Jesse Jackson gets Silicon Valley to talk diversity
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Jesse Jackson spent the better part of this year imploring high-tech companies to include more African-Americans, Latinos and women among their employees.
Turns out, identifying and acknowledging the problem may be the easy part.
On Wednesday, at a Silicon Valley summit organized by Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition and hosted by Intel, the conversation was how to change the face of tech companies that for decades have been predominately young white and Asian men.
"This takes time, it is hard," said Rosalind Hudnell, chief diversity officer at Intel. "We're trying to drive change in big, complex environments that move fast."
"There's nothing we can't do," Jackson said in a rousing, 25-minute speech to about 300 people from 25 companies, including Google, Cisco Systems, Pandora and Microsoft.
"There is a talent surplus in this room," said Jackson, the civil rights icon who recently met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and is scheduled to sit down with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich on Thursday. "We come in today to partner, to two-way trade — not to destroy … but to realize the American dream for all."
The focus of Wednesday's half-day summit was to drill down on the problem and come up with solutions. The tech industry is, after all, a solutions-oriented business, Jackson said.
Yolanda Mangolini, Google's director of global diversity, said widening the pipeline of talent is especially important at the search engine giant, half of whose workforce are engineers.
Van Jones, founder of #YesWeCode, an ambitious project to teach 100,000 low-income youth to code, said the talent is out there: It just needs someone to provide opportunity.
Silicon Valley leaves "too much genius on the table" by not including more diverse ideas and talent, which will translate into better ideas, products and — ultimately — sales. "We just need someone to open the door for the next Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg," he said.
Rigid institutions and infrastructure, however, remain nagging obstacles, said Gwen Houston, general manager of global diversityat Microsoft, who acknowledged there has been little progress because tech leaders are not held accountable.
"There is no urgency to change things" if companies are as successful as Microsoft and others have been, Houston said to boisterous applause. She made her case to then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who took action to diversify the software giant's executive team and board.
To underscore his company's commitment to diversity, current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Jackson earlier this month. "(Tech leaders) need a little pushing," Jackson said Wednesday.
