The lack of racial diversity in the technology industry has been widely acknowledged, especially since 2014 when many Silicon Valley companies, like Google, Facebook, and Intel, released racial diversity data. (USEEOC 2014) Statistics indicate that Blacks and Hispanics are grossly underrepresented in professional careers within technology companies. While Blacks comprise over 14% of the workforce in all private industries in the United States, they account for only 7.4% of the high tech workforce, as defined by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Similarly, Hispanic workers comprise just under 14% of jobs in all private U.S. industries, but less than 8% in high tech industries. By contrast, however, whites account for nearly 64% of the workforce in all private U.S. industries, but over 68% of the high tech workforce and Asian Americans comprise less than 6% of the private industry workforce in the U.S., but over 14% of the high tech workforce. (USEEOC 2017) Howard University faculty involved in tech entrepreneurship noticed this disparity first-hand as entrepreneurs themselves and as participants in entrepreneurship events and conferences. They set out to build an innovation ecosystem at Howard, a Historically Black University, in order to address this gap and prepare more traditionally underrepresented engineering professionals for careers in the current and future technology innovation sector.
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