Right on the heels of Intel's mixed-result diversity report, last week Apple also released information on its workplace demographics. The second-annual diversity transparency report from the most valuable company in the world yielded a similar mix of promise and progress, albeit slow.
This year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel made a historic pledge to reach full representation of minorities in its company in the next five years, better known as #Parity2020.
The National Center for Education Statistics published the latest update for their 2009 High School Transcript Study, which revealed blatant differences in how students of different genders and races earn STEM credits during high school.
New data from the 2015 STEM 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, as the gender and racial gaps in STEM fields have widened since last year.
"Like many people, I do not like going to the dentist," said Kayla Rodriguez. "No offence to dentists," she continued, "but I've had 17 teeth pulled and had braces twice, so I don't want to spend any more time in that chair than I have to." Kayla's career is inspired by that sentiment, even though she works with dentists all the time.
When it comes to reshaping Silicon Valley to be more inclusive and better reflect the makeup of the rest of the country, Intel is leading the way again.
Latinos in Tech Innovation and Social Media, or LATISM, announced it will be holding its seventh annual national convention in late October. With the national election one year away, the theme of this year's LATISM'15 gathering in Washington D.C. will be "Igniting Latinos to Drive the Innovation Economy."
Stanford University will be launching a new initiative aimed at strengthening Latino ties with the entrepreneurial world and creating one of the most comprehensive databases of Latino entrepreneurs.
Intel has announced its 2015 plan for a more diverse workforce, and Google has joined in with its own $150 million initiative to get more women, African Americans, and Latinos into technology.
Latinas are one of the most sought-after consumer groups in the U.S. -- and with the demographic trends underway in the U.S., especially with Latinos being discovered to be incredibly tech savvy -- that influence is only going to grow into the future.
Google has called attention to the "unconscious bias" or "unintentional hiring discrimination" that's present in its own backyard, recognizing how its own lack of diversity has contributed to the overall absence of nonwhites and women in Silicon Valley. But, it aims to address that diversity issue.
The southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California, where the tech mecca Silicon Valley resides, is abundantly populated with Latinos. In fact, the budding Latino community represents 30 percent of the population. However, there's just three percent of Latinos working in the Valley's high-tech workforce,
Last year, Voto Latino launched its Innovators Challenge, a competition for savvy Latinos looking to make a difference in their community with a unique technology-based solution.
Google may have begun last year's ongoing public conversation about the technology industry's lack of diversity by finally being transparent about its workforce demographics, but Intel (which has regularly released such reports for years already) will become the first tech company to do something about it.
