Lucidworks CEO Will Hayes and Clef BD Head Darrell Jones III on Why Diversity Starts at Home

Lucidworks CEO Will Hayes interviews Clef’s head of biz dev, Darrell Jones III about how individuals can make a lasting impact on youth and breed inclusivity in the organization from the ground up – and why Oakland is poised to be the Atlanta of the west coast – in this snippet, Hayes ask Jones about the common tech habit of hiding behind meritocracy:

“When I hear people talk about meritocracy… I question whose history they’ve been reading, whose life they’ve looked into and how objective that really is. You can’t expect children growing up on welfare with no access to education and mentors to be able to compete. For every thousand kids, you have one Barack Obama. You will have one Jackie Robinson. But far and away, the odds are not in that favor. That is privilege. When 50 out of 70 privileged kids do well and only 1 out of 70 kids here do well, I don’t want to talk about how the other 69 should have been better. I was a bright kid and when I was in the inner city of Chicago, I was surrounded by plenty of other bright kids. I’m here now and a lot of those equally intelligent kids, who had similar family structures — if not better because I had a single parent — don’t have the same outcomes. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that’s meritocracy.”

Full inteview on Forbes.com: Why Diversity Starts at Home


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