A coalition of 29 leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) experts from academia and the tech industry released a new report, Action to Catalyze Tech (ACT), which calls on tech companies to commit to bold, collective action by open-sourcing DEI best practices, encouraging collaboration on systemic solutions, and increasing accountability to drive change.
Convened by the Aspen Institute, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), PwC, and Snap Inc., a cross-industry working group partnered for over a year to aggregate relevant, research-based actions that businesses can take to help radically improve DEI outcomes. The ACT Report compiles this research in one place and provides a blueprint and tools for companies at all stages — from startups to mature organizations — to implement to drive internal and sector-wide change. The full report is available here.
Over 30 CEOs and executives from leading technology organizations, including Apple, Airbnb, Dropbox, Etsy, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Salesforce, Spotify, and Uber, have committed to being founding signatories of the ACT Report, pledging to hold themselves and their companies accountable to accelerate progress toward achieving DEI success. Together, these founding signatories represent more than 500,000 tech employees.
As part of the pledge, company signatories commit to developing company-specific strategies for pursuing or enhancing activity around the report’s four recommendations, which include:
- Model and incentivize inclusive leadership, including by recognizing DEI as a business imperative.
- Operationalize DEI throughout the business by applying a framework to address how to spend money (supplier diversity), design and build products (product inclusion), and think about talent.
- Share DEI demographic data with a new industry partner, the Tech Equity Accountability Mechanism, incubated by the Aspen Institute, with the goal of creating industry-wide standards for reporting such data.
- Transform future pathways into tech for underrepresented talent, including by helping solve the acute lack of computer science teachers from underrepresented backgrounds.
On November 3, Catalyze Tech will convene the first annual DEI Innovation Summit, which will bring together CEOs and leaders from signatory companies, DEI experts, and advocates to discuss cross-industry alignment, and how to put the report’s recommendations into action. The Summit, held virtually, will begin at 9 a.m. PT, and it will be available to watch for free here
