Coalition of Tech Companies and Academic Experts Launch Unprecedented Report to Transform Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Outcomes within Tech Industry
October 28 2021 - 5:30AM
Business Wire
Over 30 CEOs and Leaders from Leading Tech
Companies Pledge to Take Action and Drive Change
Today a coalition of 29 leading diversity, equity, and inclusion
(DEI) experts from academia and the tech industry released a new
report, Action to Catalyze Tech (ACT), which calls on tech
companies to commit to bold, collective action by open-sourcing DEI
best practices, encouraging collaboration on systemic solutions,
and increasing accountability to drive change.
Convened by the Aspen Institute, the National Center for Women
& Information Technology (NCWIT), PwC, and Snap Inc., a
cross-industry working group partnered for over a year to aggregate
relevant, research-based actions that businesses can take to help
radically improve DEI outcomes. The ACT Report compiles this
research in one place and provides a blueprint and tools for
companies at all stages — from startups to mature organizations —
to implement to drive internal and sector-wide change. The full
report is available here: https://actreport.com/.
Over 30 CEOs and executives from leading technology
organizations, including Airbnb, Apple, Dropbox, Etsy, Google,
LinkedIn, Twitter, Salesforce, Spotify, and Uber, have committed to
being founding signatories of the ACT Report, pledging to hold
themselves and their companies accountable to accelerate progress
toward achieving DEI success. Together, these founding signatories
represent more than 500,000 tech employees.
As part of the pledge, company signatories commit to developing
company-specific strategies for pursuing or enhancing activity
around the report’s four recommendations, which include:
- Model and incentivize inclusive leadership, including by
recognizing DEI as a business imperative.
- Operationalize DEI throughout the business by applying a
framework to address how to spend money (supplier diversity),
design and build products (product inclusion), and think about
talent.
- Share DEI demographic data with a new industry partner, the
Tech Equity Accountability Mechanism, incubated by the Aspen
Institute, with the goal of creating industry-wide standards for
reporting such data.
- Transform future pathways into tech for underrepresented
talent, including by helping solve the acute lack of computer
science teachers from underrepresented backgrounds.
“The tech industry remains dominated by white men," said Vivian
Schiller, Executive Director of Aspen Digital, a program of the
Aspen Institute. “Justice for underrepresented communities requires
sustained commitment, transparency, and accountability from
leadership, and that’s what we strive toward with Catalyze Tech. We
are glad that so many tech companies are committing to implement
recommendations made in this report, and eager to support the
sector on the path to true equity.”
“Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion is more than a
numbers game. True change occurs when company leaders remove the
systemic biases and barriers to fostering inclusive organizational
cultures,” said Lucy Sanders, CEO and Founder, NCWIT. “It is
imperative that we continue to call upon tech companies to take
action, and contribute to making the tech industry a more accurate
reflection of a broad society.”
“So often the tech industry moves fast and shoots for the stars
— yet when it comes to diversity and inclusion, the industry’s
progress has been agonizingly slow. It is long past time for
urgency and accountability, and the ACT Report sets out a tangible
roadmap for companies of all sizes,” said Oona King, Vice President
of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Snap Inc. and the Chair of
the Catalyze Tech Working Group. “Collective action is key, and
needs everyone in business — from CEOs to interns — to be inspired
to act.”
“Diversity, equity and inclusion must be treated with the same
prioritization, investment and rigor as other C-Suite priorities —
it demands collaboration, accountability and transparency to help
accelerate systemic and sustainable change,” said Shannon Schuyler,
Chief Purpose & Inclusion Officer at PwC US. “The commitments
laid out in the ACT report strive to do just that, from the talent
we hire, to the suppliers we work with, to the products we create —
inspiring a culture of belonging should be felt through every
corner of an organization if we are to drive change at scale.”
The full list of companies that have signed on to commit to the
report’s recommendations at launch are: Airbnb; Apple; Ariel
Investments; Cisco; DoorDash; Dropbox; Etsy; Google; Headspace
Health; Justworks; LinkedIn; Maven; Netflix; Nextdoor; PwC; Ro;
Salesforce; Snap; Spotify; Twitter; Uber; Vimeo; Warby Parker; and
Wipro; along with PledgeLA and the companies that form the Alliance
for Global Inclusion: Applied Materials, Dell, Intel, Micron
Technology, Nasdaq, and NTT Data.
On November 3, Catalyze Tech will convene the first annual DEI
Innovation Summit, which will bring together CEOs and leaders from
signatory companies, DEI experts, and advocates to discuss
cross-industry alignment, and how to put the report’s
recommendations into action. The Summit, held virtually, will begin
at 9:00 a.m. PT, and it will be available to watch for free
here.
Learn more about this effort at ACTReport.com.
About Catalyze Tech
Catalyze Tech is a new initiative to align the tech industry
around collective action for diversity, equity, and inclusion
(DEI), based on the belief that outcomes cannot be transformed by
any one leader or company alone. They are an industry-wide
challenge that must be tackled by working together.
The coalition’s founding recommendations, released in its Action
to Catalyze Tech (ACT) Report, were developed over the course of a
year by a cross-industry working group of academics, DEI experts,
think tanks, and tech companies, with the goal of bringing
companies together to define industry standards for DEI and
determine and commit to the collective action needed to solve
systemic inequity in tech.
The working group that developed the report included experts and
academics from AnitaB.org; Aspen Digital, a program of the Aspen
Institute; Bennington College; Brookings Institution; Computing
Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions, University of Texas at
El Paso; Constellations Center for Equity in Computing at the
Georgia Institute of Technology; Coqual; CSforAll; Expanding
Diversity and Gender Equity in Tech (EDGE in Tech)™ Initiative at
the University of California; Google; Harvard Business School;
IncluSTEM; Kapor Center; LA-Tech.org; Management Leadership for
Tomorrow; National Center for Women & Information Technology;
Powered By Decisions, LLC; PwC; QSIDE Institute; Reboot
Representation; Scholastic Education Solutions; Snap Inc.;
University of Massachusetts Amherst; and the Women and Public
Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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