Welcome to the Impact Labs Social Impact Tech Guide! We’re so glad you’re here 😊
Our mission has always been to empower the next generation of social impact technologists, and we don’t think that goal could ever be more vital than it is right now. With climate change, pandemics, inaccessible healthcare, income inequality, discrimination, misinformation, and a litany of so many other challenges we face as a society, it is only the people who are brave and audacious enough to try and change the world that can ever hope to actually do so. We hope you’ll go through this guide with an open mind and a bold heart, never afraid to ask yourself how you can use your energy to make a difference.
Whether you’re an undergrad looking into your first internship opportunities or a senior engineer in big tech, this guide is for you! We’ll get you up to speed on what’s out there in tech for social impact & help you figure out your own personal framework for what social impact means for you. We’ll then spend good time digging into career paths — what success looks like, and how personal fit is part of the puzzle. By the end of this guide, you’ll have multiple perspectives on where you’d like to go next & the resources you’ll need to take the next step!
This guide is built to be done over a series of 7 weeks, with readings and exercises each week. There are time estimates on each reading; they tend to be about 90 minutes per chapter. If you’re just setting out on this journey, we recommend doing each chapter in order — but, of course, you know what you need better than anyone else. If you’re feeling like skipping around would be more useful, we support it!
We picked readings and exercises that we ourselves have found useful. The team of writers behind this include CS undergrads, founders, folks who have been software engineers at social impact startups, and PhD students. We’re quite a ways into our tech & social impact journeys and we also still have so much to learn!
On that note — this guide is meant to be iterated upon. If, as you go through it, you think of other readings we should add, or you invent your own exercises that help you along your path — let us know! Reach out to [email protected] anytime; this is a collaborative, living document. You, doing this guide — you’re a part of it now 💙
So, to get started: you’ll want to duplicate this entire workspace as a template (it’s read only for you right now, but you’ll want to be able to fill in some things later on). You’ll need a Notion account for this; if you’re logged in and load this page, there will be a “Duplicate” button in the top right corner. Click that and you should be all set, or check out Notion’s docs if you need more help!
At Impact Labs, we firmly believe that folks who have the resources to should engage deeply and critically with questions around their role in society; we tend to focus specifically on technologists working in social impact. What does social impact mean? What is our responsibility to society as technologists?
This guide will bring up these questions and provide readings and frameworks for addressing them — but it will not provide specific positions or conclusions. This is a reflection of one of our guiding principles at Impact Labs: we believe in engaging deeply with the material, and also in making room for the plurality of opinions that can come from that inquiry. So, in going through this guide, we won’t be prescriptive about what views you should or shouldn’t have; we will instead lead you through your own deep inquiry.