Danielle Brown, Google’s new head of diversity, is no stranger to hiring challenges. At Intel, Brown helped the company improve its retention rate among minority and female hires. “In the last diversity report under Brown’s leadership, Intel reported that it hit its goal of retaining diverse employees, with women and people of color leaving the company at about the same rate as majority groups.”
According to TechCrunch “in 2016, about 14 percent of Intel’s newly hired workers came from underrepresented minority groups, boosting the percentage of people of color in its workforce”. In the world of Tech and diversity these are no small feats particularly when dealing with multi-global organizations. Brown will look to achieve similar results at her new job at Google. The company, like most in the industry, is looking to diversify itself with about 30% of its workforce being women and only 6% of its workforce being Latino and black.
On the plus side, Google HR head Eileen Naughton has noted that there have been some improvements “In the past three years, women in tech roles have grown from 17 percent to 20 percent … and women in leadership roles have grown from 21 percent to 25 percent.” In addition, Google has been known to promote and invest in diversity. Take it’s recent opening of Code Next, a computer science initiative aimed at connecting with black and Latino students in the Oakland, CA area. (https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/google-opens-computer-science-lab-in-oakland-for-young-people-of-color/)
Brown will no doubt have enough support from the top to promote different programs and initiatives, but substantial change remains to be seen. Despite this, I do believe this is a step in the right direction for the company and it’s nice to know that this is a priority for the organization. Good luck to Google and its diversity hiring push!
Google hires new diversity chief, fresh from her work at Intel
