On the heels of the annual Pride celebration of the LGBTQ community, famed Silicon Valley capitalist Marc Andreessen, and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, are giving $250,000 to two LGBTQ organizations, USA Today reports.
One of these is Lesbians Who Tech, an organization that supports and connects gay women in the tech industry through events in the US and abroad. The organization will use its $165,000 gift to launch two pilot programs. Bring a Lesbian to Work Day will provide shadowing opportunities for gay women considering a career in tech and match them with mentors, while the Coding Scholarship Fund will help with tuition assistance for attending coding schools.
The other is Trans*H4CK, a nonprofit that hosts hackathons to create new tech products for the trans and gender non-conforming communities. Trans*H4CK will use its $85,000 grant to build an online hackathon space and education center to help build more apps and other tech for the transgender community.
The Andreessens’ donation is no surprise given the tech industry’s recent efforts to spotlight LGBTQ rights. Many companies participated in San Francisco’s annual Pride parade over the weekend, including Apple, whose CEO, Tim Cook, published an impassioned letter about his own experience last year. Tech companies still have a long way to go in including and hiring more members of the LGBTQ community, something the above organizations, along with others, are hoping will shift.
