Meet the Pods: Civics and Elections

​You're invited to Meet the Pods!

​Pods are small communities of Upskillers who have formed around thematic problems they have prioritized. At Meet the Pods, Upskillers will share their problem statement research and findings to date, and will solicit input from invited civics, elections, and emerging tech experts.

​Meetups are preceded by upskilling workshops. The workshops designed for Upskillers in the build cycle, but are open to the public!

EVENT DETAILS:
August 11, 2026 @ Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library

• ​4:30-5:00pm — Registration and Upskilling Labs Orientation

• ​5:00pm-6:00pm — Building Out Loud Workshop with Sunny Avantsa.

• ​6:00pm–7:30pm — Meet the Pods presentations. 5th Floor events space

  • ​Civic tech examples from special guests, Karima Williams and Helen Glover.

  • ​1 minute lightning talks from civics and elections Upskillers

  • ​Paradox statement (to be used in the hackathon)

• ​7:30pm — Happy Hour!

​Speaker Bios:
Sunny Avantsa is a public health professional, specializing in digital health program management. She holds a Master of Public Health from George Washington University, and in the recent years across federal health, academic, and nonprofit settings, she's consulted on projects such as clinical survey systems, defined program evaluation metrics, public health social media campaigns and created data management guidelines that scaled alongside partnerships across the country. Outside of her professional life, Sunny loves to write and build, but her worst nightmare was anyone seeing it. As a participant in the latest build cycle, she realized how valuable it can be to build visibility on yourself, your projects, and your unique skill set. During this hands-on workshop Sunny will go over strategies for building out loud in civic tech, and how to use your words to create opportunities for you.

​Helen Glover is a tech consultant at Lewis-Burke Associates and Executive Director of Civic Tech DC, a nonprofit that brings together technologists and designers to build community tech solutions. Her work focuses on open-source communities, civic technology, and the policy frameworks that support them.

​Karima Williams is a self-taught builder and single mom based in the DMV. She builds AI systems that run the parts of a business that used to run the owner — content, research, operations — so founders can spend their time on the work only they can do.

​Her own apps have reached 191,000 people across 187 countries, built solo with no ad budget and no funding round. That work has been featured on Good Morning America, Business Insider, Essence, Afrotech, and Pop Sugar. She's a Howard University graduate.

​Now she builds the same systems for small business owners — AI employees that handle admin, leads, and follow-up — and trains their teams to work alongside them. Her approach: AI-fluent, not AI-afraid.

​About The Upskilling Labs

​Ready to be part of it? Join the community of hundreds of Upskillers (and growing) today.

​The Upskilling Labs (https://theupskillinglabs.org/) is an open, project-based learning community where you build real things with real people. Every quarter, we run a Build Cycle themed around an industry—participants form pods around real problems, develop AI-enabled solutions together, and showcase what they've built. No credentials required. Just show up ready to learn alongside others.