Volunteer Spotlight - Steven Truong
Immediate Impact Leadership
When Ripple software engineer Steven Truong was awarded $5,000 from his company to direct to a nonprofit organization, he approached his first stab at giving thoughtfully. “I wanted to put the funds toward a cause that is both positive for society and relevant to my interests," Steven says.
And that he did, finding a cause that aligned with his own passions and experiences from childhood: a cause that helps low-income youth, many of whom are the children of first-generation immigrants and English Language Learners. Steven landed on a local non-profit that would visibly benefit from his donation and engage him in a meaningful volunteer role.
Steven grew up in Orange County in Southern California, a child of parents who immigrated from Vietnam during the mid-1980s. His mother and father started work early in the day and finished late. Steven spent a lot of time in afterschool programs, two hours before school and then again after. Over the years, he’s gained a deep appreciation for his experience. “It was formative,” he says. “I made a lot of friends I probably wouldn’t have through those programs, had I just been in school. In hindsight, they helped me socialize with all kinds of different people, people I normally wouldn’t interact with. The experiences I encountered built perspective and helped me grow into a well-rounded person.” In a year like 2020—one punctuated by cultural upheaval and social unrest—the ability to live among people with a range of ideas, values, perspectives, and backgrounds has become more valuable than ever.
Steven received his giving award through a partnership between Ripple for Good and Ripple’s internal employee recognition program, which celebrates those who exemplify outstanding performance and company values. Ripple for Good is the philanthropic arm of the financial technology company Ripple, which uses blockchain technology to enable the world to move money like information moves today—the Internet of Value.
“It’s part of Ripple for Good’s overall efforts to connect employees to great organizations addressing important social issues,” explains Ken Weber, Head of Social Impact at Ripple. “In the Bay Area, Ripple supports a number of impactful community-based organizations, including Tipping Point, community food banks, and frontline service organizations Larkin Street Youth Services, New Door Ventures, and Eat. Learn. Play.”
Steven’s initial idea was to focus on a soccer-related organization, ideally a free one. “Soccer, especially pick-up, has always been a community for me, and I began thinking about the role youth development could play within that arena. I wanted to put the money toward something local, but scalable in impact —not too big, not too small.”
As part of his exploration, Steven talked to Ken, who suggested he look into America SCORES. Weber knew Colin Schmidt, SCORES’ executive director, from his experience playing in SCORES’ corporate charity soccer tournament and through investments made by his former employer in SCORES’ asphalt-to-turf program.
“I checked out the SCORES website, and the first thing I saw was an afterschool program that helps children—particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds—grow into well-rounded people through soccer, group poetry, and group community service,” Steven says. “It worked out very serendipitously, blending my passion for soccer with my values. I want to support the kinds of programs where children can build their confidence and explore these very fundamental things we appreciate as humans—sports, literature, and being part of and contributing to the community.”
The timing felt right too, as the events of 2020 only propelled students to want to capture their perspectives on a world turned upside down. At that point, the Bay Area was two months into shelter-in-place and SCORES was pivoting to digitize its afterschool programming to respond to the new reality. SCORES U was created to give students a robust, engaging, digital platform to interact remotely with their coaches; learn lessons; take part in practices; and share their poetry. “Poetry does a great job in helping kids express and share the abstract ideas in their heads. It’s about communication between people,” Steven says. “It was just the perfect storm of values I wanted to contribute to.”
“I came in at a good time for a lot of brainstorming and thinking. How could we make the platform both engaging and interactive and one that would live up to SCORES’ values? How could we make it user-friendly, colorful, easy, efficient? As an engineer, I enjoy understanding problems to see if I can help solve them effectively in a way that brings a lot of value. Working on a student platform wasn’t something I’d done before, but it was a challenge I was keen to take on. How would a student feel coming into the website, or a coach or program manager working from the backend? Essentially it involved human-computer interaction problems as a starting point for the experience.”
Pete Swearengen, SCORES’ CTO, was thrilled to put Steven’s technical and design skills into action. “He’s developing the user-experience design side, the UX visibility. That’s been a big gap at SCORES,” Pete explains. “And Steven’s not only affected the front-end experience, he’s made the challenges on the back end of the stack drop way down.”
User experience is both a philosophy and a technical discipline, with an emphasis on the latter because doing so recognizes the autonomy of the user. “In a sense, the user experience is like what a film director imagines when setting up the camera, when determining what the audience sees and where their eyes go. It has continuity; it’s a story,” Swearengen says. “The UX designer tells the story for the viewer, be that a student, a coach, a parent, a school superintendent, a coach, or a donor. Each of those groups has a different set of needs, and the UX designer elevates those needs from both an informational and emotional standpoint. That is, why am I here and what am I going to take away from this?”
For students, that also meant creating a secure platform that would protect their privacy and data. “Those foundational concerns are front of mind as we build this platform,” Steven says. “These are children’s identities and we don’t want their information to get leaked or exploited in any way. We’ve consulted a privacy policy lawyer to make sure what we’re doing is safe and legitimate. We’re also finding creative ways to allow students to post poems without revealing their identities.” For example, students can log in using playful usernames, rather than their real names, with only the coach knowing who is who. “You can be Ronaldo or you can be Robert Frost,” Steven laughs. Or for that matter, Megan Rapinoe or Maya Angelou.
While soccer had been the initial hook, SCORES’ service-learning component resonates most deeply with Steven. “Community service takes you beyond the limits of the world defined by your home, school, sports, or place of worship, and not only impacts the lives of others, but augments your perspective on the meaning of community. It can be tough to find these opportunities, but SCORES builds it right into the program, along with soccer and poetry. It’s such a beneficial combination. I think a lot about what it would have been like if I'd been part of SCORES as a kid. I think it would have been really positive!"
