Equity takes
initiative.

Here’s how Apple

stands up for change.

  • Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative (REJI) is an effort to address systemic racism and expand opportunities for communities of color across the country. REJI programs make an impact in three key areas:

    Education. Greater access and greater opportunity.
    Everyone deserves access to learn the skills needed for the workforce of today and tomorrow. We partner with institutions to make that real.

    Criminal justice. An unfair system is unfit for everyone.
    The criminal justice system disproportionately fails communities of color. We support organizations working to end mass incarceration and defend civil rights.

    Economic empowerment. For today’s entrepreneurs.
    Black and Brown business owners deserve a fair shot and a fair share. Through mentorship and financial investments, we back founders who have historically been cut out of funding opportunities.

  • Detroit is the home of automotive engineering, and now a growing class of entrepreneurs are pioneering a new future of digital innovation. The Apple Developer Academy, which has opened more than a dozen locations around the world, now brings its program to Michigan State University, its first-ever U.S. location, to help entrepreneurs, creators, and coders hone their skills and their iOS apps. In collaboration with the university, the academy is expected to reach nearly 1,000 participants each year from in and outside of MSU with both short-term and long-term programs that teach the fundamentals of coding, design, and marketing. With its wealth of minority-owned businesses, bringing the Developer Academy to the Detroit area was an easy choice.

  • Our Impact Accelerator is a capacity-building program designed for Black-, Latinx-, and Indigenous-owned businesses that share our focus on innovation and our commitment to the environment. With customized training and access to Apple experts, the Impact Accelerator will help environmental product and service providers achieve their next stage of development.

    Learn more about the Impact Accelerator program (PDF)

  • Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) are critical leaders in expanding educational access, as are community colleges and other centers of learning. To support their continued leadership, Apple is collaborating with minority-serving institutions across the country on programs designed to build a more inclusive workforce. We are a founding partner working with a range of community stakeholders to support the launch of the Propel Center, a first-of-its-kind global innovation and learning hub in Atlanta’s historic Atlanta University Center. The Propel Center will offer tech-related learning programs, career opportunities, and fellowships. In addition, we are establishing two innovation grants to support HBCU engineering programs, creating a Faculty Fellows Program for HBCU educators, and offering 100 scholarships to students of color. Also, in partnership with Apple, California State University Northridge’s HSI Equity Innovation Hub will work to transform Hispanic-Serving Institutions throughout the CSU system and nation in order to increase student success and equip Latinx students and other students from historically underserved groups with skills for high-demand careers in STEM.

    Learn more about the Propel Center

  • The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. And the system is set up to disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities. Apple is donating to preeminent organizations working to end mass incarceration and racial injustice in America. Our grantees include the Equal Justice Initiative, Vera Institute of Justice, Inc., Turn 2 U, Inc., Council on Criminal Justice, Sentencing Project, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Recidiviz, and regional branches of the Innocence Project.

  • In 2021, we announced two financial investments to further empower entrepreneurs of color. Our investments in Collab Capital and VamosVentures, venture capital funds working exclusively with entrepreneurs of color, support historically overlooked business owners. And in 2020, Apple invested in Harlem Capital, an early-stage venture firm that’s working with 1,000 diverse founders over the next 20 years. We also backed Siebert Williams Shank’s Clear Vision Impact Fund with an investment that will provide small- and medium-size minority-owned businesses with capital to grow.

  • With the right technology and resources, educators can take creativity in the classroom to new heights. Our Everyone Can Code curriculum provides them with a holistic approach to teaching code. Our interactive Swift Playgrounds app helps students learn the basics of the Swift programming language through a series of fun puzzles and challenges. Educators are also using Apple’s Everyone Can Create curriculum to deepen creative expression and engagement. Our free project guides teach students how to develop and communicate ideas through video, photography, music, and art. We’re also partnering with schools serving Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students to enrich their STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) programming. STEAM is the backbone of the modern economy. And when educators are equipped with today’s learning tools for coding and creating with purpose, they can unleash any young person’s potential.

