Tableau will spend $10 million over the next three years to help non-profits and governments address racial inequity using data. The Seattle-based data visualization startup announced the program Wednesday.
The Racial Justice Data Initiative will provide partner organizations with an equity data hub, detailing how issues like health, poverty, homelessness, and gender equality affect different racial and ethnic groups. Tableau hopes the dashboard will help government agencies, non-profits, and other organizations better understand the way systemic racism functions in their regions.
Tableau is also working with its parent company, Salesforce, to increase Black employee representation, according to an open letter from CEO Adam Selipsky.
“I recognize that we are not where we want to be in terms of diversity across our company, including our leadership team,” he said in the letter. “We know we still have more to do to build a more racially and ethnically diverse Tableau.”
Tableau plans to build a Community Equity taskforce in the coming months to improve diversity in the company’s partner network.
“With data, people can insist on changes to discriminatory policies and biases built into education, housing, employment, healthcare, and banking systems that deprive so many of opportunity,” Selipsky said in the letter. “And with data, people can change policies to empower others, enfranchise communities, and eliminate the barriers to progress that have stood for too long.”
Tableau is one of many tech companies in Seattle and beyond that endorsed nationwide protests demanding an end to police violence and racism in the U.S. But critics have been pressuring the technology industry to put action behind its words.
Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce and others have announced racial justice initiatives and donations over the past few weeks as protests continue across the country.
