Lessons From #BlackTechTwitter | Qualcomm’s $100 Million Metaverse Fund | Tackling AI’s Talent Shortage | And More

Plus: Record-Setting Venture Capital Market Shows Signs Of A Slowdown

Hi there and welcome to the latest edition of the Forbes CIO newsletter.

“Technological change, innovation and disruption is occurring across all industries and significantly impacting our economy, society and our democracy, but Black communities have yet to benefit from technology’s promise and potential.”

That was the depressing conclusion of a report recently published on the Black tech ecosystem by the Kapor Center, a nonprofit focused on diversity in tech and entrepreneurship, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). According to its findings, Black people make up 13% of the working population, but only 7% of the computing labor force, and just 3.7% of technical roles at the largest U.S.-based tech companies, a mere 0.6% increase since 2018.

This glacial pace of change reflects a long period of stasis in the advancement of Black executives more generally, including at the commanding heights of U.S. industry. Given that CIOs are facing a shortage of skilled employees, it’s deeply frustrating to see that Black workers remain significantly underrepresented despite efforts to boost diversity in tech training.

As the Kapor/NAACP report notes, business leaders need to push harder for change in academia, where Black students still represent only 6% of students in advanced placement computer science (CS) courses and almost a quarter of Black K-12 students lack access to computers or reliable high-speed internet at home. The proportion of Black students receiving CS degrees fell from 9% to 8% between 2016 and 2020.

CIOs and other top executives are aware there’s untapped potential here, but more needs to be done to help students build tech skills for the future and to support Black employees already in tech. As Forbes CIO Network Contributor Paige Francis points out here, social media sites such as #BlackTechTwitter create a powerful virtual community of support and encouragement for young Black students and professionals, including by highlighting tech employment opportunities. 

They are definitely worth following and tech leaders might want to think about creating their own, company-focused versions, if they haven’t done so already. Of course, this isn’t an issue that social media initiatives alone can fix, but they can play a useful role in shaping and supporting an overall strategy to ensure that Black communities do finally benefit fully from technology’s promise and potential.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know if you have any suggestions for themes to cover in future issues. You can contact me on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.

Technology & Innovation

War in Ukraine shows the promise—and perils—of AI: The conflict has seen facial recognition technology used by the Ukrainian government to help identify dead Russian soldiers. But AI's use has otherwise been relatively limited, which may well reflect concerns that algorithms can be hacked.

Chip innovations for the metaverse: Semiconductor companies recently announced a raft of initiatives aimed at boosting virtual reality and other applications related to the emerging 3D layer of the internet. These include a $100 million investment fund from Qualcomm to back metaverse startups and Nvidia’s new AI accelerator chip.

Leadership & Strategy

Conan the communicator—lessons from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Ukraine video: According to some leadership experts, the Hollywood-star-turned-politician’s recent video discussing the war in the country and directed at a Russian audience is a model for how corporate leaders should approach communicating with key stakeholders on ESG issues and other sensitive matters.

Tactics for dealing with hidden dissension: Ever come out of a team meeting thinking all the participants are aligned on a course of action, only to later discover that some of them aren’t? Me too! So here are some useful tips for surfacing disagreements in the ranks before they can undermine decisions.

Talent & Careers

Mind the stress on workers…: One of the main reasons for the sharp increase we’ve seen in people quitting jobs is that they feel overwhelmed by the amount of work expected of them. This and other issues, such as how they are being managed by bosses, matter far more than compensation according to a recent survey by McKinsey—though pay may become an increasingly important factor in quitting decisions if inflation stays unusually high.

…and mind the gender pay gap, too: That disparity is still significant for many women across America, but a new study by the Pew Research Center suggests there’s been some progress towards erasing it. As my Forbes colleague Jena McGregor reports here, in 22 of 250 metro areas in the U.S. the median woman under 30 has achieved pay parity with men and, in some cases, is out-earning them. That’s good news, but there’s still a very, very long way to go to eliminating the pay gap altogether.

"There is tremendous synergy between a technology executive’s role in the C-suite, interactions with their board and service on external boards."

Chris Putur

EVP, Technology & Operations, REI

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