By: Julia Kryzan
In a concerted effort to address the systemic issues causing racial discrimination throughout the country, the University of Washington’s Foster Tech Club held a virtual event centered around diversity and inclusion and creating a more equitable world.
Organizers Jessica Hatz, Foster Tech Club President 2020-2021, and Harshal Agarwal, Foster Tech Club Executive Vice President 2020-2021, aimed to empower attendees to be the next generation of changemakers in the tech industry. The key themes of the event were access to technology, building strong networks, the urgent need for diverse voices and how to be an active ally.
“At Foster, we learned that business is all about how we can identify an unmet need, define a clear problem around it, break the problem into subproblems and then address them,” said Agarwal. “When George Floyd’s life was taken, we realized that the problem was staring right at us, waiting for someone to address it. This event was our small way to raise awareness in the business and tech community to drive awareness and equip future leaders with the knowledge of the problem, which they can then address in due course of time.”
The half-day event featured thought-leaders from Washington’s 10th Congressional district, University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, VMWare, GMI, Netflix, Amazon, Coconut Software, Remitly and Cisco who helped shed light on diversity in the tech industry and how to create long-lasting change.
At the event, speakers addressed lack of access to broadband and technology and how this has only gotten worse due to COVID-19, creating new barriers to entry, especially for the BIPOC community. Understanding the underlying causes of the digital divide requires understanding the socioeconomic conditions of those who are most affected.
According to a 2015 McKinsey report, companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity were 35 percent more likely to have greater returns than the industry average.
In addition to race, the speakers also addressed the growing disparities based on gender and for the LGBTQ+ community. According to the McKinsey report, in 2015, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15 percent more likely to have greater returns than the industry average.
Allyship is the key to igniting meaningful change. Industry leaders at the conference shared how they are actively working to create change in the tech-field by using inclusive language, and encouraging employees to include their pronouns.
The Foster Tech Club hopes to continue to participate in the conversation, spread awareness, and also incite change by expanding their offerings and holding more diversity and equity events in the future.
“Fostering Tomorrow’s Tech Leaders: Managing for Equity represented an initiative to learn from the past, evaluate the present, raise awareness, foster conversations and provide tools to the Foster community to drive a more equitable future for BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ people within the tech industry and greater society,” said Hatz.