By: Dom Brassey
Behind every API endpoint, every map rendered with Mapbox GL, every tweet liked, and every support ticket answered at Mapbox, there is a team of humans striving to make our platform as flexible and extraordinary as the people who build with it.
Our teams also work behind the scenes to cultivate belonging for everyone here, across generations and geographies — and at our many intersections of identity and experience, including race, class, sex, gender, ability, sexual orientation, family composition, country of origin, military service, and more. We strive to notice diversity and leverage different perspectives to enrich our understanding of our colleagues, ourselves, our customers, and people everywhere.
In this spirit, we’re releasing “Queer in Tech,” a free collection of stock photos created by our employee resources program. We created this photo set to promote the visibility of queer and gender-nonconforming (GNC) people in technology, who are often under-represented as workers powering the creative, technical, and business leadership of groundbreaking tech companies and products.
We created these images to encourage and enable everyone in tech to represent LGBTQIA+ people at work. The photo collection includes images of collaboration and teamwork, leadership, design, engineering, and mobile development. We invite anyone to use them for blog posts, slide decks, billboards, digital ads, event promotion, or any other purpose promoting teamwork, leadership, or technology:
These photos are licensed CC BY 3.0 US and they’re free for anyone to use, as long as the use contains attribution. (For an example of attribution, see the images in this post.)
Inspired by WOCTechChat, impossible without models
This collection of photos was inspired by Stephanie Morillo and Christina Morillo’s #WOCTechChat photos, which emerged from a Twitter chat to shine a light on women of color, who are often “hidden figures” in tech. Mapbox Uncharted ERG (our employee resource group supporting an inclusive environment for LGBTQIA+ people at Mapbox) organized and sponsored the project. We consulted Christina Morillo directly and we sourced “models” for the photoshoot from our internal community and our peers attending the Lesbians Who Tech Annual Summit in San Francisco.
With gratitude for the contribution of these models, we would like to share their voices to help illustrate the impact of “being seen” on these technologists’ sense of belonging. Here are their remarks on being part of this project:
Southeast Asian queer/trans person from Tennessee participant says:
I showed up to be seen. I hope these images will show visibility to some of the real authentic people behind our everyday products, and that there’s a ton of talented queer folks (and people of color) working in the tech sector.
Tall, black, mid-20s, committed to wholehearted living participant says:
I had just given a talk about the value of diversity in user experience research and as I searched for stock photos using the term ‘diversity’ I found myself laughing at what was available. Most of the photos lacked true diversity and…they lacked heart. Our shoot was absolutely full of life and excitement and beautiful representation and it was just fun!
Giuliana Garcia (Program Manager, Oculus) says:
I have come to embrace my gender nonconforming, queer style — and have absolutely stopped hiding it. But it’s difficult to work at a tech company and not only not see yourself reflected in other employees, but also not see yourself in internal presentation materials. We can be encouraged to bring our authentic selves to work…but until the subliminal messaging from these homogeneous presentations is resolved, it can be difficult to take that seriously and feel safe being 100% yourself at work.
Sales team member at Mapbox, 28 years old, queer participant says:
We need more stock photography that represents the diverse environments we work in. Tech is full of amazing, talented, diverse folks from every kind of background.
Help spread the word
Please download, use, and share these photos — copy and paste these templates to boost our signal and spread the word:
Slack
- Hey everybody, guess what? Mapbox released a collection of stock photos showing queer humans in technology! These photos are licensed CC BY 3.0 US and they’re free for anyone to use for blog posts, slide decks, billboards, digital ads, event promotion, or any other purpose. Download the images here: bit.ly/QueerInTechPhotos
- Are there queer people in tech? Most definitely. Mapbox released a collection of free stock photos to help increase LGBTQIA+ representation in the industry. Download ’em here: bit.ly/QueerInTechPhotos #QueerInTechPhotos
- Mapbox released a collection of stock photos showing queer humans in technology! These photos are licensed CC BY 3.0 US and they’re free for anyone to use: bit.ly/QueerInTechPhotos #QueerInTechPhotos #queer #LGBTQIA
- Mapbox released a collection of stock photos showing queer humans in technology! These photos are licensed CC BY 3.0 US and they’re free for anyone to use: bit.ly/QueerInTechPhotos #QueerInTechPhotos
Dom Brassey - Brand Strategy - Mapbox | LinkedIn
“Queer in Tech” free stock photos from Mapbox was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.