Founded by Melinda French Gates, Pivotal Ventures accelerates social progress by removing barriers that hold people back.

©$year Pivotal Ventures

Women and
Tech Innovation

We believe a more diverse and inclusive technical workforce will drive greater innovation and advance a more equitable, prosperous society.

Tech is one of the fastest-growing, most influential industries in the world. To have power and influence in society, women must have power and influence within the tech sector. We help women from diverse backgrounds break into the field and rise to positions of leadership.

A woman working on a laptop while sitting near a windowsill in an office

Photo by The Good Brigade/Getty Images

Featured Partner

  • Center for Inclusive Computing

    Center for Inclusive Computing ensures women thrive in undergraduate computing.

    Women make up only 23% of computing majors. The Center for Inclusive Computing is working to remove the institutional barriers that exclude students, especially women, from discovering and thriving in computing programs.

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    Three students talking together and looking at a single laptop at a table in a classroom

    Photo by Ian MacLellan courtesy of Khoury College of Computer Sciences

  • Break Through Tech

    Break Through Tech launches students into successful tech careers.

    Break Through Tech equips underrepresented tech talent with the skills, support, and experiences they need to break into tech roles in fields like AI, data science, and machine learning—enabling them to write the rules that will shape the future.
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    A teenager holding up a certificate of completion for an AI program

    Courtesy of Break Through Tech

  • Rewriting the Code

    Rewriting the Code is creating new pathways to careers in tech.

    As the largest peer-to-peer network for undergraduate, graduate, and early career women in tech, Rewriting the Code is empowering women in tech by providing support and mentorship for professional advancement.
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    Five young women smiling for a photo at a networking event

    Photo by Aaron Augsburger courtesy of Rewriting the Code

  • Algorithmic Justice League

    The Algorithmic Justice League raises public awareness about the impacts of AI.

    As artificial intelligence expands its reach in daily life, the AJL draws attention to the social implications and potential harms of AI, while also galvanizing researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners to promote equitable and accountable AI.
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    Four women holding and wearing AJI merchandise smiling for a photo at a summit event

    Courtesy of Algorithmic Justice League

  • America Achieves

    America Achieves is advancing opportunity in emerging tech hubs.

    America Achieves helps emerging tech hubs advance and integrate equity into their plans for growth, with the goal of building clear paths to good jobs so all Americans, regardless of background, can help their local communities lead in the tech and innovation economy.
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    Two women talking and looking at a tablet while walking through a factory

    Tom Werner/Getty Images

  • Public Interest Tech Infrastructure Fund

    Public Interest Tech Infrastructure Fund fosters equitable, responsive tech.

    Public Interest Tech Infrastructure Fund is a shared space for philanthropists to leverage one another’s expertise, incubate investment strategies to advance visionary concepts, and catalyze big ideas that can transform the use of technology to serve the public interest.
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    A female engineer in uniform installing a charging station in a parking lot

    Sinology/Getty Images

Solutions We Support

We’re addressing the gender gap in tech by helping women enter the field, rise into leadership roles, and build a more inclusive tech industry.

Opening Doors to the Industry

Women, and especially women of color, are chronically underrepresented across the tech ecosystem. Women account for fewer than one in four computing graduates and fewer than one in three employees in technical roles. Our partners focus on correcting these imbalances and setting women up for successful careers in tech.

Women face many hurdles to entering the tech industry, and our partners are working to dismantle barriers in a variety of ways:

The Center for Inclusive Computing works with colleges and universities to remove obstacles that prevent students—especially women—from discovering and thriving in computing programs.

The Computing Research Association for Widening Participation focuses on increasing the number of undergraduate computing research opportunities for women and ensuring that they have the technical training to shape the AI research agenda for our country.

Last Mile Education Fund helps technology and engineering students nearing graduation overcome financial emergencies that could otherwise interrupt their education. Through small grants, most of which are under $1,000, the Fund has helped thousands of students stay on track to graduate and enter high-paying fields.

Three young female computer programmers looking at a monitor and working together in an office.

Photo by SrdjanPav/Getty Images

Supporting Female Founders

In addition to helping more women of all backgrounds start their careers at tech companies, we want to position more women to shape the tech innovation of the future. That’s why we work alongside our partners to get more venture capital in the hands of women founders.

Today, only about 2 percent of venture capital in the U.S. is invested in women-founded companies, making it difficult for women to secure the funding they need to turn their ideas into success stories.

Our partners are working to ensure a more diverse group of people—including women of all backgrounds—are able to control, access, and benefit from venture capital funding. For example, we support Recast Accelerate, a program started by Recast Capital that helps emerging fund managers raise bigger funds, faster. By changing the face of power in VC, we can diversify the group of people creating the technologies and products that impact our everyday lives.

A woman having a conversation with a group of her colleagues at a table in their office.

Photo by AzmanL/Getty Images

Unlocking AI’s Potential

While AI has the potential to improve our lives, there is also a risk that it will deepen today’s inequalities. We partner with organizations that are working to increase diversity in the AI workforce so we can unlock AI’s potential to drive innovation that better meets all people’s needs.

Women, and especially women of color, are even more underrepresented in AI than in technical roles overall. Our partners focus on fast-tracking women and other historically underrepresented populations into the field.

AI4ALL, co-founded by AI visionary Dr. Fei-Fei Li, helps more students see AI as a viable career path and develop the technical skills to pursue it. Break Through Tech’s AI specialization program works with universities and companies to equip college students with foundational AI and machine learning skills, relevant experience, and mentorship.

We also support partners that are working to address harmful biases in AI, including the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL). The AJL is dedicated to expanding public awareness about the dangers AI can pose. Its founder Dr. Joy Buolamwini shared her landmark research on discrimination within facial recognition technologies in her popular TED Talk, “How I’m Fighting Bias in Algorithms.”

Learn More

How I’m Fighting Bias in Algorithms (Algorithmic Justice League)

A renowned AI researcher and cofounder speaking to a room of people at an event

Video by Second Peninsula for Pivotal Ventures

Founded by Melinda French Gates, Pivotal Ventures accelerates social progress by removing barriers that hold people back.

Since Melinda French Gates founded Pivotal Ventures in 2015, we have used different kinds of funding to achieve our mission to advance social progress, including venture capital investments, advocacy funding, and philanthropic grantmaking. In 2022, Melinda formed Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, to support philanthropic grantmaking and help facilitate this flexible approach to driving impact.

©$year Pivotal Ventures
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