Back in 2018, Omidyar Network started funding the rise of the responsible tech worker—our effort to help industry workers and founders step into their power and build a world in which technology makes good on its promise of improving everyone’s lives for the better: fueling a technology ecosystem that is equitable, ethical, inclusive, and innovative.

The tech workforce is increasingly aware of its complicity in building cultures and products that cause societal harm, but many people are unclear about what they can do to change course. Many people are constrained by misaligned incentives, risk-avoidant business policies, and a lack of understanding around which steps to take to remedy this or signal their positive intent.

There are many people who want to see change and be part of change, but acting collectively is both imperative and incredibly challenging. The year 2020 was full of moments where people took a stand against the harms of systems and institutions when they act in bad faith, but a lack of knowledge, planning, and coordination has thus far yielded short-term visibility and gains that are easily lost.

Looking ahead, our team intends to enable a diverse community of tech stakeholders to connect, collaborate, and co-create. To fuel the next stage of the movement, we all need to focus on both the aspirational (envisioning together what we want) and the adversarial (pushing back against what we don’t). We believe that communities are defined as much by what they are as what they are not.

In doing so, we hope examples will emerge of what we—as an industry and society—want to reward and want to correct. Working together, we believe a new surge of people, ideas, and examples will shift tech culture and enable us to build the tech we want.