April 1, 2022

‘Pose’ Actress Angelica Ross Is On A Mission To Help The Trans Community Secure Roles In Tech

If you’re a fan of the Emmy award-winning series Pose, you will already know Angelica Ross as the feisty trans character, ‘Candy Ferocity’.

But outside of Hollywood and in 2014, Angelica founded TransTech Social Enterprises; an organization that works to provide education, support, and jobs to trans people facing discrimination in the tech sector.

In 2017, she then hosted the TransTech Summit, which is a free event for attendees to be educated on ways to level up in their careers and the industry.

Two years ago Angelica told cnet.com, “technology saved my life”.  As founder and CEO of TransTech, Angelica is continuing her work in the technology sector for young trans people even as a successful Hollywood actress.

This year’s four-day event, a free virtual one starting on the Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, and ending Sunday, April 2, will cover everything from tech in Hollywood, health wellness and technology, racial justice, diversity representation, inclusion, media marketing, advertising, healing and more.

“I think we have over 60 speakers at the workshops. We have multiple days of programming, so it’s going to be much, much bigger, a much, much wider conversation than before. It’s like I’m a proud mother watching her baby grow.

“We’ve always been talking about how trans people, especially trans women, many of them have been the masterminds of makeup and fashion but have not been given the authority in that in the industry,” Ross shared with Essence, adding, We talk about how to take those skills that they have and turn it into business, and be about their business. Because beauty is a billion dollar business, and we want to get our folks into it.”

“So, yeah, literally everything from translating the hustle, translating your survival tactics to actual work skills. I will be giving a keynote. We’ll be having workshops on how to process databases and just knowing basic database administration, learning Adobe Creative Cloud.

“I cannot be more proud of this summit because there’s everything. There’s even somebody teaching them how to do reels and TikToks. Because listen, I’m pretty sure I need to sit in on that class.”

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Abbianca Makoni

Abbianca Makoni is a content executive and writer at POCIT! She has years of experience reporting on critical issues affecting diverse communities around the globe.