You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well. Earlier this month, we did um highlight a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study. It was published in the lance that we highlighted it on the Bloomberg terminal in at Bloomberg dot com. What it showed is that the pandemic push more women out of jobs than during the early months of the pandemic, reversing decades of progress and
education and gender equality. And Tim, we've talked about to the pandemics unequal impact too when it comes to minorities. So we have the perfect guest to talk about all of this, that is Bertina chick A Relli, the CEO of and Power. And Power is an organization with a mission to get people to the middle class from poverty, and the way they do that is by training when it comes to tech skills, and they focus on job placement as well. Bertina, it's good to have you back
with us. How are you. Thank you so much for having me back. It's great to be here. Well, what are you seeing in terms of what what Carol just mentioned. Is that something that you're seeing day in and day out when it comes to the effects of the pandemic. Yeah, I know, it's very real. We have certainly seen women of color in particular just proportionately impacted by this pandemic with a great loss of economic stability um and rising
demands in terms of childcare and elder care. So the problem is very real, and I think our opportunity is to identify ways in which we can create better pathways to accelerate another kind of career track that helps these women in particular gain an economic foothold. I love that you said that, because if we talk about the inequities that are out there, the inequalities, you know, we we used to talk about income gaps, That's what it's about.
It's about wealth creation, right, and how do you do it and how do you help those that haven't had the same opportunities be on a better path to help create generational wealth and so on, And this is something we've certainly seen blacks and minorities that certain haven't had the same access. Tell us about the research you guys are doing and the specific actions that maybe can move black women into positions and technology where it seems like every CEO of Bertina that we talked to they want
tech workers. Absolutely. It is everybody I talked to in the tech sector right now. It is the number one concern is a perceived lack of talent. Let's start with what we know and which really guided our research today. We know that less than five of the tech workforce in America is comprised of women of color, specifically Black, Hispanic and American Indian women, and that's just an astonishing fact. And so we set out with this research really to
understand two things. First, what should that percentage be, what should we be striving for as a society, And secondly, what might be some pathways to be able to reach a much more ambitious goal. So that was how we framed So what are those pathways? So well, I'll tell you our findings, right the three things that we walked away with this research that we conducted in partnership with Burning Glass is first, and this really speaks to that
question of a pathway. First, we found there are five hundred job classifications right now today where there are similar skills, abilities and qualifications required to do those jobs. They are not in the tech sector, but tech adjacent. These are jobs like an electronic medical records specialist, right, an individual who needs to have knowledge of information systems, project management,
customer service quality assurance. And here's the interesting fact. In those five hundred job categories we mapped for skills similarity, the percent of women of color and those jobs are ten. So you know, I have to see the double Let me, you said skills adjacent, right? Is that? Did I get
that right? That's correct? Remember, I believe talking about this with the President of the Federalizer Bank of Philadelphia, Patrick Harker, and has done the same research of saying that there's so many skills that aren't in tech jobs that are are very similar to skills that are needed in what would be classified as tech jobs, and yet those people aren't being shown or provided the opportunity to take that step uh into that tech community. So so talk to
me more about that. So how do we change that? How do we make that better? So? I think, really where we where we identify this gap, where we know that there are skills that are halfway there, and we can go the difference that the distance is through short term skills programs, bridge skills programs like m power and a number of others and the way we think about this right, it was important for us to put some dimension around how might we benchmark our success And that's
where the equation for equality comes in. When we have an equation for equality of one, that's when we know the percent of women of color in tech jobs is equal to the percent of women in these tech eligible jobs, those five hundred that I mentioned. So when we get that one ratio, that means that the investments that we're making in bridge skilling programs, upscaling recruitment, retaining practices, then
we will have been successful. So I think the first priority is really to communicate to many of these women who have a lot of those skills similarity aspects, communicate the opportunities through these programs, providing the flexibility so they can take these types of courses which are often free, and get the required certifications and skills to be able to be connected to much higher paying jobs. Britina, is this is this? You mentioned? What happens when we reach
that goal and how we reach that goal. Are you optimistic that that happens during our lifetimes? I mean, I just look at how slow we have been when it comes to progress within these realms. Yeah, so I I I by nature I'm an optimist, and especially now. And the reason the reason is because there is so much urgency in the business sector on finding great talent and
investing in that talent. We have to do it. And you know, for a long time we've been very laser focused as a society, rightly so on K through twelve, and we need to continue to do that. And they're great organizations like Girls who Code and the Y and Urban Alliance. Those efforts need to persist. But we also need to recognize the urgency that today tech openings are up. With these short term programs, we can more quickly position these women to take the jobs that are open right
now today. Please just gonna say that that electronic medical record specialists. The skills she needs are things like operating systems, network trouble shooting, a little bit of computer and hardware and software knowledge. Again can all be down through a certification process. Her starting salary as a help desk analyst will be on average over seven thousand dollars a year more.
It's a big difference. It's a big difference. Now we've got to just remind you know, corporations right that these these workers are out there and it's an easy shift for them, um to certainly be hired by the tech community. Britina, we have to run. Good luck with it, UH and great to get a check up and just an update on what you guys are doing. It was good to have you back, Britina Chickarelli. She's a chief executive officer of and Power, joining us via zoom from Brooklyn. Last
time we talked with her. Chartier Brentley, our deputy beuer chief here assistant Deputy beure chief here at Bloomberg and joined us for the conversation. But it's it's interesting to hear what you're saying. Yeah, really and then look, it comes just a few days after we spoke to the folks at UH one huddle about the uh UP skilling programs that they do right and new work. It's an
easy shift. A lot of the skills are there, it's just a little bit of tinkering and then they can be you know, have the opportunity to go into a job that pays them more.