#05: When tech meets teaching

A Q&A with João Coelho

Jan 20, 2021

Welcome to Pass It On—a newsletter bringing the tech and non-profit sectors closer together through knowledge sharing, written and edited by Lauren Crichton.

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It's time for our next Q&A knowledge share! For those new to Pass It On, the newsletter issues alternate between my tips and tricks and the learnings of others. This week, I'm delighted to introduce my wonderful colleague, João Coelho. As a data scientist, João has lived and breathed the tech sector, and over the past five years, has been applying the best of the industry's ways of working to treetree2, the education non-profit he co-founded in his spare time.

In this Q&A, João tells treetree2's story, including the challenges and opportunities that arose with the pandemic, and shares his tips for becoming a more focused and balanced leader. His words will leave you feeling inspired and motivated for change.

💫 The journey from tech to non-profit leader with João Coelho

You're a data scientist and physicist. Tell us how you ended up founding a non-profit in your spare time?

I've been passionate about science since I was very young. Yet all through school–as I watched my friends develop their interests in music, drama, sport–there were no after school activities to develop my passion for science where I lived in Portugal.

By the time I got to my Physics Masters, I realised just how much I would have benefited from learning some of the course material earlier in my education. As it turned out, I wasn't alone: many of my peers working in STEM roles shared the same experiences and frustrations. In 2015, when I was working as a computer science researcher for Portugal's National Civil Engineering Lab, two of my colleagues and I decided to do something about it. We started by offering local after school classes in programming fundamentals. Pretty soon, we were organising a week-long summer Science Academy for 120 teenagers eager to develop their passion for science.

Somewhere along the way, we formalised treetree2 as an education non-profit. Today, we run about a dozen projects anchored in three core pillars: science, learning, and community. Our goal is to give today's bright young minds the science and engineering opportunities we wish we'd had when growing up.

You've worked in three tech companies, ranging from corporate to startup. How have those experiences shaped your decisions as a non-profit founder?

Significantly! When it came to working tools and methods, we adopted most of what we'd seen and practised at tech companies. Like keeping our meetings purposeful through POWs (as you mentioned in an earlier issue, Lauren!), and the principle of making the work you do as visible to others as possible (we use the Kanban method), among many others.

Our previous tech roles also allowed us to observe and experience the conditions good people need to produce work: motivation, autonomy, and the chance to make an impact. We have taken these as core principles and built our organisation around them––essentially developing a community of peers who are happy to volunteer on an impactful project they can steer with minimal oversight from us. It's how we've been able to run and maintain many projects while only being a couple of full-time employees. In short, we find good people and get out of the way!

treetree2 has always been a remote-first team. What digital tools have been most effective in helping you collaborate?

As a scattered network of collaborators dedicating varying amounts of time to the cause, real-time meetings are virtually impossible for us! We rely heavily on writing, and asynchronous communication. Google Drive tools like Docs, Sheets, and Slides are essential because we can easily comment on each other's work without getting lost in multiple versions of the same file. Trello helps us work in the open (you get a lot of functionality for free), and we're growing increasingly fond of Mural for sketching out ideas and planning visually.

Our learning activities for the pupils are also not dependent on real-time communication. We use Discourse to host discussion forums, and we have repurposed the messaging platform Discord as a digital study space (we're not the only ones). Not only has Discord enabled our instructors to manage virtual lessons and online courses, it's given our pupils access to a 24/7 virtual study library.

Community is one of treetree2's core pillars. Aside from tools like Discord, how else have you fostered the community over time?

Building a vibrant learning community is an integral part of what we want to achieve and one of the keys to scaling and reaching more young people. We foster this community by providing a shared structured space for informed discussions, maintaining an onboarding program to welcome new instructors, and by setting up social events that cut across age and project boundaries––though those have been put on ice since Covid hit.

We also encourage our students to become instructors and to get involved in more than one project as their interests develop. There are a few advantages to this approach: (1) active learning through teaching, (2) empathy building, and (3) the chance to work and learn from more experienced instructors.

How has the pandemic and its consequences affected treetree2's strategy?

Massively! Even though we'd always been a remote-first team and had the ambition of setting up online projects, most of our learning activities were in-person events based in a single city in Portugal. When Covid hit, it sped up our plans considerably: we had to cancel a few projects, like our flagship Scientific Summer Academy, and figure out how to bring the learning online as quickly as possible. It was daunting but transformational: suddenly, we were no longer bound by location and could cater to students across Portugal. Crucially, it also demonstrated that we could field quality online study programs––a wall we'd often run into before.

As a result, we've now shifted to a remote-first learning strategy and are planning to reach more non-local audiences. To anyone else at a non-profit struggling with this prospect: you'll never be fully ready to take the leap, but trust me, you're ready enough to see the transition through. And it's worth it: you have the potential to impact so many more people through these digital technologies.

You’ve just taken a sabbatical to work on treetree2 full time. Can you tell us a bit about what you’ll be doing?

Absolutely! Since we're such a small team, I'll be working with a bit of everything, but my main goal is to expand our existing projects to more scientific disciplines and reach a wider audience. For example, we just launched our first Machine Learning course for students aged 15-17, which I co-developed.

On a more organisational level, my priority is to make it easier for new collaborators to join and contribute to existing projects. And, of course, to secure funding so that we can develop these projects sustainably.

What's the most valuable lesson you've learned as a non-profit founder?

As a non-profit founder with a full-time job, the most valuable personal lesson I've learned is that brainpower is a limited but precious resource. It took me a long time to realise that allocating a few hours to a project on a Friday evening was damaging: I'd either end up mentally exhausted, feeling guilty for not being able to do it or, even worse, producing low-quality work. Now, I understand that I need to manage my energy levels just as carefully as I manage my time if I'm going to keep a consistent pace and deliver on what I've signed up for.

From a team/collaboration perspective, the best way to maintain energy and balance is by limiting real-time (synchronous) interactions and being ruthless about prioritisation. Focusing on one thing at a time is simply more efficient and effective than spinning multiple plates at once. Sure, it might mean putting some really exciting projects on ice, but in my experience, that disappointment is outweighed by the benefits of being able to pour your heart and soul into a single initiative. At treetree2, we've forced ourselves to decide which projects are core to our mission and which are supplementary, thereby encouraging us to explore partnerships for the latter rather than trying to handle everything ourselves.

On a personal level, I've adopted the following habits to manage my energy and encourage focus:

I handwrite a daily working diary as a pacing mechanism.
I make all of my work visible to my teammates to prevent "status update" meetings.
I set my phone to black and white and keep it on silent and out of sight while working.
I allocate large chunks (3-4hrs) of uninterrupted time for myself, ideally in the morning when my brainpower's still at 100%.
I push all necessary real-time meetings to the afternoon.
When the going gets rough, I use the Pomodoro technique to make the most out of my working time.

Which three books have had the most significant impact on you as a leader?

Swarmwise by Rick Falkvinge. Informed how I think about networks and how they behave. Also provided lots of insights into designing an effective de-centralised organisation.
Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of Basecamp. A brilliant argument for, and guide to, working remotely.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. A handy guide to understanding hidden bias in decision-making. Helped me identify and correct those biases in myself and learn to expect them when dealing with others.

Thank you, João!

If you want to learn more about treetree2 or any of the tips that João mentioned, email him at joao.coelho@treetree2.org or:

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