This year, the hackathon will be organized around three tracks: Reimagining Work, Broadening Access, and Strengthening Community. Each track will contain 3-4 challenge statements co-created with one of our sponsors. Additional challenges will be posted soon.

Reimagining Work: What does inclusive, equitable work design look like in today’s world?

Activating Global Managers for DE&I Initiatives

Sponsor: Danaher

Global diversity offers rich opportunity for organizations, yet global DE&I initiatives face challenges due to differences in perception, messaging, and culture around the globe. Danaher is a multinational organization, with operating companies around the world. How can Danaher message DE&I initiatives -- initiatives that "grow the pie" -- to activate middle managers around the globe to support these efforts? How can Danaher engage the majority male population critical in helping to drive DEI strategy, mission, vision and actions on a broader scale?

Expanding Parental Support

Sponsor: Bain & Company

COVID-19 threatens to undo generations of work to close the gender pay gap in the workforce. According to a study by The Century Foundation and Center for American Progress, four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force in September, validating that the COVID-19 pandemic is unequally affecting working women. Given these unique challenges our country is facing, how can a company like Bain create a culture where parental support is equal across genders and further support women, given they are unequally burdened? What lessons can we take from remote working to ensure this support both applies now and carries on beyond 2020?

Identifying Inclusive Employers with Shared Values

Sponsor: MIT Sloan Career Development Office

The CDO manages relationships with hundreds of companies, and recruiters are constantly asking how they can get in front of Sloan’s affinity groups, in the interest of improving diversity at their company. Similarly, more and more students are starting to identify DE&I as being an important factor in choosing a potential employer. However, it can be difficult for students to identify which companies are serious about these efforts, versus which ones are mainly focused on optics. How can we help students identify employers that are in-line with their DE&I values? What does it even mean to be an inclusive employer, from a student perspective? How do we gather data around this?

Improving Diversity and Visibility in Hiring

Sponsor: Girl Scouts of the USA

The Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) embrace and celebrate diversity, both in the girls whom they serve and in their internal workforce, with more diverse teams reporting higher employee engagement and retention. GSUSA continuously looks for systematic ways to improve their talent acquisition processes despite hiring constraints that are common among non-profits: the organization primarily hires for unique roles, making standardization a challenge; and resources are limited. How can organizations like GSUSA use data to identify ways to improve their hiring practices? How might data be used to mitigate bias and create a more inclusive and welcoming experience for all candidates going through the hiring process? How might GSUSA use data to measure and track progress in building effective, diverse teams?

Broadening Access: How do we ensure products and services reach beyond traditional customer segments?

Closing the Virtual Elementary Education Gap

Sponsor: Microsoft

52% of US elementary school students attended school completely virtually this fall; only 25% attended school in person every day. Many of these students will continue to learn virtually in the spring. This has had a significant impact on educational attainment. By June 2020, many students had already lost over 30% of their expected progress for the school year. Gaps in elementary education have a far-reaching impact on students’ future earnings and life expectancy. Low income students, especially from immigrant and minority communities, have been disproportionately affected by the move to virtual learning. Many lack the resources they need to keep up, such as access to technology and dedicated adult support. These challenges are even more acute for students with disabilities. How can a company like Microsoft help to close this gap in educational attainment, for all elementary students but especially low income, minority students? How can these strategies be employed to continue to support educational equity post-pandemic?

Supporting POC-Owned Small Businesses

Sponsor: Toast

Black-owned businesses have been almost twice as likely to fail as businesses overall during the current pandemic, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Black and other POC entrepreneurs often face extra hurdles to secure needed loans and investors. The coronavirus pandemic has underscored these systemic racial inequities and therefore, the road to recovery for these businesses is likely to be extra long and challenging. Toast is on a mission to democratize restaurant tech, helping businesses from large chains, to independent single-location restaurants efficiently run their point-of-sale, ordering, scheduling and in-house operations. How can Toast be a better partner to restaurants owned by people of color?

Building Anti-Biased Algorithms

Sponsor: Liberty Mutual

According to a 2019 Pew research paper, individuals without access to the internet (about 10% of Americans) are disproportionately elderly, have lower educational levels and low incomes. The Federal Reserve’s 2019 report shows 14% of African-Americans and 11% of Hispanics are unbanked, compared to only 4% of whites. Situations like those lead to missing and incomplete data that could introduce bias into the AI algorithms. Because AI is only as impartial as the data it draws from, it is important to look at how the algorithms are coded and to address any perceptual bias from the training dataset. How can we ensure the algorithm/AI is trained on a dataset that is accurate and diverse, and how can we use data to ensure proactive anti-bias? After the algorithm is built, do you have any recommendations for improving the AI transparency to consumers?

