The St. Louis Coalition (St. Louis Community College, Lindenwood Univ., and TechSTL) just landed the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Inclusive Ecosystem Grant — funding it’s multi-year data equity project.
bizblip: Why is this central to what you do at TechSTL?
Emily Hemingway, TechSTL: Because we can’t diversify the tech workforce if we don’t know what we’re starting with. The same in entrepreneurship and innovation, right? To really address the gaps we must have that transparency of what’s working what’s not working and how we are collectively shooting towards the same goal.
bizblip: Why is the diverse workforce vital to the growth of the St. Louis economy?
Emily Hemingway, TechSTL: Well, especially in IT and tech, diversity is critical for the future because technology is solving global problems. It’s not just solving white people problems. And the most competitive technology and innovation hubs are the ones that are the most diverse.
bizblip: How will this data be gathered?
Howard Wall, economics professor, Lindenwood Univ.: The ‘how’ is, we’re going to have to build a network of people who actually know what’s going on and gather the data they collect. Hopefully, they collect data on what they’re doing, and we need to collect together all of that so we can get a better idea of things going on generally, in the area. And you know, it’s it’s a pretty big task, but I think there are a lot of people who are interested in in moving forward on this. So we hope we can get partners to get good data and find out where we are. Then as we progress, where we’re succeeding.
Links:
TechSTL IT Labor Market Report (just dropped yesterday, with a ton of data).
