Silicon Valley has a diversity problem, and Intel plans to invest $300 million in the coming years to tackle it. The world’s largest chip maker has announced a “Diversity in Technology” initiative to get more women and minorities hired at Intel and other high-tech companies. "This isn't just good business," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where company officials also demoed some new gadgets and technologies. "It's the right thing to do. When we all come together and commit, we can make the impossible possible."
Intel said the idea behind the initiative is to get tech companies to build “a pipeline” of female and under-represented minority engineers and computer scientists and to hire and retain them. Intel’s own goal is to “achieve full representation of women and under-represented minorities” at the company by 2020, though Krzanich didn’t spell out specific target numbers. According to its publicly released figures, Intel’s 2013 workforce was 76 percent male, 57 percent white, 29 percent Asian, 8 percent Hispanic and 3 percent black.
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