When it comes to fostering diversity and inclusion in your company, either go hard or go home. Seriously. You can’t do light touch diversity and inclusion. It’s not a box to tick, a “nice to have”, or something you can dip in and out of. It requires long-term commitment and a significant investment of your resources. After all, what thing worth having comes easy in this world? I won’t bore you with the overwhelming data on diversity’s positive impact on profitability, McKinsey among a number of other reputable firms have
When Darrell D. Williams (aka “Dr. Tariq”) teaches coding to other prisoners in California’s Lancaster State Prison, he doesn’t deploy traditional equipment like a laptop, or PowerPoint slides.He uses a blackboard —used to teach HTML, CSS, website design languages—and mobile app development. Let Us Code Classroom uses coding textbooks as an entry point into computer literacy, website design, and discussions about Silicon Valley, computer programming careers and becoming a tech entrepreneur after prisoners are released. Each coding lesson is centered upon learning to code to turn one’s life around from
Consider the story of investors such as Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures and one of two women who featured on The Top 20 VCs Worldwide list by The New York Times. She represents diversity as she had never worked at a Venture Capital firm before starting her own in 2012, and she is also a woman in a male-dominated field. She achieved two billion dollar exits with Jet.com (acquired by Walmart) and Dollar Shave Club (acquired by Unilever), demonstrating the value she brings as an inclusive investor. Alternatively, there are
Accountant. African American Woman. A small dot within the tech workforce. This is my bio. Being a person of color in the tech industry tends to feel like you’re a fish out of water. Though tech companies are working to improve diversity in the workplace, Black and LatinX employees still make up only a small margin of the workforce. And for those of color that are in the industry, there is usually a minor representation in the more senior and executive roles. The lack of representation at those levels tends
The past two years have changed me quite a bit as a person. By most standards, I could be seen as reasonably successful, having been promoted nine months after my initial start date at my place of employment and well on my way to achieving the two-year milestone. In that short period, I’ve seen lots of good people go and teeter on the edge of going, the majority of them being people of color. (For context: I am a young, African American woman, the only one in the IT department.)
It used to be a tall order to find a representative look for your powerpoint presentation that featured communities of color. Little to no stock photos existed that you could download or purchase that fit the theme. But that is not the case anymore! Here are four websites that will provide you a free collection of photos you can use with either attribution or email subscription. It is time to update your blogs, PowerPoints, branding material and all other forms of media representation you are creating! While everyone can’t pay
There is a long way to go until tech reflects how society does. I’m glad there is the discussion happening, but I’m not sure if the people having the debate have the right people involved. Where are the people from a regular school, that had black, Latino, and LGBT friends growing up? If your network all followed the Stanford, MIT, Google pipeline, I’m not sure you are the right person to lead these discussions. I think you should have a seat at the table because your experiences are super valuable,
I am a Black, queer transmasculine person seeking to pursue a career in web development. I want to be able to build platforms to bring people together and make resources more accessible, especially for marginalized communities. I’ve spent most of my working life at non-profit organizations that empower girls and women; advocate for homeless and at-opportunity LGBTQIA youth; and create safer, more inclusive spaces. Three years ago, I stumbled into the tech world through a gig economy platform; one of my jobs was assembling product for an IoT startup. I
Ten years ago you could probably count on one hand the number of angel investors, let alone funds run by people of color [although it is rare even today to see the profiles of female or minority investors in the likes of TechCrunch or Entrepreneur]. Nevertheless, we are starting to see articles showcasing the increased activity in this space such as: 20 Angels Worth Knowing for Minority Startups 15 Black Tech Investors You Need to Know The List of Black Women in VC 28 Black Founders and Investors Making an Impact
When tackling culture bias in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is important to understand how much we use AI in our everyday lives. There are quite a few applications, and while they all have different names, a few of them are becoming more familiar to the general public. There are fields such as machine learning, face recognition, computer vision, virtual and augmented reality. You can also find artificial intelligence in traffic lights, GPS navigation, MRIs, air traffic controller software, speech recognition, and robotics. The point is, unlike the 90s, when AI
