Brick by brick, Deryl McKissack is building on a legacy. If you've ever taken in the magnitude of memorials, you've seen her handiwork.

"In a project like this, you know, there are a thousand moving parts," McKissack said.

For her, it's in the blood. She's part of a long line of architects, builders and dreamers.

"My family goes back to my great-great-grandfather who was a slave and came to this country in 1790. And he was a builder as a slave. And he passed a trade of building down to my great-grandfather," McKissack continued.

He would pass it down to his sons, who would become the first Black licensed architects in the southeast and officially start the family business in 1905. But it didn't end there. McKissack's father also took on the family legacy and her mother continued the work after his illness.  

"I started at six in the family business with my father. He would take us to work with him on Saturdays. I'm a twin and my mother needed a break," McKissack said. "And so he would take us on Saturdays and prop up on the drawing boards — because we didn't have computers back then — and he would have us draw."

In 1990, armed with a degree in civil engineering and $1000, McKissack launched her own firm.

"I had a lot to prove," she said. "I was one person. I was Black. I was female in a male-dominated industry. Why would anybody want to work with me?"

But somebody did eventually, after she picked up the phone and reached out to 150 potential clients.

"I don't need a handout," McKissack said. "If you give me an opportunity, I'm not going to let you down. And I built on that. My first client was Georgetown. I started with a $5,000 fee project and within six months I signed a million dollars worth of work with them."

From there, the repertoire grew from the U.S. Treasury restoration to modernizing D.C. area schools, to the design of Ghana's Cape Coast museum and project management on several U.S. airports.

"This particular job, you know, there was work on a taxiway in the apron all around the concourse. There was a lot of different activities here in the concourse."

But it was the appointment as architect of record for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that solidified McKissack's own stamp on history.

"I think about my ancestors and what they went through, the atrocities they went through — Jim Crow laws and you name it, slavery and all of that — for me to be sitting here today and even be sitting there then would just bring tears to my eyes because there had never been a time when a Black firm had designed something on a national mall."

Today her firm handles more than $15 billion in projects. But it wasn't a crystal stair. She says she faced misogyny and racism along the way.

"I've been discriminated against by Black men as well as White men," McKissacks said. "You want to say, you know, 'It's just a white male world and da da da da da.' But that's not true when you're a woman coming into this. And it's microaggressions in the sense that you can see them huddling together. You're left out."

A joint report from two architectural organizations found 2% of the nation's architects identify as African American. The barriers of obtaining licensure include the cost and a lack of support from their employer.

McKissack says she has come up with a plan to diversify the industry, enlisting some of the biggest firms in the country.

"Board members need to be Black in those companies so that there is a true understanding at the top of how policy makes Black people feel uncomfortable or how things are said and written," McKissack said. "So there are microaggressions, and then there's Black companies that need to be sustained."

Because like the McKissacks before her, she's laying a foundation she hopes lasts for generations to come.

"I believe that everybody is unique," she said. "They come here with a special purpose. And when they find that purpose, nothing can stop them. And as long as they're working and walking in that purpose, nothing can stop them."

Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here: https://bit.ly/Newsy1

It was the kind of jaw-dropping performance the crowd had never seen.

Zeb Powell stole the show at the 2020 X Games in Aspen, Colorado, jumping and flipping his way right into fans' hearts and a first-place win.

But here's the thing, the rookie clutching the gold medal didn't even like snowboarding the first time he tried it.

"My teacher was mean, and she set me up backward. None of it was appealing to me," Powell tells Newsy. 

For a while, he turned to skateboard, but his raw talent on the snow could not be ignored.

"He's always been flipping and turning, and he's always been on a board or something that will let him fly through the air," Valerie Powell, Zeb's mother, said. 

His parents, who adopted him at five weeks old, started sending him from his North Carolina home to a snowboarding camp in Colorado. Powell stood out in a sport that traditionally is as white as snow.

Newsy's Clayton Sandell: How many people were there doing this that looks like you?

Powell: There might have been one other black person on the mountain.

Sandell: You ever feel unwelcome in this sport?

Powell: Luckily, like, no. I don't really have anything bad to say about anyone.

But it isn't just that Zeb Powell is one of the few black faces on the slopes. Sports commentator Selema Masekela has watched generations of snowboarders over three decades. He says the 22-year-old has game-changing skills he's never seen before.

