A new innovation hub and co-working space has opened its doors in downtown Seattle. The Union, named after black student unions on HBCU campuses, is a space designed to facilitate events and workshops focused on science, technology, entrepreneurship, arts, and media (STEAM).

“The Union Seattle is changing the way we engage with underserved communities,” said founder Arif Gürsel, who currently serves as director of product at Heroku. “We are excited to introduce the launch of our home base to execute and drive our organization’s future growth.”

The former Microsoft engineer founded the space after seeing the need for a culturally relevant co-working space offering empowering programming with events including focused on software engineering, data science, 3D animation, design, and more.

“The desire to empower a future generation of learners, technologist and entrepreneurs drove the establishment of The Union,” said Gürsel.

The Union will operate as a co-working space during the day and transform into an event space at night where educational workshops will take place. The space also has a recording studio to serve content creators and media producers.