“This shift the world needs to see is going to happen by getting, converting, and opening the opportunities for people that are already grown and already in the workforce, pivoting adults into tech.”

Peter Beasley
Board Chairman and Executive Director 
BUiLT
.…on partnering with nonprofits based on racial equity, via Dallas Business Journal.

Beasley’s nonprofit, Blacks United in Leading Technology International, describes itself as the largest community and nonprofit professional organization that focuses on Black people in the tech industry.

As tech hiring continues to boom in Dallas-Fort Worth—with the region consistently ranked No. 3 in the U.S. for tech job postings—Beasley believes Black Americans could be a vital source for new tech workers.

“The opportunity today for the world, America and for North Texas specifically to seize is with the current number of Black adults that are not in tech,” Beasley told the DBJ. “To create racial equity in tech, the opportunity is not as much with K-12 or high school, children or with Black people in college, engineering and technology fields. This shift the world needs to see is going to happen by getting, converting and opening the opportunities for people that are already grown and already in the workforce, pivoting adults into tech.” 

Last fall, Dallas Innovates wrote about BUiLT marking its one-year anniversary as a nonprofit, 

During the pandemic, Beasley saw an opportunity to create an organization that would simultaneously uplift local communities while connecting Black technologists around the country, and even around the world. Each chapter is designed to uplift its local community, while leaders can share best practices with each other across the organization. 

“None of what we do is about us,” Beasley told Dallas Innovates at the time. “As they say, there is no “i” in team, and we are united with the other great organizations and their allies who are working to solve America’s unique problem of race relations, as it also plays out in tech.”

Diversity in tech lags behind that of the overall private industry. Black technologists make up around 7% of workers in the tech sector, compared to 14 percent in the overall private industry. Beasley recognized that gap in the tech sector and founded BUiLT to bridge the divide. 

“Black people in tech is synonymous with innovation in tech,” Beasley told us, “and it’s a great time to be alive, Black, and in tech.”

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