"He's a jazz musician on a snowboard. He improvises.  It's like, oh, this is a type of snowboarding, an ability and an interpretation of the thing that is crazy, and so artistic and spontaneous, but highly athletic. And also, in the body of a young black kid who grew up in North Carolina?" sports commentator Selema Masekela tells Newsy. 

Powell's first appearance at the X Games changed everything. He gained a ton of new followers and support on social media. Fans who maybe, for the first time, saw themselves.

"I heard a lot of them say they didn't even know that black people snowboarded, which is crazy. I mean, just coming from me, like I never even thought about it like that," Powell explained.  

Powell is still getting used to all the attention and all the selfies.

Sandell: What's it like being recognized like that? 

Powel: That's always crazy. I just kind of fully embrace it try to talk to everyone.

But one thing he's sure of, he's using his new visibility to help make snowboarding much more diverse.

"I think the culture is just it's so fun to be around. I love it. I think a lot of people will love it," Powell says. 

Inviting as many as he can to a sport that historically hasn't been very inviting.

"Recreating and luxuriating in the outdoors was sort of one of the last safe spaces that were built mostly specifically for white people on the back end of segregation in this country.  And so, it's going to take a very long time for those things to change," Masekela explains further. 

Powell didn't place at this year's X Games, but his mom says what's important is that her son knows he has a gift.

"And you got to use it right and stay humble and give back, and so far, that's what he's done, which makes me extremely proud. Prouder than any medal he could ever win," Valerie Powell says of her son. 

"It's exciting because he really does have an opportunity to be so much bigger than then snowboarding and to be like an icon for the sport in opening up accessibility and possibility to what the slopes can look like. It's like, you know, growing up watching Jordan or Kobe or Serena, and then to see it come along, in in a young Black man in America is just it just wildly powerful," Masekela says. 

For now, Powell says he'll be spreading the word through the type of videos he makes with his friends, hot-dogging down the slopes and dropping into concrete canyons, making sure that even though he's one of the few Black pro snowboarders, Zeb Powell is not going to be the last.

Clayton Sandell at Newsy first reported this story.

TRUCHAS, NM. — On the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico, Gordon Tooley manages an apple tree orchard and nursery called Tooley's Trees.

When he bought the land in 1991, he says it was overgrazed and had eroded.

"From where I'm standing here, we have about 11 western states that are all tortured and in rough shape and is part of our big picture water cycle of why we have climactic chaos," Tooley said. "We are in a highly evaporative water cycle and a transformational one because we have a lack of plants and too much bare ground.”

It’s hard to see this time of year, but Tooley says his land has no bare ground. It’s completely covered in grasses, plants, trees and shrubs.

“I am totally committed to changing the way water behaves, getting moisture into the soil and getting roots into the soil and protecting the diversity of our genetic material that is at risk," Tooley said. "More than half of the varieties of apples that were in North America a hundred and fifty years ago are gone now. So that's about eight thousand varieties that are missing."

Tooley has traveled across the state collecting different apple varietals to build that diversity back up. Agricultural ecologist and soil scientist Jerry Glover says there’s a benefit to having a wide collection of trees, plants and shrubs.

“A variety of apples that are flowering at different times of the year, in addition to the range of plants, grasses, other flowering plants that are growing in the orchard, provides a lot more nectar resources, probably over a much longer period of the season for a greater diversity of pollinators — Bees, wasps, even flies other insects that are very important to keeping that ecosystem vibrant and thriving,” Glover said.

Glover says more plants mean greater biodiversity.

“We've seen a troubling collapse of biodiversity around the world over the past 50 years,” Glover said.

Though it may look different from state to state, Glover says farmers all over the U.S. can implement similar practices of covering bare ground and growing a diversity of crops. However, he says it can come at a cost.

“Folks not familiar with farming assume that farmers should just do this," Glover said. "Ya know, why not? Well, the 'why not' is because these more complex systems where you're growing more crops, more different types of plants over a longer period of the year requires more information, requires more management inputs from the farmer.”

Glover says it’s a big problem if farmers can’t make a profit. Nonetheless, he says there is a growing need for farmers to maintain healthy soil and support biodiversity as we move into a future where our food systems could be at risk.

“We need to make sure that the land that we're producing on is producing as much as possible with the least amount of environmental damage,” Glover said.

Tooley says he believes every person, not just farmers, can do their part to grow food and build healthy ecosystems.

