12Tone x Women's History Month Virtual Challenge

Team, 

In honor of Women's History Month, 12Tone will be making a donation to Women's Audio Mission, a non-profit organization aimed at closing the gender gap in creative technology careers (more info below). In order to achieve our fundraising goal, we're enlisting all willing participants to run/walk/bike as many miles as you can through end of March while collecting pledges from family/friends so we can hit our goal of $500. Just sign up and start logging those miles!

Women’s Audio Mission addresses two critical issues:

• Less than 5% of the people creating the sounds, music and media in the daily soundtrack of our lives are women/gender non-conforming (GNC) individuals.
• The alarming 70% decline in women/girls enrolling in college STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) programs since the year 2000.

Women’s Audio Mission is a San Francisco/Oakland-based nonprofit organization that uses music and media and an incredible “carrot” of a training environment –  the only professional recording studio in the world built and run by women/GNC individuals –  to attract over 2,000 underserved women/girls/GNC individuals every year to STEM and creative technology studies that inspire them to amplify their voices and become the innovators of tomorrow. WAM’s award-winning curriculum weaves art and music with science, technology and computer programming and works to close the critical gender gap in creative technology careers.

WAM’s accomplishments include:

• 4,000+ classes given to 16,000 women/girls over the last 16 years.
• 750+ women have been placed in paid positions with Google, Pixar, SFJazz, NPR, Dolby Laboratories, KQED, recording Mary J. Blige & Hillary Clinton for Apple, Comedy Central, Tracy Chapman, Animal Planet, Electronic Arts, Sony, etc.
• The White House Office of Social Innovation visited WAM to learn about WAM’s revolutionary methods of educating young women and girls.
• WAM named Best of San Francisco 2019 by the SF Weekly – “Best Hope for the Future of Music”
• WAM was recently featured on Fox/KTVU: https://wam.rocks/ktvu ; Billboard (covering our partnership with The Grammys): https://wam.rocks/billboard ; NBC Bay Area: https://wam.rocks/NBCBayArea2018 ; SF Weekly “Best of 2019”: https://wam.rocks/2WP4VpV
• WAM’s recording studio is the only professional recording studio in the world built and run entirely by women/GNC individuals.
• WAM has produced/recorded award-winning projects, performances for 400+ artists including Sheila E., Kronos Quartet, Neko Case, Angélique Kidjo (2014 GRAMMY), tUnE-yArDs, Clarence Jones (MLK’s speechwriter), Toro Y Moi, Salman Rushdie/NPR, National Geographic, ESPN, Disney, etc., providing work for 350+ women.
• WAM was awarded Google RISE Awards in 2015 and 2016 for our integration of computer science into our curriculum.
• WAM was awarded the 2017 Silicon Valley Education Fund STEM Innovation Award.