Thanks to Zillow, these Morehouse College students are cashing out and helping others at the same time! Zillow has officially announced the winners of its HBCU Housing Hackathon, where more than 150 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) competed for top prizes. Each team of students was to bring innovative ideas to life that would help both at-risk renters and struggling first-time home buyers. The team from Morehouse, made up of four students, walked away with first place and a grand prize of $20,000 which will be split evenly amongst all four students. Their program, “Reliby,” uses a machine to predict increases in rent and utility costs at a particular address over time. Their program also offers renters an early warning about any affordability challenges that may be underway. “It’s awesome to conceptualize a project that could help a lot of people and not only win this hackathon and receive prizes that are great for my team, but also help earn a...

The tech industry has a long way to go when it comes to building gender and racial diversity. Companies like Facebook, Uber, and Google release annual reports tracking their diversity progress, while smaller firms figure things out along the way. Plus, diversity and inclusion executives have become more common as companies try to navigate building effective workplaces for a variety of people. Lionel Lee, the head of diversity engagement at Zillow, says that feeling isolated in previous recruiter positions helped influence his work today. Since 2016, Lee has assisted in creating initiatives, programs, and network centers around inclusion. “There were very few people who looked like me. Most of the time, I was the only one,” Lee said. “I found it difficult at times to even go into work eventually. I had to make money, and I had a child that I was trying to support, so I would suppress all of those feelings and just do the job.” However, going through the motions began to take a toll...