Techqueria & Latinx@Twilio invites you to join the conversation of bridging the gap in tech and social action. Have you wondered what the Latinxs in tech can do to help our communities with local policies? Learn what Techqueria is working on in their #action channel and how you can get involved. Afterwards, there will be a panel discussion discussing how we can increase voter action in our communities through the power of cloud communications and partnerships with advocacy groups.

Ysiad Ferreiras is a seasoned entrepreneur, having successfully built, scaled, and/or sold companies in software, real estate, hospitality, and logistics.

Currently Ysiad is the COO of Hustle, the leading peer-to-peer messaging platform that allows organizations to create genuine, human relationships at scale. He built and scaled Hustle’s annual recurring revenue from $0 to $14mm in 2.5 years, and has led their sales, marketing, legal, finance, people ops, and recruiting teams.

Ysiad knows that potential isn’t confined to specific zip codes, having grown up with a juvenile criminal record and raised by single immigrant mother in the Bronx. As such, he is dedicated to empowering young people from disadvantaged backgrounds reach their true potential.

Hailing from the land of Kim Kardashian, Liz's mission as a software developer is to disrupt tech itself by bringing attention to diversity and inclusion. In her previous lives, Liz was a ghost writer for a celebrity gossip blog, a wedding photographer, and a social media manager for a dog and cat magazine. Coming to tech via a nontraditional route, Liz takes none of her good fortune for granted, and is always pushing the envelope. She enjoys writing, snowboarding, pole dancing, Olympic lifting, and smashing the patriarchy. Liz is also an advocate for young breast cancer patients, trauma survivors, and access to mental health care.

Catherine Bracy is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the TechEquity Collaborative. Before founding TEC, she was Code for America’s Senior Director of Partnerships and Ecosystem where she grew Code for America’s Brigade program into a network of over 50,000 civic tech volunteers in 80+ cities across the US. During her tenure, Code for America’s Brigade was responsible for 64% of the total growth in the civic tech community in the country. She also founded Code for All, the global network of Code-­for organizations with partners on six continents. During the 2012 election cycle she was Director of Obama for America’s Technology Field Office in San Francisco, the first of its kind in American political history. She was responsible for organizing technologists to volunteer their skills for the campaign’s technology and digital efforts. Prior to joining the Obama campaign, she ran the Knight Foundation’s 2011 News Challenge and before that was the Administrative Director at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. She is on the board of directors at the Public Laboratory and the Data & Society Research Institute.