Today’s Top 5 News Stories in Tech, Race, and Gender

Diligent.com just released its 2023 Investor Stewardship report. It’s an indicator of where the biggest investors place emphasis for change at publicly traded companies. According to Diligent’s report this year, disclosure or documentation of racial and gender pay, promotion, and inclusion practices remain top items on proxy statements in 2024. Proxy statements represent the voice of the investors as they look to introduce initiatives for an investor community-wide vote on practices at publicly traded companies.

tl:dr - People who want change at large firms that sell stock in their companies are pushing for firms to document who gets promoted, what they’re paid, and what their race and gender is.

Here’s a link to the report (pdf): Investor Stewardship 2023.

And here’s reporting from Fortune on how the top three investment firms are moving to push back against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

Tech Crunch Reveals Program Designed to Reverse Dismal Venture Capital Numbers for Black-Owned Startups

Apples-to-Oranges Analysis of Growth Trends Among Global Communications Firms Reveals Key Insights

A source I commonly turn to when writing about tech is Jay Goldberg. I’ve been a fan since CNBC quoted him on a story about semiconductor companies and the Chip Wars.

His latest newsletter reveals interesting trends around the growth of cloud computing market leaders vs. telecom market leaders. He posits that the apples-to-oranges comparison can, instead of obscuring, actually reveal telling trends.

Could this Happen in the U.S.? China Exposes Real Names of Bloggers with 500K-Plus Followers

TikTok Isn’t the Only App Getting Banned from Government Devices - Canada Bans WeChat and Kaspersky

What’s Happening in Tech