Winner: Maxine Williams, Facebook
Since joining Facebook three years ago, Maxine Williams and her team have encouraged and supported the entire company as Facebook works hard to increase diversity within its culture. Williams developed a course designed to help people recognize how bias can affect them, and generated tools to interrupt and correct for bias when it occurs in the workplace. Nearly 100 percent of the company’s senior leadership has taken Facebook’s managing bias course live, as have more than 75 percent of employees.
Maxine Williams also spearheaded TechPrep, a resource hub where underrepresented people and their parents and guardians can learn more about computer science and programming. TechPrep brings together hundreds of resources, varying by age range and skill level. Williams and her team are fierce champions of all forms of diversity at Facebook. The company was also the first Fortune 500 company to release data around its LGBTQ population via a voluntary survey of its employees in the U.S. about sexual orientation and gender identity, with 7 percent of employees reporting they were members of the LGBTQ community.