Description
Summary: The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was established in 1863 by Congressional charter. The US government and other entities across the globe have looked to the Academy for sound, objective information based on the best available expertise. The organization has no research laboratories; rather, it synthesizes, analyzes, and evaluates research from relevant scientific disciplines that can be brought to bear on questions of national importance and develops evidence-based recommendations.
There is a consensus in the scientific community on the significant benefits of the nation having a technically trained and diverse workforce. Scientists and engineers play a vital role in building the 21st-century enterprises that will create solutions and jobs critical to solving the large, complex, and interdisciplinary problems faced by society. Although some advancements have been made, women, especially women of color, remain significantly underrepresented in many STEM disciplines and in STEM entrepreneurship. For example, though women of color currently make up 39 percent of the female population in the United States and are projected to comprise the majority by 2060, despite years of efforts to increase diversity in STEM and innovation, women of color have remained underrepresented, and the numbers of some groups of women of color have even declined as they continue to face biases and barriers to full participation in STEM.
Sexual harassment and racial bias have been identified as some of these barriers, and the Foundation has supported numerous grants over the last fifteen years to NAS in support of studies and initiatives to increase the number of women, mitigate sexual harassment, and promote diverse women’s leadership in STEM. NAS now proposes to launch a high-profile podcast series and an associated, multi-faceted dissemination effort to broadly share the key messages from two recent NAS publications, including “Overcoming Structural Barriers for Women in Entrepreneurship” which received funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, dealing with systemic barriers facing women of color. The podcast series will connect the firsthand experiences and narratives of women of color in tech fields and entrepreneurship with current research described in these publications. This effort will not only be aimed at broadly disseminating the important research highlighted in these publications and the actions that are needed by a range of stakeholders to address issues of intersectional equity, but, by virtue of the approach, will also be responsive to what research tells us is needed to address systemic issues that negatively affect outcomes for women of color in STEM, tech, and entrepreneurship.
The grant would support the costs associated with the production and distribution of the podcast series, including promotion and distribution, as well as the support for the National Academies staff who will coordinate and oversee the effort. The National Academies staff officers leading the effort will work closely with expert committee members to identify the podcast guests and moderator, identify the podcast vendor, curate the content and topics to be addressed by the podcast, work with the National Academies communications office to broadly distribute the podcast on multiple platforms and to a range of audiences, and will coordinate and oversee the broader, multi-faceted dissemination effort for the National Academies publications to government, industry, and academia . This grant would be made to the Board on Higher Education and Workforce (BHEW) within the Policy and Global Affairs Division, which is not the division for which former HLF PD is the Executive Director.
Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a one-year grant of $220,000 to National Academies of Sciences to support, “Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech and Entrepreneurship: A Podcast and Report Dissemination Effort”.
