Reddit x Highschool Mentorship

I'd always wished someone had told me about tech in high school. Seems obvious right? In Reddit's partnership with iMentor and Unity High school, I brought the experience I wish I'd had to students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Background I'm from Texas, and growing up Computer Science wasn't a thing. No one talked about it and I certainly didn't think it was for me. This was for people who were really good at math right? And liked to code?

What I didn't realize is the huge amount of doors computer science could open for me - from merging my interests in biology and technology to photography. Technology is or will be in every industry.

 I wanted to bring the experiences I wish I had to high school students who wouldn't normally consider working in tech to show them technology needs people like them - even if they don't want to code!

Problems solved

• Tech isn't on some students' radars
• Students don't have the opportunity to get an early start on things they could be passionate about
• Students don't realize that working in tech can mean working in sales or marketing, not just engineering 
• Students don't have access to tech professionals to give them pointers on how to break into tech or what tech is like

• Partner with iMentor, an organization specializing in pairing historically disadvantaged students with mentors in all topics
• Use iMentor's structure to match Reddit employees from across the entire company with students interested in their profession (Eg. sales, product, engineering, design etc)
• Host a panel of Reddit employees representing different departments
• Have student-mentor pairs complete a short project that answers a question you may see in a real life interview (eg. What is your favorite product? Why?)
• Do a tour of the Reddit HQ in SF

Results

• 55 students participated in the program and completed projects
• 16 Reddit employees participated as mentors from divisions across the company (Recruiting, sales, P&C, engineering, product, product marketing)
• 16 students came to visit the Reddit HQ

Next steps/ Learnings

• We originally planned to expand the program to students across the country remotely to benefit students outside of tech hubs like SF, but due to iMentor's program funding, we only ran the pilot
• Create a structure that allows mentors and mentees to communicate and stay in contact more easily (communication was limited due to safety restrictions)