  • Black and Hispanic/Latinx founders and developers in technology face unique challenges, and deserve solutions designed to cut through systemic racism. Our Entrepreneur Camp programs for app developers from underrepresented communities give them one-on-one code-level guidance from Apple engineers, ongoing support from an Apple Developer representative, and membership in the Apple Developer Program. Participants also become members of the Apple Entrepreneur Camp alumni network, a world-class group of ambitious leaders working across tech, business, and social impact.

    Learn more

  • We’ve developed the Taking Action on Racial Equity and Justice series, a set of conversation guides and learning-based challenges on race and inequality issues for teachers to use with their students. Partnering with The King Center and the Dolores Huerta Foundation, these discussion guides and materials also educate youth about social justice and encourage positive community impact. These are great resources for parents looking to have those conversations, too.

Meet a few of the makers behind the change.

Kickstroid app team. Featured: Nicco Adams, David Alston
Featured: Nicco Adams, David Alston

Entrepreneur Camp took us from fighting with sticks to fighting with Excalibur.

David Alston Kickstroid app

Nicco Adams /

David Alston

Entrepreneur Camp took us from fighting with sticks to fighting with Excalibur.

The sleekest new kicks. Much-hyped future releases. And powerful, pristine code. These are a few of the things that most animate David Alston and Nicco Adams, the duo behind the app Kickstroid, their contribution to the vibrant culture of sneakerheads. The idea for Kickstroid came to life after the two kept running into each other at the University of Illinois at Urbana‑Champaign, their alma mater. A mutual respect for each other’s sneaker game and a shared desire to give back to the sneakerhead community made collaborating a no‑brainer.

“I was like, ‘Let me make something for people I know, because I know what they like and I know what they don’t like,’” Alston says.

Kickstroid curates news from across the sneakerhead community, lets members vote for who has the sweetest kicks through in-app battles, and helps members keep tabs on forthcoming sneaker drops. The duo brought the app to Apple’s inaugural Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers in early 2021. They say the experience was transformative, strengthening the app and sharpening their personal visions. They’re now using what they learned at the camp about Core ML, an Apple machine learning framework, to implement intelligent new features in their app.

More than just a stronger grasp of the technicalities of app development, Adams says, Entrepreneur Camp offered him a much-appreciated sense of connection with other Black developers. He says the cohort cut across ages, cultures, and life experiences, facilitating an environment where everyone could learn from each other. “We’re definitely a family,” says Adams.

With most of their careers still ahead of them, the two are already dreaming up ways to give back. Alston says he wants to create an accelerator that gives Black developers the financial freedom to take risks that yield priceless learning experiences, if not priceless new businesses. And Adams says he wants to find ways to cultivate his own giving empire.

Kickstroid - Sneaker Drops
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Kayla Rodriguez Graff of SweetBio, Inc.

SweetBio could potentially let a generation of young Latinas know they can do this.

Kayla Rodriguez Graff SweetBio, Inc.

Kayla Rodriguez Graff

SweetBio could potentially let a generation of young Latinas know they
can do this.

Forget your average bandage. Kayla Rodriguez Graff believes healing can begin with honey. She cofounded SweetBio with her brother, Isaac Rodriguez, to leverage the anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties of manuka honey in innovative wound care materials. Based out of Memphis, Tennessee, SweetBio is developing advanced dressings for hard-to-heal lacerations like diabetic ulcers, surgical sites, and more, with plans to eventually make the products commercially available. The startup received support from Apple partner VamosVentures, which funds diverse entrepreneurs with groundbreaking ideas.

Graff says she sees SweetBio’s impact going beyond just biology.

“My brother and I are incredibly passionate about younger generations seeing that people like us can do this and be successful,” says Graff, who is Puerto Rican. She says her startup story is as untraditional as they come, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She speaks with pride about raising a family while getting SweetBio off the ground (“I may be pitching pregnant, like I did multiple times, but I’m going to give it hell”). And she believes her example can show other women-of-color entrepreneurs they can succeed on their own terms.

Growing SweetBio has helped Graff cultivate valuable relationships throughout the Memphis business community. She uses her positions on boards of directors to create space and opportunity for others like her, even joining a group that caucused with senators in Washington, D.C., on behalf of women-of-color entrepreneurs. After six years of work on SweetBio, she says the ride has been worth it, and the rewards of entrepreneurship outweigh the risks.

