After work one Thursday, I attended Code For the Future: Diversity in Tech a panel presented by Code for America & Code2040. Techies gathered in the Code for America workroom to create ties and talk about the opportunities a diverse tech field offers and strategies to get there. 

Takeaway points:

-Current State: The pipeline is homogenous. The pool of those entering the tech field right now is mostly made up of people who already knew about the tech field through family or friends and had the means to be able to learn about it. Upon highschool graduation, only 3% of black girls consider tech as a field of entry. 

-Lost Opportunity: Diverse teams make more meaningful products. Who do you want deciding what tech gets made? A diverse team is able to forsee more issues, usecases, needs and methods employed across different communities. Expanding the kinds of people in tech will result in more creative innovative ideas that help more kinds of people. 

-Solution Example: Up the exposure. Besides actively seeking diversity on your own team, funding projects that serve to expand accessibility to tech to begin with. Black Girls Code offers sustained computer science exposure in under-resourced schools with a focus on young girls of color to get them armed and interested in a competitive market that they can use to solve problems in their own communities.

Support alternative futures! Expand the voices coding the future! Volunteer, donate, and learn to code!

<3 – T