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.