Silicon Valley–and Alley–present themselves as the ultimate meritocracy. Anyone can succeed in tech, regardless of their gender, race, or choice of footwear, as long as they’ve got the smarts. Right? In theory, the answer is yes. But take a look at the makeup of most major companies, and you’ll find a wealth of white, male employees.

As Etsy CTO Kellan Elliott-McCrea pointed out in a lecture recently posted on First Round Capital’s blog, the lack of diversity in the tech industry isn’t always for want of trying. Faced with problems created by an all-male engineering team, Elliott-McCrea set out to increase the number of female engineers at Etsy in 2010. After a year of miserable results (they actually lost 35% of their women engineers), he tried a new approach that has since transformed the gender makeup of Etsy’s team. Brett Berson explains:

Mark Hedlund, Etsy’s VP of Engineering, launched “Etsy Hacker Grants” to provide needs-based scholarships to talented women engineers enrolling in Hacker School (a three-month hands-on course designed to teach people how to become better engineers). A number of studies, like one from CMU, have shown that people perform better in math and sciences if fifty percent of the participants are women, so gender distribution was a key metric in future Hacker School classes.

Etsy ran this program in the Summer and Fall of 2012 and watched the number of applications skyrocket each time. And in the summer of 2012, women ended up making up over half of the Hacker School class! For Etsy, the process was objectively worth the investment. If you figure that there’s normally a $20,000 placement fee, Etsy was able to hire eight candidates. You do the math.

So increasing their female team count wasn’t a simple matter of finding qualified female engineers–it was a matter of investing in them. Because women engineers tend to not have enough hands-on experience, they might not always get the job. But running a camp that gives them those experiences, and lets Etsy get to know the candidates, solves problems on both sides of the table.

Etsy’s approach offers a model for any growing company angling to build a diverse team. As BetaBeat’s Nitasha Tiku pointed out a few weeks back, discrimination isn’t usually the result of a single lone actor. “Often it’s a confluence of factors that inspire people to see you as enough of an ‘other’ to underestimate you, ignore you, deny you access, or simply not want to help,” she noted. Etsy’s Hacker Grants, along with the similar Silicon Valley Boot Camp, offer a systematic solution to a systematic problem.

Read more here.

Here’s a quick overview:

• Black folks over index on Twitter (26%) and Hispanics (19%) prefer it more than whites (14%)
• Whites (white women, in particular) love Pinterest (18%); Blacks (8%); Hispanics (10%)
• Blacks (23%) and Hispanics (18%) use Instagram far more than whites (11%)
• Almost everyone black, white or brown, uses Facebook

Why do Blacks and Hispanics utilize Twitter and Instagram more than whites?  The answer probably has something to do with the lack of diverse stories in the media.  Services like Twitter and Instagram allow people of color more accessibility and control to information that is specific to them.  It provides a channel and a platform for their voice to be heard in a way that it usually is not.

Read more:  Pew Internet

Thanks to strong corporate support from some of the nation’s largest Hispanic brands, media companies and marketing agencies, organizers of Hispanicize 2013 announced that for the second consecutive year its “Brands Love Bloggers” program has been renewed to provide more than 125 Latino and multicultural bloggers with free passes to attend the annual Latino trends event.

Read more:  Hispanic PR Blog 

Loida Rosario, of intothecore.com, had some great Super Bowl lessons, one of which I thought should be highlighted…

Multiculturalism abounded in new subtle and inclusive forms.   From the description of Beyoncè as French, African-American and White,  (PepsiCo’s new spokesperson) to  bilingual phrases (Spanish/English) at Taco Bell and to celebrities from different ethnic backgrounds together  (Budweiser with Zoe Saldaña and Stevie Wonder),  a new version of ‘multicultural marketing’ was apparent throughout the evening.  Even the elderly, instead of being the source of comedy, were the ones creating the fun.  The new ‘dads’ were targeted with Tide’s Fashionista spot, and an ‘eye candy’ menswear ad that quickly got too long was also included.  Audi’s ‘Prom’ ad related to young generations and to the not-so-young’s nostalgia, and won many credits for creativity.

“If the [U.S.] Hispanic market were a nation, it would soon be the 11th largest economy in the world,” global CEO Sol Trujillo told the Wall Street Summit of 2010. That would place it on the list right near Russia, Canada and Australia. At that size, and with tremendous growth potential — the Hispanic market grew 43% in the last 10 years — how can this market still seem invisible so much of the time, failing to get the investment share and business priority it ought to have?

The answer lies in a seriously flawed system for gathering multicultural sales data. What multicultural market researcher experts call the “sales data undercount” is estimated at between 40% to 60% of the true volume of multicultural consumer sales, depending on the brand or product category.

How does this occur? Most consumer product and service companies gather all sorts of multicultural demographic, psychographic and behavioral data and have made great strides in marketing and advertising to these customers. However, tracking sales remains poor: What percentage of corporate sales and growth is generated by purchases of each of the different consumer groups: Hispanic, African-American, Asian-American and Asians?

Many corporate managers rely on multicultural retail sales data provided by syndicated measurement companies, which quantify how much of a product is purchased by a given demographic group. These numbers are crucial because they measure who purchased what, and are used to make business decisions, including budget allocations for marketing, advertising and product and service innovation.

