Wells Fargo employees conducted “fake interviews” with diverse job candidates, The NY Times reports, with one former executive claiming he was fired after complaining about the practice, which Wells denied. Seven current and former employees, including one former executive, told The Times that they were instructed to interview women and people of color for roles that had already been filled. These efforts, they said, appeared to be a way to show a record of diversity efforts rather than actually hire diverse candidates. The current Wells Fargo employees also told The Times
Back in April 2021, João Gualberto, the district mayor of Mata de São João, held an in-person auction letting Brazilian technology companies bid for a contract to supply facial recognition technology for the public school system. The $162,000 tender was won by PontoiD, and in July that year, two public schools — João Pereira Vasconcelos and Celia Goulart de Freitas — began secretly rolling out the facial recognition system, without informing parents or students in advance, according to research by Rest Of World. Students were registered on the system, which
What does it take to produce hundreds of Doodles a year that celebrate major cultural moments and push critical conversations forward? Perla Campos knows all about it. She leads marketing for Google Doodles, which changes Google’s logo for special occasions. Campos is also a proud Latina who describes her job as “making people feel seen and heard.” Campos usually runs on five-and-a-half hours of sleep, according to her previous media interviews and sometimes she manages about a dozen doodles at a time and is in constant talks with ‘Googlers’ around
As Latin America pushes to build a robust tech sector, the language barrier will remain a major obstacle, especially for high-quality positions, according to some in the industry. This is largely because the English language remains the predominant foundation for coding and an in-demand skill required by tech companies in Mexico and abroad. According to a recent study by the Spain-based IT services firm Everis, 55% of companies in Latin America said that finding the right employee was difficult, while experts estimate that the region will see 10 million new IT job openings by
After securing $32 million in a Series A funding round back in February, Canela Media became one of the largest funded Latino-owned companies. The New York-based digital media technology company was launched in 2019 in an effort to cater to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities and it claims to currently reach more than 50 million unique Hispanic viewers across its over 180 premium Spanish-language websites. Canela’s streaming-video app, Canela.TV, is entirely free and supported by ads. Its app, which was launched in 2020, offers on-demand licensed and original shows, as well as
In 2020 none of the $4.4 billion in venture funding raised in the region went to female founder-led startups. The lack of support in the early stages of entrepreneurship, poor access to capital, and the lack of women investors in venture capital funds are among the main reasons. Of the more than 800 companies recently surveyed by Endeavor and Mastercard for a whitepaper on bridging the gender gap within tech companies in Latin America, only 23% had at least one woman on their founding team, and only 9% had one or more all-female founders. Racial and
More than half the country’s workforce identifies as Black or mixed race in Brazil, yet less than 30% of these workers occupy managerial roles. Beyond the scarcity of Black professionals in IT departments in Brazil, a study by diversity initiative Preta Lab in partnership with consulting firm ThoughtWorks in 2020 found that 50.4% of teams do not have “non-heterosexual” staff. The inclusion of indigenous people and people with disabilities is also nearly absent in Brazil: 85.4% of the participants reported no disabled people in their team, and in 95.9%, there were no
Globally, women in tech make up about 28.8% of the tech workforce as of 2020. While this number is an increase from 25.9% in 2018 and 26.2% in 2019, reports still show it could take 12 years for women to have equal representation in tech. In Africa, it will take even longer. Some members of the Latino and Hispanic communities have long held prominent positions in the world’s largest technology companies, and it’s no surprise because of the talent they possess. But Hispanic women reportedly tend to have a more negative experience with workplace DEI efforts,
What are the best Slack communities for Black tech professionals? With so many out there, it’s hard to decide which ones are right for you. So We’ve compiled a list that you should check out. Below is a list of 17 thriving hubs of discussion, collaboration, and innovation spanning virtually all technical specialisms. As a tech journalist getting involved in these Slack communities has helped me learn a lot in a short space of time. Cleveland Tech The Slack community for North East Ohio’s diverse tech community. Developers, designers and tech people of
Carl is a seasoned product executive with 10 years of experience developing products for the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence industries and specializes in making products that solve urgent problems and are easy to use by anyone. Before founding Boundless Robotics, Carl worked at Rethink Robotics, Neurala, Johnson & Johnson and started another company that manufactured components for the Aerospace, Oil & Gas, and Medical Device Industries. The Boston-based founder started Boundless Robotics with the vision to “create an ecosystem that cultivates health and happiness.” Boundless is using technologies such as