“Well, you could fail at doing what you don’t love, that’s life. Anything can happen. Pandemics can happen. So why not take a shot at doing what you love?”

Learn more about SweetBio Learn more about VamosVentures
Everyone Can Code Chicago. Featured: Jorge Angel, Saleh Abuali, Natalie Lampa, Jonathan Eghan
Featured: Jorge Angel, Saleh Abuali, Natalie Lampa, Jonathan Eghan

In school we’re taught what to think, but with Everyone Can Code, we learned how to think.

Saleh Abuali, Beat Streets app Everyone Can Code Chicago

Beat Streets app

Jorge Angel /

Saleh Abuali /
Natalie Lampa /

Jonathan Eghan

Lumi Lumi app

Amirah Ibrahim /

Giselle Salgado /
Abriel Simmons /

Kelsi Sumter

In school we’re taught what to think, but with Everyone Can Code, we learned how to think.

Few things weigh more heavily on incoming college freshmen than who they’ll be rooming with. Eyeing their own college pathways, the team behind roommate-matching app Lumi Lumi set out to lessen the burden by giving freshmen a chance to match with like minds before landing on campus.

Meanwhile, the crew behind Beat Streets wanted to whittle away at a problem that has long vexed city dwellers everywhere — potholes. Beat Streets allows Chicagoans to report potholes to city officials, and future updates might allow anyone in Chicago to vote for which potholes most urgently need repair.

Both teams developed their apps as part of Everyone Can Code Chicago (ECCC), a community program that makes use of Apple’s Everyone Can Code curriculum. The program is run under One Summer Chicago, a local organization and Apple partner that offers employment and paid internship opportunities to young people across the city. ECCC aims to make app development more attractive by challenging students from different parts of the city to solve problems relevant to their own lives with code, and to turn that code into App Store–ready apps through seasonal accelerators.

The teams built their apps while managing the pressures of classes, part-time jobs, and college applications — with the added challenge of collaborating remotely during the pandemic. Completing that challenge, they said, yielded new insights into entrepreneurship and a stronger sense of purpose.

The Lumi Lumi team comprises four young women of color. Team members Amirah Ibrahim and Kelsi Sumter said they are proud to be making inroads in an industry where they don’t often see people like themselves. Giselle Salgado and Abriel Simmons echoed those sentiments.

“We’re one step closer to closing the gender gap in the STEM field,” said Salgado. “Yeah, or four steps closer,” added Simmons.

And the Beat Streets team sees their work with ECCC as a means to furthering their entrepreneurial aspirations. “If I can make an app, and startups are where it all happens, well, this taught me to create another startup,” said Saleh Abuali, one of the app’s creators. “It taught us how to make connections, which could help us when it comes to entrepreneurship.”

Learn more about Everyone Can Code Chicago
Adam Taylor of Black app

Helping Black and Brown folks build things that will help other Black and Brown folks prosper. That’s Entrepreneur Camp.

Adam Taylor Black app

Adam Taylor

Helping Black and Brown folks build things that will help other Black and Brown folks prosper. That’s Entrepreneur Camp.

Adam Taylor was tired. He was tired of being met with stories of police brutality against Black people in the news. He was tired of feeling a gnawing personal obligation to read these stories, and he was tired of feeling exhausted after he did. During the 2016 presidential election cycle, he began dreaming up an app that would give Black and Brown people a way to discover news that affects them and has been curated through a more considered lens. That app eventually became Black.

“There has to be a platform that allows us to see the good, too, because if you take a look at the data, there’s a lot of good out there,” said Taylor. “We don’t have to use Black bodies for profit and for clicks just because that’s what other companies out there are doing.”

He set out to turn that mission statement into an app, but his first go at it didn’t land quite where he wanted. He said he felt stuck, until he got a notification about the inaugural Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers on his iPhone. With some encouragement from a friend, he applied and was accepted. He said guidance from Apple developers helped him clear out some of his app’s bugs and begin to fully grasp the power of what he was creating, and who he was becoming.

