Why should nonprofit executives care about POC in technology?
Channel: MAPTechWorks
Date: 2014-06-20

Nonprofit executives should care about having more people of color in technology serving their organizations. As Shireen Mitchell, Digital Sisters, and the director of web & interactive media for the Women's Media Center, explains, there are two primary factors to consider when trying to understand this issue:

* People of color are over represented among recipients of nonprofit services, but under represented in the leadership of those organizations.

* This lack of representation results in decision making that often misses the mark because leadership simply don't bring the same understanding to the complex issues presented with the communities they serve that community members themselves could bring.

In other words, if you want to make better decisions as a nonprofit executive, making sure that staff members influencing those decisions represent the communities you serve is essential.

Then Shireen shares a great example for the corporate tech world. When HP developed their facial recognition technology, they didn't include people of color in the design, or the testing of the product. As a result, they discovered, much to their embarrassment, that their tool often failed to identify the faces of people of color once their product was launched.

Another example comes from a project involving social media, where an organization sought to create a social media platform that they hoped people of color would use, but failed to have a duel last name option, which is culturally very common among the Latino community they sought to serve.