I work for King County on the Communities of Opportunity (COO) Initiative, and a goal of the COO Initiative is to ensure all residents thrive economically. To reach this goal, we work with employers and community members to help expand local hiring practices and provide underserved communities with more access to better paying jobs.

We used this strategy to organize the July 21st Diversity Panel and Resource Event on Technology Industry Careers, with the support and partnership of the WTIA Workforce Institute and other private, public, and community partners.

A total of 110 community members attended our tech career event in Rainier Valley to hear directly from technology professionals, employers, and training providers about new opportunities and resources meant to attract more women and people of color to enter our local tech workforce. 75% of the attendees were people of color and nearly half were from COO communities.

A panel of tech leaders from Amazon, Expedia, King County, and Microsoft spoke about their organizations’ commitment to hiring a diverse tech workforce and offered advice about the different avenues available to pursuing a career in the tech field.

Event attendees also heard from a panel of diverse tech industry professionals about their tech jobs with King County, Amazon, and Code Fellows. In addition, they had an opportunity to network and enroll in a free Introduction to Coding Workshop.

One attendee commented that they “liked the fact that the event was focused on trying to help the underserved population get information about how to break into the tech industry.”

Black people and Hispanics represent only 3% of tech industry employees, and women represent less than 20% of tech workers. Our diversity in tech event not only highlighted this industry need for more diverse and local talent, but gave attendees interested in pursuing tech careers access to some new training options and industry connections.