LISTA — Will be in Washington DC this Sunday March 21 2010 Marching for Immigration Rights… See you at the Capital.
Remember Today We March — Tomorrow We Vote
We are excited about heading to Washington D.C. to ensure we have our collective voice heard on a very important and pressing issue within our community: COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM!
To borrow a phrase from the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute’s recent conference theme, “Adelante: The Time is NOW!” The time is NOW for us to take a moment and ensure there is enough political pressure and commitment from our elected officials to make comprehensive immigration reform possible in 2010. The moment is historic and I want to be there. Tens of thousands of others from all over our nation will be there as well.
Will YOU join us?
GALEO, ABLE, and GLAHR are coordinating buses and the response from our community has been amazing! Overall, we potentially will have a collective of 20 buses or more leaving the Metro Atlanta area for this March! Will you join us and reserve your space? This will be an historic trip and hope that you would join us! Make your reservation TODAY!
Even before we get to DC, OUR collective voices are being heard loudly and clearly. President Obama met with Senators working on the legislation and indicated that our March is a big reason for the urgency. We will make our mark in Washington D.C. on March 21st and then bring that energy home to Georgia to make immigration reform a reality in 2010. We will also follow through with engaging in the 2010 Elections.
YOUR voice and contribution is needed.
Get on the bus with us and be a part of history! If you cannot be on the bus, please make a contribution to help us take someone in your stead.
Since the inception of the modern healthcare industry after WWII, the U.S. has been plagued with a daunting amount of wasteful spending related to healthcare.
For the first time, the technology has come of age that truly allows us to change that reality and to take back those wasted healthcare dollars and redeploy them towards real benefits. These benefits will take the form of better healthcare services, a reduction in annual health insurance premium increases and broader coverage of healthcare benefits for our citizens.
At CareCloud, we are continually building systems to eliminate this administrative waste and enhance healthcare providers’ ability to deliver great care. We have assembled a team of the finest and most passionate technologists and designers. These individuals have come together with a mission to build the most powerful infrastructure ever created for the healthcare system while delivering the best business software applications over that infrastructure.
As large an industry as healthcare is, there is a shocking shortage of well-built software applications to serve its needs. Most software was written using software development tools and technologies created in the 1990’s, essentially the infancy of the Internet. Software applications and tools from that era provide a very poor user experience compared to the tools of today.
CareCloud is working 100% untethered. We have an unwavering focus on human-centered design for our products and are utilizing the most modern tools and technologies available to provide the richest user experience possible. The Internet is now a truly ubiquitous platform whereby essentially all of healthcare’s key constituents participate. We are leveraging the power of the Open Source Community to harness the collective brainpower of the Internet and even delivering our systems on the latest platforms such as the iPhone. In this manner we are always available to our customers wherever they are and at any time. CareCloud is not concerned with whether a customer has a Windows PC or a Mac as our systems work on any platform and on any browser. Our information is available all the time and anywhere using essentially any device.
The pace of technological change increases exponentially. More technology has been developed between 2000 and 2009 than in all of the 20th century. We continue to see far too many companies using rigid and obsolete systems from past eras even today. Our mission is to facilitate bringing the latest and greatest to the forefront of healthcare.
Most importantly, we at CareCloud are “living the dream.” We founded our company during an unprecedented time in the history of our economy. While much of the market was in decline, decreasing R&D spending or simply perishing, we were busy building. Our vision, passion and commitment allowed us to secure the necessary financing, build a team of employee-owners and get to work on the future. We believe that the key to living a meaningful life is to aim high in purpose, doing something you love with great people who share your same values. We consider ourselves lucky to have that reality.
Sincerely,
Albert Santalo
Founder and CEO CareCloud
About CareCloud
CareCloud is a web-based software and services company that modernizes the workflow in a medical practice. Visit CareCloud online at www.carecloud.com or www.twitter.com/carecloud.
Broadband for America has released a new study on the important contributions to the U.S. economy made by private investment in communication and information technology.