“People are maybe deciding that, you know, 'I have a tiny backyard, I'm going to plant some fruit trees, I'm going to plant some shrubs, I'm going to make a pie, I'm going to pull carrots, grow squash, beans, whatever,'” Tooley said.

 

BEND, Ore. — Patrik Nabelek lives with muscular dystrophy, but he loves to get outside.

“There's one thing to look at kind of nature stuff from afar, but it's another to kind of get really get in there," Nabelek said. "And so, I hope a lot of other people will get the same opportunity I have had.”

Muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease that leads to muscle weakness over time, which is why he gets around in his power wheelchair.

“When I was younger, I used to do lots of outdoor stuff, like I used to go skiing and did some hiking and stuff," Nabelek said. "But then, as I got older and the disease got more severe, I couldn’t do that anymore. A real good change for me was when I got a nice power chair that allowed me to get out and go outside, like, go on kind of long walks on paved and stuff.”

The vast majority of nature trails aren’t paved, limiting Nabelek on his outdoor excursions until his mother, Anne Trehu, found out about AdvenChair.

“We’ve taken it to the coast. We’ve taken it on a number of trails around town here," Trehu said. "Narrow, muddy trails that were totally inaccessible for the power chair.”

AdvenChair is an adaptive, human-powered wheelchair designed to help people with physical disabilities get outside. The current design of AdvenChair is version 3.0. The first version was built in 2016. It was inspired and created by Geoff Babb.

“It means a lot for me, to me, to help people be outside,” Babb said.

Geoff Babb has experienced two strokes and now lives with quadriparesis, which means he experiences weakness in all four limbs. We first met him in 2020 when he was at the hospital for a medical emergency. Back then, there was only one AdvenChair. But now, 10 more have been built and sold to people like Nabelek.

“Despite all these setbacks, the pandemic and health and weather, we're really happy with where we are,” Babb said.

Now, there are AdvenChairs from coast to coast with one making it all the way to Machu Picchu. Babb says a couple from Los Angeles reached out to him with the desire to take the chair to the iconic spot.

“They were just ecstatic," Babb said. "Nelly is from Peru, but she’s never been to Macchu Picchu and so for her to be able to take Robert, her husband, who had a stroke, take him to Macchu Picchu in the chair, it was it's a big moment for them.”

Babb says they were able to use AdvenChair for everything—from getting on planes, trains, and buses to the Macchu Picchu trail. That’s one of the benefits of the latest design. It’s convertible to be used indoors and outdoors.

“We got this, in part, to travel to New Zealand, because power chairs and airplanes don’t mix very well, and with this front wheel off, it does serve as a regular wheelchair,” Trehu said.

As a professor in earth, oceanic and atmospheric sciences, Trehu says she hopes AdvenChairs can eventually help students with physical disabilities get out in the field for research. It’s something that could be happening very soon as Babb and his team ramp up for another production of AdvenChairs in 2022.

“Soon after the pandemic, we’ll get the chair out as much as possible and get more exposure and get as many smiles on faces as we can,” Babb said.
 

Eight years after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Geoffrey Easterling remains astonished by the Confederate history still memorialized on the storied academy's campus – the six-foot-tall painting of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the library, the barracks dormitory named for Lee and the Lee Gate on Lee Road.

As a Black student at the Army academy, he remembers feeling "devastated" when a classmate pointed out the slave also depicted in the Lee painting. "How did the only Black person who got on a wall in this entire humongous school — how is it a slave?" he recalls thinking.

As a diversity admissions officer, he later traveled the country recruiting students to West Point from underrepresented communities. "It was so hard to tell people like, 'Yeah, you can trust the military,' and then their kids Google and go 'Why is there a barracks named after Lee?'" he said.

The nation's military academies provide a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services and, for the better part of the last decade, they have welcomed more racially diverse students each year. But beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions volunteer little about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.

In an Associated Press story earlier this year, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it. Less attention has been paid to the premiere institutions that produce a significant portion of the services' officer corps – the academies of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine.

Some graduates of color from the nation's top military schools who endured what they describe as a hostile environment are left questioning the military maxim that all service members wearing the same uniform are equal.

That includes Carlton Shelley II, who was recruited to play football for West Point from his Sarasota, Florida, high school and entered the academy in 2009. On the field, he described the team as "a brotherhood," where his skin color didn't matter. But off the field, he said, he and other Black classmates too often were treated like the stereotype of the angry Black man.

