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The Morning Download: Black Tech Leaders Seek Change
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Good morning, CIOs. Black leaders in tech tell The Wall Street Journal's Jared Council that they hope the national reckoning with racial disparities will bring change, expanding the participation of blacks in technology in ways they haven’t seen before.
“Corporate America has used the excuse of the pipeline for way too long,” says Cushman & Wakefield CIO Adam Stanley. "For some reason in the diversity space we for years talk about it but never really move the needle much.”
Diversity: Part of a larger conversation. "Below the surface, is a 400-year-old problem," says Claude Johnson, a former executive who has held management and executive positions with companies including IBM, American Express and NBA Properties Inc. "Address it with more diversity, yes, but why is it there in the first place?" Read on below for more insight from black tech leaders.
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Change that's past due. Several tech executives told CIO Journal that the tech sector must expand and deepen the participation of black technologists.
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Tony West, senior vice president and chief legal officer at Uber. "Tech has to get his right ... I think it also forced many of us to look in the mirror and ask, you know, what am I doing to advance racial equality? … Is what I’m doing to support black lives enough?"
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Sherri Smith, editor in chief of Laptop Mag. "The jobs I got were because people reached out to me and I want to pay it forward for people who look like me.”
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Will Griffin, chief ethics officer, Hypergiant Industries. “[We need black] senior management and C-suite with equity; partners and principals in VC firms with equity; and funding of entrepreneurs that are African-American that allows them to keep founder's equity. Offer them a deal that if you were in their situation you would want for yourself."
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Aston Motes, interim executive director of /dev/color. "History has shown even after a lot of effort put in, with the best of intentions, progress has been very slow. I am willing to wait some time to judge the impact of these particular efforts, but my best guess is that we will continue to see the same incrementalism, at least in the short term."
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Dewand Neely, chief operating officer of Eleven Fifty Academy and Indiana's former CIO. “I'm hoping that we see a lot more efforts on corporations and folks going out of their way, or finding new ways, to make those environments feel more safe and welcoming to keep our young generation of blacks and African-Americans interested and not deterred from it.”
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Ron Guerrier, CIO for the state of Illinois and former CIO of Express Scripts Holding Co. “As people of color, here’s an opportunity of a lifetime to educate and say, hey, this is not new … here’s a personal experience I’ve had that might surprise you.”
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7.8%
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The percentage of people in core IT occupations in the U.S. who are black, according to CompTIA
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Nurses pose with 'Hapybot' robots, autonomous mobile robots created to assist medical staffs, Bangkok, May 29, 2020. PHOTO: NARONG SANGNAK/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Why the ‘techlash’ is a threat to growth and progress. Despite the emergence of “a strong and widespread negative reaction" to the power and influence of Big Tech, technology itself remains a force for progress, argues CIO Journal Columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger. “Rather than techlash, we need ‘tech realism," he writes.
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Alexander Desuasido said he created the Contact Tracing app in his free time after two earlier versions were rejected from app stores.
PHOTO: GENEVIEVE DESUASIDO
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Federal oversight MIA, tech giants determine validity of Covid-19 tracing apps. Google and Apple have become de facto regulators of virus apps, deciding which of the many developers can offer services in their stores. For contact tracing, the main requirement for entry is proof of a relationship with a government entity or health-care organization.
There are still lapses. According to a new study of more than 100 apps in the Google app store by the International Digital Accountability Council, a watchdog group, and an analysis by The Wall Street Journal, some of the emerging contact tracers and symptom trackers aren’t transparent about what they are doing with user data, potentially allowing the use of private health-care data for advertising. Others share information such as location data with third-party services.
Protesters download local crime app Citizen. In the past week, about 620,000 first-time users in the U.S. have downloaded Citizen, an app, which uses police-scanner communication and on-the-ground reports and notifies users of what’s happening near them, from demonstrations to police movements to emergencies. (WSJ)
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ILLUSTRATION: STEPHANIE AARONSON/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; ISTOCK
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Doomscrolling | doom·scroll·ing | verb. Spending inordinate amounts of time on devices poring over grim news. Often happens late at night. Unable to sleep, Todd spend the next hour doomscrolling through news on the pandemic.
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed in police custody, a veto-proof majority of the city council agreed to begin the process of disbanding the police department. (WSJ)
Thousands of protesters gathered in cities around the world in solidarity with U.S. demonstrations calling for changes to the justice system after the killing of George Floyd while in police custody. (WSJ)
Nearly three months since the U.S. declared a national emergency over the new coronavirus, some states are reporting a rise in new cases as they lift restrictions meant to slow the virus’s spread. (WSJ)
The New York Times editorial page chief resigned, becoming the second prominent U.S. newspaper editor to lose his job over decisions related to coverage of civil unrest following the killing of George Floyd. (WSJ)
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