The study was conducted by Robert W. Crandall and Hal J. Singer – both experts in the economics of the telecommunications industry – and shows the massive investments made in mobile and wired Internet capacity by the major network providers has created hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past six years.
The authors caution that the explosive growth in broadband access will be severely limited if “new regulatory changes undermine the incentives of broadband service providers to continue to invest.”
“Thus, the increases in broadband’s reach, penetration, capabilities, and services which we have seen over the past seven years with a minimum of government interference should be embraced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as it moves through the process of creating a National Broadband Policy.”
President Obama appealed “to the nation’s governors today to fulfill education reforms that move past partisanship to offer every American a complete and competitive education. What’s at stake, he said, is “nothing less than our primacy in the world.”
“We are tired of arguments between the left and the right, between reformers and teachers unions,” he said. “We want to find out what works.”
Under former President George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation, 11 states lowered their standards for students in math, Mr. Obama said, signaling that the law created the wrong incentives.
The Obama administration is taking a different approach to incentivizing educational improvements. The president’s 2011 budget proposal includes billions in additional funding for elementary and secondary schools. The extra funding includes a large expansion of Mr. Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative, which awards competitive grants to states that implement reforms favored by the administration, such as linking teacher pay to student test performance.
Mr. Obama also wants to scrap No Child Left Behind’s 2014 deadline by which all schools are supposed to reach “academic proficiency” in favor of a new goal of helping all students graduate “college or career ready.” In order to receive funding for primary and secondary education, Mr. Obama said today that states will have to put in place a plan to adopt and certify “college and career ready” standards for reading and math. He praised the National Governors’ Association for already working to develop common academic standards.
“If we can come together to do all this – in Washington, in state houses, across party and ideology – we’ll raise the quality of American education,” he said. “We’ll give our students, workers and businesses every chance to succeed, and we will secure this century as the next American century.”
Civil Rights Organizations’ Hopes for Change at the FCC Remain Unmet
Guest Blogger: Sylvia Aguilera
Executive Director, Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP)
A letter issued by 23 civil rights organizations should provide some answers to those who profess to being troubled and confused by the civil rights community’s unwillingness to fall into lock-step with them and the Administration on the Open Internet proceeding.
It should go without saying that civil rights organizations are not only entitled, but justified, to question the ability of a government agency to manage the regulation of something as vital as the Internet. Even a cursory look at the Federal Communications Commission’s record in addressing the needs of unserved and underserved communities, opens one’s eyes to appalling disregard for the needs of communities of color. It is a record that the current Commission has done little to change.
The FCC has failed to address:
enforcement of broadcast Equal Employment Opportunity rules,
assignment of a compliance officer for advertising non-discrimination rules,
promulgation of multilingual broadcasts of emergency information,
holding a hearing on faulty audience measurement technologies impacting minority-serving radio.
These are only a few examples of the FCC’s failure to protect the interests of minority communities. While these failures can be directly attributed to the prior Administration, more recent examples – such as the omission of minority, digital divide or minority business enterprise issues in its December 2009 National Broadband Plan Framework, and the agency’s failure to support funding for much-needed support for media and telecom ownership by women and minorities – can only be interpreted by advocates as an outright dismissal of the concerns of disenfranchised communities.
If these issues were not so serious, questions about civil rights organizations’ reluctance to embrace regulation of an open Internet would be almost laughable. When presented with the FCC’s dismal record of neglect and disregard for the needs of our communities, why would any advocate expect civil rights organizations to trust the FCC’s ability to safeguard our rights on the Internet?
Civil rights organizations need not excuse or explain themselves in the face of such naiveté. Like any group of engaged, concerned citizens, we have the right to petition our government. In this case, where the trust and goodwill of minority communities have been decimated by neglect, we will be especially vigilant in our efforts to ensure that our government engages in responsible policy making. While we respect the right of advocates to hold differing opinions, we feel strongly that the energy and resources being used to discredit civil rights organizations over this one proceeding would be better placed in moving the FCC to act on the long-standing list of civil rights proposals that have languished at the agency.
