Attract. Retain. Promote: Building a Diverse Technology Workforce
Thursday 11th November, 1pm EST/ 10am PST/ 6pm GMT
For many of our clients, equity, diversity, and inclusion are top priorities. Businesses are increasingly recognizing the value of diverse teams. Yet even the most well-meaning businesses can struggle to effectively build technology teams that reflect the rich diversity of society.
One challenge all businesses face is how to develop an ED&I strategy that effectively speaks to professionals with such varied backgrounds and experiences. We could talk about gender balance, LGBTQ+ inclusion, ethnic diversity, or different social classes, but true diversity encompasses all of these differences. Effective ED&I strategies must do the same.
As staffing partners, we also learn a lot about what inclusion and equity mean to candidates. We have found that technology professionals from underrepresented backgrounds are looking for businesses that foster safe and inclusive environments. So how can businesses demonstrate equitable practices and an inclusive professional environment?
We are fortunate to partner with Talent Acquisition teams, technology and business leaders who have successfully developed and delivered ED&I strategies. Many of whom have also had the experience of being those “underrepresented” candidates.
We have invited some of these leaders to share their experiences in our webinar, Attract. Retain. Promote: Building a Diverse Technology Workforce.
On Thursday 11th November, 1pm EST/ 10am PST/ 6pm GMT we will discuss how they have achieved success with their ED&I strategies and share practical tips businesses can use to build their own.
Register to join the conversation.
Meet our panelists:
Melissa Benua (She/her)
Senior Director of Engineering, mParticle
Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—dev, test, DevOps, and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She’s created and run high availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One, and now for mParticle’s enormous data platform. Melissa discovered her love of massively-scaled systems while growing the Bing backend, where she honed the art of keeping highly-available complex systems up while undergoing significant code churn. Now a senior director of engineering with mParticle, she’s passionate not only about maximizing efficiency both in her teams’ product code and in their developer tools but also about sharing best practices among colleagues and the tech world at large.
Fred Swaniker (He/him)
Founder & CEO, African Leadership Group
Fred Swaniker is on a mission to bring better leadership to Africa and the world. He leads the African Leadership Group – an ecosystem of organizations that are catalyzing a new era of ethical, entrepreneurial African leaders. Over the past 15 years, he has founded and led the pre-university African Leadership Academy, the African Leadership University, the African Leadership Network and The Room — a community of global leaders committed to unlocking opportunities for undiscovered talent, starting in Africa. Collectively, these endeavors aim to transform Africa by developing 3 million African leaders by 2035.
Fred previously worked as a McKinsey consultant before earning an MBA from Stanford and becoming an entrepreneur. He is an Echoing Green Fellow; Aspen Institute Fellow; and most recently, was recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people of 2019. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Macalester College, Middlebury College and Nelson Mandela University.
Maura Coyle (She/her)
Talent Acquisition & Development Lead, Canoe Intelligence
Maura is the Talent Acquisition & Development Lead at Canoe, focusing on recruitment strategy, performance management, and talent development across Canoe’s technical and commercial teams. Prior to joining Canoe, Maura led recruitment for the Private Wealth Management and Technology divisions at Rockefeller Capital Management, a high-growth financial services firm. As a graduate from Loyola University Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Maura is passionate about leveraging social psychology to enhance employee engagement and people strategy in organizations, specifically in a cross-cultural context.
Chinedu Enekwe (He/him)
General Partner, Passbook Ventures
Passbook Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in US immigrants building tools for the future of commerce for the next generation of internet users.
Prior to Passbook, he was a principal at the top quartile pre-seed & seed fund, Exponential Creativity Ventures and managed AffinitiVC, an investment syndicate & consulting firm deploying over $15M since 2017. He co-founded the first immigrant accelerator, tiphub, in US in 2014 and has unvested in startups for 9 years with 5 exits invested in leading companies like Lyft, Koji and Emerge with follow-on and co-investors of Greylock Partners, Andreesen Horowitz, Techstars, Capital G and Vulcan partners.
He is also an executive producer of weekly show, Tea Time, on Black Enterprise the #1 Black media publication, co-producer of Africa’s largest tech conference, AfricaNXT/SMW Lagos. Additionally, he also co-produces the Venture The World podcast and the Future of Money conference. He’s a Moonshot Fellow of the Kravis Lab for Social Impact, founding member of the Forbes Impact Community and serves on the advisory board of Impact Entrepreneur Magazine.