Riviera Partners Receives Grant to Bridge Gender & Diversity Career Gap
September 18, 2019 – The data science team at Riviera Partners has been given the prestigious Convergence Accelerator (C-Accel) award by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in which the firm will receive nearly $1 million to help put women and first generation college grads into STEM careers. Riviera, partnering with the University of Virginia economics department, received the grant to build an AI-powered application that can help people navigate STEM.
The tool, which builds on Riviera’s proprietary algorithms against thousands of technology candidates and hiring insights, will study the role of individual characteristics such as education, skill-set, peer self-assessment and others to guide peoples’ career planning, said the firm.
“We believe that anyone can achieve anything if the path and direction are clear,” said Tammy Wang, vice president of data science and engineering at Riviera Partners. “There are large populations in the U.S. that don’t know where and how to start a technology career. Riviera will work with non-profit organizations to reach out to these communities to make sure our tool is easy to use and gives them perspectives that are practical, feasible and that can transform their career trajectory. Data science and technology can make life better for everyone, and we are on a journey to help the tech field be more diverse to bring opportunities to more people.”
The solution has the potential to impact U.S. labor supply by addressing the increasing demand for technology talent, which has resulted from the rapid digitization and automation of the labor market. It can help bridge the gender and diversity gaps in the high-tech industry by better equipping women, minorities and underrepresented groups in developing a successful technology career path, said the firm.
Placing Tech Leaders
“Our data science team is one of the best in the world, and this award is a testament to their amazing talent and innovative thinking,” said Will Hunsinger, CEO of Riviera Partners. “Our technology platform is crucial to our ability to place highly skilled technology leaders at the world’s leading companies, and now, thanks to this support from the National Science Foundation, we’ll be able to apply our technology and accumulated knowledge to help more underrepresented people navigate successful tech careers.”
As a funder of research and education across all fields of science and engineering and with relationships with universities and funding agencies around the world, NSF is uniquely positioned to pilot this approach to accelerate discovery and innovation. NSF C-Accel brings teams together to focus on grand challenges of national importance that require a convergence approach.
Rivera’s project was chosen as part of the C-Accel National Talent Ecosystem track, the ultimate goal of which is to support research and development leading to innovative approaches for employers to support workers seeking the skills required for 21st century work related to AI, data science, predictive analytics and other technologies of the future.
Riviera matches top engineering and product talent with tech innovators. Having worked with nearly half of the tech unicorns, serving hundreds of clients, placing thousands of tech executives and working with the most influential VC and PE firms in the business, Riviera already leverages its proprietary AI-driven technology to reduce hiring risks and deliver better candidates to its clients.
A Global Recruiting Firm
Through Riviera’s platform, called Sutro, recruiting partners leverage the collective experience of the entire firm, have access to historical, enriched, and real-time data and can leverage machine learning-derived signals, scores, and success factors run against two decades of recruiting process data, With the National Science Foundation grant, Riviera will use its technology to identify and illustrate the typical career paths for engineers, tech product managers and designers, revealing candidate likelihood of achieving overall career goals. When released, the app will be free and available to the public.
Riviera Partners Acquires WorthyWorks, Appoints COO
Riviera Partners continues its recent expansion with the acquisition of New York-based tech and product leader specialist WorthyWorks and the addition of Ryan Giordano as chief operating officer. “We are in a phase of hyper-innovation in the technology market,” said CEO Will Hunsinger.
Riviera Partners is a global recruiting firm specializing in the technology industry. The firm provides clients with optimal placements by combining recruiter interactions and experience with data-driven findings about candidates. The firm has recruited for key executive roles at Pinterest, Postmates, Tinder, Twilio, Uber, Asana, Dropbox, GitHub, DoorDash, Hulu, and partnered with venture-backed concerns, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Benchmark, Accel, Menlo Ventures, KPCB, Greylock and General Catalyst.
Through sophisticated, machine learning algorithms, Riviera Partners identifies specialized, highly-qualified candidates that fit an organization’s needs from 600,000 professionals in the most important tech geographies. Riviera can often provide a short list of exceptional candidates in 30 days and has a track record of over 95 percent success rate.
This spring, Riviera Partners closed a minority investment of $25 million led by private equity firms Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors and ROCA Partners. The financing will be used to fund Riviera Partners’ continued geographic expansion, strategic acquisitions, enhancements to its Sutro platform and the addition of staff to meet the increased demand for its services. Riviera grew its revenues by nearly 48 percent this past year, to $31 million, and is now ranked No. 18 by Hunt Scanlon Media on its Top 50 list.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor; and Andrew W. Mitchell, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media