It is distressing to witness groups and individuals that are aligned with the Commission using smear tactics – typically the domain of political operatives – to discredit civil rights organizations. These tactics are at odds with the “Change” that had been the uniting promise of a new Administration that many of us helped bring into office. In the past, we have partnered with some of the same organizations that now question our motives. In the future, it would serve all of us to collaborate once again. We ask these organizations to not make the same mistakes that the FCC has made in disregarding our very real concerns for the needs of disenfranchised communities.
Sylvia Aguilera is the Executivew Director of Http: Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP) is a s a coalition of twenty national and regional U.S. Hispanic organizations working to increase awareness of the impact of technology and telecommunications policy on the U.S. Hispanic community. LISTA is a proud member of HTTP:
Contact Sylvia at http@httponline.org. or follow her on twitter httponline
Internet Use in the United States: 2009 — Census released today Tables with national- and state-level data showing who is accessing the Internet, cross-tabulated by age, sex, race, Hispanic-origin, educational attainment and employment status.
State data show Internet usage at home versus use at other locations. Also included is whether people are using broadband or dial-up for Internet access.
Commissioned by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the data come from the Current Population Survey.
LISTA CEO Jose Marquez will Meet with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Chairman of UPS Scott Davis on how to develop more jobs in USA.
The Honorable Gary Locke U.S. Secretary of Commerce & Scott Davis Chairman & CEO UPS are in Georgia for a discussion with small businesses. They will hold a meeting with Latino and African American Business leaders to discuss President Obama’s new National Export Initiative to increase U.S. exports and support American jobs.
This special meeting will be held at the UPS Facility in Doraville Ga. on Friday February 19, 2010 @10:20 am.
During last month’s State of the Union speech, President Obama announced a goal of doubling exports over the next five years to support two million jobs in America.
Locke will detail how the Export Initiative will help the country reach that goal—providing more funding, more focus and more cabinet-level coordination to grow U.S. exports. The NEI represents the first time the United States will have a government-wide export-promotion strategy with focused attention from the president and his Cabinet.
“Increasing the export of American products and services to global markets can help revive the fortunes of U.S. companies, spur future economic growth and support jobs here at home,” Locke said. “This initiative will correct an economic blind spot that has allowed other countries to chip away at the United States’ international competitiveness.”
The National Export Initiative is focused on three key areas:
1. A more robust effort by this administration to expand its trade advocacy in all its forms, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises. This effort includes educating U.S. companies about opportunities overseas, directly connecting them with new customers and advocating more forcefully for their interests.
2. Improving access to credit with a focus on small- and medium-sized businesses that want to export.
3. Continuing the rigorous enforcement of international trade laws to help remove barriers that prevent U.S. companies from getting free and fair access to foreign markets.
In addition to improving efforts in those areas, the Export Initiative creates an Export Promotion Cabinet reporting to the president that will consist of top leaders from agencies that can contribute to this effort, including from the Commerce, State and Treasury Departments, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Small Business Administration, the Export Import Bank and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The link between increased exports and high-quality jobs is significant enough to demand a smart, concerted effort to maximize this economic opportunity. We aren’t going to leave any jobs on the table,” said United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk. “The U.S. Trade Representative’s mission is to tear down foreign barriers to American exports and to open up new markets for U.S. goods and services. And with our partners across the government, we’ll work to ensure that job-creating export opportunities are available around the world to American businesses of every size and type.”
Within 180 days, each of the departments in the Export Cabinet will be responsible for submitting a detailed plan to the president about how it will enhance American exports. Those plans will be integrated into the strategy laid out in the NEI.
