Fullstack Stands with the Black Lives Matter Movement

Dear Fullstack Community,

We at Fullstack Academy and the Grace Hopper Program stand with the Black community—against racism, systemic injustice, police brutality, and white supremacy.

Watching the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and reading about the murder of Breonna Taylor was gut-wrenching in every way. Not only because of these tragic incidents but the lifetimes of injustice in the past. To say it has been difficult to process is an understatement. We mourn for their families and friends and the countless others who cannot be safe in their own homes in their own country.

We must heal ourselves first if we are to heal society. We stand with the Black community at Fullstack and across the globe. We want to state unequivocally that at Fullstack, Black Lives Matter.

The past week, it has been difficult to focus on the daily needs of our work, but we’ve taken that opportunity to remind ourselves that the work we are doing is changing lives. What we are doing is important, especially following the public health and jobs crisis we are also currently in. Helping people improve their economic situation through education is one of the best methods we have to improve self, community, and society. We’ve had to remind ourselves of that more frequently this week.

The systemic challenges that Black communities have faced with access to education continues to be a root cause of many of the injustices that we see throughout society today. Fullstack has historically supported underserved communities in tech with our Grace Hopper program and Web Development Fellowship. We’ve always believed in committing real actions to words and are eager to do more.

Today we are creating a $1.1M Opportunity Fund of full scholarships for members of the Black community. These will be full-scholarship seats for all Fullstack programs. We’re working on the details and will keep everyone informed.

One of Fullstack’s core values is “We Strive to Accelerate Meaningful and Enduring Diversity and Inclusion in Tech” and justice in educational access is fundamental in that journey—as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

We’re in this together,

Nimit and David