Facebook and LinkedIn is aiming to boost the declining numbers of women that opt to study computer science and engineering with collaborative initiatives that will eventually fill in thousands of lucrative men dominated Silicon Valley jobs.
Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and Jeffrey Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, stated that they are launching support and mentoring programs at several colleges to entice in general more women in studying technology, and thus become future employees.
15% of Facebook’s employee population that are working specifically in technology related jobs and 31% of these employees are women. At LinkedIn, 17% of tech employees are women and 39% of overall employees are women as well.
Telle Whitney, Anita Borg Institute’s president and CEO, an initiative partner, stated that diversity will bring greater technology innovation.