“The National Export Initiative’s coordinated effort to increase American exports will not only generate important income opportunities for farmers and ranchers, but also create off-farm jobs, furthering the Obama Administration’s work to strengthen and revitalize America’s rural communities,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “This renewed emphasis on trade will help America’s agricultural producers, who are the most productive in the world, further expand the United States’ agriculture trade surplus and contribute to the continued growth of our economy.”
Access to Export Financing
To improve access to credit, the president has called upon the Export-Import Bank—which provides critical financing when private banks are unwilling or unable—to increase its financing available for small- and medium-size businesses from $4 billion to $6 billion over the next year. The 2011 budget also allocates additional money to help the Export-Import Bank administer its expanded efforts.
Progress is already being made. During the last three months alone, the bank has authorized $1 billion in small business financings and added 112 new small business clients—many of whom were first-time exporters—that are selling everything from nanotechnology-based cosmetics to date palm trees to sophisticated polymers to 45 countries around the world.
And Export-Import’s increased activity will dovetail with the administration’s other credit expansion efforts, including President Obama’s recent proposal to redirect $30 billion in repaid TARP loans to boost lending to small businesses.
“In face-to-face conversations with foreign companies and government officials during the past year, I have consistently heard the same message—they want to buy high quality U.S. goods and services, and they want more American companies to sell to them. Ex-Im Bank is prepared to increase our outreach to both buyers and small- and mid-sized businesses to provide critical export financing and help us achieve the President’s goal of doubling U.S. Exports within the next five years,” said Fred P. Hochberg, chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
More Resources for Export Promotion Efforts
The president increased the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration (ITA) FY2011 budget by 20 percent to help meet the goals of the NEI. Those new resources will allow ITA to:
Bring on as many as 328 trade experts to serve as advocates for U.S. companies;
Assist more than 23,000 clients to begin or grow their export sales in 2011;
Put a special focus on increasing the number of small- and medium-sized businesses exporting to more than one market by 50 percent over the next five years;
Increase their presence in emerging high-growth markets like China, India and Brazil;
And develop a comprehensive strategy to identify market opportunities in fast-growing sectors like environmental goods and services, renewable energy, healthcare and biotechnology.
Under the NEI, the 2011 budget also allocates $54 million to enhance the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s export promotion activities. That is going to result in more technical assistance to help farmers sell specialty crops, more foreign country promotions extolling U.S. commodities, and more direct assistance helping our farmers develop new foreign markets and increase market share in existing markets.
Helping American farmers sell more simply equals more jobs. American agricultural exports totaled almost $97 billion last year, which represented nine percent of the goods the U.S. ships abroad. This activity supports about a million jobs. These jobs are both on the farm and off, in urban and rural communities, across many communities and professions.
Improving Access to Foreign Markets
The National Export Initiative directs the government to continue its efforts to remove barriers that prevent U.S. companies from getting open and fair access to foreign markets—including combating unfair tariff and non-tariff barriers and addressing practices that blatantly harm U.S. companies.
This administration will pursue trade agreements that are balanced, ambitious and improve market access for U.S. workers, firms, farmers and ranchers.
Trade starts with the understanding that it only works in a system of rules where all parties live up to their obligations. The United States is committed to a rules-based trading system where the American people—and the Congress—can feel confident that when we sign an agreement that gives foreign countries the privilege of free and fair access to our domestic market, we are going to be treated the same in their country.
The Department of Commerce, through the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC), leads the administration’s trade promotion efforts and will help operationalize the National Export Initiative. This interagency group is chaired by the Secretary of Commerce to establish trade promotion priorities to expand trade and create jobs for Americans. The TPCC provides a platform for the Secretary of Commerce to advance a government-wide agenda on trade promotion and to directly engage the heads of other TPCC agencies. The Export Promotion Cabinet will coordinate with the TPCC.
The FCC’s Civil Rights Record & Overdue Section 257 Triennial Report to Congress
Dear Chairman Genachowski:
As you know, in Section 257 of the Communications Act, Congress requires the Commission to submit triennial reports “identifying and eliminating Émarket entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other small businesses….” The Commission submitted the required reports for 1997, 2000, 2003, and (several months late) 2006, but the Commission has not yet submitted its 2009 Report.
