Reports urge more diversity in tech sector to bridge ‘digital divide’

2018/01/23 Leave a comment

Canada catches up to the Silicon Valley conversation on the lack of diversity in tech (to be fair, there has been discussion that led to these reports):

The tech and innovation sector needs to do a better job of recruiting visible minorities to boost Canada’s economic output, two forthcoming studies say.

On Wednesday, the MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based innovation hub, will release Talent Fuels Tech, a report that found most job seekers in the region are visible minorities and argues for the development of a sector-wide strategy to build and retain a more diverse work force.

And the Ontario Incubator Diversity Report, an independent study by non-profit advocacy group Innovate Inclusion, examined four prominent organizations with incubator and accelerator programs – including MaRS – finding leadership and mentorship teams lacked African-Canadian, Latin-Canadian and Indigenous leaders. This, the report finds, can create a “digital divide” in the province that holds members of those communities back from contributing to the innovation economy.

While the pair of studies highlight that innovation hubs tend to unfairly leave crucial demographics of Canadians behind, they also chart pathways to more equitable recruitment strategies for hiring underrepresented visible minorities.

“As much as we celebrate diversity in Canada, diversity even more so in technology often starts and stops with gender,” says Jessica Yamoah, executive director of Innovate Inclusion. “Diversity within an organization will bring you perspective and new ways of doing things. A lot of times, there’s not enough credit given to our immigrant community.”

Innovate Inclusion’s report will be published later this month. It applauds Ontario’s well-known incubators and accelerators for “rising to the challenge” of gender diversity, and invites them to take further steps to get more members of the three underrepresented minority groups into their leadership teams. Examining publicly available information about various leadership groups – including boards and executive teams – at MaRS and Ryerson University’s DMZ in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo’s Communitech and Invest Ottawa, the report found only five people of African, Latin or Indigenous descent among the dozens of leaders. (Invest Ottawa and DMZ told The Globe and Mail that some of the report’s figures are incorrect, but applaud its intent.)

Ms. Yamoah, who is Ghanaian-Canadian, says the report is not intended to scold the organizations, but rather to set a starting point from which they can improve inclusion, which would only serve to benefit everyone involved. “As we evolve in the innovation economy, certain communities are being excluded, creating a larger digital divide,” she says. “If the numbers aren’t established as starting point, how do we measure success?”

Canada loses when underrepresented communities aren’t included in the broader conversation, she says. “That can definitely be reflected in the bottom line. Look at how the African-Caribbean community affects buying decisions in popular culture. Instead of just being musicians and artists in front of the mic, why can’t they be the executives behind the deals, and the technology that’s used?”

The report’s suggestions include that governments provide more support to incubators and accelerators that strongly demonstrate diversity in their ranks, and to earmark funds and procurement opportunities for entrepreneurs of underrepresented backgrounds. Incubators, it suggests, should design strategies to build more diverse leadership teams and better target underrepresented groups.

MaRS’s report also sought ideas to better tap into tech talent in the Greater Toronto Area – and found the answer in seeking a more diverse range of candidates. “We need to build a pipeline of talent so companies can stop going through a closed loop of referrals,” says Lekan Olawoye, one of the report’s authors and the lead executive of Studio Y, a talent development and leadership program at MaRS.

The report surveyed nearly 600 technology workers, finding that 63 per cent of job seekers were visible minorities, while 56 per cent were born outside of Canada. “Either they’re looking for work because their current environment is not conducive to them, or they are overqualified for their current role and raising their hand and saying, ‘Hey, I have more skills to provide,’ ” Mr. Olawoye says.

The report recommends developing a “sector-wide diversity-and-inclusion working group” to develop a comprehensive system of talent attraction and retention for Toronto’s tech sector. And one major key unlocking this talent, Mr. Olawoye says, is by dismantling biases ingrained in hiring. One such bias is the need for cultural fit, which the report suggests is less important than hiring talent with a mindset for growth. “The best person might not be the person you like the most that you’ll take for a beer, but it’s the person who will help your company grow,” Mr. Olawoye says.

Ryerson’s DMZ has incorporated a diversity guidebook, TechGirls Canada and TWG’s Change Together, into its membership process. “I think it comes to no surprise that the Ontario ecosystem, in terms of diversity, is lacking – there’s a lot of work to be done,” says Abdullah Snobar, its executive director. Mr. Snobar underlines the importance of incorporating the value of diversity into incubators, rather than treating it as a series of boxes to check off. “We want to see it rooted into the culture of an organization,” he says.

Spokespersons for both Communitech and MaRS said they aim to seek diverse leadership, though they seek primarily to reflect the communities around them in attaining ethnic diversity. “To be diverse, our boards and our executive should mirror our population,” says Jodi Marner, Communitech’s head of diversity and talent initiatives, who suggested that Kitchener-Waterloo region does not have a large African-Canadian or Latin-Canadian communities to hire from. “I agree we’re not mirroring our population, but we need to understand our population better, and what it’s made up of.”

