Infor teams with #YesWeCode to promote diversity in technology
As part of its Infor Inforum conference and exhibition held in Washington DC this September, industry-specific cloud applications company Infor and #YesWeCode today announced the launch of GenOne.
This is a joint initiative aimed at increasing diversity of all kinds in the tech workforce in the space of what is hoped to be one single generation.
The partnership is being catalysed by Infor CEO Charles Phillips and social entrepreneur Van Jones.
Infor is an industry-specific cloud company – so, logically enough, it wants to help skill up coders in highly-tuned role-based training.
The objective sets out to execute training and in under 4-months, place new recruits in profitably-paying roles across the technology ecosystem.
According to Infor CEO Phillips, the programme is dedicated to focusing on the change management needed to not just ‘place’ but also ‘retain’ diverse talent.
The initial phase is a NYC-based cohort of underrepresented students between the ages of 18-35 who will take part in a 3-month intensive training program in New York to be ready for placement into technology jobs.
Additional phases of this initiate will scale and expand the number of students and the geographic reach of this project over 2019.
“When we started #YesWeCode, we saw an opportunity to change the odds for success in STEM by encouraging candidates from disadvantaged or non-traditional backgrounds to pursue careers in technology,” said Van Jones, founder of #YesWeCode.
Jones suggests that while most people are familiar with consumer technologies, by partnering with Infor, #YesWeCode can expose more people to employment opportunities in the large market for business computing.
A vision from Prince
According to the organisation, “#YesWeCode honours Prince for his inspired [original founding] vision for #YesWeCode. Prince’s commitment to ensuring young people of colour have a voice in the tech sector continues to impact the lives of future visionaries creating the tech of tomorrow.”
Jones spoke on stage at Inforum 2018 to explain how far we need to appreciate the amount of change that is happening right now — he claims to have met ‘many smart 17-year olds’ that have no idea what CNN is, because it has never appeared in their SnapChat or Facebook feeds.
Insisting that the future of law (and society and culture) used to be written by government, but today it is being written by code, Jones says he recognises that the economy needs to achieve new digital skills… but a key part of that is diversity because diverse teams typically outperform non-diverse teams.
#YesWeCode, launched in 2014 and is an initiative of The Dream Corps, to help 100,000 young women and men from underrepresented backgrounds find success in the tech sector.