From your eloquent letter of January 5, 2010 to Henry Rivera, Chair of the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age, we know that you share our concern for the fact that minority ownership and employment in our industries are de minimis and in many respects nearing extinction. Minority television ownership has decreased by 50% since 1999. Minority radio ownership has declined by 9% just within the last three years. Minority wireless and cable system ownership levels are near zero. Finally, minority radio journalism employment has plummeted to less than 1%, a level not seen since 1950.
It is therefore unfortunate that, in 2009, the Commission failed to vote on any of the dozens of pending proposals to advance minority ownership and participation in the industries the Commission regulates, including proposals endorsed by the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age (http://www.fcc.gov/DiversityFAC/). The following examples illustrate the Commission’s shortcomings in areas of concern to us. The FCC has failed:
To adopt any of the two dozen proposed noncontroversial initiatives that would give minority businesses an opportunity to acquire FCC-licensed assets.
To restore minimal enforcement of the broadcast Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Rule, and to assign a compliance officer to the 2007 Advertising Nondiscrimination Rule which, if it were enforced, could restore to minority broadcasters the approximately $200 million every year that they forego because of racial discrimination by advertisers.
To hold a hearing on Arbitron’s “Portable People Meter” (PPM) audience measurement technology.
For the fifth straight year since Hurricane Katrina – to act on the Spanish Radio Association/United Church of Christ/MMTC petition to provide for the multilingual broadcasts of emergency information. The September 8,2009 “FCC Preparedness for Major Public Emergencies” Report did not even mention this critical issue.
To repeal the 2006 Designated Entity rules that have decimated minority wireless ownership: of the $19 billion fair market value of licenses sold in Auction 73 last year, minorities acquired $5 million, or less than three-hundredths of one percent of the total value of those licenses.
To include even a mention of minorities or minority business enterprises in the December 2009 National Broadband Plan Framework Ð ignoring the transcripts from four staff workshops and two field hearings at which the witnesses focused on minority cyberpreneurship.
To support the only remaining federal initiative aimed at promoting minority and women media and telecom ownership Ð the Telecommunications Development Fund. Nowhere in the Commission’s 2009 legislative recommendations was support for this vital initiative mentioned. In fact, on January 28, the Administration Ð without consulting with diversity advocates Ð proposed a budget that would eliminate the Fund entirely. The budget narrative suggested that a proposed loan program and, even more implausibly, the USF are adequate substitutes for this equity fund for new entrants.
To advance the civil rights objectives of the agency and the administration, we would be glad to assist the Commission with a comprehensive review of what can be done in 2010 to promote minority ownership and equal employment in the telecommunications sector. We specifically ask that you place on the agenda of the Commission’s A pril 2010 public Commission meeting a Report and Order adopting several of the dozens of long-pending, fully briefed and virtually unopposed proposals to advance media and telecom ownership diversity.
Sincerely,
Asian American Justice Center
Black College Communication Association
The Hispanic Institute
Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership
International Black Broadcasters Association
Latinos in Information Sciences and Technology Association
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
League of United Latin American Citizens
Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters
National Association of Black Telecommunications Professionals
National Association of Latino Independent Producers
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Black Coalition for Media Justice
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation-Black Women’s Roundtable National Congress of Black Women, Inc.
