Kathryn Finney, founder of The Budget Fashionista and tech equity organization digitalundivided, announced the creation of a new Atlanta center dedicated to furthering Black and Latina women’s leadership in the tech world. 

The BIG Innovation Center, a 6,000-square-foot space in downtown Atlanta that Finney announced yesterday (March 13) during Austin’s tech and arts festival South by Southwest, is being billed as the first of its kind. "This has never been done for Black women before," Finney told The Root.

The center will host a four-month accelerator program for companies led by women of color, where emerging tech leaders will learn the how-tos of founding and funding a high-growth start-up company. The center will also host paid internship programs for student developers. These programs aim to further digitalundivided’s goal of, "reach[ing] around 2,000 Black and Latina founders per year," per TechCrunch. "We are a resource for the entire Black tech community," Finney said. The center will accept applications for the accelerator program starting in May. 

The new center arrives on the heels of digitalundivided’s #ProjectDiane report, which states, among other startling facts about women of color’s marginalization in the fast-growing tech world, that only 0.2 percent of all venture capital deals made between 2012 and 2014 went to Black women. 

(H/t The Root, TechCrunch)