By Deron Dalton
It’s no secret that transgender people face many barriers in both education and employment: They are four times more likely to live poverty, and four times more likely to make less than $10,000 a year.
However, a Black trans female entrepreneur hopes to change that.
Angelica Ross, 35, businesswoman and actress on the web series Her Story, founded TransTech Social two years ago, following frustrations and limitations at her previous job. She felt her work there was being co-opted by some of her colleagues and that she was tokenized in her role developing employment for transgender people.
Now, with TransTech, she has created a free-of-charge on-going training academy and apprenticeship program to teach trans people a variety of employable Web and tech skills, including social media management, web development, graphic design, and multimedia production. So far, more 250 people nationwide have accessed TransTech’s online and in-person trainings.
However, Ross created TransTech not only to help trans people get jobs, but to also instill in them self-worth and value, which is something she has learned along the way.
Ross recalls being a younger trans woman and “accepting” that the only way she could survive or transition was by becoming an adult entertainer or a showgirl.
“My personal journey went from thinking all I had access to was sex work to ‘I don’t have to escort, and I don’t even have to pose on these websites,’” Ross told the Daily Dot. “I can actually build the website. I don’t have to be exploited by another photographer. I can take my own pictures and exploit myself, put a paywall on it, manage my own website, make a business around that—and I did.”
Read more via The Daily Dot.