Millines Dziko, Trish 1957(?)–

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Trish Millines Dziko 1957(?)–

Nonprofit executive

Launched Foundation in 1996

Trish Millines Dziko is one of the Seattle area’s “Microsoft Millionaires,” employees of the successful software company whose net worth soared along with the price of their Microsoft stock. Many of them have, like Millines Dziko, retired early to launch second careers in philanthropy. In 1996, she established the Technology Access Foundation, an educational program that brings computer training centers, an internship program, and scholarship funds to youths in low-income neighborhoods in Seattle. Millines Dziko is lauded as one of the Puget Sound’s new generation of charitable benefactors, many of whom donate not just their financial resources but their time and well-honed executive skills to establish and run socially committed projects. “I’ve always known I wanted to do something like this,” Millines Dziko told People writer William Plummer. “All one has to do is take a look at corporate America and see it pretty much has only one color. And in high tech, it’s even more evident. People of color need to get on the technology kick before it’s too late. The kids need us.”

Millines Dziko was born in the late 1950s. Her mother was a cleaning woman who worked in the hotels and private homes of an affluent community called Belmar on the Jersey Shore. An only child who never knew her father, Millines Dziko inherited much of her mother’s determination and drive. Patricia Millines led three separate fund-raising drives to start Baptist churches, and was able to amass the down payment for her own home by saving the cab fare and lunch money her employers gave her. As a youngster, Millines Dziko was also involved in her mother’s extracurricular activities; she sold toothbrushes door to door, and collected cans and newspapers for the church drives. Around the age of 13, she decided that she did not want to go to college. So Patricia Millines took her daughter to work that summer. “I hated it,” Millines Dziko recalled in an article for Fast Company in which she recounted scrubbing toilets and floors all day. “But it gave me a real appreciation for my mother’s hard work and a clear understanding of the value of education.”

College & Basketball

During the senior year of high school for Millines Dziko, her mother was bedridden with cancer, and she divided her time between taking care of her, school, and basketball practice. Rejected when she tried to enlist in the Air Fore2, Millines Dziko’s prowess as an athlete opened another door for her instead: she was a standout athlete on lier school’s state-champion basketball team, and won an athletic scholarship to Mon-mouth College in New Jersey. She was the first woman ever to receive one there. She hoped to study electrical engineering, but her plans were thwarted. “I liked math and tearing things spart,” she told Plummer, “but I changed to computer science because the engineering classes were held at the same time as basketball practice. No basketball, no school.”

After she graduated, Millines Dziko’s first job was at Computer Sciences Corporation. There were very few minorities in the information technology (IT) field in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and Millines Dziko was

At a Glance…

Born c. 1957, in New Jersey; daughter of Patricia Millines (a domestic worker); partner of Jill Hull Dziko (a social worker); one child. Education: Received degree from Monmouth College, c. 1979.

Career: Computer Sciences Corporation, Philadelphia, PA, programmer; also worked for firms in Tucson, A2 and San Francisco, CA; Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, hired as program manager, 1988, became diversity administrator, retired, 1996

Member: Founder and chief executive, Technology Access Foundation (TAF); trustee, Monmouth College.

Awards: Arthur As h e Award for community service, 1998.

Addresses: Office —Technology Access Foundation, 3803 S. Edmunds St., Suite A, Seattle, WA 98118.

often the first black and sometimes the first woman in her department. Once, she learned that a white woman had been hired for the same job as hers a few months later, as she told Fast Company, and made $10, 000 more than Millines Dziko—though the woman had been a psychology major and needed on-the-job training. After stints with companies in Tucson and San Francisco, she relocated to Seattle in 1985, and three years later became a program manager at Microsoft, the software giant, at its suburban Redmond headquarters.

Broke Barriers in “Geek Culture”

The IT world that Millines Dziko experienced was predominantly male and white. According to a 1998 industry survey, only five percent of all computer programmers are African-American, and Latinos represent just 4 percent. Because “geek culture,” as it is sometimes called, also has a relatively young demographic, even people with children sometimes feel out of place in the social environment created by the workplace. “In the high-tech field, they have beer bashes and paintball parties,” Millines Dziko told Christian Science Monitor reporter Silja J.A. Talvi. “If you have kids, you can’t bring them to the activities because they are not family-friendly. There are a lot of different things that the [IT] culture does not embrace.”