National Council of La Raza
National Puerto Rican Coalition
National Urban League
Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Spanish Broadcasters Association
United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
UNITY: Journalists of Color
cc: Senator Robert Menendez
Congressman Bobby L. Rush
Congressman Edolphus Towns
Congressman G.K. Butterfield
Delegate Donna M. Christensen
Hon. Michael J. Copps, Commissioner, FCC
Hon. Robert McDowell, Commissioner, FCC
Hon. Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner, FCC
Hon. Meredith Attwell Baker, Commissioner, FCC
Hon. Calvin Smyre, Presid ent, National Black Caucus of State Legislators Hon. Iris Martinez, President, National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators Hon. Robin Read, President, National Foundation of Women Legislators
Hon. Sharon Weston-Broome, President, National Organization of Black Elected
Legislative Women
Hon. Robert Steele, President, National Association of Black County Officials Hon. Sergio Rodriguez, President, Hispanic Elected Local Officials
Hon. Samuel Audwin, President, National Black Caucus of Local Elected Official Hon. George Grace, President, National Conference of Black Mayors
Blacks, Latinos and Women Lose Ground at Silicon Valley Tech Companies. By Mike Swift, mswift@mercurynews.com
The unique diversity of Silicon Valley is not reflected in the region’s tech workplaces — and the disparity is only growing worse.
Hispanics and blacks made up a smaller share of the valley’s computer workers in 2008 than they did in 2000, a Mercury News review of federal data shows, even as their share grew across the nation. Women in computer-related occupations saw declines around the country, but they are an even smaller proportion of the work force here.
The trend is striking in a region where Hispanics are nearly one-quarter of the working-age population — five times their percentage of the computer work force — and when dual-career couples and female MBAs are increasingly the norm.
It is also evident in the work forces of the region’s major companies. An analysis by the Mercury News of the combined work force of 10 of the valley’s largest companies — including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Cisco Systems, eBay and AMD — shows that while the collective work force of those 10 companies grew by 16 percent between 1999 and 2005, an already small population of black workers dropped by 16 percent, while the number of Hispanic workers declined by 11 percent. By 2005, only about 2,200 of the 30,000 Silicon Valley-based workers at those 10 companies were black or Hispanic.
The share of women at those 10 companies declined to 33 percent in 2005, from 37 percent in 1999. There was also a decline in the share of management-level jobs held by women.
“It’s just disappointing,” said Shellye Archambeau, the African-American CEO of MetricStream, a Palo Alto-based company that provides governance, risk and compliance support to global corporations such as BP and Pfizer. “The valley is a very strong place, but the fact that we are so lacking in female leadership, in African-American leadership, and frankly in Latino leadership in tech, you just sit there and say, ‘Imagine what it could be.’ ”
With the number of white computer workers also dropping after 2000, Asians were the exception. They now make up a majority of workers in computer-related occupations who live in Silicon Valley, although they hold only about one in six of the nation’s computer-related jobs.
Among the findings:
* Of the 5,907 top managers and officials in the Silicon Valley offices of the 10 large companies in 2005, 296 were black or Hispanic, a 20 percent decline from 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor work-force data obtained by the Mercury News through a Freedom of Information request.
In 2008, the share of computer workers living in Silicon Valley who are black or Latino was 1.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively — shares that had declined since 2000. Nationally, blacks and Latinos were 7.1 percent and 5.3 percent of computer workers, respectively, shares that were up since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The share of managers and top officials who are female at those 10 big Silicon Valley firms slipped to 26 percent in 2005, from 28 percent in 2000.
Cisco Systems is among companies that say they are taking steps to improve diversity by forming diversity councils and employee resource groups and by tapping organizations such as the National Society of Black Engineers for job candidates. Cisco declined to released its most recent race data in detail, but said the number of black and Hispanic workers had “remained stable”
since 2005, when about 6 percent of its local work force was either black or Hispanic.
“Cisco believes an inclusive culture promotes creativity, innovation and drives collaboration,” said Ken Lotich, a company spokesman.
The reasons Silicon Valley lags the nation in hiring — and perhaps in retention — of African-Americans and Latinos are varied and complex, researchers and observers say.
A company’s commitment to diversity can waver, particularly in tough economic times, said Palo Alto venture capitalist Alberto Yépez, a former executive at Apple and Oracle. While Hewlett-Packard, for one, is consistent in its efforts, “I think companies that do not necessarily fare as well have issues, and it’s the consistency that drives” successful diversity efforts.
