Diversifying Tech

Simply put, we believe that the tech sector should look like the diverse population of United States. As a thriving economic engine and a cultural phenomenon, tech is nearly unavoidable in our 21^st century lives. Our work focuses on increasing the presence and viability of underrepresented people of color in the tech sector as producers, entrepreneurs, financiers, and thought leaders.

We primarily engage in partnerships with other organizations that address the leaks and lack in the talent pipeline. 2013 partnerships and collaborations included:

Black Girls Code ∙ CodeNow ∙ Hidden Genius Project ∙ Level Playing Field Institute ∙ Latino Startup Alliance ∙ Latino USA ∙ Management Leadership for Tomorrow ∙ Platform ∙ UNCF ∙ White House Office of Science & Tech Policy (co-hosted event)

Additionally, we believe that understanding implicit or “hidden” biases is the key to reinforcing the diverse talent across sectors. Our Hidden Bias Research Prize brokers connections between research and industry leadership in order to create practical solutions to close the gaps that hidden biases create.

Maria Hinojosa

Maria_Hinojosa_Large For 25 years, Maria Hinojosa has helped tell America’s untold stories and brought to light unsung heroes in America and abroad. In April 2010, Hinojosa launched The Futuro Media Group with the mission to produce multi-platform, community-based journalism that respects and celebrates the cultural richness of the American Experience. She is the first Latina to anchor a Frontline report. “Lost in Detention” about deportation and immigration detention aired in October 2011 and sparked public engagement and conversation from Capitol Hill to mainstream media to the Spanish language media. Hinojosa interviewed dozens of notable Latinos for Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ “The Latino List” which premiered on HBO in October 2011.

As the anchor and executive producer of her own long-running weekly NPR show, Latino USA, and anchor of the Emmy Award winning talk show Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One from WGBH/ La Plaza, Hinojosa has informed millions of Americans about the fastest growing group in our country. Previously, a Senior Correspondent for NOW on PBS, and currently, a rotating anchor for Need to Know, Hinojosa has reported hundreds of important stories—from the immigrant work camps in NOLA after Katrina, to teen girl victims of sexual harassment on the job, to Emmy award winning stories of the poor in Alabama. Her investigative journalism presses the powerful for the truth while giving voice to lives and stories that illuminate the world we live in. Hinojosa has won top honors in American journalism including 4 Emmys, the John Chancellor Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award, and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club for best documentary for her groundbreaking Child Brides: Stolen Lives. In 2009, Hinojosa was honored with an AWRT Gracie Award for Individual Achievement as Best TV correspondent. In 2010 she was awarded an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, by DePaul University in Chicago, as well as the Sidney Hillman Prize honoring her social and economic justice reporting. In 2012 she additionally received an honorary degree from Simmons College, was named among the top 25 Latinos in Contemporary American Culture by the Huffington Post, and gave the prestigious Ware Lecture.

Throughout her career she has helped define the conversation about our times and our society with one of the most authentic voices in broadcast. As a reporter for NPR, Hinojosa told groundbreaking stories about youth and violence and immigrant communities. During her 8 years as a CNN correspondent, Hinojosa took viewers into communities that had never been shown on television. Three times over the past decade, Hinojosa has been named one of the 100 Most Influential Latinos in the United States by Hispanic Business magazine. She has received the Ruben Salazar Communications Award from the National Council of La Raza and was inducted into the “She Made It” Hall of Fame at the Paley Center/Museum of Television and Radio in a program that honors women trail blazers in the media.

Hinojosa is author of two books including a motherhood memoir, Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son. She was born in Mexico City, raised in Chicago, and received her BA from Barnard College. She is married to the artist German Perez. They live with their son and daughter in Harlem, New York city.

Benjamin Todd Jealous

051011-National-Ben-Jealous4 Benjamin Todd Jealous is a civil rights activist, political leader, and the former President and CEO of the NAACP. Appointed at age 35 in 2008, he was the youngest person to lead the 104-year-old organization. During his tenure, the NAACP’s online activists grew from 175,000 to more than 675,000; its donors have increased from 16,000 individuals per year to more than 132,000; and the number of total NAACP activists has topped one million. Furthermore, as President, Jealous opened national programs on education, health, and environmental justice. He has also greatly increased the organization’s capacity to work on issues related to the economy and register and mobilize voters.

Jealous began his career as a community organizer in Harlem in 1991 with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund while working his way through college. In 1993, after being suspended for organizing student protests at Columbia University, he went to work as an investigative reporter for Mississippi’s frequently-firebombed Jackson Advocate newspaper.

