Internal Tools | External Benefits

Esteban is learning about working in a clean tech startup by creating an internal dashboard to track performance.

Internal tools are a great way for a software company like ours to track performance metrics. We look to those metrics to give us important information about how satisfied you, our customers, are with us and our products. But it can be hard for a scrappy startup like UtilityAPI to allocate precious engineering resources to get an internal data tool built. 

Enter our new intern, Esteban Sanchez. Thanks to his work this summer, UtilityAPI’s about to get a new dashboard that will track our performance data and report the results. He has only just started, but for now, he says, “This is a very big learning experience for me. I'm learning a lot about web technologies and the technological infrastructure required to run a company.” 

We hope he’s also seeing a potential viable career path for himself. Our industry needs to start including historically underestimated and excluded people. “We know that diversity is good for business. Right now, we’re not doing a good enough job building the diverse teams that we need, so we’re coming together to amplify the demand for diverse voices in this industry,” said our CEO, Devin Hampton.

Last summer, Devin launched Edict along with Jason Michaels of Leap. Devin was tired of being the only black person in the room at conferences. On LinkedIn, he wrote, “I also hope to see the “financing the next phase” panel being led by black and brown people. And if your company doesn’t have a black or brown person who can lead that panel, I suggest you think about why that is and take some action.”  Edict came to life as a part of that action — not just a statement of values, but an action plan for our entire industry to get more people of color on paths to leadership roles. 

This spring, Elemental Excelerator took over Edict stewardship, as part of their Equity is Dynamic community of practice. They partnered with CELI to launch a summer internship program. And now, we have Edict to thank for bringing Esteban to us. “The Edict Summer Internship Program is designed to provide Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and underrepresented students with paid, full-time 10-week internship opportunities in the clean energy and climate tech sector with companies and organizations that are actively building a diverse team and an inclusive working environment.” That’s (still) us! 

Welcome, Esteban, in particular, and welcome to the entire CELI Edict Internship 2021 cohort. We're glad to see you. We need you in this industry.  

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