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Tech is an industry known for its speed.
Companies can go from zero to millions, if not billions, in a short time. Products seem to be constantly evolving and applications are being updated literally overnight.
Nevertheless, there is one area in which the sector has experienced very little movement – diversity.
The latest diversity reports from TwitterGoogle and Facebook indicate that less than 5% of enterprise technical workers identify as blacks. In Silicon Valley as a whole, blacks and Hispanics represent between 3% and 6% of workers, and women of color 1% or less.
The racial imbalance in technology persists for a variety of reasons, including negative stereotypes, island networks, and barriers to obtaining venture capital. And studies suggest that Blacks in the industry are particularly concerned.
More: Facebook's efforts for diversity fail African-American and Hispanic women
More: Jesse Jackson Calls Big Techs to Redouble Diversity Efforts – and Understand What's Not Working
In fact, according to Pew Research data from 2018, 84% of Blacks employed in the occupations of science, technology, engineering and mathematics place a high value on the diversity of workplaces, compared to 49 % of whites.
59% of Hispanics and 64% of Asians said they thought racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace was extremely or very important.
Despite the difficulties, the list of people working to change the prospects of the industry is long, as more and more blacks take leading roles in technology companies, develop products and start their own businesses .
"All my experience in the industry over the past 10 years has created this desire to create solutions to these problems," said Jewel Burks Solomon, a black race. She co-founded the Partpic visual recognition technology start-up in 2013 and sold it to Amazon for an undisclosed amount in 2016.
"There are many promises in the industry to level the playing field. That's why I spend a lot of time giving others a chance to flourish," said Solomon Burks.
Since selling his business to Amazon, Burks Solomon has invested in seven black-owned businesses and has partnered with three other black entrepreneurs to launch a project called Collab, an investment company that connects homeowners Black businesses with investors, resources and partners.
According to Pew Research, about half of STEM workers believe that limited access to quality education is one of the main reasons why blacks and Hispanics are under-represented in STEM jobs.
Kimberly Bryant, founder of the Black Girls Code (BGC), is working to introduce a large network of color girls of excellent academic standing in computer science.
Since its launch in 2011, BGC has introduced computer science to more than 8,000 girls, with 13 chapters in the United States and an international chapter in Johannesburg. By 2040, Bryant wants to reach 1 million girls.
"We want to see companies make an effort in good faith and put concrete initiatives behind their commitment to diversity," Bryant told US TODAY in 2018.
Nine of the biggest advocates of technological diversity in Silicon Valley pose in the United States. January 4, in San Francisco, the first ranks (Brandon Nicholson, Freada Kapor Klein, Kimberly Bryant, Wayne Sutton and Tristan Walker). Back row (From left to right) Makinde Adeagbo, Charles Hudson, Erica Joy Baker, Dr. Kortney Ziegler. (Photo11: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY & # 39; HUI)
Nevertheless, there are a large number of black professionals like Burks Solomon and Bryant who succeeded despite the difficulties. Many hold the technology industry for its low number of minority professionals.
Take Erica Joy Baker, for example, who is the principal responsible for group engineering at Microsoft. Baker has called the technology industry on Twitter for years to focus on diversity.
She also mobilized her colleagues to create a salary spreadsheet that she said exposed some of the inequality when she was working at Google.
"I consider it's my job to hold businesses accountable until things get better," Baker told USA Today in 2016, when she was working as chief engineer at Slack. "I'm trying to keep moving the needle, to make sure the items we have not talked about, the ones swept under the rug, are discussed and resolved."
Here are the top 10 companies.
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Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter @Dalvin_Brown
Read or share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/02/18/black-professionals-helping-others-launch-careers-tech/2869981002/
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