News 2

08 Jul Innovate Finance dubs UK a fintech diversity hub

Innovate Finance says financial technology is one of the easiest places to find diversity in business, and the UK has it in spades

07 Jul Diversity in Tech: 2015 STEM Index Indicates Positive Trends for Minorities in STEM, But Race, Gender Gap Worsens

New data from the 2015 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) 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. The gender and racial gaps in STEM fields have widened since last year. The 2015 STEM Index was created as a way to track the growth of STEM degrees and jobs against baseline statistics pulled from the year 2000.

07 Jul Addressing Diversity in Tech Should Go Beyond Gender

I commend companies for continuing the diversity discussion within the Venture Capital and Technology communities. It takes courage and self reflection to publicly admit that you are not currently where you need to be. However, I believe companies could be even more proactive. A recent KPCB report broke down the company’s employee gender diversity but omitted ethnicity data. A note at the bottom of the report read, “We plan to add ethnicity data to this page in time."

06 Jul Twitter employs only 49 African Americans despite diversity pledges

Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff. The Rev Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, who has long campaigned for tech companies to be more transparent about their lack of minority employees, told the Guardian that black people are “becoming intolerant” of Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies’ lack of progress in making their offices more diverse.

06 Jul London’s diversity is one of the strongest attributes of its tech ecosystem

At the recent PreMoney conference in Silicon Valley, an uncomfortable discussion about racial diversity happened on stage. The speakers, Ellen Pao and Dave McClure, were trying to highlight an issue that is rarely spoken about: the under-representation of ethnic minorities in the US tech industry.

02 Jul Facebook only hired seven black people in latest diversity count

Facebook is still dominated by white men despite Mark Zuckerberg’s repeated promise to get serious about building a workforce that better reflects the diversity of its 1.4 billion global users. In its diversity report released on Thursday the social network company revealed that more than half of its US staff are white, with the proportion dropping slightly from 57% to 55%. The proportion of Asian employees increased by 2% to 36%, but the shares of hispanic and black people or those of “two or more races” remained flat at 4%, 2% and 3% respectively.