How to Draw Full Body of Aaron Gordon Drawings
Aaron Gordon noticed that he rarely saw anyone that looked like him or even his female parent when he would visit her tech chore in Silicon Valley as a kid. And that visual — re: reality — led the Denver Nuggets forrad and his mother to start a program with their family foundation in hopes of inspiring underprivileged kids of color to enter the tech earth.
"I was probably ten years old, and what I noticed afterwards, as I reflect, it was all white men," Gordon, whose mother is white and begetter is Blackness, recently told The Undefeated. "She was one of the only women at that place. She was breaking a glass ceiling of her own. But information technology was just all white men. That's not right."
Gordon was playing for the Orlando Magic in 2018 when he and his family founded the Gordon Family Giving Foundation, whose mission is "to provide opportunity through science, engineering science, engineering and math instruction to underserved and underrepresented young students."
Gordon and his mother, Shelly Davis Gordon, decided in 2019 to use her expertise from 35 years of working as a computer scientist and engineer in Silicon Valley to outset CodeOrlando, an immersive Stem experience. The free four-week summertime camp for eighth through 12th graders introduced the students from various Orlando, Florida, schools to coding, robotics and nanotechnology. The students are primarily of color from underserved backgrounds, the groups most underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math fields. Over the years, the kids in the program have taken part in grouping projects, three-day internships and visited local colleges, tech development companies and organizations. The Gordon Family Giving Foundation partnered with the University of Central Florida's College of Customs Innovation and Teaching to host the CodeOrlando programme on the UCF Downtown campus each summer through 2025.
The Gordon Family unit Giving Foundation
"We did a lot of stuff similar vacation giveaways, Thanksgiving stuff, basketball camps in the summer, those types of things," Davis Gordon said. "Simply Aaron and I have always talked nigh how we really wanted systemic change and we really wanted to do something that was more lasting than just a giveaway. We talked a lot about his love for technology and my experiences with information technology and how the college dropout rate for Blackness males is 60%. It's no wonder that the pipeline for Black, Hispanic and women to get into technology and so to stay in technology, remains minor. There's just and so many things that cake people from beingness able to participate in it."
Said Gordon: "We're only trying to show these kids at that place'south a different pathway than lilliputian with microphones [in music] and dribbling basketballs, or dealing drugs and gangbanging. There's other ways to break the generational curse."
Davis Gordon has a bachelor's degree from San Diego State in figurer information systems and a principal's degree from the University of San Diego in marketing. She began her tech career in Silicon Valley every bit a product marketing engineer in 1982. She worked for Intel every bit a product marketing engineer; at LSI Logic every bit a product and customer marketing managing director; at Xilinx Inc., nigh notably a senior director in technology programs; Altera as a senior product marketing manager; and returned to Intel every bit a partner and marketing solutions director.
Being a woman in a white male-dominated industry from the 1980s to the 2000s was very challenging for Davis Gordon. Existence the female parent of iii biracial kids also made her very enlightened of the lack of diversity, and she often sabbatum on several diversity and inclusion boards.
Shelly Davis Gordon
"I was the outset female in product marketing at my company and later on I was there, they did hire more," Davis Gordon said. "There were very few people who were Black and Hispanic and very few women. In that location was always the idea that nosotros would have liked to hire more than, but the pipeline was very small. And so the power of the company to really understand who they were hiring and the equity piece of it was very hard. And so, oftentimes, even if you did hire people, they didn't concluding long considering it wasn't a superinviting, fun environs for people.
"Many of the women that I started with when we were younger just didn't stay in the industry. So, by the fourth dimension I was in my early 50s, I was one of but a few women of that historic period group even so in my company."
When asked if she dealt with sexism in the tech manufacture, Davis Gordon said in that location were incidents daily that were "ingrained in the culture."
"When I looked dorsum on information technology, you put up with it considering it was just what you did," Davis Gordon said. "Dorsum in the 24-hour interval, there was nobody in Hr that would have even batted an center at it. When I look back on it, some of the stuff that I went through was this heinous, was just horrifying, but when you're in the middle of information technology, you just suck it up and keep going considering that's what you do and you don't have whatever recourse."
Said Gordon: "She used to come dwelling livid sometimes because she was overqualified, more qualified than the white man that got the promotion over her just because she was a woman and he was a man."
