Apple donating over $50 million to help encourage more diversity in tech

March 11, 2015

Apple has pledged to donate over $50 million to a number of organizations that are trying to encourage more women, minorities and veterans to seek employment in the tech industry.

According to Fortune, Apple's money will be going to groups like the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which supports students in historically black colleges and universities. Part of its money will also go to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Finally, the report says that Apple is in talks with military leaders to offer veterans better technology training.

Fortune spoke with Apple's human resources chief Denise Young Smith about their divisity funding plans, which will extend over several years:

We wanted to create opportunities for minority candidates to get their first job at Apple," said Young Smith, who took over as its head of HR a little over a year ago. (Before her current role, the longtime Apple exec spent a decade running recruiting for the retail side of the business.) "There is tremendous upside to that and we are dogged about the fact that we can't innovate without being diverse and inclusive."

In August 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he was "not satisfied" about the current race and gender makeup of the company and that Apple was "committed to being as innovative in advancing diversity as we are in developing our products."

Source: Fortune