OREANDA-NEWS. June 24, 2016. A host of companies, including Airbnb, Lyft and Spotify, have pledged to diversify their staff as part of a White House-led initiative to help the technology industry reflect the country's changing population.

Thirty-three companies on Wednesday committed to the Tech Inclusion Pledge, publicly stating their goals to recruit a diverse workforce, publish company data on diversity and invest in partnerships to continue strengthening that initiative.

"The United States is the best place in the world to start and grow a business," Megan Smith, the chief technology officer of the US, said in unveiling the pledge. "Yet, there's so much more that we can do to be able to field our whole team."

Diversity in the technology field has become an increasingly publicized issue, leading big companies such as Google and Apple to release annual reports describing the make-up of their workforces. Smith cited statistics showing that just 3 percent of US venture capital-backed startups are run by women and just 1 percent are run by African Americans.

The pledge, which was announced by the White House along with two other initiatives designed to foster the growth of young companies, comes as the Obama administration hosts the seventh Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University. The three-day summit has attracted more than 300 investors and over than 700 businesspeople. People from 170 countries are participating.