Mayor Kenney, Comcast’s David Cohen will join PSL’s Diversity Dinner 2017

Philly Startup Leaders and Mogulette are bringing back last year’s Diversity Dinner, this time with sponsorship from Comcast and with boss David L. Cohen among the speakers.

The event is happening Oct. 25 at Bok, with Mayor Jim Kenney and Councilmen Allan Domb and Derek Green slated to join Comcast’s Cohen as speakers.

Last year’s session yielded a crop of big-picture lessons on how to get the local tech ecosystem to more accurately represent Philadelphia, a majority minority city. This year’s edition will feature lightning talks and table discussions led by Philly tech execs like IOPipe CTO Erica Windisch.

“I would love to spark a dialogue with the attendees around concrete, constructive steps to make tech a better place for underrepresented minorities (URMs),” the exec told Technical.ly. “I believe Philadelphia has an opportunity to lead in building companies inclusive of URMs.”

For PSL’s Yuval Yarden, the event is happening at a time when diversity is being broadly recognized in the community as an important issue.

“But there’s been a failure to close the gap between how we know things need to be and how things are,” Yarden said. “That’s what this year’s event is all about.”