Electronic Arts and Diversity in the Industry
According to an interview with EA's COO Peter Moore, Electronic Arts is actively looking to increase diversity in its workforce and has been doing so for the past few years.
Speaking to Fortune, Moore said "We all need to step back sometimes and think about the environments we create for our people, the opportunities we create for people internally, and equally importantly how you bring new blood into the company, it can't all be white males," he continued, "as a result, I think that hiring managers at EA over the last couple of years have had a sharper focus on diversity. I know that my teams around the world have."
Now, some of EA's biggest releases are being headed by women such as Sara Jansson (Executive Producer for Mirror's Edge Catalyst), Rachel Franklin (Executive Producer for The Sims 4), Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir (Senior Producer for Star Wars Battlefront), Amy Hennig (Creative Director for a new Star Wars game), Jade Raymond (heading Motive as well as overseeing Visceral Games) and Senior Vice President Samantha Ryan.
Recently, EA hosted more than 30 high school students at their campus as part of a seven week Girls Who Code course and has immediate openings for growing mobile studios. "At EA we're encouraging girls to think about programming as a career from as young as high school, even before you get into college and focus on where you go for computer science degrees."