Corporate diversity:
Twitter, Facebook and Zoom join other Bay Area companies pledging to fill a quarter of their executive roles with people from underrepresented groups by 2025.
Twitter, Facebook, Zoom and a host of other Bay Area companies are planning to increase diversity in their executive ranks as part of an initiative through the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the region’s major business organization.
The companies have signed on to the group’s 25x25 pledge, promising to fill a quarter of their executive roles with people from underrepresented groups by 2025. Companies can alternatively increase the number of people from diverse backgrounds in leadership roles by at least 25% by that time.
“For far too long our successes have not been reflective of who we are,” the leadership group’s CEO Ahmad Thomas said during a virtual diversity meeting Friday.
It wasn’t immediately clear what “underrepresented groups” meant, although a state law requiring more diversity on the corporate boards of publicly traded companies that took effect this year defined the term as a person who selfidentifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaska
Native, or who selfidentifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
A separate law passed in 2018 also sets goals statewide for placing women on corporate boards. That law requires publicly held companies headquartered in California to have at least two women on boards with five members and at least three women on boards with six or more directors, by the end of the year.
Thomas announced that tech companies including Flex, Listo, Lumetum, Sunpower and Western Digital had also signed on to the pledge.
Businesses from other industries signed on as well, including the San Francisco 49ers and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others.
Tech companies including Facebook and Twitter have drawn criticism in the past for falling short when it comes to diversity in their workforces.
In its most recent diversity report Twitter said it planned to have women make up half of its workforce by 2025. The company also said it is aiming to have Black, Latinx, Native American, Alaskan or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or multiracial people make up a quarter of its workforce by 2025. Those groups made up less than 15% of the workforce according to the report released in March.