The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) and Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) have announced $50,000 in scholarships for 14 first-generation Latino students pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). According to research by the Pew Centre, Hispanic and Latino workers make up 17% of the workforce but only 8% of people working in STEM. TELACU and SoCalGas’ collaboration couldn’t have come at a better time. The companies have partnered on initiatives to address social inequality and help students navigate the education system over the last three decades.
According to a new report by Coding Black Females, the proportion of Black women working in tech is disproportionately smaller than in the rest of the UK workforce. Why are “thousands” of Black women missing from the tech industry? The Office of National Statistics data found that Black women make up 1.8% of the UK workforce but less than 0.6% of the technology sector. Furthermore, although women’s representation in tech has increased marginally over the past five years, Black women are still lagging. Not only do Black women have to undergo biased
Software platform Adobe has partnered with HBCUs across the US to provide more Black Americans with the skillsets needed to prevail in the competitive tech industry. According to a study by Zippia, Black people currently make up 13.6% of the US population but only 7% of the tech industry. Abode’s investments aim to inspire students to express their ideas in a compelling, digital-first world and provide them with critical digital literacy skills needed to thrive in the modern workforce. “To create products that solve challenging problems for people all over the world, companies
A Latino Corporate Directors Association (LCDA) report has revealed a lack of Latinx representation on giant company boards. Lack of representation on company boards According to the LCDA, Latino directors are missing from 47% of Fortune 100, 59% of Fortune 500, and 65% of Fortune 1000 boards. This means companies seriously lack Latino/Hispanic representatives on a higher level. Despite Latinx people making up the second largest US population, with a total of 62.1 million, there has been no change in Fortune 100 companies adopting more diverse practices by having Hispanic/Latino representation on their
Olympic gold medalists Lauryn Williams and Sanya Richards-Ross, also of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, are embarking on a new journey in the venture capital space. As Debut Capital company investors, Lauryn Williams and Richards-Ross have become two of the first venture capitalists to invest in the Black-owned hiring platform Us In Technology (UIT). “We are incredibly excited about helping UIT connect many more people of color, women, military veterans, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community to life-changing opportunities within the tech industry,” said Richards-Ross. From Athletes
Annie Jean-Baptiste, head of product inclusion and equity at Google, is on a mission to make product inclusion and equity a critical part of tech. Who is Annie Jean-Baptiste? After 10 years at Google, Jean-Baptiste now leads the diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) team, pushing the tech giant to take marginalized users into account when building its products. According to Jean-Baptiste, the idea to focus on product inclusion came about after she noticed that many things like culture and representation were internally important but were forgotten about when designing new
From street vendor to software engineer, Devin Jackson, founder of We Build Black, is on a mission to achieve socio-economic change by offering the community tech education and professional development. We Build Black, founded in 2017 by Devin Jackson, is a non-profit organization that has evolved from a one-person-only team to a volunteer-run group that aims to support thousands of members looking to advance their careers. Unlike traditional software engineers, Jackson never went to high school or college; he instead set up his own business selling graffiti t-shirts and comedy tickets on
Brazil-based startup, Gen-t, is an organization at the forefront of medical evolution. The startup, founded by Lygia da Veiga Pereira in 2021, is a company built on advancing science and medical technology. Gen-t’s mission is to diversify global genomic data to help fasten medical breakthroughs and make novel discoveries based on different phenotypes. Despite being new, the organization has managed to raise $2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Eduardo Mufarej. “The field keeps saying that we need diversity, but most of the diversity in the world is in countries with
Businesses in the US and Canada can now self-identify as Black-owned on Tripadvisor. The world’s largest travel guidance company decided to launch the new feature after research showed that 77% of Black-owned businesses and 63% of Hispanic/Latinx-owned businesses actively use their platform. Tripadvisor aims to use the data gathered on its users to help make accommodation providers and restaurants-owners feel safe and welcomed on the platform. Now more than ever, it is crucial that POC-led businesses get the recognition they deserve to help amplify their voice and make their businesses
Christian Smalls, primarily recognized as the brains behind the movement to unionize Amazon warehouse workers, was threatened by police in New York. Smalls, who Amazon infamously fired, led one of the first labor actions of the pandemic in 2020. After being fed up with the company’s unsafe practices, he decided to fight back, which put many workers’ lives at risk. So what happened? Earlier this week, workers at the warehouse in New York attempted to join the Amazon Labour Union. While organizing the rally at a fulfillment center bus stop,