Other reasons, experts say, include a history of valley companies hiring well-trained tech workers from the Pacific Rim, a weak pipeline of homegrown candidates, and a hypercompetitive business environment that leaves little time to develop workers.
“This is like ‘top gun’ school for techies. Basically, that’s one difference between Silicon Valley and the other tech centers,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher at the University of California-Berkeley, Duke and Harvard who has studied the work-force dynamics of tech centers around the U.S. The intense premium on education “inherently gives Asians an advantage, because they tend to be stronger in math and science.”
But social research has shown that innovation can flower from differences.
“If everybody around the table is the same, the same ideas will tend to come up. If you have a diversity of race, gender, age, educational and different life experiences, people will attack a problem from different perspectives, and that will lead to innovation,” said Caroline Simard, research director for the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. “In an industry that thrives on innovation, like high tech, it’s especially important.”
First-person account
Many minority tech workers are keenly aware of the numbers, because they live them every workday.
“I was the only African-American in every IT job I’ve ever had, ” said Derek Anderson, a 24-year valley veteran who has worked at Adobe Systems, Cisco and other companies.
Like Anderson, San Jose State University computer science student Vicente De La Cruz describes a feeling of isolation — of being “the only one.”
“I’m typically the only Latino, the only Mexican-American, in my class,” said De La Cruz, a 34-year-old with a quiet demeanor. During a recent internship at the software company SAP in Palo Alto, he saw “maybe five other Latinos on the SAP campus. I’ve learned to adjust to it. You have to get used to it; it’s a major motivation of mine to keep working in this field.”
The Mercury News originally sought federal employment data for the valley’s 15 largest companies through the Freedom of Information Act in early 2008. Following an appeals process that stretched over nearly two years, five of those companies — Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials — convinced federal officials to block public disclosure. Data from 2005 was the most current available when the Mercury News made the request.
Between 1999 and 2005, Hispanics were a declining share of the work force in a majority of the 10 large Silicon Valley companies analyzed by the Mercury News — slipping to 5.2 percent of all workers at the 10 companies in 2005, from 6.8 percent in 1999. The black share of the work force at the 10 companies dropped to 2.1 percent, from 2.9 percent.
Even an organization as elite as Stanford’s computer science department felt the need to revamp its curriculum this year, amid concerns that declining overall enrollment was causing the number of women, blacks and Latinos to dwindle even more.
As computer science enrollment dropped, “the percentage of women declined more than the overall percentage,” said Mehran Sahami, a professor who led the curriculum reform. For the few women and minorities left, “suddenly it feels much more isolated” — yet another deterrent.
Women’s prospects
Despite a few high-profile figures like Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Google search chief Marissa Mayer, labor department and other data suggest women are climbing the corporate ladder in Silicon Valley at a slower rate than men.
Over a recent lunch at the Women’s Community Center at Stanford, gender researchers Simard and Andrea Henderson were recounting some gloomy statistics for a room of female computer science students.
In Silicon Valley companies, men and women in technical careers are equally likely to hold mid-level jobs, but men are 2.7 times more likely than women to be promoted to a high-ranking tech jobs such as vice president of engineering, or senior engineering manager, Simard and Henderson found in a 2009 study.
The researchers found a series of clues from the water cooler to the living room. Men are more likely to develop informal professional networks, like taking coffee breaks with colleagues — networks that often lead to career opportunities.
The valley’s married male tech employees are more likely to follow the traditional model of having a man working full time, with a woman who stays home with the kids, than are male professionals nationally, perhaps because of the high salaries paid in tech. By contrast, tech women are overwhelmingly in dual-career couples, and many face an either-or choice — parenthood or career advancement.
“We expected a difference,” Simard told the glum-looking students at Stanford, “but this is kind of like the 1950s.”
Still work ahead
Simard and other researchers are convinced that valley companies do value diversity.
Take eBay, for example. While the San Jose company declined to make its executives available for an interview, or to share its most up-to-date employment information, eBay said it believes workplace diversity is crucial.
