Tracy Chou

Tracy Chou is an entrepreneur and software engineer, known for her work advocating for diversity and inclusion in tech. She is the Founder and CEO of Block Party, which aims to fight abuse and harassment online. Their latest product, Privacy Party, helps people find and fix privacy risks on social media.

She co-founded Project Include, which consults tech startups on diversity and inclusion, and the social movement #MovingForward, which works with venture capital firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies.

From 2011 to 2016 Chou was a software engineer and tech lead at Pinterest, with roles on home feed and recommendations, ads products, web, infrastructure, API, email, and growth. Before Pinterest, she worked at Quora, also as an early engineer there. During the Obama administration she was on reserve with the U.S. Digital Service as a technical consultant.

Chou is most well-known for her tech diversity activism. In 2013, she helped to kick off the wave of tech company diversity data disclosures with a Medium post titled “Where are the numbers?” and a Github repository collecting data on women in engineering. In 2016, Chou co-founded the non-profit Project Include, which works with tech startups on diversity and inclusion towards a mission of giving everyone a fair chance to succeed in tech. In 2018, Chou co-founded the non-profit #MovingForward, which works with venture capital firms to establish and publish anti-harassment policies.

For her advocacy and activism work, Chou has appeared on the covers of The Atlantic, WIRED, and MIT Technology Review; been named Forbes Tech 30 under 30, MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators under 35, and Fast Company Most Creative People in Business; and been profiled in Vogue, ELLE, and other media outlets.

Chou is an investment scout and advisor with several Bay Area venture capital firms and enjoys working with startups on engineering, product, culture, and diversity.

Outside of tech, Chou serves on the board of the digital art non-profit Rhizome and on the advisory board of the political organizing and training non-profit Arena, which she also co-founded.