What happened to big techs, big promises to improve diversity?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Karino. Reno. Over the last couple of years, the tech industry has slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs,

many of them in recruiting and other departments working to improve diversity.

Companies like Meta and Google Google which earlier set ambitious hiring and investment goals

have pulled resources from those efforts. It's left many nonprofit groups set up to

train and recruit underrepresented workers

struggling to stay afloat. One of those is Wonder Women Tech. We asked

founder Lisa May Brunson how things have changed. We saw the writing on the writing on the wall where it was like, you know, it seemed like companies were performative.

Despite the fact that statistically, you know, companies will perform better when they have diverse

teams, their bottom line will actually, you know, increase, they will make more profits, but

that wasn't really what they were looking at. I mean I think they were looking at the

fact that they were going to have to change culture, you know and you started to see the political

climate change too. And I think when that shifted, the focus on, you know, increasing representation

also shifted.

And we've certainly seen a shift in terms of financial investment. Of course, the last couple years,

a lot of tech companies have been shedding jobs. Many of those jobs have been concentrated in HR, recruiting, you know, diversity

equity and inclusion programs. Have you felt the effect of that in the work you do?

Oh, a thousand percent. I mean we had a pretty significant surge for a hot moment when George Floyd was murdered and

you saw all of these companies like get together and focus on you

know Black Lives Matter but then once that momentum shifted and again that

political climate shifted it was almost like night and day just a complete

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