Communications of the ACM
Google Backs Three-City Program For Black, Latino Techies
"Rather than trying to change what is, we are trying to shape what might be," says CODE2040 co-founder and CEO Laura Weidman Powers.
Credit: Martin E. Klimek / USA Today
Google is supporting a new pilot program from CODE2040 to foster tech startups led by minority entrepreneurs in three cities. CODE2040 is a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 with a focus on increasing the participation of African Americans and Hispanics in the tech workforce.
Google is backing CODE2040's new program, which will provide office space, funding, and other support to three minority tech entrepreneurs in Chicago, Austin, TX, and Durham, NC. Google awarded $775,000 in grants to the effort last month. The money will provide the entrepreneurs with free office space in tech hubs in the three cities, as well as $40,000 in seed funding. The entrepreneurs also will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, attend meetings with investors, and have access to mentoring and other resources through the Google for Entrepreneurs program.
CODE2040 cofounder and CEO Laura Weidman Powers says the project serves a dual purpose: helping to give minority tech entrepreneurs a hand, but also helping to spur the development of new technology hubs around the country. She says the hubs will help create new power centers in the tech world in places where a lack of diversity has not yet become entrenched the way it has in Silicon Valley.
From USA Today
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