Trans*H4ck tries to help transgender people in tech industry “It made me feel very unsafe,” said Boudreaux, a black transgender woman and student at San Francisco State University. Boudreaux, a mechanical engineering and computer science student, got to work making an app to help with just that. For Boudreaux and others, creating technology to respond to the needs of transgender people — particularly black transgender people — is a kind of activism.
Trans*H4ck works to develop technology which enhances and elevates the lives of trans*, gender diverse and gender non-conforming individuals.
Trans*H4ck works to shift the ways trans*, gender non conforming, agender and non binary people live by creating technology that economically empowers, improves access to social services, promotes gender safety and community sustainability, while bringing visibility to trans* tech innovators and entrepreneurs.
The collective launched as a response to the growing social and economic barriers that plague the trans community:
Unemployed at twice the national rate (four times for transgender people of color).
Have incomes of less than $10,000 a year.
Experience immeasurable homelessness.
Suffer overwhelming discrimination when accessing adequate health care, legal services and housing.
Trans*H4CK tackles these social problems by developing new and useful open source tech products that benefit the trans and gender non conforming communities in the following ways:
Promote economic advancement and financial sustainability
Promote attention to or improve services for trans people without homes, that are sex workers, or that are incarcerated.
Increase gender safety
Support the overall wellbeing of the community
Since their launch in 2013, Trans*H4CK has become the hub for transgender visibility in tech and entrepreneurship. They have had over 600 transgender developers, designers, and aspiring coders present at our hackathons, producing mobile apps that are used by trans* and gender non-conforming people across the country.
Additionally, their speaker series has featured the stories of leading transgender executives, innovators, and emerging leaders--stories which were previously absent from the tech landscape.
