CODE2040 helps tech plan for a non-white-majority USA
Source: Marco della Cava
Fact: Most big tech companies ― from Google to Uber to Airbnb ― have achieved their huge successes with a largely white workforce.
So why bother adding people of color to the ranks if things are just fine as they stand?
Because here's another fact: By the year 2040, the United States will have a non-white majority. In other words, today's playbook for financial victory will soon be outdated.
"Think about it, what if Facebook were founded in 2040, would it be Spanish-language first or English? It's a legitimate question that will be asked soon enough," says Tristan Walker, one of Silicon Valley's few African-American tech entrepreneurs and a co-founder with Laura Weidman Powers of the strategically named non-profit CODE2040.
"If you're a smart company, you'll want an ethnically diverse team empathetic about the needs of your diverse consumers," says Walker, 30, who runs Walker & Company Brands. "What we're doing at CODE2040 isn't charity work. We're trying to help tech organizations because there is a real business imperative here."
Founded in 2012, CODE2040 has a simple mission that dovetails with the growing chorus of social activists, progressive technologists and media outlets pressing Silicon Valley to use its significant brainpower to make tech less of an ivory tower.
The outfit provides college-age African-American and Latino students who have shown an interest in computer science with both an encouraging network of peers and, more pointedly, a summer internship program aimed at placing them at tech companies whose narrowly focused recruiting efforts often overlook them.
“'Companies just looking at the usual schools (for tech hires) are missing the point, because there is simply a lot of talent they're going to miss.'”
Laura Weidman Powers, CEO CODE2040
"We want to create a network of the highest-performing black and Latino technical talent," Walker says. "This group also happens to be among the most culturally influential, the most early adopting. So, if you can inspire the best consuming demographic in the world to be the best producing demographic in the world, imagine the amount of market change you can have in the world."
Of the few dozen CODE2040 Fellows, nearly 90% have seen their 10-week paid ($1,000-a-week minimum) fellowships turn into full-time offers. That's significant considering that the students often hail not from stereotypical tech-company feeder schools such as MIT or Stanford University, but schools such as University of California-Channel Islands and University of Maryland-Baltimore County.
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