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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️
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🤨StopAsianHate🤨
The events of the last few weeks have reminded us that the work we are passionate about remains pertinent to all communities
We shared our thoughts here
There was good coverage on who said what from the tech world here too
#Stopaisanhate
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😲No Pride in that 💁🏿♀️
London's Pride march organizers were hit with a wave of walkouts last week🚶🏾♂️
A number of the organisation's leadership team stood down following the resignation of every member of Pride in London’s community advisory board (CAB) on Thursday who claimed there was a culture of bullying and a “ hostile environment” for minority ethnic volunteers😮
UK Black Pride (set up by the Formidable Lady Phyll, who has no problem speaking truth, after she turned down MBE in protest at LGBT persecution by 'colonial regimes') put out a scathing statement noting;
"We know personally of Pride in London's disregard and disrespect of Black people and people of colour because of how they've treated UK Black Pride and the volunteers within it. They've treated us with obvious and open contempt"👀
She has been quoted to say that " one queen will not bow to another".
Lots of other organisations have pulled out of supporting the org who noted themselves
" Pride in London is committed to rebuilding the trust of minority communities which it knows is broken, but we hope not irreparably. We are aware that only through immediate and decisive action as well as demonstrable change in the coming weeks and months can we authentically show its commitment to diverse voices and experiences.”
Let's see what happens but we may be reserving our attendance at this year's march for Lady Phyll's version
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🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠
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😴100h weeks😴
Goldman Sachs is hardly known for its respect of work-life balance, and this week a PR (and frankly an employee welfare) disaster hit the news, with a group of graduates exposing the frankly ludicrous work conditions expected of them🤨
This isn't a trivial issue with employees reporting that
- "There was a point where I was not eating, showering or doing anything else other than working from morning until after midnight"
- “My body physically hurts all the time and mentally I’m in a really dark place”
- “I didn’t come into this job expecting a 9am-5pm’s, but I also didn’t expect consistent 9am-5am’s either”
Their CEO who happens to also be a DJ said... well not a lot but you can read it here.
I suppose if it's a win, the analysts secured the "Saturday rule" meaning that from 9 pm Friday until Sunday morning, they can have an expectation not to work 🤣. What a life hey?
So what?: Mental health has been a challenge to manage for all during this lockdown, but no doubt working in the Investment Banking Divison of Goldman Sachs hasn't helped.
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🥊Wiki fights back🥊
Wikipedia is a giant of the internet. It's number 8 in the US and 13 Globally of most visited websites😮
Nonetheless, we feel a bit sorry for it. It consistently asks for donations and pretty much gets exploited by the big boys of the internet who use the information hosted by it to improve their products (Cough Alexa, and Google, and before Microsoft gets too smug, Bing is in on it too😅. To be honest frankly everyone kind of does it, even Apple 👀
Well possibly emboldened, by the news from Australia, it's setting up Wikimedia Enterprise. The unit, which is a first for the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, will offer a paid service targeting Wikipedia’s biggest users: the Big Tech companies🏢
It does only seem fair that some of these companies kick back some of their profits to Wikipedia (after all everyone is better off by having access to its information)🤷🏽♀️
So what?: Let's see how friendly they are and ultimately who sets the price. Impoverishing search results isn't good for products so that the stick, but donations to charities might help with big tech tax bills and that's a nice carrot, so how this enterprise unit is structured could create an interesting revenue pool for Wikipedia😅
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😊Accessibility updates😊
So we saw some good tech for good news this week with Microsoft and Google shipping some products which are bound to be game-changers for those millions of folks including those with disabilities🙌🏾
Yep, the verge reported that Google is expanding its real-time caption feature, Live Captions, from its own Pixel phones to anyone using its Chrome browser. The app uses machine learning to create captions for videos or audio where none existed before across everything and making the web that much more accessible for anyone who’s deaf or has audio accessibility requirements💻
Not one to be left behind, Microsoft’s new Group Transcribe app offers real-time translation for languages spoken in more than 80 distinct locales for those that initiate the technology for their meetings👩🏽💻
So what?: We've thought it been far too long that companies have shipped products thinking about accessibility as an afterthought ( who remembers this), so it's nice to see the pace of innovation picking up to make the web better for all 😊
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📈BAME and its problems 📈
This week, we saw a headline that triggered the team👀
The headline asserted that a third of UK unicorns are founded by ethnic minorities. Now things like that would have you believe that we don't have a diversity problem within UK tech, however, it misses one crucial thing, Intersectionality (the interconnected nature of social categorisations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage).💁🏿♀️
Right, dig under the surface and you see that, whilst Eight of the UK’s 23 unicorns are founded by ethnic minorities, of those 8, none are founded by women or Black people.😮
Sifted did a good break down of some of the data but it also highlighted research that said six of the top 100 ethnic minority businesses were founded by husband and wife teams — and just three of them were female founded. Finally, this is global, it's reported that only 21% of tech unicorns worldwide have any women in their leadership team and In Europe, just four out of 64 unicorns have a female founder or CEO🙄 So what?: Every headline has a story
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📈 The tools behind the tech📉
📦Product📦
📏Design📏
👩🏿💻Code👩🏿💻
🏢The business behind the tech🏢
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🌐Events and opportunities 🌐
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👘Interested in Fashion?👗
The Fashion Minority Alliance, launched in September 2020 have in a short space of time harnessed some incredible partnerships in the marketplace, which include those with Capri Holdings Limited, Michael Kors, Versace and Jimmy Choo and PVH, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein.
Founded by PR CEO Barbara Kennedy-Brown and Stylist Cheryl Konteh, the FMA as it is affectionately known has been actively working to facilitate, motivate and advocate in the fashion, beauty, and lifestyle industries to create meaningful inclusion and diversity.
As part of their mission to level the playing field, they have created a directory to help promote talent at all levels.
You can join for free below:
https://www.fashionminorityalliance.com/
https://directory.fashionminorityalliance.com/
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👩🏽🏫Ed Tech jobs🙋🏽♂️
The Founder's Forum team are spinning out a new Ed Tech Venture and are actively recruiting for it.
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🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾
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😃Fill in our Survey😃
You could win an oculus
+ the data will really help drive greater inclusion as we hold people to task on the data points!
Survey.colorintech.org |
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😎And that's the bottom line😎
👊🏾Let us know what you think if you have any feedback on the newsletter here👊🏾
📩If you think someone else would enjoy it, they can sign up here📩, you can forward it or you can share
  
🤗In these challenging times, we hope you and your loved ones stay safe.🤗
❤️Love, peace and happiness from the Colorintech Team!❤️
24/03/21
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