Ms. Yamoah warns that suggestions playing down the need for more African, Latin and Indigenous leaders are why the report was done in the first place. “This sentiment is concerning as it would never be expressed in the context of certain sports, entertainment, or the criminal justice system where these communities are often over-indexed,” she say

via Reports urge more diversity in tech sector to bridge ‘digital divide’ – The Globe and Mail

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Immigration: Donald Trump Pushes Silicon Valley to Toronto | Time.com

2017/04/01 1 Comment

Smugness alert for Canadians. Nevertheless there is some merit in Salim Teja, EVP of Ventures at MaRS’s arguments and narrative:

 Without immigrants, Silicon Valley would look very different. There would be no Amazon, no eBay. No Reddit, no Intel. Google, Tesla, and Yahoo? Gone. And you can say goodbye to your iPhone.

These are just a few of the biggest names, but half of all billion-dollar U.S. startups were founded by immigrants. Silicon Valley would simply not exist, and the United States’ position as a global tech leader might never have come to fruition.

Under President Donald Trump, we are not far from this hypothetical. Trump’s immigration ban and H-1B visa restrictions will significantly harm the U.S. technology industry, diverting the steady, decades-old stream of foreign tech talent to international competitors.

And there’s no country better positioned to welcome this diverse group of innovators than Trump’s northern neighbor: Oh, Canada. At the center of the country’s identity is Toronto — the fourth-largest city in North America. Boasting a diverse community, booming tech scene, and forward-thinking government, this city is the leading contender to welcome tech talent and become the next epicenter of innovation.

A Culture of Inclusion

It’s easy to talk in generalities when it comes to diversity and inclusion — but I’m actually a product of Canada’s welcoming stance on immigration. My family emigrated to Canada from Tanzania, East Africa. We fled political turmoil and settled in Canada to build a better life. It would also become the place where I eventually began to flourish as an entrepreneur.

 Forty years later, Canada is still a beacon of hope for immigrants, an open society that is welcoming refugees in unprecedented numbers. Toronto was recently named the most diverse city in the world, and has become a cultural haven in which foreign entrepreneurs can pursue innovative ideas. In fact, it’s easier than ever for immigrants to work up north — capitalizing on Trump’s decision to delay H-1 B visas, Canada recently announced an expedited work permit process, allowing foreign talent to be approved for work in a short ten days.

Toronto recognizes that diversity both breedsinnovation and is good for business. As the EVP of Venture Services at a Toronto innovation hub, I’ve seen the power of diversity on the startup teams we are advising. Of the roughly 1,000 startups within our ecosystem, 54% have at least one foreign-born founder – a higher percentage than Silicon Valley.

So, as America tightens its borders and retreats inward, diversity in cities like Toronto will flourish.

Infrastructure for Innovation

Toronto’s diverse community has fostered a rapidly growing startup scene. Recently named one of the world’s most innovative cities, Toronto is home to between 2,500 and 4,100 active tech startups, the world’s largest innovation hub, and world-class academic and research institutions.

And with 150,000 full-time students enrolled in universities in the Greater Toronto Area — many focused on science and engineering fields — the region benefits from a robust pool of entrepreneurial and tech talent. Of course, this hasn’t always been the case: while Canada has historically been victim to a “brain drain” of academic talent emigrating to the U.S., Trump’s policies will undoubtedly lead to more talent staying in Toronto; and we may start seeing the reverse as Silicon Valley talent leaves to head north. University of Toronto has already seen a 70%increase in applications from American students following Trump’s win.

As always, tech follows the money — Toronto’s rapidly developing venture capital community is setting record investment numbers. VC in Canada hit a 15-year high in 2016, with a total of $3.7 billion invested— a whopping 36% increase over 2015. I haven’t seen Canadian VC excel at this rate since the dot-com boom, and every day speak with investors from around the world looking to cash in on Canadian ventures. With names like Shopify and Hootsuite rivaling Silicon Valley successes, I can understand why they’re hedging their bets.

The New Wave of Global Entrepreneurship

Where investors see the most potential, however, is in ventures that scale — ventures that tackle tough problems and provide global solutions.

And as someone who works with fellow immigrants every day, I believe that foreign entrepreneurs are more likely to develop these types of solutions, with the broadened worldview necessary to take on global issues. In fact, amongst our ventures with foreign-born founders — over 70% have some social purpose in mind, developing solutions in areas like healthcare and clean energy. A Syrian refugee creating an open approach to drug discovery.

A Mexican immigrant developing digital solutionsfor mobility impairments. These are the breakthroughs I see from global entrepreneurs in Toronto every single day.

While I believe that Silicon Valley once fostered this type of innovation, somewhere along the way it got stuck in a “move fast and break things” mentality, promoting innovation for innovation’s sake. They stopped caring about true progress and started caring about VC dollars — today, you’re more likely to see the Valley pump out a new photo editing app or subscription box before a clean energy solution or drug therapy. And with Trump’s new restrictive policies, fewer entrepreneurs will be able to come to the U.S. to build the globally impactful ventures that society truly needs.

But as America shuts them out, Canada welcomes them in. Global entrepreneurs can find a home in Toronto — a city that sees beyond borders, and whose tech community leads the world with solutions in cleantech, biotech, and more. For all of Trump’s talk about bringing back jobs to America, he may actually be helping to send them to Canada. And just as it once did for my family,

Toronto welcomes this talent with open arms.

Source: Immigration: Donald Trump Pushes Silicon Valley to Toronto | Time.com

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