Jewel Burks Solomon is an advocate for minority representation and access in the technology industry. Solomon is a managing partner at Collab Capital. She is the co-founder of the startup, Partpic, groundbreaking technology that changes the way people everywhere locate products. Solomon sold Partpic to Amazon in 2016. Rolling out spoke with her at the Facebook Civil Rights x Tech Town Hall.
What are your thoughts about this event?
I think it’s been a great event. I really like the focus on talking about the structural issues that cause people that look certain ways to be locked out of the tech space. I think it is really important to call it what it is. The event was kicked off with a discussion about racism being the root cause of a lot of disparities we’ll see in the tech industry. I haven’t been to a tech event that says it so plainly and I appreciated that.
What do you understand the divide in the tech space to be?
I will add to what was said earlier, which is racism. I think that people have created companies that benefit them and there’s nothing wrong with that. When a company gets to a certain size and none of the leadership is Black, most of the people who are employed aren’t Black, most people who benefit from the company are white, yet the main drivers of that success are diverse consumers, there is a disconnect there that has to be resolved. So I think that that’s something that we have to have conversations about and more important[ly], definitive action that can lead to changes in the industry.
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