Only 3 percent of Black professionals hold executive roles in the tech C-suite. That statistic is not just a number. It is a mirror reflecting opportunity lost, decisions never made and innovations the world will never see.
It also highlights a dynamic that we believe can be changed. The three of us — a nonprofit CEO, a founder and principal of a college prep high school and a summit president — met last year over breakfast at an education summit in San Diego and have committed to driving that change.
The lack of Black leadership and talent in STEM fields is a problem with a known origin point: K-12 schools. It is evident in school classrooms where a 7-year-old is asking why the robot can’t recognize her face and a ninth grader is struggling to debug her first algorithm.
Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.
Students cannot be what they cannot see. By the time most students meet their first mentor in STEM, the pipeline has already narrowed. If we wait until college orientation to widen that pipeline, we have waited too long, because the future workforce does not start at college orientation.
The three of us are each doing our part to expand the pipeline. Our solutions to this problem include:
- Investing in programs that work: Equitable talent development begins well before internships. Philanthropic and corporate partners must invest in pre-K programs, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other organizations that expand access to STEM.
- Elevating stories: Amplify narratives about the contributions of the graduates of those schools and organizations. Bring young innovators into boardrooms as collaborators. Tell their stories on the stages where capital and policy decisions are made.
- Building a career pipeline of future leaders and innovators: Commit to creating more paid internships, sponsoring a cohort of teachers or funding a classroom. The need is specific; the impact is generational.
Our partnership, which began as an effort to bring HBCU students and leaders into the ASU+GSV community (a convening platform for education innovators), now fosters access, mentorship and career-connected opportunity via collaboration between three separate entities.
Project Scientist is a national nonprofit that spans early exploration through college-ready leadership. We offer a series of out-of-school experiences, including an explorer’s club, innovation lab and scholars circle that walk students through every stage of their K-12 journey. The programs include rigorous, hands-on real-world experiments and teacher training.
At the HBCU Early College Prep High School, students tackle projects such as exploring the role of science in civic justice by using physics to analyze bullet velocity and chemistry to help design protest-safety tools like tear-gas protection. When a ninth grader at the HBCU Early College Prep High School debates whether an algorithm can be biased, she is not just learning computer science; she is framing ethics.
It’s the first program of its kind in the world and is filled with scholars who are already engineering real-world solutions. In this way, students learn that STEM is not only about formulas; it is also about freedom.
HBCUs have always been more than institutions; they are incubators of intellect and courage. Despite receiving a fraction of the philanthropic and government investment directed at their peers and representing just 9 percent of four-year bachelor’s degree-granting institutions, HBCUs award 28 percent of STEM bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students. That is an outsized return on undervalued investment.
Our partnership treats HBCUs as essential infrastructure in the innovation economy, bridging K-12 and higher education. It seeks to foster students’ sense of belonging and to ensure they get access to mentorship from professionals, job shadowing and paid internships. This exposure to professional expectations will shape their futures.
Education at its best cultivates both innovation and integrity. Students in these programs and schools are not waiting for adulthood to create change. They do not need to be told they belong in the future. They are already building it.
Expanding pipelines requires more than corporate will. Some convenings and partnerships produce business cards; ours resulted in a blueprint: the conditions needed for people to sit across a table from one another, recognize a shared problem and refuse to leave without a plan. It is helping us forge relationships that move students, institutions and ideas forward.
It is also proof that when investors, policymakers and innovators are in the same room with educators, something real can happen. That is exactly the commitment the next generation is asking us to make, to ensure the doors we walked through stay open long after we are gone.
Our story began with a conversation over breakfast. The next chapter depends on who chooses to pull up a chair.
Patrice S. Johnson is the CEO of Project Scientist, a national nonprofit igniting curiosity and confidence in underestimated students from pre-K through career. Tiffany Taylor, president of the ASU + GSV Summit, and Asya Johnson, principal and founder of the HBCU Early College Prep High School, also contributed to this opinion piece.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story Black students and STEM was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