Some students of color have spotlighted what they see as systemic discrimination at the academies by creating Instagram accounts — "Black at West Point," "Black at USAFA" and "Black at USNA" — to relate their personal experiences.

In response to the AP's findings, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, Maj. Charlie Dietz, said the academies make it a policy to offer equal opportunities regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. He said the DOD formed a team in April to advance progress on diversity, equity and inclusion across the entire department, including the academies.

The latest annual defense spending bill mandated that the Defense Department survey all its military properties for references or symbols that potentially commemorate the Confederacy, including at West Point, which the commission overseeing the work picked as its first site to visit earlier this year. But the deadline to act on any recommendations is still more than two years away.

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, which sparked global protests, a group of West Point alums released a 40-page letter urging the academy to address "major failures" in combatting intolerance and racism, adding "we hold fast to the hope that our Alma Mater will take the necessary steps to champion the values it espouses."

Shelley said the academy has significant work to do to retain and support students of color. In his class, he estimated about 35 Black students graduated — "some crazy low number," he said. "And we started with a lot more."

West Point did not respond to repeated requests for comment, beyond reiterating the importance of diversity to its admissions process.

The academies are a growing pathway to officer status for Black cadets, 2019 data from the Under Secretary of Defense shows, with about 13% of Black active-duty officers commissioned through the five institutions, compared to 19% of white active-duty officers.

Most students who enroll — about 60-70% — are nominated by U.S. senators or representatives from their home states as part of a system created in the 1840s to build a geographically diverse officer corps. But today, the country's changed demographics mean the system gives disproportionate influence to rural congressional districts that tend to be whiter.

Only 6% of nominations to the Army, Air Force and Naval academies made by the current members of Congress went to Black candidates, even though 15% of the population aged 18 to 24 is Black, according to a March report by the Connecticut Veterans' Legal Center. Eight percent of congressional nominations went to Hispanic students, though they make up 22% of young adults, the report said.

The diversity of nominations has improved slightly in the past 25 years, but the report noted that 49 Congress members did not nominate a single Black student while in office and 31 nominated no Hispanic candidates.

Curtis Harris said he was awarded one of just three nominations to West Point out of more than 300 applications to his congressman. Now, he helps review applications for a New York Congressman and visits schools to encourage young candidates of diverse backgrounds to apply.

Diversifying West Point is "not going to happen by itself," he said.

According to data supplied to the AP by the four schools, the Naval, Air Force, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard academies have generally become less white over the past two decades. West Point did not provide full data, but said it is increasingly welcoming diverse students, with 37% of the class of 2024 identifying as nonwhite, compared to about 25% a decade ago.

While the number of Hispanic cadets increased in the past two decades at the Coast Guard and Naval academies, Black cadets showed no noticeable increase during that time. In the class of 2000, there were 73 Black midshipmen in the Naval Academy and just 77 in 2020. At the Coast Guard Academy, there were 15 Black cadets in the 2001 class. And in 2021? Merely 16.

Two of the five academies -- West Point and the Air Force Academy -- now have their first Black leaders. But Easterling, the West Point graduate, noted that the faculty there remains mostly white, meaning students who "don't see themselves, and don't want to stay" can find it hard to ask for help.

Greg Elliott said he often found himself in trouble while at the Merchant Marine Academy and was asked to leave without graduating. He said he didn't face overt racism, but wonders if a more diverse faculty and student body could have changed his course by making him feel he belonged.

He recalls a fellow Black alum telling him to just plow through with his head down and realize the academy was "a terrible place to be at, but it's a great place to be from."

___

AP writers James LaPorta in Miami and Kat Stafford in Detroit and data intern Jasen Lo in Chicago contributed to this story.

Wieffering is a Roy W. Howard Investigative Fellow.

CINCINNATI —

Local artist, educator and owner of Not Your Average "Paint and Sip" mobile unit, James Reynolds, designed and prepared the mural concept for today's event at Court Street Plaza downtown.

"This season, more than any other, is about appreciating and celebrating our community," Reynolds said. "Our mural will be a wonderful expression of Cincinnati's vibrancy, diversity and fraternity."

The event on Saturday afternoon was created to invite and inspire local residents to come together as a community to share and express their inner artist.

Court Street Plaza served as today's canvas, which produced a community-created mural honoring the city of Cincinnati.

Along with the community-wide mural painting, there were also performances by local musicians, coffee stands, and even take-home crafts, inspired by the new mural.