Enabling Inclusion & Accessibility in a Virtual World

Sponsor: Catalyst

Catalyst is a mission-driven nonprofit that has conducted cutting-edge research and interactive workshops for decades. We believe that the key to creating an inclusive workplace is to ensure that individuals are empowered to engage in impactful conversations and skills development around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The rise of the Covid-19 pandemic necessitated the migration of our Leading for Equity and Inclusion workshop offerings to a fully virtual environment. While this remote learning has facilitated accessibility in many ways (participants can engage with the workshop content from anywhere in the world, and collaborate with teammates they normally would not have exposure to), it has also raised the challenge of interactivity for learners who are blind and/or hearing impaired. How can we ensure that all workshop participants are able to fully engage with the content and interactive skill-building of Catalyst’s Leading for Equity and Inclusion workshops?

Strengthening Community: How can organizations help build thriving, inclusive communities?

Transforming a Transit Desert to Innovation Hub

Sponsor: Ford

As of 2011, 7.5 million households in US urban areas were located in “transit deserts”, meaning they lack access to public transportation and other mobility services. These deserts have disproportionate impact on people who are older, poorer and have disabilities, making it hard for them to access jobs, healthcare and other vital services. Ford is committed to its home state of Michigan and in 2018 acquired a 1.2 million square foot innovation hub in the heart of Detroit: Corktown. Ford will work together with our new neighbors to integrate entrepreneurship, small business, arts and mixed-use community spaces. Corktown will be the place to test out mobility concepts and city solutions and understand the role transportation plays in revitalizing cities. To improve socio-economic conditions for residents of Corktown/Central Station, how might we improve access to mobility products and services? How can we ensure we are designing with underserved groups in mind?

Connecting Underrepresented Tech Talent to Jobs

Sponsor: Hack.Diversity

Research indicates that diversity is crucial to creating innovative organizations, yet Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in the tech and startup industry. Hack.Diversity aims to change this reality by connecting promising technical students from underrepresented backgrounds to job opportunities and professional mentorship in the greater Boston area. However, with the advent of COVID-19 and a remote-first world, Hack.Diversity’s traditional recruiting channels such as in-person career fairs have been significantly disrupted. How might we help Hack.Diversity better recruit for their program in a virtual world? More broadly, how might we leverage technology to connect promising underrepresented students in the greater Boston area to the right job and training opportunities for them?

Creating Safe, Engaging Spaces in a Digital World for Teen Girls

Sponsor: Generation W

At a time when social distancing is a way of life, teen girls need more social and emotional learning (SEL) than ever before. Since its inception, Generation W's Generation WOW program has worked with thousands of girls across the US, delivering girl-focused SEL leadership and mentorship programs that inspire, educate, and connect teen girls (leaders of tomorrow) with the leaders of today. Historically, Generation WOW’s programming (e.g. school-based WOW clubs, leadership and personal development workshops, quarterly programming, learning excursions, and mentorship experiences) has resonated with girls. However, the transition to a virtual setting has made it difficult to attract and engage teen girls, especially since school administrators who have traditionally recommended girls to the program are now overwhelmed with their own day-to-day work. Given these challenges and evolving norms, how can signature components of the Generation WOW program bridge the physical and virtual world, and scale across the country? How do we continue to create safe welcoming spaces for teen girls that leverage technology but also go beyond the screen to create meaningful connections that embody the warmth, joy, and engagement of in-person experiences?

Measuring the Value of Community Engagement

Sponsor: Union Capital Boston

We intuitively know that we can derive benefits from our relationships. Research indicates at least 50% of jobs are retained through networking. The National Conference on Citizenship also reports that civic measures that promote social cohesion, like attending public meetings, and helping a neighbor, can increase a community’s resilience during economic uncertainty. Union Capital Boston (UCB), a Boston-area non-profit, rewards individuals for community engagement, allowing them to build up their social capital and gain access to more employment opportunities. How can we measure the value of community engagement to help organizations like UCB best address systemic differences amongst communities? Since its inception, UCB has collected demographic (employment status, education, ethnicity, etc.) and engagement (public meetings, volunteering, voting, etc.) data on its members. How can we develop a data-driven strategy to have the largest impact on individuals and communities going forward?