Pinterest software engineer Makinde Adeagbo was mentoring a black computer science student at Stanford University when the idea for a new nonprofit, called /dev/color, popped into his mind.
He ended up creating a group to help black engineers connect with the people and skills they need to succeed in the tech industry, one that is still dominated by white and Asian men.
The relationship was so successful and impactful for the both of us, I wondered how I could scale it and build an organization that helps all Black engineers. In Silicon Valley, you can go weeks without seeing another black engineer, and having a go-to person is a needed reminder that you re not alone, Adeagbo wrote in a Medium post about the nonprofit, which launched on Wednesday.
The group is focused on mentorship, events and goal setting, he wrote.
This isn t the only diversity effort that Pinterest has helped launched. The social bookmarking company, in a rare move, publicly announced its diversity goals for 2016. Twitter then followed the San Francisco company s lead and released its diversity goals.
Tech firm Paradigm is also helping Pinterest and other tech firms to set up a lab to experiment with new ways to improve diversity this year.
In the United States, about 1 percent of employees at Pinterest are black and even fewer are engineers, on par with other tech firms in Silicon Valley. About 2 percent of U.S. employees at Facebook, Twitter and Google are black.
Photo: A /dev/color event with Facebook s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer. Provided by Pinterest.
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