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NYC Tech Center Aims to Diversify the Tech Industry

In September of 2016, AJ Vandermeyden filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Tesla, her employer. The female engineer alleged the tech giant paid her less than her male counterparts, and ignored multiple complaints of sexual harassment she logged against her male coworkers. Another Tesla employee said that women coworkers were […]

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New York Fast Food Workers are getting serious about unionizing.

Fast food workers in New York City are pushing towards unionization.  After winning a 15 dollar minimum wage, workers at Chipotle and McDonald’s restaurants are organizing with SEIU local 32BJ have begun forming committees and signing union cards indicating their commitment to the union effort.  “The demand of the Fight […]

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The Tech Talent of Tomorrow—New Moms

After years of working as a product manager in an ad tech company, Svetlana Shammasova decided she wanted to learn how to code. She earned a fellowship at the Fullstack Academy, and began learning web development, but needed to drop out when she became pregnant. After her daughter was born, […]

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Fixing Gender Inequality for NYC Tech Start-ups

Hurricane Sandy struck New York City in 2012, knocking out power and leaving residents and storeowners desperate to access digital data. One New Yorker saw how access varied among users, and created a service that would allow local businesses to search for available data sources. Aileen Gemma Smith, founder and […]

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Brooklyn McDonald’s employees rally against unfair firings.

By Jeffery Harrell When Paquasia Haynesworth was fired from her job at a Brooklyn McDonalds in June, she was completely blindsided. She says her manager had never come to her with problems before. “I was practically begging for her to give me a day or two more,” said Haynesworth. “I […]

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A Starker Drop in H-1B Approvals May Buckle NYC’s IT Sector

Almost one-quarter of H-1B visa applications in New York City were denied in the first half of the year, four times the rate in the same period of 2016 under the Obama Administration. The increase in the city to 24.8% from 6.2% in 2016 even outpaced the tripling of denial […]

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No Room for Low-income Seniors in New Affordable Senior Housing Initiative

Vicki Been, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development and former Commissioner of the Department of Housing and Preservation, speaks at a Crain’s Business Breakfast Forum on Sept. 10 (Megan Conn) Three years after its introduction, a city program aimed at incentivizing real estate developers to build more affordable apartments […]

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Trash bill opponents scrambling as legislation gains steam

Over the weekend, 14-year-old Mario Valenzuela was killed in Queens. Photos from the scene show the teen’s bicycle hanging from the wheels of a dump truck. The distraught driver said he felt a bump before coming to a stop. The truck belongs to Limited Interior Group, and is one of […]

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In Changing Harlem, A Homegrown Vision for Affordable Housing

Ed Poteat at his office in Harlem. Those who grew up in Harlem’s rougher years may hardly recognize the neighborhood today, now home to an American Eagle, Whole Foods, and a lot more white people. While some criticize gentrification, others see a brighter side – including Ed Poteat, 47, an […]

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Sekou Siby fights for fair wages for restaurant workers

BY: STEPHANIE CHUKWUMA Sekou Siby left the war-stricken and politically unstable Ivory Coast in 1996 in search of better opportunities in New York, a place his friends in West Africa described as “easy to live and welcoming”. Upon arriving on a tourist visa, Siby quickly realized that was not the […]

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Queens Is Open For Business

Despite Amazon’s decision to pull out of the deal that would have put the tech behemoth’s HQ2 in Long Island City, Queens, local residents and leaders still see the neighborhood, and the borough at large, as a destination for tech companies.  And those leaders are doing what they can to […]