As big Silicon Valley firms up their efforts to diversify their mostly white, male workforces, the Obama administration's TechHire initiative has begun taking applications for grants from a $100 million fund to help boost the development of IT skills in overlooked communities.
This week in social media, Facebook dominated the headlines and Wall Street, as it showed how much it dominates the social media world. Meanwhile an ex-Twitter engineer exposed the company's clunky attempts at diversity and Pinterest officially introduced a new feature that blends perfectly with the reasons people use its network.
In August, Twitter released a diversity report outlining how little diversity there is at the company, along with a set of goals to increase the presence of underrepresented voices in the company that could be described either as modest, or outright disappointing.
Facebook's TechPrep hopes to boost diversity in technology by empowering underrepresented minority students and their parents to get involved in computer science.
Silicon Valley's represnatives are only part of the problem with diversity in technology. The other center of power is known as Sand Hill Road, a part of Silicon Valley that's the center of private equity for the tech industry.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan talked about the importance of closing the diversity gap in technology careers by closing the technology gap in South Texas on Tuesday, as part of the annual Hispanic Engineering, Science, and Technology (HESTEC) week for area middle and high school students.
"In a nutshell, my life's work is really about creating access." Silicon Valley has a diversity problem, and judging from the small annual increase in the number of women and minority hires at tech giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook, progress has been slow.
It's probably a little of both. Late last week, Twitter published an announcement on its blog regarding the company's diversity goals. Depending on your perspective, they are either modest and realistic, or just disappointing.
On Monday, Apple CEO spoke to Good Morning America about the company's role connecting "99 percent" of students to 21st century technologies in the classroom. "I think technology has to be a key part" of public education, he said. "That's why we're here."
Right on the heels of Intel's mixed-result diversity report, last week Apple also released information on its workplace demographics. The second-annual diversity transparency report from the most valuable company in the world yielded a similar mix of promise and progress, albeit slow.
This year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel made a historic pledge to reach full representation of minorities in its company in the next five years, better known as #Parity2020.
The technology industry has a diversity problem. And for Latinas in technology, the problem is doubled: Demographic reports from major Silicon Valley companies show Hispanic employment averages in the single digits, while women make up far less than half of the workforce.
Silicon Valley companies are being pressured to add some diversity to their mostly white, male workforces -- and this time, it's coming from a grassroots hashtag campaign on Twitter.
New data from the 2015 STEM Index, the second-annual study of growth in STEM jobs, careers and educational pathways carried out by U.S. News/Raytheon shows Silicon Valley's lack of diversity is still rooted in education, as the gender and racial gaps in STEM fields have widened since last year.
This week in social media, Facebook released its (disappointing) update on diversity, while setting Messenger free and introducing face-recognition technology so impressive (and creepy), it doesn't need to see your face.
When it comes to reshaping Silicon Valley to be more inclusive and better reflect the makeup of the rest of the country, Intel is leading the way again.
The "Creative for a Cause" campaign and competition, spearheaded by Fiverr and numerous other technology firms, is raising awareness about the need for diversity in the tech field while offering visibility to multicultural artists.
When Deldelp Medina talks about Silicon Valley, it's like she's talking about the neighborhood kids she grew up with. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Medina shares some of Silicon Valley's quirks, appreciates its strengths, but also isn't afraid to call it out on its failures, since she became acquainted with the center of the technology universe -- before anyone knew it would become that.
Stanford University will be launching a new initiative aimed at strengthening Latino ties with the entrepreneurial world and creating one of the most comprehensive databases of Latino entrepreneurs.