Over the past two decades, he has helped organize successful campaigns to abolish the death penalty for children, stop Mississippi’s governor from turning a public historically black university into a prison, and pass federal legislation against prison rape. His journalistic investigations have been credited with helping save the life of a white inmate who was being threatened for helping convict corrupt prison guards, free a black small farmer who was being framed for arson, and spur official investigations into law enforcement corruption.

A Rhodes Scholar, he is a graduate of Columbia and Oxford University, the past president of the Rosenberg Foundation and served as the founding director of Amnesty International’s US Human Rights Program. While at Amnesty, he authored the widely-cited report: Threat and Humiliation–Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States.

Jealous comes from a long-line of American freedom fighters. His mother, who descends from two black Reconstruction statesmen, desegregated Baltimore’s Western High School for Girls in 1954. His father, who descends from a Revolutionary War soldier who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill and Sufragettes, was one of a small number of white men jailed during the Congress of Racial Equality’s efforts to desegregate Baltimore’s downtown business district. He is married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a civil rights lawyer and professor of constitutional law. They have two children and live in Silver Spring, MD.Kety Esquivel

Kety Esquivel

Kety headshot Kety Esquivel is Principal of Esquivel McCarson Consulting. Her work has taken her to China and Ethiopia with the UN Economic Commission for Africa. She’s coached executives for a fortune 100 company on human capital and diversity in the US, Canada and Latin America and directed Latino outreach for a Presidential Campaign. She’s been the New Media Manager for the National Council of La Raza, the CEO for LATISM and a Vice President with Ogilvy and Fenton.

Kety is on the board of the Netroots Foundation. She was a founding board member of the Hispanic Public Relations Association NCC and the New Leaders Council and has served on several other boards, including the Puerto Rican Youth Development and Resource Center. She’s the founder of CrossLeft and an author. She’s a former editor of BlogHer, a current blogger on the Huffington Post and has been a convener for Web of Change, She’s Geeky and TEDxAdamsMorgan.

She has spoken at conferences worldwide including the World Bank’s Entertainment Education Conference, SXSW, BlogHer, Blogalicious, Women Action and the Media, Personal Democracy Forum, Social Media Week and CampaignTech as well as conferences in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, El Salvador, Spain, Ireland and Canada.The Maynard Institute included her in their 31 Profiles of Women of Color in Digital Spaces. She was named in the Huffington Post 7 Young Latinos In Online Media To Watch In 2012 and a Politic365 ‘Game Changer’. Her work in PR includes the 2011 PRSA-NCC Thoth Award Category Winner in Global Communications, the 2012 Global Gold Sabre Award and placement as a 2012 Cannes PR Lions finalist. Kety graduated from Cornell University where she served on the Board of Trustees. She has also studied at NYU and Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Program. Her commentary has been featured in the WSJ, HITN, PBS, CNN, NPR, Televisa and Univision.

Mitch Kapor

Mitch Kapor is the Co-chair of the Kapor Center and works with startups using information technology platforms to drive disruptive innovation. He is a seed stage investor in Uber, Twilio, Inkling and University Now. His focus is increasingly on driving positive social impact, especially in leveraging IT to close gaps of opportunity and access in education, health care and other areas.

Mitch founded Lotus Development Corporation and designed Lotus 1-2-3, the “killer application” which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980s. He is the co-founder of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which protects freedom and privacy on the Internet and the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation, creator of the open source web browser Firefox. He is also a founding investor in Linden Lab, maker of the first successful virtual world, Second Life.

Currently he serves on the board of Level Playing Field Institute, whose mission is to enhance equal opportunity in education and the workplace. Mitch is also on the Advisory Board of Generation Investment Management, a firm whose vision is to embed sustainability into the mainstream capital markets.

Mario Lugay

NSanchez Mario Lugay is an Impact Advisor/Program Officer helping to build partnerships exploring the intersection of tech and social impact. Prior to his work at the Kapor Foundation, Mario served as the first Program Director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, where he provided leadership around new philanthropic investments in both integrated voter engagement strategies and for a fair and accurate 2010 census count. He has built significant experience in organizing as the National Coordinator of Racial Justice 911 and at CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, and currently remains active at the intersection of community organizing and civic engagement as co-founder of the New American Leaders Project, the country’s first organization dedicated to training first and second generation immigrants to run for elected office. Mario is a long-time philanthropic and nonprofit consultant, trainer, and speaker, and is a graduate of Columbia University. He is a life long NYer, has found a physical home in Oakland and a political home at Asian Pacific Environmental Network, where he serves as board chair.