(birds calling)
(water rippling)
(upbeat music)
- Hi, my name is Tim Herron.
I'm the CEO and founder
at Degrees of Change.
I started my career as a
high school math teacher
at Lincoln High School here in Tacoma.
Lincoln is Tacoma's
highest-poverty school,
most diverse student body.
It's a wonderful place
of really bright students
who are going to really good colleges
with good financial aid.
I was surprised to find out
that far too many of them
were coming home without a degree
and oftentimes with debt.
It felt like these places were not built
with students like them in mind.
And so I began to think,
"Is there another way
that we could send students to college,
to empower them to lean in as
leaders on those campuses?"
It was that idea
that was the launch of Degrees of Change.
Our mission is to equip
diverse, homegrown leaders
to succeed in college and career
so that they can be the ones
who can lead our communities
towards a more vibrant
and equitable future.
Data and technology have
always been a central part
of the work we do.
But as a small nonprofit,
finding the resources to support that work
is always a challenge.
This last year, we had
a thousand applications
for 150 full scholarships
across seven communities
across the country.
When we discovered the Power Platform,
it was a game changer for us
because now our team of just two people
were able to make responsive changes
and add new features as the need surfaced.
We needed a technology solution
that protected students' information,
but also allowed our team to
apply an assessment and scores
in an equitable way
that allowed us to get to the heart
of what we're looking for
in our next generation of scholars.
Building these apps
is one of the highlights of our job.
Tommy and I, and now Cyrus,
just get incredible enthusiasm
out of leaning into this work
and being able to respond to our students
and our staff in-house in real time.
Power Apps has enabled us to build things
that we didn't think we could.
It feels like we're
punching above our weight
with the limited resources that we have
to develop really amazing tools.
Building this application has
only unleashed our imagination
about the new ways that
we can use technology
to support and empower our
students moving forward.
(upbeat music)