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…

By Jared Karol In today’s Diversity & Inclusion Spotlight, we hear from Aubrey Blanche, Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Atlassian. Aubrey’s role focuses on working with teams across the business to enhance access to technical education, recruiting, retention, and career mobility for underrepresented minorities. Change Catalyst: What are you currently working on to improve diversity and inclusion in tech? Aubrey: Atlassian is a global software company that makes a suite of collaboration products for teams,…

Marco Rogers of Clover Health speaking at Tech Inclusion 2016 By Jared Karol When Marco Rogers moved to the Bay Area five years ago from Washington, D.C., it was his first introduction to startup culture. As a black man in tech, he had been recruited pretty hard, but he didn’t expect to see too many people who looked like him. It was a surprise, then, when the first person he sat down with was another black…

Rachel Williams, Head of Corporate Recruiting, Diversity & Inclusion at Yelp speaking at Tech Inclusion 2016 By Jared Karol As head of Diversity and Inclusion at Yelp, Rachel Williams is responsible for creating a diverse workforce — including ethnic and gender diversity, sexual orientation, disability and veteran status, and folks who are more senior in age. But more important than the numbers, she says, is that all people from all these groups feel included. How is she going…

Thanks, Mark. We agree and hope more teams realize the benefits you’ve listed.