Intel’s $300 Million Pledge: Tech Giant Stamps Commitment to Diversity at Wall Street Project Summit

Van Jones and His Fight For Programmer Parity

Black Enterprise spoke with #YesWeCode founder and former White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones about his efforts to improve diversity in the technology industry.

Jones was optimistic about the massive steps taken in the first month of 2015. “2014 was the year people talked about diversity,” Jones said to Black Enterprise. “I think 2015 is the year people do something about diversity.”

Jones’ #YesWeCode is aspiring to become similar to the United Negro College Fund, but focused exclusively on funding coding education. “So our job is to help finance people who want to go to the coding boot camps,” said Jones, who founded the company in 2013.

“In three to six months someone can go from making zero dollars in this field to making $70-80 thousand a year. When you have that kind of return on investment you can create a revolving loan fund that can become a perpetual motion machine, so a relatively modest amount of money invested in coding education can give results for a very long time.”

Check out more on the growth in urban tech on the next page …