The free event was one of several community-produced holiday events in the FOUND series. FOUND is a collection of creative and engaging holiday events aimed at bringing the community together in Cincinnati's urban core.

You can catch a glimpse of the new mural at the storefront below the Stanley & More Flats located at 11. E. Court Street.

You can find more events produced by FOUND here.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When racial justice protests swept across the country last year, hope sprang that the change pushed for on the streets might spill over into the workplace, too.

“Increasingly, the world is getting to be more diverse,” Sandra Timmons, executive director of The Steve Fund, said last year. “This is the future workforce; these are the future leaders.”

However, experts on diversity say that hasn't quite come to fruition at work.

“While we do believe that certainly there's been a lot of good that's been done on by ‘diversity first’ consultancies, that change has not been as sustainable as it should be,” said Lauren Tucker, founder of “Do What Matters,” a consulting firm that helps businesses navigate inclusion in the workplace.

A recent report on diversity in the workplace, from the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, surveyed more than 1,500 working women across the country—more than two-thirds of them were women of color.

It found that 97% of those surveyed feel their employers need to establish better ways to investigate and address discrimination at work.

Among the other findings: 57% of women of color say they hear damaging stereotypes, based on their backgrounds, while they are at work. In addition, 58% say there are no senior leaders of color in their workplace.

Tucker said that’s where so-called, “activist employees” might be able to make their mark.

“Activist employees, in particular, are those who are leaning forward articulating to management what the expectations are,” Tucker said, “and I think we need to understand that those expectations are not just about getting a paycheck.”

It’s also about creating an inclusive environment, where ideas can be freely shared by everyone. Tucker said that starts in company meetings, though, it doesn’t always happen that way as she saw for herself two weeks ago.

“I actually timed how much men talked versus women, and 90% of the talking that was done in that meeting was done by men,” she said.

So, how can all employees help to start a change? Some suggestions include sharing your workplace knowledge with informal networks at work and including a diverse array of co-workers.

As for formal networks, Tucker said employees should get involved in a company’s employee resource group that addresses inclusion. If a company doesn’t have one, she said, employees should consider starting one of their own.

“They have a choice to stay in and lean forward, and a lot of them have activated these groups on their own,” Tucker said. “I mean, it isn't necessarily the employer that's created these groups.”

It’s a focus on diversity that Tucker believes companies should expect to keep seeing.

“What we're seeing is the growth of activism period, both by employees and by consumers,” she said. “And I will say that company leaders who dismiss this activism, company leaders that do not take advantage of listening to these employees, they do so at their peril.”

It is a risk that includes paying a potentially high price to their bottom line.

ATLANTA, Ga. — Just about every morning, Monicha Taylor hits the gym. She says it helps with productivity before logging on to work at her kitchen table.

“My favorite thing about it is the flexibility that you get,” Taylor said.

Her current public relations job makes it possible for her to work from home, but just like 25 million other Americans, she was unemployed the first few months of the pandemic.

“It was super frustrating, honestly, and scary," Taylor said. "I live alone and I have to take care of myself, so I just wasn't sure how I was going to come out of this or how I was going to stay afloat.”

Since graduating college in 2017, Taylor has been able to stay afloat thanks, in part, to freelance opportunities through Black Girl Group.

Founded by Stephanie Alston, Black Girl Group is a creative staffing platform that connects men and women of color to companies seeking more diverse creative talent.

“Let’s say they're looking for a graphic designer," Alston said. "They'll come to us and we will vet out the top three candidates for them and then we'll send those candidates over for them. They'll interview those candidates and if they decide to hire, then a relationship with them is made and then that person is able to move forward in that role.”

Alston says the idea came to her in a dream. Her goal is to diversify companies all over the U.S. by bringing people of color to the table.

“Being in PR in the past and being the only Black woman in the room on several occasions, what I realize is that oftentimes either there was not enough representation at the table or there was representation where people were afraid to speak up because they were fearful that they would be retaliated against if they did speak up,” Alston said.

Bringing women of color into the workforce is critical right now. Demographics professor Rogelio Saenz at the University of Texas-San Antonio says Black and Latina women have been the most heavily impacted by job loss during the pandemic.

“Childcare disproportionately falls to women and then with women, they also had elder care as well,” Saenz said.

Saenz’ report shows the highest peak of unemployment happened in April. Latinos had the highest unemployment rate at nearly 19%, followed by Blacks at 16.4% and whites had the lowest at around 13%.