Millines Dziko was a founding member of Blacks At Microsoft (BAM), and she recalled that when she worked in technical departments, she seemed to be judged on her abilities and experience, but when she became a diversity administrator at the software giant, her co-workers treated her differently. Her new job entailed raising questions about minorities in a predominantly white workplace at Microsoft, and she conducted seminars with exercises to raise awareness of perceptions and prejudices. “I’m a pretty direct person and diversity is a hard thing,” Millines Dziko told Richard Seven in an article for the Seattle Times. “You have to get people to really think about their own privileges in the world before they will change for somebody else and you have to convince them that giving some of that to someone else doesn’t necessarily take it away from you. All the really hard things I couldn’t get people to do.”

Launched Foundation in 1996

Millines Dziko had taken advantage of Microsoft’s stock-option plan, in which employees could receive shares of company stock as part of their benefits plan, and when its value continued to rise, she realized that she could retire before she turned forty. In 1996, she was walking with her partner, Jill Hull Dziko (the couple took the same last name in 1998 after Hull Dziko gave birth), and their dogs, and both were complaining about the particular challenges their work presented. Hull Dziko lamented the public school system and its lack of stimulating opportunities for students, while Millines Dziko grumbled about the scarcity of minorities in the IT field. She suddenly realized the two were related, and her idea for the Technology Access Foundation (TAF) grew from there. After retiring, she launched her nonprofit project in the fall of 1996 with $150, 000 of her own money. The facilities, outfitted with a generous donation of computers from her former boss, Microsoft chair Bill Gates, opened its doors to students in October of 1997.

TAF offers computer training, summer jobs, and scholarships to Seattle students from economically disadvan-taged households. The entry-level program, in which students can enroll during all four years of high school, requires a 2.5 grade-point average at school, and a 90 percent attendance in its 150 hours of after-school and weekend classes. About seventy percent of the enrollees are female, and nearly all are African-American. They learn Windows, Word, Excel, and Web-page development, as well as technical know-how. “They also learn about nuances of the workplace, from putting together resumes and reading paychecks to working as a team and fitting in when you look different,” noted Seven in the Seattle Times. “Millines Dziko tells students about the frustrations she had, including the feeling that she had to perform error-free to be credible.”

Millines Dziko also enforces a strict dress code and no-nonsense rules. Students in the program, for instance, are not allowed to create their web pages about sports or music. “They see that all the time,” she told Seven. “They need to aspire to be something else and see there are other things for them. This needs to be a different experience.” When a student completes a year of the program, they become eligible for Foundation’s Technical Teens Internship Program. These are paid internships at local IT companies. For each year completed, a student also earns $1, 000 in scholarship money. The program is popular with local students; in 2000, about seventy were enrolled, but 130 had applied for first-year spots.

“Best Job I’ve Ever Had”

In the interview with the Seattle Times, Millines Dziko recalled one young teen who came to the training program, but confessed she really hoped to be an auto mechanic instead. “Why do you want to fix cars,” Millines said she asked her, according to Seven, “when you’re bright enough to design them?…Our kids, especially in the African-American community, shoot low because they don’t see the opportunity in front of them,” she declared. “Jasmine knew engineers existed, but didn’t have enough confidence to believe she could be one. She always loved cars and the people she saw in her community who were involved with them were mechanics.”

Millines Dziko serves as executive director of the Foundation, which entails managing a $1 million budget and seeking additional grants and funding. She is often mentioned in press articles about the Seattle area’s new wave of socially responsible philanthropists. “A lot of people are watching what we do about giving back to the community,” a former Microsoft colleague of hers, Scott Oki, told Plummer. Oki and his wife started a baby-blanket company that donates its sales to charity, and with part of their Microsoft stock launched a foundation that donates to child-related causes in the Seattle area. “We have yet to see the tidal wave of what these Microsoft people will do 10, 20, 30 years from now. It’s going to be huge,” Oki predicted. The Technology Access Foundation has established fledgling chapters in other cities in Washington state, and after she appeared on Oprah, Millines Dziko began fielding calls from across the United States from others interested in launching similar projects.“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” she told People. “I love it.”