NYC Panel: The Future of Work in a Global Ecosystem

Last week we hosted a panel with our CEO and Co-Founder, Jeremy Johnson, Knotel’s Co-Founder and CEO, Amol Sarva, and PowerToFly’s Co-Founder and CEO, Milena Berry to discuss how to utilize diversity and talent, regardless of geographical location, in today’s global economy.Andela, Knotel and PowerToFly are actively working to make diverse talent more accessible in the global ecosystem -- PowerToFly by building the first global platform for finding, vetting and connecting accomplished female tech talent with companies, and Knotel by providing company-sized workspaces to accommodate distributed teams. Andela, of course, is redefining how the world views tech talent by shaping the next generation of technology leaders across Africa.The conversation began with a discussion around diversity, what it means to each company, and why it's important. PowerToFly elevates women in technology, Andela focuses on access global talent, and Knotel emphasizes bringing together different companies in one location to facilitate cross collaboration. Regardless of a company’s definition, everyone can agree that diversity is not important -- it's essential.

Talent always has options, especially diverse talent that is able to transform and scale a company. The panelists touched on how attracting that talent poses problems, not only for their companies, but companies around the world. It’s an intricate process to attract and retain those individuals, but it starts with developing an environment that caters to a variety of specific needs. Being able to build and maintain a distributed team is one way to provide individualized solutions and attract talent, regardless of location.The panel concluded with a (cautiously) optimistic discussion around the current tech and political landscape and how it is progressing in terms of diversity inclusion. Although we are faced with certain challenges, those challenges can be turned into opportunity for this global tech ecosystem to unite for positive change.

The full video is included below -- and if you want to learn more about how Andela can help you utilize diverse perspectives to grow your engineering team, click here![embed]https://andela-1.wistia.com/medias/e9bxkxgaxj?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640[/embed]