Can Artificial Intelligence Help Fix Tech's Diversity Problem?

It's often been said that successful entrepreneurs don’t just start businesses; they solve problems. Google made search better. Amazon simplified online buying and selling. Uber and Lyft made transportation easy and reliable.

For Iba Masood, that problem was finding a job. She graduated from the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, in the middle of a global economic downturn. Although she graduated “magna cum laude” with three internships under her belt, she still couldn’t land a job post-graduation.

“My first company, Gradberry, was born of necessity,” she explains. “ It helped college grads find jobs.”

After going through Y Combinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator program that’s produced tech darlings like Dropbox, Airbnb and Coinbase, Masood and her co-founder and CTO, Syed Ahmed, pivoted their business model. The company that emerged was TARA.AI, an Artificial Intelligence platform that aims to eliminate bias from the tech recruiting process. 

It's often been said that successful entrepreneurs don’t just start businesses; they solve problems. Google made search better. Amazon simplified online buying and selling. Uber and Lyft made transportation easy and reliable.

For Iba Masood, that problem was finding a job. She graduated from the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in 2010, in the middle of a global economic downturn. Although she graduated “magna cum laude” with three internships under her belt, she still couldn’t land a job post-graduation.

“My first company, Gradberry, was born of necessity,” she explains. “ It helped college grads find jobs.”

After going through Y Combinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator program that’s produced tech darlings like Dropbox, Airbnb and Coinbase, Masood and her co-founder and CTO, Syed Ahmed, pivoted their business model. The company that emerged was TARA.AI, an Artificial Intelligence platform that aims to eliminate bias from the tech recruiting process.