“With respect to who was able to work from home and there that was also a significant difference, that it tended to be much more likely to be people with higher levels of education and also more likely to be whites compared to African Americans and Latinos,” Saenz said.

“The Band-Aid that was often put on the struggles that women of color face in the workplace, it was ripped off,” Alston said.

Saenz says the lack of opportunity for higher education and well-paying jobs among women of color is an issue of sexism and systemic racism. Because of that, he says the types of jobs many women of color have are in the service or tourism industries, those heavily affected while we were in lockdown.

The need for diversity became essential and noticed after George Floyd was killed in late May of 2020. Alston says that's when companies started making commitments toward diversity.

“It is unfortunate that the death of George Floyd, you know, was one of those things that propelled us into that," Alston said. "But at the same time, we are now able to give more people opportunities to sit at the table who may have otherwise never had the opportunity before.”

Taylor says her long-term goal is to become an entrepreneur like Alston, propelling women of color into high-paying and meaningful jobs.

CINCINNATI —

A 40-year-old hiring and promotion policy that helped more women and minorities in the Cincinnati Police Department has been ruled unconstitutional.

The policy was born out of the 1981 consent decree, an effort to improve diversity within the ranks of the Cincinnati police department.

A federal ruling acknowledges that the consent decree has "positively affected the composition of CPD." But a federal judge ruled Thursday that the race-based and sex-based initiative is no longer needed.

The consent decree was signed onto by several parties including the city of Cincinnati, Cincinnati police department and Department of Justice in 1981, at a time women and minorities faced discrimination in hiring and promotion in the department.

The consent decree contains race-based and sex-based hiring and promotional goals for each recruit class and sergeant cohort. Under those goals, the department aimed to make each recruit class 34 percent Black and 23 percent female and to fill 25 percent of sergeant openings with black and female candidates.

According to the federal ruling, in July of 1980, 9.9 percent of the department was Black and 3.4 percent was female.

In January 2021, 28.3 percent of the department was Black and 22.9 percent was female.

The police department has 90 days to confer with the Department of Justice and submit modifications to the consent decree.

"We certainly wish the DOJ did not take this action as the consent decree has been important to our progress," Mayor John Cranley said in a statement. "We are evaluating all options to appeal and will do so if possible. We won't stop pressing our case."

The reconsideration of the hiring and promotion rule was prompted by a lawsuit filed by Erik Kohler, a Cincinnati police sergeant.

"Erik Kohler was promoted, but his promotion was delayed because the city promoted other candidates for sergeant ahead of him simply based on their race, even though they had a lower score on the promotional eligibility list," said his attorney Zachary Gottesman.

The federal ruling Thursday does not apply directly to Kohler's case but Gottesman said it is a win for them.

"Race-based and gender-based promotion and hiring programs can be legal if they meet very strict criteria, and the city has known for years and years that their policy did not comply with those legal requirements," Gottesman said.

CLEVELAND — It’s not a secret, and the tech industry has a problem.

“It’s always been pretty abysmal,” said David Ferreira.

For David Ferreira, tech’s diversity issues are more than numbers. It’s his experience.

“I went off to college. I was the only Black person in my program there for four years," he said, “Being the only representation of my race.”

When he reached the professional world, things got a little better. He was no longer the only Black person he worked with. But Black people and other minorities were still wildly underrepresented.

White people represent 60% of the US population but 78% of the tech world. Minority groups in tech make up just over half (22%) of where they stand in the real world (40%).

Tech Elevator, a coding boot camp company where David is an instructor, is trying to make a dent in those numbers.

“Here at Tech Elevator, because we have that scholarship that we talked about, we can actually just make it seem that the workforce in our classroom matches what society looks like,” said Ferreira.

Tech Elevator’s Represent Tech Scholarship is available to anyone a member of an underrepresented group in the industry.

So far, it’s paid for all or almost all of 135 students’ tuition through the program. Those recipients have gone on to make a combined $337 million, according to the company.

Jasmine Brown had been looking for a change after spending seven years as a speech therapist.

“With speech pathology, there really isn’t too much to do other than being a speech therapist. It wasn’t horrible, but I didn’t feel the field, and the passion wasn’t there,” said Brown.

85% of her tuition is taken care of because of the scholarship.

“That was the only way I was going to be able to come, was with the scholarship," she said.

She loves the program but growing up, and she never saw this career as an option.

