Diversity in Early-Career Tech Policy Roles

Public Knowledge surveyed 13 technology policy organizations and convened 17 early-career technology policy professionals. Key insights include:

• Recruitment remains narrow. Job opportunities remain largely circulated within organizational websites and established networks, with limited outreach to Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), affinity groups, or community-based organizations, which continues to restrict access for underrepresented candidates.
• On-ramps are improving but remain inequitable. Paid internships are now the dominant early-career on-ramp, but few organizations offer externships or other pathways, and financial barriers still shape who can participate.
• Bias-reduction is partial. Structured interviews are widely used to reduce bias, yet practices such as blind resume reviews, scoring rubrics, and diverse interview panels are inconsistently adopted across organizations.
• Policies outpace practice. Most organizations report having formal inclusivity policies, but the effectiveness of these policies in improving diverse hiring is mixed, and demographic data collection remains uneven.
• Retention depends on clarity. Mentorship and sponsorship programs are the most common strategies for retention, though early-career professionals emphasized the need for clear promotion pathways, stronger onboarding processes, and opportunities to build policy-writing skills.
• Leadership representation lags. Diversity in leadership and decision-making spaces remains limited, with many early-career professionals reporting that their lived experiences are only sometimes recognized or valued.
• The external climate is chilling. Organizations report mixed effects from the external political climate, with most seeing little impact but some noting that federal and state-level legal and regulatory backlash of DEI has created hesitancy around data collection and public commitments.