Google CEO discusses black talent pipeline concerns with HBCU executives



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December 21, Former Google Diversity Recruiter April curley tweeted that she was fired from the company in September after repeatedly raising concerns about how the tech channel assesses black graduates.

In recent interviews with CNN Business, Curley argues that his former Google superiors believed that HBCU computer science graduates lacked the technical skills necessary for successful careers in Google technology, and that they routinely resisted his attempts to recruit more tech majors from black colleges, although she says that’s what the company hired her for.

Google declined to comment on Curley’s specific workplace allegations, which came less than a month after the company split from prominent artificial intelligence researcher Timnit Gebru. Curley and Gebru are both black women. Each of their Twitter feeds telling their google experiences went viral in December, sparking outrage in the tech world and questioning Google’s renewed commitment to recruit more black employees following the police murder of George Floyd last year.
The national organization for diversity and inclusion HBCU 20×20 sharply canceled its partnership with Google in response to the controversy, which has caught the attention of administrators at HBCU whose schools have technology exchange partnerships with Google.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a conference in Brussels on January 20, 2020.

Friday’s meeting was hosted by Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, whose nonprofit supports publicly funded HBCUs and other predominantly black institutions. Williams said the presidents of Howard University, Florida A&M University, North Carolina A&T University, Prairie View A&M University, and Morgan State University all participated in a 60-minute virtual session. Friday night minutes with Pichai and seven members of the Google leadership team on working together. forward.

“We are all encouraged by the future partnership,” Google and HBCU executives said in a joint statement emailed to CNN on Friday evening. “The meeting paved the way for a more substantial partnership in a number of areas, from increased hiring to capacity building efforts that will increase the technological talent pool of HBCUs.”

Williams said Gebru and Curley’s allegations about Google were not discussed at the meeting.

“It’s a question of personnel,” he says. “The presidents have said very clearly with regard to the students, if they send students (to Google), they must be feeling good about the situation.”

Ahead of the meeting, Morgan State University President David Wilson hosted a focus group with MSU Google Tech Exchange students and alumni who are currently working at Google to get their feedback on how the company is handling. black students and graduates of HBCU.

Wilson said he told Google at Friday’s meeting that what he heard from Morgan State students was mostly positive.

“One of our black students informed me that she was the first black woman to be part of her immediate team at Google and one of only two blacks on the bigger team,” Wilson told CNN Business. “But she’s never been named. Feeling like she doesn’t belong … They’re having good experiences.”

Denigration accusations

A fall 2020 photo of the Howard University campus.  School & # 39;  is one of many historically black colleges and universities to participate in a technology exchange program with Google.
Thursday night, Curley tweeted that Google had replaced her on its HBCU recruiting team with a white woman, which resulted in online review. Google declined to respond directly to Curley’s claim.

“We have a great team of recruiters who are working incredibly hard to increase the hiring of Black + and other under-represented talent at Google, including a dedicated team who partner up and strengthen our relationships with HBCUs,” said the society.

Curley also accused Google staff members of writing a derogatory report on HBCU graduates in 2014, the year she joined the company, according to her LinkedIn account. Curley said she had a copy of the report, which she said was entitled “Bison project proposalAn apparent reference to the Howard University mascot.

Google said: ‘Our case studies of interview comments and our analysis of programs show that current HBCU (IT) departments are not graduating strong technical talent,’ “Curley wrote, citing the report, in a statement. series of tweets Thursday night. “” HBCU CS students struggle with the most basic of coding, algorithms, and data structures. ‘”

Google said its Google in Residence program, which sends the company’s software engineers to teach computer science classes on HBCU campuses, began in 2013.

“We have been very forthright about the goals of this program and how it is a partnership with the HBCUs,” a Google spokesperson said via email. “We have no comments on the previous proposals.”

Google says it has worked with HBCUs in a number of ways to prepare black students for competitive software engineering internships and full-time positions with the company.This includes the company’s technology exchange programs, its residency in Computer Science at Howard University, known as Howard West, and its Computer Science Summer Institute program for high school students in the United States and Canada.
Last summer, Google pledged to increase black representation at its top ranks and improve representation of leaders of “underrepresented groups” by 30% by 2025. Only 3.7% of the US workforce of Google are black, according to the company’s latest diversity report. In 2019, Google claims to have hired graduates from 19 HBCUs.

“We have extended our recruiting efforts to more than 800 schools,” the company said.

Asked late Friday night, Curley said the black college recruiting successes Google touts are a product of the work she and other members of her team have done over the course of six years. She wasn’t surprised that Morgan State students had positive things to say about their Google experiences.

“These kids were my kids that I brought into the business,” Curley said. “(Google is) able to take credit for this because I laid the groundwork, myself and two other black women.”



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