PITTSBURGH
Chief executive officers of the country’s 100 fastest-growing science and technology companies fear international companies will gain a competitive advantage if they have access to the U.S.’s best scientists and technical workers, according to a survey released this week.
And yet, the feared drain on manpower has not prompted the CEOs to recruit, hire and nurture minorities and women, who are woefully under-represented in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.
In fact, 74 percent of CEOs are “not frustrated” by their company’s inability to hire Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians and women, according to the survey commissioned by the Bayer Corp. Although 83 percent say STEM companies have a role in ensuring that minorities and women succeed in science and engineering, only one in five have specific recruitment programs targeted at minorities and women.
The pool of women and under-represented minorities in the STEM industry is not being adequately tapped because of a dubious mental image of what scientists, mathematicians and engineers should look like, says Dr. Mae Jemison, the nation’s first Black female astronaut and CEO of BioSentient Inc, an emerging medical devices company.
“A good proportion (of CEOs) have not yet fully made the connection between the potential STEM manpower shortage issue and the potential untapped talent pool that exists in those individuals who are still not well represented in these fields,” Jemison told Diverse. “They don’t visualize (minorities and women, who make up) more than 50 percent of the population as their potential workforce.”
