It’s no secret that tech companies and their products have bias issues baked right into them. At the top 75 companies in tech, only 3% of employees are Black, according to a 2020 study from San Jose State University. And when it comes to the tech products themselves, some algorithms equate beauty with light skin, while artificial intelligence has trouble recognizing Black and brown faces.
A growing number of people are working to put an end to these problems. Sharae Gibbs is an interaction designer with Google and runs a company called She Designs Creative Agency, which offers women of color and nonbinary people job training for the tech industry.
“When I was starting out in my career, eight or nine years ago, I was always the only person of color that was also a woman that was in the room, designing and actually working on products,” says Gibbs. “I was able to add value in this way. Because maybe from my culture, I had an insight that the people in the room didn’t have.”
Gibbs joined hosts Michal Lev-Ram and Brian O’Keefe on Coins2Day Brainstorm, a podcast about how technology is changing our lives, to talk about the important work going on to ensure the technology industry reflects the world’s diversity.
Also on the show is Nikkia Reveillac, the head of research at Twitter. Reveillac’s team is, in part, responsible for understanding the kinds of experiences users have on the platform. She talked to Lev-Ram and O’Keefe about helping users have a healthy and safe experience, Black Twitter, the spread of false information, and much more.
Rounding out the episode is Mutale Nkonde, CEO of AI for the People, a nonprofit communications agency. The mission of AFP is to grow the number of Black professionals who work at American technology companies.
“The institutions themselves need to change and need to really address the racial bias of white supremacy [and] misogyny, within their ranks,” says Nkonde. “And in its place, we have to cocreate [for] all of us, including white people, the type of workplaces that share power.”
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