It has been quite a transformative year for Microsoft in the diversity and inclusion space.
Last week, Microsoft’s corporate venture fund M12 announced that it will be joining forces with EQT Ventures and SVB Financial Group to launch the Female Founders Competition, a global startup contest to identify top female talent and accelerate access to capital for women entrepreneurs. Read the full blog post by Executive Vice President of Business Development Peggy Johnson here.
Also last week, Microsoft announced that it will be partnering with Black Girls Code, led by founder Kimberly Bryant to help the organize launch the Seattle chapter. Read more via the TechCrunch article here.
Since its founding in 2011, Black Girls Code has helped introduce technology and computer science to young black girls in 13 cities across the country. Microsoft also deepened its partnership with Technology Access Foundation, founded by Trish Millines Dziko. Microsoft has invested $500,000 across both partnerships.
“As Satya has said in the past, Microsoft can only be successful if we have people of all backgrounds building our technology and we cannot build product and services for everyone unless everyone is represented in our engineering ranks,” Microsoft Corporate VP and Lead Mary Snapp wrote in a LinkedIn post last week.
May this be the first of many more new industry and external partnerships with local #DiversityandTech organizations to come!