Intel Pledges $300M Towards Promoting Diversity In Tech
Intel, the giant chip manufacturer on Tuesday, announced its plan to invest $300 million over the next five years aiming to improve diversity in its workforce.
“It’s not good enough to say we value diversity and then underrepresent women and minorities. Intel wants to lead by example,” said Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich during a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES).
Intel wants to achieve “full representation” of women and the under-represented minorities in the company by the year 2020. The move will also include working towards having a more balanced representation in senior leadership positions.
The $300 million investment is set to attract more women and minorities to fill up positions of engineering and computer science, support and retain the company’s new employees and set up fund programs that will support more positive diversity in the technology and gaming industry in general.
Intel is partnering up with other stakeholders in order to make increased diversity in tech a reality. Some of these partners include E-Sports League, CyberSmile Foundation, National Center for Women in Technology, Feminist Frequency, Rainbow PUSH and International Game Developers.
Intel will also be revamping its support for primary education programs in underserved areas and increase its collaborations with computer science and engineering programs in colleges.
“This isn’t just good business, this is the right thing to do,” said Krzanich.
The announcement by Intel of investing $300m to promote diversity inside the organization, comes at the backdrop of recent events like GamerGate and the controversial comments made by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella last October at a women’s conference. Nadella was talking about women and raises, when he said women should depend on “karma” instead of asking for more raise. He later retracted the statement and promised to make radical changes within Microsoft in order to promote diversity.
Krzanich also talked about wearable technology, where he revealed the Intel Curie module. A small hardware product designed based on the company’s first system-on-chip (SoC) for wearables. The module is expected to be shipped out sometime in the second half of 2015 and will include the Intel Quark SE SoC, Bluetooth low-energy radio, sensors and battery charging.