But the numbers don’t reflect that.
As eBay’s local work force swelled to accommodate the online retailer’s growth between 2000 and 2005, eBay added 366 managers to its Silicon Valley offices. That net increase included just five additional black managers and no Hispanics.
At a time when eBay was headed by one of the few high-profile female CEOs in Silicon Valley, Meg Whitman, the share of the company’s managers and top officials who were female declined to 30 percent in 2005, from 36 percent five years earlier, according to federal employment data.
“No global company today can stay competitive without persistently recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse work force “… eBay believes workforce diversity is critical to achieving our growth objectives and serving our millions of customers globally,” the company said in a statement.
Some critics blame the government for allowing powerful Silicon Valley companies to rely so heavily on foreign-born workers on H-1B visas, which they contend has boosted the numbers of Asians in the tech workforce at the expense of other groups.
“The reason Silicon Valley is different is that those standards have traditionally been enforced in other industries,” said John Templeton, whose “Silicon Ceiling” report details the lack of blacks and Latinos in Silicon Valley. “If you go to a bank IT department, or a cable television IT department, it reflects the community around it. But somewhere, government dropped the ball.”
Others point to the public education system, noting that recent achievement test scores for black and Latino students have been even lower in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties than for the state overall.
“It certainly is a self-reinforcing cycle,” said AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the school of information at UC-Berkeley.
Aristotle Saunders, a 32-year-old Marvell engineer, volunteers with school kids in Oakland, dissecting iPods to interest them in a tech career. He thinks the lack of visible middle-class minority neighborhoods in Silicon Valley makes it even tougher to recruit minorities to tech jobs here.
“I sort of have that chameleon feel where I can fit in anywhere, but I can see where people raised in a black neighborhood would feel really uncomfortable,” said Saunders, whose parents are African-American and Filipino and who grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Southern California. “Even though Silicon Valley is based on a principle of meritocracy, where they value people based on their skills rather than their class or ethnic background, I think it’s still a challenge.”
Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/swiftstories.
The 2010 Census is your community’s voice in government.
“Just like we can’t survive without roads and bridges, the country doesn’t function well without an updated Census to distribute funds to areas that most need them and to support community decisions about their own future.”
– – Robert M. Groves, Director of the United States Census Bureau
Accurate data reflecting changes in your community are crucial in apportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and deciding how more than $400 billion per year is allocated for projects like new hospitals and schools.
That’s more than $4 trillion over a 10-year period for things like new roads and schools, and services like job training centers.
The census effect in action
In addition, residents themselves have used census data to support community initiatives involving environmental legislation, quality-of-life issues and consumer advocacy.
“Low-income families have clearly been targeted in this study.” The Organic Consumers Association used census data to lobby the Environmental Protection Agency to halt testing dangerous chemicals on low-income children in Florida. The testing was eventually stopped due to the petition. Go to the petition site and read the census data cited to help augment their case
“This data shows that Phillips has a higher number of both elderly and children under the age of 5 within its boundaries.” A town in Minneapolis used census data to push for further examination of the environmental and physiological impact of a proposed energy facility. Read the actual petition that was filed in court
“Florida is rapidly being developed, increasing the threats to wildlife” Save the Manatee Club petitions Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to step up protection of Florida’s at-risk species using census data. Go to the official press release
Redistricting 101: What is redistricting and why do states redistrict?
Redistricting is the process of changing electoral district and constituency boundaries, usually in response to periodic census results
The U.S. Constitution requires that electoral districts be periodically adjusted or redrawn to account for population shifts
While the census does provide information to the U.S. states on population in order for the states to redistrict appropriately, the census is not actually responsible for the act of redistricting. State legislatures or independent bi-partisan commissions (depending on the state) are the bodies that actually redraw district lines.
LISTA — Will be in Washington DC this Sunday March 21 2010 Marching for Immigration Rights… See you at the Capital.