Statistics in contempo years in the tech industry have besides inspired Gordon and his mother. Of nearly 50,000 employees at Google in 2014, 83% were men, sixty% were white and 30% were Asian, while ii.9% were Latino and ane.9% Black, according to the Los Angeles Times. Only half dozen.five% of all STEM college graduates in 2016 were Blackness, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The People of Color in Tech Written report released in 2020 stated of its 1,207 respondents, 16% were Blackness, 16% Asian, 12% Hispanic, 5% Ethnic and seven% other, such as mixed-race.
Gordon said graduates of his program are not merely working in the tech manufacture, but accept come back to help electric current CodeOrlando participants. Davis Gordon retired from working in Silicon Valley in September 2015 and took over as CEO of the Gordon Family Giving Foundation. She at present works with CodeOrlando mentoring and keeping in bear on with the current and by participants.
"If yous simply don't have anybody in your community that is in that world, you never run into that globe. Information technology's that old adage, 'If you can't see it, you can't be information technology. If you tin can see it, yous can exist it.' And I think that's really true. So, we wanted to do something where nosotros introduced kids to technology," Davis Gordon said.
Gordon certainly comes from a basketball game family, as his father Ed played at San Diego State, sister Elise played at Harvard and brother Drew is a one-time NBA player at present playing in Ukraine. But cheers to his mother, the eight-year NBA veteran is also a self-described "computer dork" who loves having all the latest tech products and is educated about the newest products.
"She would bring the computers home for us and we would take them apart and look through the whole computer, look through all the chips and everything that made the computer work," Gordon said. "I didn't even take the patience to put information technology back together. I was just wanting to take office in the destruction part of information technology, but we e'er were around some of the latest technology in Silicon Valley.
"We were around projectors. We were around augmented reality glasses for video games. Nosotros were examination children for a lot of the latest technology coming out."
With CodeOrlando thriving, Gordon plans on beginning a new lawmaking programme soon in Denver, where he is now thriving with the Nuggets.
Gordon averaged 12.ix points, half dozen.iv rebounds and ii.five assists in vii seasons with the Magic before beingness traded to the Nuggets on March 25. The 6-foot-8, 235-pound forward said that he was trying as well hard only to fit in offensively with Denver after the trade, but he also made a potent impact defensively. The Nuggets saw enough of his value after the trade to sign him to a four-yr, $92 1000000 contract during the offseason.
"We liked his versatility and his defense force," Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth told The Undefeated. "Obviously, we lost Jerami Grant. We were looking for somebody who is bigger on the wing to help protect Mike [Porter]. Obviously, [Gordon] was playing a No. one, No. 2 role in Orlando. We felt that he would be a proficient complementary piece for u.s..
"I call up he had to abound from last season, but what has happened is that nosotros had a whole summer to get him healthy, piece of work on his game more and tighten some things up. I think he's feeling better about his torso and his skill set."
The Nuggets are notwithstanding without star point guard Jamal Murray, who is rehabilitating from a torn left ACL and has no timetable for his return. Murray's absence certainly has put stronger importance on Gordon to contribute offensively. Gordon has averaged 13 points and 7.3 rebounds in 30.3 minutes per game through the first 4 contests. He is optimistic that Murray volition render after this flavor and believes the Nuggets are a title contender either fashion with three-time NBA All-Star Nikola Jokić leading the charge.
"We going to be dangerous either style," Gordon said. "Nosotros're going to become Jamal late this twelvemonth or maybe adjacent yr, but with all the players we have on the team, we are nonetheless deep. We all the same have guards that tin can score and defend. Manifestly, at that place's no replacement for Jamal. Jamal, he's Jamal. He's one of the best in the league.
"I practise a niggling fleck of everything. I'm in that location to be as glue, make sure everything is running smoothly, to make sure everybody is happy, guard the best player every night and merely do me."
Gordon is almost well-known for being one of the NBA's greatest dunkers. His oft-debated dunk contest loss to Zach LaVine in 2016 in Toronto is considered one of the greatest because it included vi straight perfect scores. And then, will Gordon take part in the 2022 NBA douse contest in Cleveland and perhaps add a creative STEM twist?
"I will practice the douse competition again, just information technology's got to be a grip [financially]," Gordon said. "I'k not sure what the price is, but information technology's going to be a lot. Information technology's going to be entertaining. It'due south gonna be a draw. I still got information technology. People still want me to be in the douse competition. I know whatever they're going to pay me they are going to make triple, quadruple that anyway. They tin can afford information technology."
Source: https://andscape.com/features/nuggets-aaron-gordon-and-his-mother-are-determined-to-bring-diversity-to-the-tech-world/