Raytheon wants CT women, people of color in high tech
Company allocating $500M to diversity effort
Raytheon Technologies, a Waltham, Mass.-based company with about 16,000 employees in Connecticut, announced it will commit $500 million over the coming decade to open up more opportunities for young women, minorities and veterans.
The initiative — known as Connect Up — would focus on three connected areas: providing access to STEM education to groups who continue to be underrepresented in technology careers; supporting local communities by focusing on food insecurity and social justice issues; and helping veterans and military families land jobs in the civilian workforce.
Raytheon’s pledge was the latest from the private sector to arrive attached to eye-popping dollar amounts. Last October, JPMorgan Chase committed $30 billion to addressing racial inequality, much of it in the form of mortgage refinancing to help minority homeowners reduce their monthly costs and construction loans dedicated to affordable housing developments.
Greg Hayes, who led United Technologies into its
April 2020 merger with Raytheon and remains CEO of the combined company, has already committed to many of Connect Up’s goals. In January, the company installed Marie Sylla-Dixon, who previously worked for T-Mobile and Verizon, as chief diversity officer.
“She’s going to accelerate our ongoing initiatives,” Hayes said in a February conference call. “She’s a member of my executive
leadership team and she has wasted no time in getting to work.”
Raytheon’s Pratt & Whitney division is located in East Hartford, and Collins Aerospace has a large plant adjacent to Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks. The company has roughly 180,000 employees across the globe.
Between 2012 and 2018, UTC had reported $250 million in philanthropic
support to some 6,000 organizations worldwide, for an average of more than $35 million annually. Raytheon did not disclose an aggregate dollar investment in the most recent corporate responsibility report it posted prior to the UTC merger.
“So much has changed in the way companies think about their role in society, their role in local communities [and] so much
has changed about the expectations that employees have for the roles companies will play on serious societal issues,” said Randy Bumps, who leads corporate social responsibility initiatives at Raytheon, after holding a similar role at UTC’s in its Farmington headquarters. “Even before the merger, both companies were working really diligently to fine-tune their giving to a core group of focus areas.”
Bumps did not provide an estimate on how much of the $500 million earmarked for Connect Up would benefit Connecticut communities directly, but said Raytheon wants to spend the money where its employees live and work.
Since the start of the pandemic, Raytheon has donated $5 million to Feeding America; Connecticut food banks were among the largest recipients. It has otherwise furnished support to 140 organizations statewide, including the Connecticut Science Center and Junior Achievement.
“We looked at the diversity in our workforce and said, ‘OK, if we are ultimately to change the composition of our workforce, we have to figure out how to bridge a pathway for girls and people of color to see themselves in careers at Raytheon Technologies,” Bumps said. “Not only do that, but provide them the resources and the opportunities they need in order to get to work here.”
To advance opportunities for girls and minority youth, Raytheon indicated it will support efforts by the National Academy Foundation, Girls Who Code and SMASH, which derives its acronym from Summer Math and Science Honors. It will also free up funding for community support groups like Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Feeding America.
Raytheon will also deepen its involvement with nonprofits that help veterans transition to privatesector careers like The Mission Continues, Student Veterans of America and American Corporate Partners.
In the case of Girls Who Code, which has grown to three dozen chapters at schools, libraries and youth groups, UTC was among a handful of corporations to donate in excess of $1 million in 2019 along with AT&T, Prudential, Uber and Walmart. Combined, the big infusions boosted the nonprofit’s total grants and gifts to more than $20 million that year.
Jackie Corricelli, a teacher with Conard High School in West Hartford who is president of the Connecticut chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association and worked at Raytheon earlier in her career, described her own experiences in overcoming classroom challenges in a CSTA interview last year, saying “the space did not seem safe to me” with a slew of arcane terminology and class discussions.
“Right now we still have some significant inequities,” Corricelli stated in an email response to a Hearst Connecticut query. “We have made some gains. Courses like AP CS Principles have helped and many teachers are working to educate themselves about how to make student experiences better.”