Instead of bemoaning the lack of multicultural women in the IT industry, this technology leader aggressively seeks out the best candidates in the business.

In 2008, Cisco developed a global recruiting strategy to better identify top multicultural women in the field and hired a diversity oversight manager to keep the initiative on track. But it’s already easy to find women of color in prominent positions at Cisco, including Chief Technology Officer Pad masree Warrior and Judy Lin, who serves as senior vice president of the Ethernet Switching Technology Group. Like her peers, Pad masree is straightforward about why she came to the company, explaining that it fuses “a relentless focus on success” with “a very inclusive culture.” Now, in a bid to attract the next generation of IT workers, the company is tapping multicultural employees like systems engineer Danielle Desalu to volunteer with its IT Rocks program for high school students. Its mission? To let young women of all ethnicities know that technology is a field in which they can succeed.

Multicultural Women: 13%

Multicultural Women Managers/Execs: 7%

Chief Diversity Officer: Brian Schipper

Hires who are multicultural women: 10%

Hires who are multicultural men: 22%

Multicultural women managers/execs: 7%

Multicultural men managers/execs: 26%

Top 20% earners who are multicultural women: 5%

Top 20% earners who are multicultural men: 23%

Multicultural women on board of directors: 0%

Offers formal compensation program to reward managers who specifically help multicultural women advance: NO

Rates managers on the number of multicultural women employees advancing: NO

Uses outside recruiter to focus on finding multicultural women candidates: YES

Offers support groups specifically for multicultural women: NO

Offers mentoring programs specifically geared toward multicultural women early in their careers: NO

Offers sponsorship program specifically geared toward multicultural women early in their careers: NO