“The reality is my app might not ever have come out if it wasn’t because of E-camp. I needed that exposure to other Black entrepreneurs, and I needed the confidence boost and the friendships I built through E-camp to help me get this through.”

Since finishing the camp, Taylor has continued to rely on relationships he built with others in the program for support and inspiration. He said he’s working on an update to Black that will filter in only positive news stories.

Black
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Matt Garrison of TuneBend app

We’re just touching the tip of the iceberg. TuneBend could be an industry disruptor if it’s done right.

Matt Garrison TuneBend app

Matt Garrison

We’re just touching the tip of the iceberg. TuneBend could be an industry disruptor if it’s done right.

TuneBend developer and musician Matt Garrison has spent his career chiseling away at ways to empower musicians to create, collaborate, and be justly compensated for their work. That drive led him and childhood friend Fortuna Sung to open ShapeShifter Lab, a performance space in Brooklyn that has nurtured New York’s arts scene for 10 years. And to take that mission of empowering musicians even further, Garrison began developing his forthcoming app TuneBend.

TuneBend will enable artists to collaborate remotely, mixing in their own recorded contributions to create a kind of virtual ensemble performance. As an indie record label owner, Garrison is particular about musicians keeping ownership of their work. He intends to build permissions systems into TuneBend that will enable artists to retain control over their contributions. He also plans to implement tools that can help them monetize their work.

Garrison refined the app as part of Apple’s inaugural Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers. He said the Entrepreneur Camp experience felt like a genuine effort at equity, giving him and other campers unprecedented access to people and tools that could help them grow.

The global pandemic has made TuneBend even more essential, he said. Because revenues have dried up, he and Sung expect to shutter ShapeShifter later this year, leaving artists with one less physical space where they can collaborate.

“The pandemic really showed how vulnerable musicians and the artists creating the cultural patrimony of this country are. They can’t be left in a condition where they have nothing after everybody sells all their stuff,” said Garrison.

He’s hopeful TuneBend will help artists collaborate and earn money in a post-pandemic world where so many performance spaces, particularly the few like his that are operated by people of color, are gone.

Learn more about TuneBend
Dr. Learotha Williams of Tennessee State University

I think humanities can inform,
and maybe
cultivate, a better understanding of tech.

Dr. Learotha Williams Tennessee State University

Dr. Learotha Williams /

Marc Aupont

I think humanities

can inform, and
maybe cultivate,
a better understanding of tech.

To Tennessee State University alums, Dr. Learotha Williams is something of a local legend. For years, he’s investigated the school’s and the Nashville community’s contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. From oral histories passed down over barbershop chatter to transformative moments of social change etched into the city’s legacy, Williams is working to preserve it all under the umbrella of the North Nashville Heritage Project.

But by his own admission, he needs new ways to broaden his research’s reach and keep Black Nashville’s history rooted in the present. When Apple brought a new coding initiative to TSU, he began envisioning an app that would allow users to hear recorded narratives about the city as they tour important historical sites. Sort of like a high-tech walking tour companion.

“Apple and this app can help me do what I do better,” Williams said. “And maybe even spark the interest of someone to pick up what I’m doing and run a little bit farther and make it better.”

Williams, who recently published a book on Nashville’s historical sites, is collaborating with New York City–based developer Marc Aupont and a team of students from HBCUs across the country to begin developing the app. Aupont, a self-taught programmer and child of Haitian immigrants, sees technology and this project as a means to break down societal barriers that keep too many talented Black minds from getting their day in the sun.

“Sometimes in the process of living and working and doing what you need to do, you can’t really be free to do the things that your heart wants to do,” Aupont said, adding that learning to code freed him to focus more on what he cared about and less on what would feed him. “The bigger picture for me is being able to give students a skill set that allows them to just empower themselves, and then go into their community and empower others.”

Learn more about the North Nashville Heritage Project
Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette of Huston-Tillotson University

For entities

like Apple to embrace us, that’s how
we dismantle systemic racism.

Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette Huston-Tillotson University

Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette /

Xavier Linton /
Nakyshia Fralin

For entities like Apple to embrace us, that’s how we dismantle systemic racism.

For Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, president of Huston-Tillotson University, Austin’s crown jewel is beginning to shine even brighter. Established in 1875, HT is the oldest institution of higher learning in the city, and its only historically Black university. The school has produced leaders who have gone on to create positive impact across Austin and the country. And with the creation of two new programs, HT is poised to create even bigger waves of change.

Only 2 percent of the country’s teachers are Black men, and research shows that when Black students are taught by a Black teacher, they’re significantly more likely to graduate from high school and consider attending college. HT’s African American Male Teacher Initiative encourages students at the university to earn a degree in Education, with Apple providing scholarships as well as hardware, software, and professional development courses for students and faculty. Sophomore Xavier Linton, a member of the initiative’s inaugural cohort, says he was inspired to enroll after reflecting on his experience with a Black high school band director.

“I saw someone who looked like me, doing what I envision myself doing,” Linton says. “I felt like this program was perfect. I want students to know you can do anything you put your mind to. It might sound cliché, but it’s real.”

Burnette says her goal is to see 100 Black men matriculate through the program.

“It’s like the water that rolls over the jagged rock. If you roll so much water over it, it starts to smooth out. The jagged part for me is the injustices,” says Burnette. “It’s like a ripple effect, where it eventually becomes exponential.”

And while Linton’s time at HT is ramping up, senior Nakyshia Fralin is already taking what she’s learned in the classroom out into the world. Fralin is a senior in the school’s environmental studies program, which is being reworked into an environmental justice program with support from Apple. Since starting at HT, Fralin has collaborated with city officials and nonprofits to promote equity and climate responsibility around Austin. She said she got interested in environmental justice after discovering predominantly white neighborhoods back home in Kansas had better access to healthier, safer foods.

“I started learning this was a targeted effort to not give Black people healthy food options,” Fralin says. While at HT, Fralin won a grant to build a community garden on the school’s campus that she hopes will show others they can grow their own healthy food, no matter where they live. Like most seniors, she isn’t entirely sure where she’ll land when she graduates. She’s strongly considering continuing her environmental advocacy by working for Austin’s government. School officials are confident she’ll continue to do great things no matter what.

Learn more about the African American Male Teacher Initiative at HT Learn more about HT’s Center for Sustainability and Environmental Justice
Peek app team. Featured: Harold Lomotey, Ashley McKoy, Ositanachi Otugo
Featured: Harold Lomotey, Ashley McKoy, Ositanachi Otugo

There are a lot of Black filmmakers creating these awesome films. That could all be in Peek.

Ashley McKoy Peek app

Harold Lomotey /

Ashley McKoy /
Ositanachi Otugo

There are a lot of
Black filmmakers creating these awesome films. That could all be in Peek.

Take a look at review and ranking sites for films and television shows, Ositanachi Otugo says, and you might notice an unevenness in the ratings, with Black content receiving low or inflated scores. Otugo, along with Howard University classmates Ashley McKoy and Harold Lomotey, attributed the phenomenon to the content being assessed by a general viewership in greater numbers than Black audiences. Their solution is Peek, an app designed to surface movie and TV show recommendations from trusted family and friends first. They began developing the app during a hackathon, parlayed it into their senior project, and now continue refining it after participating in Apple’s inaugural Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers.

“If you’re someone who loves Black entertainment and Black art, Peek is pretty much like a microscope into Black creators,” said Otugo.

And it’s not just for the most well-known creators. McKoy said the team wants to elevate upcoming Black filmmakers and showrunners as well, eliminating barriers to awareness and access by placing less celebrated works right next to work from more established creators.

“Peek’s scope could be so much bigger,” said McKoy. “It’s not just for your well-known Black films and TV shows, it’s for your friend’s film too.”

Since graduating from Howard the team has settled in different places, but they continue to build on their vision, with a little guidance from a mentor at Apple. They eventually want to bring Peek to smart TVs and devices, allowing users to jump straight from recommendations in Peek into the actual content.

Peek - Movies & TV Shows
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”Inequality can’t be ignored. We’re committed to helping create the positive outcomes communities of color deserve.”

Lisa Jackson

Vice President, Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives

More on racial equity and justice initiatives at Apple.

Change takes everyone. Get involved.

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