Santa Fe data firm Falling Colors grew at an accelerated rate during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Since the beginning of last year, the 6-year old company added a dozen people to its staff. This year is shaping up to see even more new hires, according to the company, which on Wednesday announced an "ambitious growth plan" with a preference for workers living in or willing to relocate to New Mexico. Falling Colors now employs 33 people in total. Most of its staff works in Santa Fe, according to spokesman Billy Sladek.
Falling Colors merges expertise in technology and analytics to help organizations widen the attainment of the social determinants of health — the "conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health and quality-of life-risks and outcomes," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The company says it tracks spending and measures outcomes using a software platform and supporting devices, allowing customers to get insights on the effectiveness of their programs.
The company credits its success in part to its focus on diversity — a quality which is often lacking in Big Tech. Falling Colors is a woman- and LGBTQ-owned company and 45% of its staff is female. Race data was not immediately made available.
"A lot of recent research seems to be pointing to what Falling Colors has always recognized: that a team of diverse people with different backgrounds and life experiences is a tremendous asset to our company," said Pamela Koster, co-founder and CEO of Falling Colors, in a statement. "Those differences allow us to bring different approaches and solutions to the client problems we're working to solve."
Falling Colors has attempted to reduce bias in its job posting and hiring practices. The firm's job descriptions go through what it calls "automated bias analysis," which detects language that could be changed to better reflect gender neutrality. And during the screening process, Falling Colors masks identifying information such as applicant names to prevent bias, according to the company.
Diversity is a concern among some business owners and members of the workforce. One Deloitte survey found that 83% of millennials "are actively engaged when they believe their organization fosters an inclusive culture."
For large tech companies, diversity among minorities has emerged as a shortcoming, both nationally and locally. Women also make up significantly smaller percentages of overall employment compared with men at large tech employers.
As of 2020, less than one quarter of Google's tech workforce in the U.S. was female. In terms of race, more than 90% of Google's tech workforce was comprised of Asian and white individuals that year, according to Google's annual report on diversity. Facebook posted similar levels of representation among women in technical roles globally and among certain U.S. ethnic groups for technical roles.
At Sandia National Laboratories, a major tech employer locally, about 32% of staff and students are female. Most are white, and those identifying as Hispanic or Latino make up the next largest demographic at 25.9%, according to Sandia's website.
At Falling Colors, diversity seems to be the way of the future. The company plans to keep adding jobs, on pace to outdo last year's growth in 2021. The company previously purchased The White Building in Santa Fe's Downtown and Eastside Historic District for an undisclosed amount. The deal closed without brokers, said Samuel Wolf, who is director of internal operations at Falling Colors.
Falling Colors declined to disclose how much revenue it had in 2020 and the year before, according to Wolf.
The company also has a nonprofit called the Falling Colors Foundation. The organization will develop educational resources, offer scholarships and facilitate projects "that support the development of technological solutions to challenges facing New Mexico," according to a release from 2017.
