Success Through Diversity by Carol Fulp

Author:Carol Fulp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2018-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

INNOVATING A MORE COLORFUL COMPANY

ON CHRISTMAS EVE 2015, Jean Paul Kambazza immigrated to Boston from Uganda, hoping to find a job in America’s bustling technology sector.1 It seemed a reasonable ambition: for twenty years he had worked in the IT departments of East African banks and telecom companies. And yet, the more Jean Paul learned about the ultracompetitive, fast-moving world of American IT, the more he realized he didn’t quite have the skills or cultural knowledge he needed to break in. To bridge this gap, he postponed his job search and enrolled in a master’s program in computer science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

In October 2016, as he neared graduation, Jean Paul received an email about Hack.Diversity, a public-private partnership dedicated to helping talented graduates from underserved backgrounds navigate the tech industry’s job market. Jean Paul applied to the program and was accepted into its first cohort of eighteen interns. For six to eight weekends during his final semester at school, he attended workshops where he participated in mock interviews, polished his résumé, and learned practical skills. The internship culminated in a series of placement interviews, during which regional tech companies considered interns for positions in their companies. Wayfair, the Boston-based e-commerce giant specializing in home furnishings, selected Jean Paul for an internship.

In a conversation with me, Jean Paul spoke glowingly about the three months he spent at Wayfair. This brief stint was just as valuable, he felt, as the full year and a half he spent at school. “When you’re in school,” he said, “your universe is theoretical, and you approach things in theoretical ways. My internship at Wayfair, thanks to Hack.Diversity, opened my eyes to how it is in the real world.” At Wayfair, he gained a better sense of how his coding decisions actually impacted the company’s bottom line, and he found himself embraced by the organization’s culture. “At Wayfair, minorities were few,” he recalled, but he nonetheless immediately felt at home, “part of the brotherhood.” That’s partly because Hack.Diversity not only mentored students but also focused on retaining diverse talent, helping companies to cultivate inclusive management policies.

Jean Paul now had the skills and the experience to compete in the job market. “I’ll be a better employee for the next job I get, thanks to the industry preparation provided by Wayfair,” he noted. He needed Hack.Diversity to help provide him an entree into a market where people of his racial and ethnic background have traditionally gone underrepresented. Hack.Diversity, he said, “gives [members of underrepresented groups] a shot to prove that we’re just as smart or we’re competent, which is all we can ask for.”

Hack.Diversity cofounder Jody Rose recognizes the importance of connecting talented graduates like Jean Paul with tech startups and industry heavyweights.2 Having spent most of her career helping tech startups scale, she knows that innovative talent is imperative for any company’s success. Since 2015, she has focused on talent acquisition, becoming executive director of the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA). Instead of

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