People of color are more likely to work irregular and prolonged hours, contributing to long-term health issues, according to a new study by Wen-Jui Han, a professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work. Even among Black professionals and other minorities in office jobs, Han tells Fortune, there’s a pressure to work longer hours to succeed. Long, irregular work hours Han’s study utilized data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which tracked over 7,000 U.S. workers from age 22 to 50. She found that employees, especially people of color,
A high school athletic director in Baltimore has been accused of using AI to impersonate a principal on an audio recording that included racist and antisemitic comments, authorities said on Thursday. The principal was placed on leave and had police outside his home after he received hate-filled messages and death threats over the fake recoridng. What Happened? Dazhon Darien, a 31-year-old high school athletic director in Maryland, reportedly created the AI audio recording to retaliate against Pikesville High School’s principal Eric Eisworth. Eisworth was investigating Darien over allegations that he
Nigeria’s Chowdeck, an on-demand delivery platform, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding to fuel its growth. Chowdeck With households in Nigeria spending nearly 60% of their income on food and the rise of online shopping, Chowdeck aims to make its mark in the space. The platform was founded by Femi Aluko, Olumide Ojo, and Landre Yusuf to offer consumers the option of ordering food and delivering it within an average of 30 minutes. “Ordering food in Nigeria would usually take one or two hours,” Aluko said as he described how his trip to Dubai was one
Venita Cooper and Vincent Sanders have created an AI-powered sneaker resale price-prediction startup – Arbit. According to their website, Arbit is the only price prediction model designed to empower sneaker buyers to get fair prices in the resell market. They collect real-time prices from trusted sites, providing pricing insights and trend analysis that allows users to shop prices on one app. Arbit’s Journey Cooper’s passion for sneaker culture began in 2019 when she opened Silhouette Sneakers and Art in Tulsa, which attracted attention from Brian Brackeen in 2021. After more than four years in the business, Cooper announced
Toro Taxes and Trez, two Latine-owned companies, have formed a strategic partnership to better deliver their services to Latine entrepreneurs across the U.S. The Partnership The Latine market represents nearly 19% of the country’s population and continues to be the fastest-growing demographic in the US. Toro Taxes, the largest Hispanic tax preparation and business services franchise in the U.S., operates over 200 locations nationwide. Trez, a specialized payroll and benefits platform designed for the Latine community, will serve as the primary platform for onboarding the Toro Taxes’ clients onto the
Black-owned AI analytics platform AI Squared has announced a $13.8 million Series A funding round led by Ansa Capital with participation from Latimer Ventures, NEA and Ridgeline. AI Squared As investments in AI increase, data science teams in businesses and governments are looking to implement AI models that can utilize more value from their data to improve decision-making. AI Squared, founded in 2019 by Benjamin Harvey, PhD, helps organizations deliver data and AI insights into their business applications. The company estimates that up to 90% of AI models enterprises develop do not make it
A national program, The Hidden Genius Project, teaches technology and entrepreneurship to young Black men in Chicago and around the US. The Hidden Genius Project The project was founded in 2012 by five Black male entrepreneurs and technologists who had noticed the high unemployment of Black male youth and the large number of careers in tech. To address the challenge, they created a program to connect young Black males with the skills, mentors and experiences needed to become high-performing entrepreneurs and technologists. “The hidden genius project trains and mentors Black male youth in
Cincinnati woman Azizah Nubia created Cincy Black Travel Guide to connect visitors with cultural events and Black businesses in the area. After attending Black Tech Week during its run in the Tri-State area, Nubia noticed other people of color weren’t familiar with Cincinnati’s Black community’s annual events and activities. This sparked her idea to create a platform in July 2023, to make it easier for travellers to find and enjoy what Black people had to offer in the city. Cincy’s Black Travel Guide Cincy’s Black Travel Guide is a digital tool accessed via the website or
Large U.S. employers are 9.5% more likely to contact candidates with names that suggested they were white than those presumed to be Black, a new study has revealed. Uncovering Systematic Bias In a study by leading economists Evan Rose, Patrick Kline and Christopher Walters, approximately 80,000 fabricated résumés were sent out 10,000 jobs at 97 of the largest companies in the U.S. The experiment explored racial and gender biases by alternating names on résumés to imply different ethnicities and genders—such as Latisha or Amy (suggesting Black or white women) and Lamar or
Digital health startup Acclinate has partnered with Quilt.AI to enhance its Black maternal health initiatives through AI and cultural understanding. Increasing Culturally Competent Healthcare Professionals Black women in the U.S. are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Acclinate is a digital health startup focused on improving health equity through technology and community engagement, particularly within communities of color. Thanks to Acclinate’s NOWINCLUDED community platform, significant strides have been made in understanding the healthcare needs of Black mothers over the past year. Data from the Mommy Listening
