The movement to diversify Silicon Valley is crumbling amid attacks on DEI

Girls In Tech, a nonprofit dedicated to recruiting women to the tech industry, was a Silicon Valley darling, with major companies eagerly partnering with the group after its 2007 launch.

But in a single week in late 2023, five key donors pulled their funding, citing market turbulence.

To stay afloat, the group’s founder, Adriana Gascoigne, considered merging with Women Who Code, a nonprofit with a similar mission backed by corporate giants including Microsoft, Google and Boeing. Days after she floated the idea to members of her board, Women Who Code shuttered.

With money drying up, Gascoigne dissolved her own 130,000-member group in July.

Girls In Tech was part of a network of nonprofits and consultants that blossomed in the early 2010s to promote race and gender representation in Silicon Valley. The network has struggled amid a growing political backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.

In an era of tightening budgets, many tech companies are distancing themselves from these initiatives – forcing the advocacy groups to close up shop, lay off staff or rebrand their efforts to stay afloat, according to interviews with more than a dozen diversity advocates and group founders.

The drop in support for programs that tech companies once touted as a sign of their commitment to adding women, Black people and Hispanic people to their ranks follows a right-wing campaign to challenge diversity initiatives in court.

After the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at Harvard and other schools, advocates have levied similar legal challenges against corporations. Some prominent tech leaders have recast DEI as a discriminatory movement, turning programs into a political liability for donors.

“DEI must DIE,” Elon Musk posted on X in December. The popular All-In podcast, hosted by four tech investors, called DEI “dying” the “best political trend” of 2023.

The sudden collapse of a program with the wholesome-seeming goal of encouraging girls and women to pursue careers in technology, where the workforce is dominated by White and Asian men, floored Gascoigne.

“I was just in shock when we had to pull that rip cord,” Gascoigne told the Washington Post.

Bolstered by support from top tech executives and the Obama administration, the organizations promised to transform the industry by finding, training and supporting promising talent to diversify a largely homogeneous workforce.

Despite these initiatives, the tech industry’s demographics remain largely stagnant. In 2022, 26% of science, tech, engineering and math workers were women, an increase of one percentage point from the year 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. While the share of Black workers in Google’s U.S. offices increased by 2.4 percentage points between 2019 and 2024, they make up less than 6% of the company.

Some experts attribute unwavering numbers to failures in company DEI programs, which critics contend fail to fully incorporate the needs of staff.

Diversity consultants say they are being offered fewer contracts as tech companies lay off the DEI teams that championed their work. Some nonprofits have been told that corporate leaders no longer support their efforts, while others say the change is part of a strategy shift.

Reshma Saujani, founder and former CEO of Girls Who Code, which served 670,000 students, said programs like hers have helped marginalized groups break into tech .

“This wasn’t a partisan issue, this was an opportunity issue,” Saujani said. “They have made it into a woke left thing, rather than something that is good for the American economy.”

Efforts to diversify Silicon Valley have faced waves of backlash.

Under public pressure, tech companies like Google and Facebook began issuing annual “transparency” reports in the mid-2010s, revealing leading firms often had only 1% or 2% Black or Latinx employees.

Despite the stark divide, internal efforts to raise awareness around the numbers became a flash point inside tech companies.

Some workers argued the tech company demographics were based on merit and reflected hiring the best person for the job. Others, particularly employees of color, said corporate training around mitigating bias avoided topics like discrimination and inequality – framing bias as an interpersonal issue.

Karla Monterroso, the former CEO of Code2040, which offers Black and Latinx students fellowships at tech companies, marveled at how normal it was, at the time, for executives and employees to debate whether promoting diversity was “lowering the bar” for talent. “We were really in the gunk of trying to prove people of color had worth,” she said.

Some donors who cut funding after Trump’s 2016 election privately expressed concern about unionization and worker organizing, said Monterroso.

“Folks just did not want a radicalized activist workforce, so they were pulling money left and right,” she said.

For Girls in Tech, financial troubles mounted when the pandemic hit in 2020, said Gascoigne. The nonprofit needed more resources to pay for new technology as it shifted in-person hackathons and start-up competitions to virtual events. Corporate donors, citing an erratic market, were reluctant to give.

As Silicon Valley grappled with the absence of Black workers and investors after George Floyd’s murder, some tech companies redirected donations toward nonprofits supporting Black communities and people of color, rather than organizations like Girls in Tech, Gascoigne said.

Some tech executives became distrustful of diversity initiatives, she added, noting lagging progress on hiring and promoting underrepresented groups. “The pendulum swung so far and people were not really being strategic,” said Gascoigne.

The dynamics have changed the landscape for organizations that once flourished.

Debbie Forster, co-CEO of the Tech Talent Charter – a UK-based industry coalition promoting diversity – dissolved the group this summer when the tech companies’ commitments waned. Forster had enough funds to keep operating, but said she would rather close up shop than let companies promote their commitment to the charter’s mission, while they quietly slash DEI programs.

“We didn’t want to be part of any kind of performative, fig-leaf activity,” Forster said. “We had to show the sector what was going on.”

Wonder Women Tech founder Lisa Mae Brunson knew her nonprofit, which helps women break into tech, was vulnerable to corporate whims. But she was surprised by how quickly the winds shifted after losing roughly 75% of her corporate clients in the past year.

One client canceled a panel and networking mixer for women and people of color at the last minute, despite having already paid. Sponsors who previously had a booth at Brunson’s annual Wonder Women Tech conference opted not to participate this year, she said.

KARS Group president Keisha A. Rivers, whose firm helps companies design and implement programs to support people of color, cut roughly 30% of its workforce after companies eliminated or paused their programs.

Clients would say, “ ‘It’s not anything to do with you. It’s just that at this point in time, we just felt like it was better to pause this and not to move forward,’ ” Rivers said. “And I’m just like, ‘Well, we’ve been talking for months and they seem fine. So what changed?’ ”

Last year, Rivers pivoted, offering training for leaders to create “psychologically safe environments” for a diverse workforce.

Industry experts are discussing how to make diversity initiatives less polarizing, including using language around “culture, identity, and belonging,” or leadership development, rather than equity.

Brunson is changing the name of her annual conference from Wonder Women Tech conference to Wonder Tech Fest – a move that has already attracted more male sign ups for the event next year, she said.

She finds the need to rebrand frustrating. “Are we trying to sugar coat it for companies to get on board?,” she asked. “Today it’s a political issue, but tomorrow it may not be.”