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XCan CSUN's New $50 Million Tech Campus Bring More Latinos Into LA's Tech Scene?
Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

About 8% of Apple's tech workers are Latino, a figure that's been stagnant for more than six years. The Cupertino company has grown its presence in Southern California as it attempts to break into Hollywood. Now, it's backing an initiative at California State University Northridge to bring more Latinos into the tech world.
A $50 million center called the Global Hispanic Serving Institution Equity Innovation Hub will be an immersive experience that hopes to attract the state university system's largely Latino students into STEM studies and careers.
The tech sector has long been criticized for failing to recruit and retain Black and Latino workers.
Apple and the state are splitting the cost of the center, which aims to reverse the persistent gaps. It will offer a place where students can be inspired by leaders in the tech industry, provide in-person and virtual information about mentorship opportunities and make connections to STEM employers. It could ultimately serve as a pipeline for Apple. The building is expected to open in 2024.
"We aim to cultivate aspirational capital in STEM that transcends physical and virtual spaces exposing Latinx and other historically underrepresented students to a creative tech mindset to accelerate their understanding of how technology is integrated in all aspects of our lives and essential to the workforce of the future," CSUN President Erika D. Beck said in an emailed statement.
But will it be effective in pulling more Latinos into a world where white and Asian males are over-represented? And particularly in Los Angeles County where Latinos represent nearly half of the population.
Mark Muro, senior fellow for the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institution, has studied the underrepresentation of Blacks and Latinos in tech and said the CSUN hub has the potential to strengthen the pipeline for Latinos.
"This appears to be a compelling outside-the-box approach that should be lauded and deserves observation to see how it works," Muro said.
But in order to truly be meaningful, those involved should explore different ways to support Latinos in the industry like by providing daycare, better HR practices, different ways to credential that don't only rely on college degrees as well as pay while students are in college and the promise of a job after graduation, he said.
"I think there's a whole lot of work and exploration that the new hub can pursue in developing truly dynamic and diverse approaches," Muro said.
Since the killing of George Floyd and the civil unrest that followed, tech companies from Airbnb to Uber were forced to face their own racial reckoning. Many did this through philanthropic endeavors to promote anti-racist policies and racial equity within and outside their workforces.
A rendering of the Global Hispanic Serving Institution Equity Innovation Hub to be built at CSUN.
Apple announced it would invest $100 million into a Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. Its $25 million donation to California State University is part of that program.
But as the tech world has been grappling with its lack of diversity, a recent study shows the gap in the STEM workforce for Latino adults has not improved.
An April Pew Research Center report found that while Latinos make up 17% of total employment across all occupations, they represent only 8% of all STEM workers. The Latino share of all STEM workers is up 1 percentage point since 2016, in line with their growth in the overall workforce.
The share of Apple's Latino tech workforce has not improved since 2015.
Apple's Inclusion and Diversity report shows that since 2015, the share of its tech workers who are Latino has remained at 8%. Latino representation in Apple's leadership positions was also 8% in 2020.
CSUN is one of the country's leading universities when it comes to awarding Latino students degrees, the university said. About 54% of its 39,000 students enrolled this fall are Latino.
"We aim to shift the conversation away from what students must do to be successful to what our institutions must do to successfully serve our Latinx and other diverse students," Beck said.
While the center will be housed at CSUN, the university said it will also be open to students from other colleges within the CSU system as well as other schools designated as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), where at least 25% of the undergraduate enrollment is Latino and at least half of all students are low-income. Twenty-one of the system's 23 campuses are designated as a HSI.
California State University, Northridge's Oviatt Library,
A virtual platform for the center will reach students and other HSIs across the nation.
Students walking through the building can use their mobile phone to scan images of diverse people in the tech field and learn more about the individuals highlighted and the educational pathways that lead to those careers, Beck said.
"This is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with an outstanding partner in Apple and to leverage their cutting-edge and creative technologies with the intellectual capacities of world-class faculty to combine that work to benefit thousands of talented students in California and beyond," said CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro in a statement.
Apple will provide its technology, design support and "thought partnership" as the project expands, CSUN said.
"We are focused on advancing enduring change, and our newest grant commitments will further that effort by supporting problem solvers and solution seekers in communities of color nationwide," said Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives.
Some companies have taken their commitment to increasing diversity in the workforce beyond financial donations to diversity and inclusion initiatives and Apple is among them.
In addition to Apple, Nike, McDonald's and Chipotle Mexican Grill are among the companies who have tied executive bonuses to be partially contingent on measurable progress on gender and racial equity, Fortune reported.
Apple CEO Tim Cook earned $14.8 million in compensation in 2020 and the company reported $81.4 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2021, covering the months of April, May, and June.- USC Granted $15 Million For Tech Startup Incubator - dot.LA ›
- At UCLA, Robots Are Delivering Groceries, Pizza and Coffee - dot.LA ›
Favot is an award-winning journalist and adjunct instructor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She previously was an investigative and data reporter at national education news site The 74 and local news site LA School Report. She's also worked at the Los Angeles Daily News. She was a Livingston Award finalist in 2011 and holds a Master's degree in journalism from Boston University and BA from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.
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LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
- Vamstar Raises $9.5M For Its Medical Supply Chain Platform - dot.LA ›
- MaC Venture Capital Eyes $200 Million For Its Second Fund - dot.LA ›
- Los Angeles Venture Capital News - dot.LA ›
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.