned into a movement of events, design courses, and collaboration with many design leaders to inspire and develop underrepresented talent in the creative industry. In just a few years, we’ve graduated 23 students from our UX Bootcamp Course and invited over 1600+ QTBIPOC creatives into our space from all around the world.

raquel ❦ @RaquelDesigns

I gotta say, @wakuu has created SUCH an absolutely lovely, affirming, challenging, and engaging space with @QTBIPOCdesign. Cannot recommend it enough, and I absolutely loved my conversation tonight with Ube and @mauricecherry!

And while juggling this work alongside my other projects has been a challenge, it’s been a joy to cultivate an amazing team of volunteers alongside this organization, many of whom have been around since our inception.

For the first time this year, our team met up in San Francisco after collaborating together digitally for over two years.

But as our organization grows, our operational and programming expenses have also gone up. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much donated this year, and I’ve been personally bootstrapping the difference to help cover our costs. Definitely not the most sustainable, but I am determined to ensure this work continues.

A bit of honesty — fundraising has been a new and difficult space for me.

Between unpacking feelings of self-doubt, fear, and anxiety, my experiences coming from an immigrant, first-generation, low-income family background held the belief that only a “fair” exchange of labor was worth any money at all.

In the work of nonprofits, rather than labor, impact, faith, and trust in the organization drive much of its financial success.

rebecca brooker 🏳️‍🌈 @beckybrooker

I had a moving experience listening to @treavorwagoner , @heymicahrivera, @wakuu and Nikita Washington tonight at @QTBIPOCdesign's UX nights. Just a really honest conversation about what it means to be queer in design. Keeps me motivated to keep building at @queerdesignclub.

Specifically for QTBIPOC Design, even with testimonials and measured impact from our programming, I’ve been trying to shake these feelings of judgment based on donations (or lack thereof) from this year.

And so, this latest project has been the scariest but also the most exciting: our QTBIPOC Design Patreon. An invitation to explore, support, or share this initiative along with me and our amazing team.

Check it out.

Let me know your thoughts.

Proceeds directly support our organization.

Thanks in advance!

Adam Fry-Pierce @AdamFryPierce

To maximize recruiting yield, design a hiring experience (HX) & pipeline. HX: Map the end-to-end candidate user journey. Improve the valleys. Protect peaks. Pipeline: Diversify. Post roles w/ @LatinxWhoDesign @QTBIPOCdesign @BlacksWhoDesign @womenwhodesign #Remotedesignweek

What I’m up to

yellowglitterpd

A post shared by Yellow Glitter Podcast (@yellowglitterpd)

The latest episode of Yellow Glitter Podcast is now out. Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and your favorite podcast syndication.

PS - we just launched our Yellow Glitter Podcast website!

For our community

For BIPOC: Tue, Dec 20 - BIPOC Healing Space (with Dr. Kristina Maria Lopez)

For Asians: Wed, Dec 21 - Asian American Healing Space (with Ganeshspace)

Something to read

Absolutely loved reading Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L. Eberhardt. The author does a phenomenal job of pulling scientific studies, historical context, and her personal story to talk about the difficult and convoluted topic of bias and race.

Something to watch

For music lovers, check out Ben Böhmer’s music creation process. The beautiful artistry in creating, splicing, and evolving music... just on a whole new level.

Something to ponder

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”
— William Hazlitt

As always, thanks for reading!

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Anything else? You can always hit "reply" to email me directly. 💌

Have a beautiful day!

Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven