In the fall of 2015, Change Catalyst launched its first Tech Inclusion Conference in San Francisco with the goal of creating safe spaces to have conversations around diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. Change Catalyst co-founders Melinda Epler and Wayne Sutton spent nine months leading up to the conference analyzing the issues and found that there were systematic problems in the tech ecosystem — primarily in four main areas: workplace, policy, education, and entrepreneurship. The Tech…

By: Jared Karol “Not all accelerators are created equally.” This sage advice was shared by Andrea Barrica to founders from diverse backgrounds at last fall’s Tech Inclusion Conference in San Francisco. Andrea is an Entrepreneur in Residence and Venture Partner at 500 Startups, a global VC seed fund investing in diverse startups all over the world. She goes on to say that “[You] should be weary of accelerators. Money is money but it’s really about what…

By: Jared Karol Listen to the full podcast with Hadiyah Mujhid here. Hadiyah Mujhid, founder of the company HBCU to Startup, a platform that connects students from HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to tech opportunities, attributes many of her career decisions to the fact that her first manager out of college as a software engineer was black. Having this manager in her first role allowed her to navigate some of the difficult conversations she was having…

By Jared Karol In today’s Diversity & Inclusion Spotlight, we hear from Fran Benjamin, Diversity Strategy Lead at Airbnb. He works with leaders as well as employees to design strategic solutions and facilitate immersive learning experiences that unleash human potential. Change Catalyst: What are you currently working on to improve diversity and inclusion in tech? Fran: My role is twofold. First, I serve as a strategist within our Diversity & Belonging COE. I design belonging into the…

By: Jared Karol Speaking on a panel at San Francisco’s Tech Inclusion Conference in October 2016, Landon Dickey, Special Assistant for African American Achievement & Leadership at San Francisco Unified School District, had this to say about building STEM Pathways from schools into tech companies: “Our beliefs start to solidify early on in terms of what we’re capable of, and where we belong. We have to start addressing and breaking down those mindsets as early as…

Leslie Miley, Director of Engineering at Slack speaking at Tech Inclusion 2016 By Jared Karol Speaking at last October’s Tech Inclusion Conference in San Francisco, Leslie Miley, (@shaft) Director of Engineering at Slack, joked to a diverse audience about the lack of diversity in tech, “If anything happens today — if there’s a tsunami — it’s going to be really bad for the rest of tech.” The line drew laughter and applause, as did his comments about tech companies repeating the…

By Jared Karol Imagine the scene: You’re visiting a country where you don’t speak the language fluently. In one-on-one conversations you can get by well enough. But in a group setting, there’s just too much going on to fully engage in the discussion — people are talking too quickly, more than one person is talking at a time, their faces are turned away from you. You can’t keep up, and ultimately, you end up being excluded from the conversation….

By Jared Karol What drives people to create inclusive communities? For Maica Gil, founder of the San Francisco International Women Entrepreneurs Forum, the answer stems from being an immigrant and a woman. With the confluence of three continents — Europe, Latin America, and Africa — in her blood, Maica says bluntly that it would be nonsense to say anything against any other person or group, as she likely would fall into one of those buckets herself. This perspective of inclusivity…

Fireside Chat with David Drummond of Alphabet: How Data Combined with a Mindset Change Will Lead to More Diversity in Tech By Jared Karol Nearly three decades ago, when David Drummond, Senior Vice President Of Corporate Development for Alphabet, first came out of law school and joined a firm that worked with startup companies, there weren’t a lot of people who looked like him in Silicon Valley. This was an obvious issue because when people are used…