Being part of a community is what the GeekWire Awards are all about — the chance to come together to celebrate Pacific Northwest tech innovators and entrepreneurs and their successes over the past year.
The honorees in the Geeks Give Back category are part of the reason there is a community, especially one that helps to make space for more people in tech, to help turn ideas into startups, and to continually work to strengthen the ecosystem that makes everything thrive.
The recipients this year are Aviel Ginzburg, the entrepreneur and investor who is a general partner at VC firm Founder’s Co-Op and who helped create Foundations, a new community for tech founders in Seattle; Chaitra Vedullapalli, founder and president of Women in Cloud, which helps women-led businesses get resources to succeed in cloud computing; and Emer Dooley, site lead for the Creative Destruction Lab at the University of Washington, a nonprofit that runs startup accelerators across the world.
The Geeks Give Back category is presented by BECU.
The GeekWire Awards will recognize nearly 50 finalists and honorees across a dozen categories, from Startup of the Year to Next Tech Titan. Winners will receive their coveted robot trophies live onstage on April 30 at Showbox SoDO in Seattle. Individual tickets are now on sale. Grab a seat here!
Keep reading to hear from this year’s Geeks Give Back honorees in their own words about how to build and sustain successful communities. Responses edited for brevity and clarity.
Aviel Ginzburg
Foundations
“From my perspective, you don’t build community, you nurture it. The desire for community is innate in human nature, it’s something that wants to exist but is hard to hold together. But it takes action and energy to prevent the natural entropy that occurs amidst such a loosely woven fabric of one to one, one to many, and many to many relationships. To do it right, you need to listen and observe and act as a steward to help the community stay focused. You also have to put your ego aside while simultaneously living inside and outside of the community, otherwise you risk losing perspective or perverting the community’s reason for existing itself.
If you’re too prescriptive with your community, you’ll create too much friction and lose momentum. If you’re unfocused or attempt to be everything for everyone, you’ll implode in chaos. To sustain, you need to find the right balance that allows community members’ engagement to ebb and flow, and allow some folks to take initiative in a push motion while also providing legible APIs for the more passive members to pull the things that they need without leaving their comfort zone.
That’s the theory at least … Now we just have to prove it.”
Previously: Inside the new ‘serendipity factory’ trying to spark the startup scene in Seattle
Chaitra Vedullapalli
Women in Cloud
“Building a community the right way isn’t just about gathering people — it’s about igniting a movement. A movement rooted in purpose, access, preparedness and action.
The key ingredient? One movement powered by collective action. When people see themselves not just as individuals but as contributors to a greater cause, they show up differently. They bring their full selves — ideas, resources, time, heart. That’s how transformation begins.
At Women in Cloud, we’re not just building a community — we’re architecting a paradigm shift that helps every member achieve their iconic identity by unlocking $1 billion in economic access in the AI powered economy. That means moving beyond transactional networking into iconic leadership, peer-to-peer mentoring, and economic elevation.
Ultimately, communities thrive when we give them access to playbooks, funding, global platforms, and peer circles that are rooted in generosity and trust. When we rise, we lift others. That’s how we become one — iconic, unstoppable, and deeply connected. The goal is to build communities that don’t just gather, but galvanize to ignite a movement.”
Previously: Microsoft-backed Women in Cloud accelerator program expanding to 8 new countries
Emer Dooley
Creative Destruction Lab
“Communities are built around common interest and a shared valuable goal. We all want to be part of something that is bigger than ourselves, but where we can have real personal impact. At CDL, our goal is to use the convening power of the UW to commercialize science and technology for the benefit of humankind.
The key to building our community is to have each community member psyched to be part of it and feel like they get more out of it than they put in.
And they do.
- Founders get access to incredible mentors, without paying fees or giving up equity. The process works. CDL-Seattle startups have raised $190M just since 2022.
- Mentors are people who have built, scaled and exited companies; the bar is high. They get to work with exceptional founders (we have a less than 20% admittance rate) and with each other in four objective-setting sessions over the course of an academic year. Many invest.
- Students get an incomparable experiential educational experience. The CDL class is a mix of undergrad, MBA and STEM PhDs. They sit in on session discussions and complete an experiential project with a startup founder.
- Sponsors get access to a vibrant tech-savvy community of future clients and partners and a real view of how milestone-based innovation progresses.”
Previously: New accelerator in Seattle: Creative Destruction Lab to launch ‘deep tech’ startup hub with Microsoft, UW
Astound Business Solutions is the presenting sponsor of the 2025 GeekWire Awards. Thanks also to gold sponsors JLL, Baird, Wilson Sonsini, Baker Tilly and First Tech, and supporting sponsors ALLtech and Showbox Presents.
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