30 years in, TAF still builds the tech talent pipeline where employers do not

The Technology Access Foundation marked its 30th anniversary on Oct. 1 with a balance sheet of about $11.4 million in net assets, a nearly $7 million annual budget, and a warning for tech employers: donated products and an occasional volunteer day are not a talent strategy. Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft executive Trish Millines Dziko with $150,000 of her own money, TAF has spent three decades converting students of color into tech workers — and its history is a case study in how thin the bridge between K-12 education and tech hiring actually is.

The clearest evidence sits at the top of the pipeline. In 2002, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer publicly offered an internship at a Seattle luncheon to Miya McClain, then 18, who had gone from knowing nothing about computers to building a scheduling system for TAF. That internship became a full-time job and eight years at Microsoft, followed by product leadership roles at Nordstrom, Cisco and Smartsheet. She is now senior vice president of product management at SumerSports. "Most of my jobs came through connections with TAF," she said, crediting the organization with "opening doors I didn't even know could be opened."

What changed the model?

About eight years in, Millines Dziko spotted a structural flaw that employers still face. TAF's interns were thriving, she said, but many could not enter college computer science or engineering courses because their high schools had already steered them into lower-level math and science. The fix required reaching students by sixth grade, inside public schools. TAF now co-manages a public middle and high school, TAF@Saghalie, with Federal Way Public Schools and coaches teachers in other schools.

The numbers cut both ways. The class of 2025 at TAF@Saghalie graduated at 88.5% over four years, above the 82.6% statewide rate, according to Washington state data. But on 2024-25 state tests, only 17% of the school's low-income students tested in grades 6–8 and 10 met the English language arts standard and 11% met math, against 30% and 15% district-wide for comparable students. Millines Dziko argues standardized tests assume every student had a teacher who covered the exam material, and that they "demean kids" by charting their academic course as early as third grade.

Her alternative is in its third pilot year: teachers score students from 1 to 4 against standards, backed by photos and work samples, stored in the modern version of SQL Server — the database she was hired to test at Microsoft in 1988. Only selected teachers participate; TAF is still working out the documentation time, and a University of Washington Bothell evaluator will review the pilot. Her goal: every district in the country using it, with state testing money redirected to teacher training. That ambition remains unproven at scale.

What did the hard years cost?

The organization nearly failed twice. Around 2012, with philanthropy flowing to charter schools and a Renton expansion stalled, TAF laid off staff for the second time. Millines Dziko said reports that little major funding reached nonprofits led by people of color made her ask whether a white leader would raise more money. "We almost went down that road," she said, before deciding TAF would instead "get out there and show them." The funding math remains sobering: her fundraising team raises about 93% of a nearly $7 million budget, mostly through grants, and TAF reported roughly $4 million in revenue against $5 million in expenses in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025.

Seattle Public Schools cut a TAF partnership at Washington Middle School in 2023 amid a budget shortfall — "It's solely about money," Millines Dziko told The Seattle Times then — and she now rules out working with the district again, saying its problems "take our energy away from places where we could be having impact." A $2 million grant from MacKenzie Scott's 2024 open call, double what TAF expected, went partly to operating needs and partly into a certificate of deposit.

What does this mean for employers?

Her message to the region's tech companies is blunt. "That's performative," she said of donated products and volunteer days. She wants lasting relationships — smaller companies return to TAF schools every year to give students real problems to solve. "I need them to be more about pouring into instead of extracting out of," she said. She is also wary of the classroom AI rush: students can use AI to find sources, she said, but must investigate them themselves. "It should be used as a tool to gather quickly, so I can now use most of my time doing the thinking."

TAF's teacher-coaching program, TransformED, now works with five schools and plans to add 10 more over five years at about $200,000 per school per year. Millines Dziko turns 70 in July and predicts she will never retire, having spent the past year and a half shifting daily leadership to Sherry Williams and Joshua Halsey to focus on fundraising. Whether employers heed her pipeline argument — or keep treating school partnerships as philanthropy rather than sourcing — will shape the next 30 years.