NEWS

The nation's chief technology officer bounds into the cavernous U.S. Capitol Visitors Center with the fresh eyes of a tourist and immediately notices that few of the statues are of women. "I always notice these things because they send a message," said Megan Smith, just nine months into her job as President Obama's top policy adviser on technology. The message is that women aren't a big part of American history. And subtle as it may be, the impression feeds into a vast reservoir of cultural signals that ultimately hold women back, she says.

Stephen Henderson speaks with Michael Evans from Loveland Technologies and PishPosh.tv about NPR’s All Tech Considered‘s #RaceOnTech campaign, which highlights the diverse community of innovators in science and technology. As a part of the program, a dozen of the best and brightest chosen by NPR will be live-tweeting a day in their life this week. Evans was nominated by NPR’s Michel Martin to participate in the Twitter chat. He comes in the studio to speak about his experience in the tech world.

Computer Weekly's annual event to announce our list of the 50 most influential women in UK IT has become our most popular event of the year. We're delighted with the way the IT community has engaged with the programme to recognise and promote the amazing female role models in technology. The programme goes from strength to strength. This year, we had nearly 150 women nominated for the list - three times the number when the list was first put together in 2012. Our online reader vote attracted over 7,500 votes - 50% more than the previous year. And the social media activity around the announcement this week generated more than 10 million Twitter impressions from over 1,100 tweets.

Rainbow PUSH Coalition partnered with Google to present a forum at Google headquarters in Los Angeles in the last week of June. The forum is part of an ongoing program to open up pathways into the tech industry, as well as increase diversity in Silicon Valley. Reverend Jesse Jackson, founding president of Rainbow PUSH, and Google executives discussed the efforts of religious and social development organizations led by Jackson, along with a panel of tech executives who explored the best ways to increase diversity and innovation in technology.