Colorintech Founder Featured as Top Tech Leader
Catz alumnus Ashleigh Ainsley (2011, Geography) was recently featured by the Financial Times as one of the top 100 black and minority ethnic (BAME) leaders in technology, thanks to his work as founder of Colorintech, a non-profit organisation that aims to improve diversity in the technology industry.
Founded in 2016, Colorintech focuses on encouraging more people from BAME backgrounds to pursue a career in the tech industry by running courses and events to help connect under-represented minorities to available opportunities. According to research undertaken by the organisation, just 2.6% of leadership positions in the industry in the UK are held by ethnic minorities, compared to 17% in the US.
In November last year Google’s charitable arm, Google.org, awarded Colorintech £200,000 in grants to help grow their programmes. These grants will allow the organisation to reach ten times more people than they would have been able to, and it hopes to use this support to launch a ‘career accelerator’ programme to reach over 3,000 students and professionals.
Ashleigh told us: ‘It is a very exciting time for Colorintech. We are looking to scale exponentially this year and really make a step change in the career paths for under-represented communities entering tech. This continues some of the work I was doing at Catz in terms of increasing access to opportunities for minorities to go to Oxford. Given the increasing pressure on finding the best talent, it is more important than ever that the industry looks beyond its own communities to meet the skills gap.’