The technology industry is one of the primary engines of growth globally and the source of many of the highest-paying jobs offering the best opportunities for upward mobility. But people from disadvantaged communities have largely been cut off from the tech cornucopia. That is as true in the United States and France as it is in Vietnam and Brazil.

One of the primary reasons the wealth generated by the tech industry has not been more widely shared is that the educational system in disadvantaged communities does not prepare young people for tech jobs. But it goes well beyond that. People from those communities often lack role models who show that it is possible to have a successful tech career. Tech companies do not recruit people from those communities or from the schools that serve those communities. And the jobs are often located far away from the disadvantaged communities, making it difficult for people to commute to work.

Even when people from disadvantaged communities overcome those hurdles and get a job at a tech company, it is often difficult to thrive or even keep the job because of the subtle and overt forms of racism and classism (and sexism) in the workplace.

The results of this system of exclusion are clear. In Silicon Valley, where I have lived for more than 45 years, Black, Latino, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous people make up a small fraction of the technology workforce. The vast majority of the people working at Silicon Valley companies are white or Asian.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The tech industry can be a source of wealth for all parts of society, but it requires individual companies, the tech industry, government, and civil society organizations to take a new approach that is deliberately inclusive. The cover story in the Summer 2022 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Tech Inclusion for Excluded Communities,” offers ideas on what this approach might look like.

Read the full article about access to the tech sector by Eric Nee at Stanford Social Innovation Review.