25X25 is a movement by leading Silicon Valley companies to catalyze change for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Member companies continue to make strides with diversity policies and the opportunity for maximum impact exists in collective effort throughout the Valley and our country. 25x25 is the collective action to operationalize change while also recognizing the business imperative for diversity + inclusion that will address a critical void in the national discourse.
The Pledge: A member company pledges by 2025 at least 25% of its leadership will be comprised of underrepresented individuals (persons of color/women), or the member company pledges that by 2025 the number of underrepresented individuals in its leadership will increase by at least 25%. Member companies also pledge to:
1. Report diversity information and progress towards meeting committed metrics to be reported by pledged member companies annually.
2. Commit to annual employee training to foster inclusion and reduce unconscious bias - with best practices shared and disseminated by SVLG.
3. Increase resources by 25% by 2025 for funding and/or community engagement in support of underrepresented groups and expansion of minority talent pipelines.
According to McKinsey, companies with ethnically diverse executive teams are 36 percent more likely to achieve above average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile and executive teams with gender diversity are 25 percent more likely to achieve above average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile. According to the Boston Consulting Group, diverse management teams have 19 percent higher revenues due to innovation, an essential benefit to technology companies.
As SVLG CEO Ahmad Thomas explained, "It's the right thing to do to meet this moment. But, the bottom line is the bottom line. We leave revenue, market share and innovation on the table when our decision makers and leadership teams don’t reflect the communities that we serve.“
For more information, or to sign the pledge, please contact us at info@pledge25x25.org.
The Digital Divide is the gap between those who have access to computers and the internet, and those who do not. COVID-19 has widened this gulf as education, work, and telehealth have all moved online. There are 37K unconnected students in San José alone. This Digital Divide is devastating to these students, undermines our future workforce, and exacerbates social inequities.
The Leadership Group, EY, and the SJ Digital Inclusion Fund 501(c)(3) are partnering to provide computers to San José students for the year.
Our students need Windows laptops and Chromebooks, or MacBook 2010 or later.
We are accepting new and gently-used devices. Devices should still be functioning, with no significant damage or cracks to hardware, monitor, keyboard, or casing.
The Digital Inclusion Fund will manage pick-up, cleaning and sanitization. The Digital Inclusion Fund will provide donors with a report on the impact of their donation and a receipt for the 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation.
We have additional opportunities for companies to commit to longer-term efforts to bridge the Digital Divide. These include a Device Partnership with the Digital Inclusion Fund to consolidate end-of-life processes for company hardware, as well as financial donations to the Digital Inclusion Fund.
Contact Peter Leroe-Muñoz at pleroemunoz@svlg.org to donate.
Innovators, entrepreneurs, and engineers throughout California have pioneered technology products and services that have proven invaluable to society. These products and services, reliant upon the use of data, have had far-reaching benefits, positively impacting communities around the world. There is a way to use data for good. And we want to tell those stories.
In the initiative, Data For Good, we highlight where the synthesis of data has spurred technological innovations across every industry sector. During these unprecedented times, data has allowed us to develop tools that save lives, keeps students learning, educates our workforce, allows small businesses to remain open, and even predicts natural disasters. Data-centric technology has transformed society and continues to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday lives. We look for ways to bring those stories to life and to show how the numbers can add up to more for all of us.
We should embrace the use of protected data to preserve the ability to advance our society.
• Forbes – This New AI Technology Could Prevent Ships From Colliding With Whales
• Wall Street Journal – California Utilities Hope Drones, AI Will Lower Risk of Future Wildfires
• USC Viterbi – School of Engineering: USC Student Develops AI Tools To Tackle Hate Speech, Hate Crimes
• Careermetis – Ways AI is Transforming the Education Industry
• EdTechMagazine – Improving Online Learning and More with Artificial Intelligence
• Mercury News – Opinion: COVID phone notification shows sharing data can save lives
“As policy makers rely on the insights from the data, new relationships can form and facilitate valuable collaborations. Public-facing data efforts can also increase awareness of a company’s brand — allowing companies to do well by doing good.” – Harvard Business Review
“Of course, technological innovation can’t match the courage, dedication and life-saving actions of doctors, nurses and first responders, but there are numerous examples of technology companies using data to assist those on the front lines, in the private sector and in government working to combat this crisis.” – Gary Mangiofico, executive professor of Organizational Theory and Management at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.
“For wildfire risk assessment or if you’re a firefighter, what you need is an accurate prediction about how fast the local fuel – the trees and plants nearby – will burn.” Matthias Ihme, a Mechanical Engineering Professor at Stanford University, said. “We’ve analysed this fuel in a new way that allows us to do just that.”
Is your company using data to develop cutting-edge technology? Or maybe data integration has enabled your product or service to solve societal issues? We want to hear your “data for good” story! Send an email to Diana Dang, ddang@ka-pow.com, to share your story.
Skilled Talent for Employers, Expanded Opportunities for Students Mission
Hire Learning, an initiative of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and Foundation, is an active partnership between industry and education to expand economic opportunity and increase diversity in the STEM workforce.
We believe that community colleges in Silicon Valley are in a unique position to partner with different industry clusters in our innovation economy. These colleges can expedite education and training for jobs that provide solid middle-class incomes.
With an enrollment of nearly 350,000 students, Silicon Valley’s network of 19 community colleges is the largest training provider in the region, and an equity engine for many of its residents. Three out of ten Silicon Valley 16-24 year olds currently attend community college, and because these schools have forged strong ties to communities traditionally underrepresented in postsecondary education, 77 percent of their students are students of color, and 54 percent are women.
Hire Learning leverages a wealth of talent among Leadership Group members to provide work-based learning opportunities that translate into student success—higher community college certificate and associate degree completion rates in the short term and better-paying jobs in the long term. As the gap between the two Silicon Valleys widens (in 2018, Brookings ranked San Francisco and San Jose third and sixth in income inequality among all US metropolitan regions), Hire Learning enables Leadership Group members and our partners to step in with a concrete, sustainable solution.
To learn more about Hire Learning or how your company can participate, contact edworkforce@svlg.org.
You do not need to be a member of the Leadership Group to partner with us.
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1. Berkeley City College
2. Laney College
3. Merritt College
4. College of Alameda
5. Las Positas College
6. Chabot College
7. Ohlone College
8. Mission College
9. Skyline College
10. College of San Mateo
11. Cañada College
12. Foothill College
13. De Anza College
14. West Valley College
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16. Evergreen College
17. Cabrillo College
18. Gavilan College
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