- CompTIA quietly dissolved its social impact arm, CompTIA Spark, during a broader organizational restructuring and sale, resulting in the discontinuation of youth-focused programs like TechGirlz.
- TechGirlz founder Tracey Welson-Rossman, who remained involved after the program’s acquisition, was surprised by the closure and has struggled to recover the open source curriculum, which remains under GTIA review.
- Despite expressions of interest from organizations like Hopeworks to continue the work, access to the TechGirlz materials has been delayed without clear explanation, frustrating efforts to preserve the program.
When global tech organization CompTIA restructured at the end of last year, it quietly dissolved its social impact arm, CompTIA Spark. The dissolution, which has not been previously reported, came alongside the demise of TechGirlz, a STEM education program founded 15 years ago in Philadelphia.
TechGirlz founder Tracey Welson-Rossman is trying to get the curriculum back, she said, but its former parent won’t hand over the open source programming.
“What is upsetting to me is it’s not about TechGirlz,” Welson-Rossman told Technical.ly. “This is about the idea that you can still help. The mission could have continued, and for some reason, something got lost.”
Founded in 1985 as the Computing Technology Industry Association and based near Chicago, the trade group last fall announced the sale of its brand and some of its certification and training business to “third party investment firms,” according to an email sent to CompTIA Spark’s board of advisors on Nov. 8. That new for-profit business has since adopted the original name and operates as CompTIA Inc.
Profits from the sale were used to create an endowment fund, framed as a more stable way of generating income for the remaining membership organization, which rebranded as GTIA (the Global Technology Industry Association). The nonprofit intended to increase its charitable work, according to a press release.
“With the establishment of the endowment, charitable giving is set to rise significantly, from approximately $5 million to over $20 million or more annually, ” GTIA Board Vice Chair Quy “Q” Nguyen said in the release. “These funds will directly benefit impactful organizations dedicated to advancing technology adoption, creating pathways to careers in technology, and using technology to educate and enrich communities.”
TechGirlz was apparently not included in that mandate.
Acquired from Welson-Rossman in 2019, TechGirlz operated under the org’s social innovation and impact arm, known since 2022 as CompTIA Spark. Spark also supported other youth-focused programming, like tech curriculum CyberPrep. (It’s unclear what happened to the CyberPrep program.) CompTIA planned to continue hosting Spark’s platform through the end of 2025 to ease the transition with participating schools, according to the Nov. 8 board email, which framed the shift as a way to maximize impact.
“Instead of initiating and funding its own programs, the association intends to find and fund existing worthy charities and programs instead,” the board email read. “The association feels this is the best way to maximize the impact of the dollars allocated and provides significantly more flexibility to the selection process.”
While the Spark platform is still active, its programs were already being wound down before the sale and split, according to MJ Shoer, who previously served as Spark’s CEO and now holds the title of GTIA chief community officer. CompTIA Inc. declined to comment.
“It’s disappointing that the promise of what I thought they could do, that we thought they could do, never materialized,” Welson-Rossman said.
‘We were never given any indication that there were problems’
In the years after Welson-Rossman founded TechGirlz in 2010, it hosted extracurricular programming teaching young girls about technology and coding. She pursued an acquisition by CompTIA because they had a similar mission with more resources and reach, she said. At the time, TechGirlz had worked with a reported 15,000 girls around the world through its workshops, exposing them to tech and STEM careers.
After the acquisition, Welson-Rossman remained involved as a member of CompTIA Spark’s board of advisors. In June 2024, she got a heads up that TechGirlz would be shutting down because it wasn’t performing well, she said.
The news took her by surprise. “As a board, we were never given any indication that there were problems,” Welson-Rossman said. “So it was a shock.”
When the TechGirlz closure became public that July, program partners were given the option to continue offering its workshops. According to Welson-Rossman, then-Spark CEO Shoer asked if she knew any organizations that might be willing to take on the curriculum. She suggested Hopeworks, a Camden, NJ-based tech workforce development org.
Her goal was to get Hopeworks all the TechGirlz materials before the start of the 2024-2025 school year. Yet nine months later, despite what Welson-Rossman described as chasing Shoer for information, it’s still unclear where the curriculum materials are.
“We were very clear about what we were trying to do, and it’s an easy lift,” Welson-Rossman said. “I don’t understand why this has become such an ordeal when it does not need to be.”
Shoer told Technical.ly the rebranded parent nonprofit is still evaluating the TechGirlz assets.
“GTIA is evaluating remaining program assets that were not transferred in the sale, including those from the TechGirlz program, to determine which of these still fit the organization’s mission,” Shoer said.
“Any time the transfer of intellectual property is considered, it takes time and due diligence,” he added. “The timing of the then-pending sale of the CompTIA brand as well as its certification and training assets, along with the resulting launch of the renamed trade association, significantly impacted the timeline for any considerations of this nature.”
If materials become available, Hopeworks CEO Dan Rhoton said his org planned to make them freely accessible to the public, rather than building specific programming around them.
“TechGirlz is a way where young women in particular can learn about tech and learn about their place in tech when they’re still in middle school,” Rhoton said. “Why would anyone want that resource to go away?”
Shoer, from GTIA, maintained that when TechGirlz was shutting down, he was “not aware of any organizations that opted to continue delivering the workshops.”
According to Welson-Rossman, the programming can’t be continued without the release of the curriculum. Regardless, she said, the TechGirlz mission will live on through all of the people involved.
“It’s a setback,” Welson-Rossman said. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be out there working for a more equitable future.”
Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
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