Deloitte Digital has announced a new initiative with The Stepladder Foundation to provide laptops, software, and study materials to UK students enrolling in Stepladder courses. The Stepladder Foundation is a charity offering flexible approaches to learning for Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic young people identified as disadvantaged. They’ve previously run programs across London, Birmingham, and the West of England- and are now focusing again on Greater London. They take referrals from schools to recruit, but some participants ‘step up’ and enroll themselves when they hear about the initiative. Their flagship programs last
As part of the Kapor Center’s Women of Color in Computing Collaborative study with Venturebeat – the duo worked on research that they say found robust evidence of bias in the industry. Of course, this is something we’ve always known takes place in the tech sector. But their survey found that women of color in tech are reportedly the equivalent of 37.6 percentage points less likely than white women to see a long-term future for themselves at their companies. Women of color in tech were also 16.4 percent more likely
Virgil Abloh’s impact in the technology and fashion industry continues to go unmatched. Mercedes-Benz is honoring Abloh, who passed away late November after an aggressive battle with cancer, announcing the Project Maybach concept. He worked on the initiative alongside Mercedes-Benz Chief Design Officer Gordon Wagener. The 41-year-old guided the luxury vehicle’s design, which carries the essence of the former Mercedes-Maybach 6 concept released in 2016. Abloh’s creativity birthed Project Maybach’s front-end features such as circular headlights, according to a report by Car and Driver, as well as the four auxiliary lights enhanced by
Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities, led by SecondMuse Foundation and Break Through Tech, has launched a third city hub in Miami as part of Pivotal Ventures’ $50 million investment focused on diversifying the tech industry. The hub, dubbed GET Miami, will work collaboratively with the region’s tech ecosystem to propel more women, trans, and nonbinary people, particularly Black, Latino/a, Indigenous, and people of color, into tech education, careers, and leadership. The company’s main blueprint is to address the challenge of inclusion by leveraging three key pillars – academia, industry, and entrepreneurship. GET Miami will
TechRise, a program from tech organization P33 that’s been hosting a weekly pitch competition this year for Chicago’s Black and Latino entrepreneurs, will return next year after a successful 2021 run. The program was launched with a $ 5 million fund to invest in startups owned by diverse entrepreneurs up and down the city in April. TechRise aims to channel more funds to minority-owned startups, which receive just 1.9% of all startup funding in Chicago, according to P33. In addition, corporate sponsors like Verizon, Discover, and Valor Equity Partners have
Tyson Clark, a general partner at Alphabet Inc.’s venture arm GV and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent Black startup investors, has died at the age of 43. GV CEO David Krane just issued a statement about the team losing the father-of-three, writing, “With great sadness, we share the news that Tyson Clark, our friend, and GV general partner, passed away yesterday due to sudden complications from a health issue. We are stunned and shattered by this loss. “The GV team extends our deepest sympathies to Tyson’s family and loved ones.
Black people produce and share substantially more content than other groups on Facebook. While Facebook Stories has low usage in most of the U.S., it has “clusters of intense production” in places with a high concentration of African Americans, such as the arc in the Southeast known as the Black Belt, Facebook research found. But increasingly, the community seems to be turning away from the app. The number of Black monthly users on Facebook declined 2.7% in a single month to 17.3 million adults, according to a research report, “Industry Update on
It’s Computer Science Education Week and Apple is taking lead by announcing a new program that will propel the future generation of STEM leaders. The Boys & Girls Clubs of America will now have an opportunity to teach students how to code through Apple’s latest collaboration. Using iPad and Apple’s free Everyone Can Code curriculum — and with ongoing professional support from Apple educators — kids and teens at local Boys & Girls Clubs will integrate coding into their programming, giving students the opportunity to create and collaborate on the basics
Two-year-old startup uLesson has just announced that it closed a $15 million Series B round. The startup first launched by providing a product pack of SD cards and dongles with pre-recorded videos for K-12 students. They can either access lessons via streaming or use the SD cards to download and store the content. But uLesson has introduced new features for an all-encompassing edtech play for this demographic. It added quizzes and a homework help feature to connect students with tutors from universities. It also launched a one-to-many live class feature with polls and leaderboards
Black Enterprise — one of the US’ leading Black digital media brands, with more than 8 million monthly unique visitors—will present its inaugural Sisters Inc. Summit on December 7. The event will feature some of the most influential and dynamic business owners. They will feature in a candid conversation with each other—and the corporations and investors who support them. Whether you consider yourself a founder, a CEO, a boss, or a side-hustler, SistersInc. is said to represent “a unique and valuable opportunity to connect to a powerful sisterhood of success to share resources,
