Almost one year ago, Google released its diversity data, kicking off a wide-ranging industry conversation about why tech companies and venture capital firms are so unrepresentative of the racial and gender make-up of the rest of the U.S.
Dozens of other companies followed Google’s suit while the issue of gender in the venture world has been on the front burner with the Ellen Pao and Kleiner Perkins verdict last Friday.
But Mitch and Freada Kapor have been here more or less all along. Mitch, who co-founded Lotus Development Corporation, which sold to IBM for $3.5 billion in 1995, and Freada, who has a Ph.D and has been active on the issue of diversity for years, run a venture firm Kapor Capital, math and science educational programs for students of color and are in the process of building a new center in Downtown Oakland around their ideas…