I wrote my graduate thesis on this topic in 1996, one year before I joined the software industry in college recruiting which was the beginning of my career in tech company HR. Here’s what I’ve learned — the leaders who really care about their employees in general end up with higher numbers of women and underrepresented minorities on their teams. They do the right things by looking at what unique points of view are missing when hiring, they support development opportunities, champion promotions, and make room for other activities in their employees’ lives (whether that be maternity/paternity leave or outside hobbies or a pet). If we wanted to really over invest in “pipeline”, the bigger software companies could build an internal coding camp at scale for liberal arts majors, where these folks become actual employees and get the real mentorship across all vectors (technical skills, design, and interpersonal) while not forcing people to make a choice between a paycheck and learning new skills. Israel basically does this with their mandatory two years of military service — Google, MSFT, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc could really go after it if they wanted.