“A technologist can come from any place and look like any of us,” Irma Olguin Jr., the co-founder and CEO of startup Bitwise Industries wrote in Fast Company recently.
Latinx founder Olguin knows firsthand. She heads up a tech ecosystem headquartered in Fresno that works to develop a diverse and representative workforce, create community, and design technology to help people and businesses. Bitwise offers training through Geekwise Academy, develops software, and invests in commercial real estate. Last year the company secured $27 million in venture funding.
“Teaching people to code, taking folks from a story of poverty and seeing if they could enter into the technology industry, that was the foundational pillar for Bitwise,” Olguin told Forbes staff writer Ruth Umoh.
In this edition of the Plug In South LA Beat, our ongoing curation of must-read innovation and tech news, we’re drawing inspiration from Olguin’s remarkable story and her startup’s pivot during the pandemic: