Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives, Lisa Jackson, is spearheading Apple’s commitment to making all its products carbon-neutral by 2030, starting with the Apple Watch. Jackson, a chemical engineer, served as the first African American US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator before joining Apple in 2013.  Meet Lisa Jackson Jackson completed a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Tulane University. Before Apple, Jackson was appointed by President Barack Obama as EPA Administrator in 2009, making her the
Meet The Latest Tech Startups To Secure $100K From Northwestern Mutual’s Black Founder Accelerator
Northwestern Mutual, a financial services organization, has announced this year’s fall cohort of five Black-owned tech startups to its Black Founder Accelerator program for the third year. Now in its third year, the accelerator is one of the core components of Northwestern Mutual’s Sustained Action for Racial Equity (SARE) initiative. SARE was created to advance bold, sustainable change that accelerates the company’s commitment to fight racism, prejudice, and social injustice, focusing on the Black and African American community. The Black Founder Accelerator The accelerator invests in up to 10 companies
Industry Link is a unique self-funded initiative to unite New York’s young Black professionals working across tech, media, entertainment, and aligned industries. Created by young Black professionals for young Black professionals, the platform offers a series of free private mixers in New York City. The events are dedicated to breaking down the cliques, kicking back, showing off your latest fits, and catching up with old and new friends across industries at different venues around the city. “This is the place to find the next person who’s gonna put you on, and
According to The Information, Meta is paying creators such as Snoop Dogg millions for AI chatbots, with the top creator making as much as $5 million over two years for six hours of work in a studio. During Meta’s Connect event in September, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will be integrating new AI assistants across its social media platforms that can have human-like conversations. While the company has its own AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, it has now introduced 28 new ones with different personalities that use celebrities’ images. These
Online resource business Hello Alice is the latest company to be named in a lawsuit for allegedly discriminating against business owners based on race. A class action lawsuit alleges the company’s partnership with Progressive Insurance Company, which offered $25,000 grants to 10 Black-owned small businesses, violates civil rights. Hello Alice and Progressive Partnership Hello Alice, founded by Carolyn Rodz and Elizabeth Gore in 2017, is a digital platform helping small businesses launch and grow through access to capital. They partner with corporations looking to reach and support new entrepreneurs through
The California Senate Bill 54 (SB 54) has been signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, requiring venture capital firms in the state to report the diversity of the founders they back annually. This is the first piece of legislation in the US that aims to address racial disparities in the venture capital (VC) landscape. There is currently no official data on how VC firms invest their money founder and tech activist who helped ideate and draft SB 54, Allison Byers said. She added that California is responsible for 36%
Wicked Saints, a Black woman-led video game studio, has secured $3.5 million in seed funding. The funding round, co-led by Riot Games and Oregon Venture Fund, brings the studio’s total funding to $4.6 million Jessica Murrey, Wicked Saints’ founder and CEO, also joins the small group of Black women founders who have raised over $1 million. Learning Real-World Skills Through Gaming World Reborn is Gen Z’s take on Pokémon Go, offering a unique blend of storytelling, real-world activism, and location-based play. The studio’s flagship game, “World Reborn,” merges the digital
Elon Musk’s aerospace manufacturing company, SpaceX, is facing a class action lawsuit for alleged wage discrimination based on gender and race. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that SpaceX systematically pays its women and minority employees less than their white male counterparts for equivalent job roles. Same work, different pay Ashley Foltz, a propulsion engineer at SpaceX, joined the company in September 2022. She was hired at a salary of $92,000, while her white male counterparts with similar or less experience were offered as much
Student surveillance technologies disproportionately harm Black, Latine, and Indigenous students, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has revealed. The findings come from the ACLU’s “Digital Dystopia” report examining the EdTech Surveillance (educational technologies used for surveillance) industry in US K-12 schools. Increased surveillance tech in schools Over the last two decades, the EdTech sector that markets student surveillance products to schools has grown into a $3.1 billion-a-year economic market, with a projected 8% annual growth rate. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, almost 80% of elementary schools have
A recent analysis by Bloomberg News has revealed that people of color accounted for 94% of new hires at the US’ largest public companies in the year after the Black Lives Matter protests. The proportion of managerial and executive roles held by people of color increased by about two percentage points – more than double the average increases in previous years. However, white people remained overrepresented in the top, highly-paid positions. A major shift The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires companies with 100 or more employees to report
