Creating an Opportunity Loop

HP’s educational and employment initiatives to improve equality sometimes reinforced one other. In 1975, Howard University engineering student Ernest Priestly began working at Hewlett-Packard the summer after his freshman year under a special work study program — he was personally recruited by Ken Coleman, a pioneer for diversity programs at HP. Priestly continued to rejoin the company every summer until 1978, when he graduated from Howard and joined the company full time.