Who we are
The NBLK Summer Fellowship™ is run by NBLK LLC (767 Broadway #1624, New York, NY 10003, United States) for the US cohort and by NBLK Global Ltd (275 New North Road #1540, Islington, London, N1 7AA, United Kingdom) for the UK cohort. In this policy, "NBLK," "we" and "us" mean whichever of these companies runs the cohort you apply to.
Questions about your data: info@nblk.co (US) or info@nblk.co.uk (UK).
The short version
- We collect what we need to review your application and run the fellowship.
- We do not sell your personal data, rent it, or share it with third parties for their own use.
- We use a small number of service providers to host and run the site. They may only use your data to provide that service to us.
- If you join the internship pool, partners see a profile without your name or contact details. We share who you are only after you agree to a specific introduction.
- Background questions are optional, never used in selection, and reported only in totals.
- You can ask to see, fix or delete your data at any time.
What we collect
When you apply
- Contact details: name, preferred name, email, an optional second email, an optional phone number, and your ZIP code or postcode.
- Your cohort country (United States or United Kingdom).
- Work eligibility answers: whether you will be authorized to work for the full program, whether you will need visa sponsorship, where your authorization stands, and (if it is in process) what you are waiting for and when you expect it.
- Education: degree, graduation date, field of study, your area of interest, and optional portfolio and LinkedIn links.
- Your written answers, how you heard about us, and your summer availability.
- Your resume and cover letter (PDF).
- Your choices about email updates, the mailing list and the internship pool, and your confirmation of the application statement, each with the date and time.
If you choose to answer them
- Background questions: gender, ethnicity, Hispanic or Latino, and veteran status. These are optional, and "Prefer not to say" is always available.
- The skills survey: tools, skill levels, interests, languages and work preferences.
If you sign up as a sponsor or partner
- Name, email, organization, country, how you would like to help, where we met, and your message.
Automatically
- A sign-in session cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 12 hours.
- A link-source cookie (30 days) that records which link brought you to the site, such as a social media post or an event QR code.
- Basic technical logs needed to keep the site secure and working. We do not use advertising cookies, analytics tools or tracking pixels.
How we use your data
- To review your application, contact you about it, and run interviews.
- To confirm work eligibility before orientation.
- To run the fellowship if you are selected.
- To match you with internships and other opportunities, only if you join the internship pool.
- To send fellowship news, only if you agree.
- To improve the program, using totals only.
- To meet our legal duties, such as work eligibility checks and record keeping.
Background questions are never seen by the people making selection decisions, and are never used to decide who is selected.
Legal bases (UK and EU applicants)
- Taking steps before a contract: reviewing your application and preparing an offer.
- Legitimate interests: running a fair, secure program and keeping records.
- Legal obligation: right-to-work checks.
- Consent: email updates, the mailing list, the internship pool, and the skills survey. You can withdraw consent at any time.
- Explicit consent: the optional background questions, which may include special category data such as ethnicity.
The internship pool
If you opt in, we create an internship profile from your skills, interests, education level, field of study and availability. The profile contains no personal identifiers: no name, email, phone number, address, photo or resume file. Partner organizations use it to tell us whether they are interested.
If a partner is interested, we ask you first. We share your name, contact details or resume only after you say yes to that specific introduction.
You can leave the pool at any time by emailing info@nblk.co. We then remove your profile from matching.
Where your data is stored
Your data is stored in the United States (Microsoft Azure). If you apply from the UK, your data is transferred to the United States with appropriate safeguards.
How long we keep it
- Applications, including files: up to 2 years after the end of the program year, then deleted or anonymized.
- Background answers: kept apart, and anonymized or deleted on the same schedule.
- Fellows' records: as long as the law requires for employment and tax records.
- Internship pool profiles: until you leave the pool, or 2 years after your program year, whichever comes first.
- Sponsor and partner sign-ups: until you ask us to delete them, or 3 years after our last contact.
- Unfinished drafts: deleted after the program year closes.
How we protect it
- All traffic is encrypted.
- Sign-in codes expire in 10 minutes and are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form. So are session keys.
- Files are kept in private storage, never public links.
- Only the people who need your data to run the fellowship can see it.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your data, we will tell you and the regulators as the law requires.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- Show you the data we hold about you
- Correct it
- Delete it
- Limit or object to how we use it
- Give you a copy in a common format
- Withdraw any consent you gave
Email info@nblk.co (US) or info@nblk.co.uk (UK). We reply within one month. We may need to confirm your identity first.
UK applicants can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk). We'd like the chance to fix things first.
Age
The fellowship is for people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.
Changes
If we change this policy, we will update the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will tell applicants by email.