However, multicultural-consumer sales data tends to be incomplete. Today’s system for measuring multicultural retail sales data is outdated, for a number of reasons. Syndicated retail data do not include sales from the independent, mom-and-pop and convenience stores where many Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American consumers shop. (These are commonly referred in retail as “unmeasured” or “untracked” channels.) In other cases, syndicated retail data under-represent urban and hard-to-reach consumers, including non-English speaking Hispanics or Asians.

These limitations explain, in part, why actual multicultural sales are significantly under-reported, making the U.S. multicultural markets effectively an invisible emerging economy.

How can CMOs budget the proper level of investment if they are unable to link sales to their Hispanic or African-American marketing and advertising efforts? How can they accurately allocate multicultural budgets without having reliable sales measures? The lack of reliable multicultural sales data is one of the primary reasons why companies continue to under-invest in the Hispanic market, which should be seen as a source of real and sustainable growth for corporations.

Presently, corporations try to “fix” the data undercount problem through retail data “guesstimates” and “patchwork,” that is, by using sales estimates applied from one market to another, using a mixture of syndicated data from different sources, etc. These approaches fall short of being a true measure of what and how much is being purchased by multicultural consumers.

The solution lies in the hands of corporations, which first, need to become aware of the multicultural sales undercount problem, and secondly, need to demand improvements to the existing syndicated measurement system by adding all retailers (e.g., independents, mom-and-pops, convenience stores, mass-retailers, etc.), and asking all retailers and syndicated data companies to work together to find a reliable solution to this problem.

Once the sales undercount is corrected, corporations will be able to make informed business decisions based on complete multicultural sales data. This will not only help them maximize their return on investment, but also make the correct multicultural sales data fully visible to their bottom line.

Source:  Ad Age Blogs

Fifteen percent of those employed in the advertising industry are people of color, while our country’s minority population is 37%.

And it’s not only African-Americans. In fact, the Hispanic/Latino demographic, our country’s fastest-growing minority group, represents 16.7% of our country, but makes up a mere 5.3% of those employed in the advertising industry.

The numbers add up yet they just don’t quite “add up.” According to October employment data, more than 12 million Americans were without jobs, but there are at least 68 jobs at two companies in one industry that are “hard to fill”?

This is a conversation that we need to have. But it’s not an easy one. It is a sore spot for people on both sides of the issue. There is the community at large and the talent pool that is looking to break in and ascend to leadership ranks in the industry. Then there are the employers who should be — and I believe are — interested in making their workplaces more diverse.

Read more:  Ad Age Blogs

Here’s what we know about the size of this large and growing market: According to the Selig Center for Economic Growth, Hispanics control $1 trillion in annual buying power in the United States. By 2015, Selig projects that power to grow to $1.5 trillion, basically the size of the economy of Mexico. So why does this large and desirable population continue to be overlooked by many businesses?

Read more:  NY Times Blog:  You’re The Boss

“Hispanics tend to own more pairs of jeans, they shop at department stores more often than any other group… they are fairly brand loyal and they like to keep up with the latest styles,” says Lipson.

Consumers in this category place a great deal of emphasis on their appearance, which makes them keen purchasers of fashion and footwear. Hispanic consumers are very brand aware and their purchasing power is projected to reach over $1.5 trillion by 2015.

Mintel found that 20% of Hispanics own more than ten pairs of jeans and 24% own seven to nine pairs. Hispanics also buy jeans for a wider variety of reasons than other racial groups and are more likely to have bought several pairs of jeans in the last year.

Source:  WGSN

Nike recognizes the importance of Black History Month with not only a product collection, but a larger recognition of the power of sports to impact society. The 2013 Nike Black History Month Collection mantra, “Be Bold. Be True” celebrates three athletes fearless in action and fueled by a purpose. Now more than ever, athletes at all levels have a unique ability to extend their voice beyond sports. Soccer superstarDidier Drogba, tennis legend Serena Williams and basketball phenom Kevin Durant provide creative inspiration for the product collection based on their commitment to giving back to their communities. Consisting of seven shoes, two T-shirts, a Destroyer jacket, Nike Elite socks and 5-panel hat, the collection is a dual effort between Nike Sportswear lifestyle product and Nike Basketball performance product. Nike Sportswear BHM shoes include the Nike Lunar Force 1, Nike Air Force 1 Foamposite Hi, Nike Dunk Sky Hi and Nike Air Force 1 Downtown. Nike Basketball shoes complete the BHM collection with special versions of the KD V, LeBron X and KOBE 8 SYSTEM; all three featuring black, grey and orange with the signature Nike BHM print. These signature shoes will debut on court during pro basketball’s Martin Luther King Jr. tribute day on Monday, January 21.

Source:  Hypebeast

Currently, the Census considers Hispanic not a race but an ethnic background. Hispanics can be of any race, and Hispanic origin is asked on Census forms in a question separate from the one about race.

Now, the Census is considering eliminating the Hispanic origin question and combining it with the race question in a “race or origin” category.

The change would be the biggest adjustment to Census questions about race since the 2000 Census, when people for the first time were allowed to check more than one race — a nod to the nation’s growing multiracial population.

Read more:  USA Today