Pinterest is like most Bay Area tech companies: Its employees are predominantly white and male.
Pinterest Hires Its First Diversity Head to Get More Women, Minorities on Board
Pinterest wants to be less white, less male.
Pinterest / Facebook
That’s why on Wednesday, the company hired its first Head of Diversity, Candice Morgan, formerly of Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on diversifying corporate workplaces. As part of her new role, Morgan will oversee two new internship programs that Pinterest is launching Wednesday, one of which is a summer internship program for college freshmen who are “women, Black/African American and Latino/Latina,” according to a company spokesperson.
Pinterest is among a number of tech companies that has admitted publicly that it’s not very diverse. Just 21 percent of Pinterest’s tech employees are women, and only 5 percent are not white or Asian.
Like Twitter, which recently set measurable hiring goals for women and minorities, Pinterest has also been public about its diversity ambitions. In July, the company said it plans to increase the percentage of female and minority engineers it brings on staff.
Diversity was a popular topic of debate in Silicon Valley last year, with most companies quick to point out their diversity initiatives in an effort to make their products and cultures more well-rounded. Not all company efforts to fix the diversity issue have been lauded, however. Twitter, for instance, took heat last week when it hired a new head of diversity who was a white male.
Morgan starts at Pinterest’s San Francisco headquarters next week.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
