Social Entrepreneur: Conscious Companies | Benefit Corporations | Impact Investing

Hack the Gap is a weekend event where women come together to build a project as a team. Kristen Womack is a bona fide techy. She worked as a product manager for some well-known tech companies. She runs Night Sky Web Co. And she has been involved in the local tech scene from Geekettes to Mpls MadWomen. And yet, as she attended hackathons, she couldn’t help but notice the lack of women. “When I went to the bathroom, there was no line,” she told me. The diversity gap in tech has been widely reported. The problem starts early in life. In a recent survey, only 0.4% of teenage girls plan to major in computer science. Only 6.7% of all women graduate with a STEM degree. According to a study by MIT, about 20% of undergraduate engineering degrees are awarded to women, and only 13% of the engineering workforce is female. According to Google’s annual report, only 31% of its employees are women. Worse still, Hispanic workers account for only 4% of their workforce, and black employees make up only 2%. Kristen and Jenna P