“When I was younger it was just something I didn’t really think about just probably because I didn’t see myself represented,” said Brown, “I have a lot of families that’s in education social work, things like that and so it just seemed natural to go that way,”

She didn’t have an example or role model in this world, so she never thought it was an option.

The hope is this scholarship will help build the pool of qualified coders, so diversity in tech can grow. And tech elevator isn’t the only one offering scholarships.

A quick search on bestcolleges.com shows 25 scholarships available to minorities and the same number to women.

“You have that network starting to build of candidates who are used to and willing to vouch and reach out to folks of different backgrounds,” said Ferreira.

While the pace of change is still slow, Tech Elevator hopes to make the industry look more like the world we live in.

The pandemic has brought structural racism in health care to the surface, not just through COVID-19 infections, deaths and access to care, but also within perceptions.

“We were really, really, you know, shocked to see the influence of discrimination on the perception of discrimination and on people's receipt of care,” said Carl V. Hill, Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer at the Alzheimer's Association.

The annual Alzheimer’s Association report released Tuesday also included a look for the first time at experiences of communities of color and perspectives of the disease and dementia care.

They found two thirds of Black Americans believe it’s harder for them to get excellent care. Native Americans, Hispanic and Asian Americans have similar feelings.

“As people feel like they will be treated unfairly in a health care setting, they're less likely to go and seek care, right, and so we know that delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis is a huge factor for the disparities that we see,” said Hill.

Diverse communities also see bias in dementia research, and many don't trust a future cure would be equal.

“So, working with organizations that represent the well-being of, for example, African Americans and Latinos, so that we can create trust you know, so we can become trustworthy and provide resources as they relate to education and awareness, or care and support, to those communities,” said Hill.

The Alzheimer’s Association is also working to improve cultural competence and diversity within health care.

African Americans and Hispanics were found to be up to twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. More than 6 million seniors are living with the disease.

Step into Nicole Jennings' book club today and you will hear conversations she wasn’t having with her neighbors a year ago.

Her book club was born in the months after the death of George Floyd.

The discussion is often about issues at the core of what took place less than 10 miles from where they live in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.

“The fact that I am a person of color, so for me to talk about life is not difficult, but for someone else to talk about my life and my experiences and to understand them from my point of view, it takes a lot,” Jennings said. “It takes someone who would want to listen and want to learn and not to feel as though anyone is pointing the finger, but my reality is my reality.”

For eight years, Jennings has lived in a neighborhood that is mostly white.

“I know that as an African American, I can count on one hand the number of people who look like me in the neighborhood,” she said. “Unless you get out of your bubble and your comfort zone, you’ll never recognize what you’re impacting and also what is impacting you.”

Like many suburbs across America, Edina is evolving.

“For our own community, which is predominantly white, getting more diverse every year, embracing that diversity, making sure everyone is welcome everyone is included,” said Edina Mayor Jim Hovland.

Mayor Hovland says his city has taken steps over the years to become more inclusive, including hiring a race and equity coordinator.

“That’s kind of the pathway we’re on, the trajectory for our community is gaining a better understanding of what these issues have historically been for people who are different from us, who have faced more impediments in life, things that we just took for granted,” the Mayor Hovland said.

High school senior Shreya Konkimalla has taken an active role in Edina when it comes to social justice.

“Usually in Edina, I think, we usually try to stray away from the hard conversations about race, diversity, and inclusion in order to avoid conflict,” Konkimalla said.

She’s building a virtual art gallery titled “From Struggling to Healing.”

“I think it’s something we can all come together with and all appreciate together, and I think from that, we have the ability to understand other people and where they are coming from,” the senior said.

It’s hard to know what progress looks like for an issue so deep and so personal.

“There is no yardstick for progress when you think about the centuries of acts that have not been discussed,” Jennings said.

Jennings says book club conversations with her neighbors have grown over the months to be authentic.

“We can take what we’re reading and look around us in the world,” book club member Kathy Ganley said.

“It’s the fact that we listen, and by doing so, we learn from each other,” another member Andrea Kmetz-Sheehy stated.

As we close in on a year since many parts of America started having uncomfortable conversations, Jennings says it’s important the discussions don’t go quiet.

“Ahmaud Arbery, that was before. Then, right after, that was Breonna Taylor, and right after that, it was sequential again. You don’t recognize it until it got in your backyard. That was frustrating. That was frustrating," Jennings said. "It was that concept. It wasn’t the, ‘Let’s talk about it’ moment. No, I’m eager to do that actually. I welcome it."