9879: Where Are All The Black Geeks?

From The New York Daily News…

New York City geeks worried about low black representation in the startup tech scene

As New York’s digital industry grows, some techies worry about shortage of high-profile black entrepreneurs and developers

By Anjali Mullany / New York Daily News

Big Apple geeks say the code to startup success requires major networking. Want to learn programming or rub shoulders with developers over drinks? There’s an event for that.

One thing most of the city’s tech events have in common: relatively few of the high-profile entrepreneurs and developers in the crowd are black.

In New York’s booming start-up scene, African Americans “are absolutely underrepresented,” says Ron J. Williams, co-founder and CEO of Knodes and SnapGoods, startups that help people share goods and knowledge.



Sara Chipps, co-founder of the city’s popular Girl Develop It programming classes for women, says she’s concerned about the New York tech scene’s lack of diversity. “It is definitely not ethnically diverse…it’s mostly Asians and white people,” she said.


Techies say there’s an especially noticeable gap between the number of high profile female black entrepreneurs and developers in New York and their peers.

“In the past when I’ve gone to speak to groups of high school girls. I’ve looked for people that I can bring with me — I want to bring a diverse group with me. When I was getting into this, you want to find someone who looks like you, so you can be like, ‘I want to be like this person when I grow up’. Often it’s very difficult for me to find black and black female developers and as far as entrepreneurs go — I know maybe one or two, but I know dozens and dozens of entrepreneurs, so there’s really no real representation in the community,” Chipps noted.

Is lack of education to blame?

One possible reason: education. The Computing Research Association reports only 4.2% of all undergraduate computer science degrees went to blacks in 2010 – even though blacks account for 12% of the U.S. population. At the Interactive Technology Program (ITP) at New York University, widely considered one of the most creative innovation programs in the nation, the numbers are slightly higher. “We have 6% of the people enrolled this year who identify as African American,” said Dan O’Sullivan, the ITP department chair.

“Certainly part of the problem can be mitigated by having vastly larger numbers of people of color…going into STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] fields and coming out with engineering and science degrees. There’s no question about that,” said Hank Williams, founder and CEO of Kloud.Co, a tool for organizing cloud service data. (Hank Williams is not related to Ron Williams).

But Ty Ahmad-Taylor, CEO and founder of FanFeedr, a real-time sports website, says there are opportunities for people to teach themselves. “If you’re in New York City, there’s enough low-cost and online resources where someone can fully immerse oneself in the New York tech community if one wanted to,” Ahmad-Taylor said.



While Hank Williams believes not enough blacks are getting relevant degrees, he’s quick to add that “it doesn’t explain the numbers.” Not all careers in the digital technology industry — like social media and venture capital positions — require computer science or engineering training.

“An awful lot of the people who have been successful in tech — particularly in the venture world — don’t have engineering degrees,” Hank Williams said.

Whether or not education is the reason for low black representation in the startup world, Ron Williams says the lack of high profile black role models in the industry is a problem. “If you don’t have folks who look like you, who feel like you, who relate to the same things as you, who are also off doing this interesting thing called tech entrepreneurship, it’s hard to actually get started, it’s hard for you to model behaviors, based on people who look familiar to you,” Ron Williams said.

But Ahmad-Taylor says despite the challenges, it’s necessary for aspiring founders to overcome those feelings. “You shouldn’t be a CEO if you’re going to be limited by those thoughts or that attitude,” he said.

Read the full story here.