Silicon Valley’s most powerful black woman is leaving Apple

There are very few black faces among the leadership of Silicon Valley’s top companies, and one of the longest-serving will be leaving her post at Apple by the end of the year.

Denise Young Smith, Apple’s vice president of inclusion and diversity, is stepping down to take a position as executive-in-residence at the Cornell Tech graduate program in New York City. Apple is still a largely white and male company in spite of public commitments to improve diversity within its ranks, and Smith’s exit will leave its 19-person senior leadership without a black person among them. Apple confirmed her replacement is Christie Smith, a Deloitte consultant.

Previously, Smith served as the head of human resources for Apple, and transitioned to running inclusion and diversity efforts this past May. In October, Smith caught flak and apologized to her staff after remarking at a conference in Bogota that “12 white blue-eyed blonde men in a room” are “going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

Smith’s exit and her comments in Colombia are not connected, according to TechCrunch, and her departure has been planned for some time. “We deeply believe that diversity drives innovation,” Apple said in a statement to VICE News. “We’re thrilled to welcome an accomplished leader like Christie Smith to help us continue the progress we’ve made toward a more diverse workplace.”

Like Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley giants, Apple has made little progress over the years to match its loud commitments to diversifying its workforce. In the 2017 edition of its annual diversity report, Apple says that 32 percent of its 130,000-strong workforce are women, up from 30 percent in 2014.

White people make up 54 percent of its staff, and 9 percent are black, although those numbers are 43 percent and 11 percent respectively for workers under the age of 30.

Those numbers include staff of retail locations, which are significantly more diverse than technology staff or management in Cupertino.

Among Apple’s leadership the numbers are bleaker: top executives are 66 percent white, 23 Asian, 7 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent black. Those numbers are virtually unchanged from 2014.