Change starts by reimagining

When 32-year-old LaTonya Judkins of Chicago first heard about a 4-month training program that would teach her tech skills and help her find a job built around those new qualifications, she thought it was too good to be true. But she was also intrigued by the promising potential it could unlock.

Born in Chicago and the child of an electrician and a stay-at-home mom, LaTonya has always loved math and been good at it. She pursued accounting in college, and was doing well until she had to unexpectedly drop out to help her family in an emergency. For the next six years, she worked in call centers and in the office of a warehouse, but she always dreamed of getting back to a job focused around her love of numbers and math. She just didn’t know how to do it.

LaTonya decided to take a chance on the program and in April of last year she committed to its rigorous and intensive schedule that required her to spend 12 hours a day, five days a week learning new skills. Doing so helped her discover a new passion in technology and coding.

“Before, I would never have thought I would be able to create something like a website that could go out in the world and help people,” she said. 

But now, that is exactly what she is doing. LaTonya graduated from the program in August 2019 and in October she started her current job as a software engineer at a sports data analytics company. “I wish more people knew about this program,” she says, “and I wish I had known about this when I was younger.”

The program is hosted by a regional nonprofit that helps advance and develop future leadership by teaching tech and business skills. And it's just one example of the powerful impact nonprofits can have in the lives of people like LaTonya. The PwC Charitable Foundation has a long-standing history of supporting organizations that are working to close the opportunity gap, and one of the grants helping nonprofits make significant strides in their tech and digital capabilities is the Foundation’s $25,000 Reimagine Grant.

Reimagine means to ‘imaginatively rethink’ and it’s exactly the word to describe the mission and work we do through our Reimagine Grants program, which seeks to have a deeper impact in our communities and help our people better align their priorities and purpose.

Our PwC partners drive this process. They are leaders in their communities and are best positioned to connect us to the great organizations making a difference in the places where they live and work. We ask them to tell us about organizations that share our firm’s commitment to digital upskilling, and are working to strengthen and build tech skills in underserved communities. Each grant request must also include a volunteer component that creates opportunities for our people to give back. 

PwC partners are having an incredible impact as they further expand our purpose outside the firm through this program. The first Reimagine Grants were issued in early 2018 and in total we’ve awarded more than $15 million over two and a half years to 311 nonprofits, with potential to reach 291,000 individuals. The grants are being used to help boost tech skills for young girls and underserved minorities, address the skills gap that exists for many adults and children, integrate technology and financial literacy skills into job training programs for young moms and immigrants, and much more. 

Through these grants, our people are also committing their time and skills in myriad purposeful and powerful ways – from mentoring and teaching coding classes in multiple languages to holding job training workshops and resume writing sessions. They are working to drive the kind of change that is needed to solve some of society’s greatest challenges around diversity and inclusion, tech education and the support of underserved groups struggling to help to better adapt to a fast-changing, tech-driven world. 

Our ultimate goal is to put more people on a pathway to thrive and succeed, and we are well on our way. The collective impact of the Reimagine Grants is staggering, and they’ve been integral to the greater impact of the PwC Charitable Foundation: we recently reached and surpassed our $100 million grant-making milestone. 

As for LaTonya – she is reimagining her life. She says she loves to go to work every day, has doubled her income, is saving for the future and has identified her next career goal – learning more about artificial intelligence so she can expand her skills in that emerging area of innovation.

Whether it’s on the individual or organizational level, we believe change starts by reimagining. Then you can work to make it a reality.