To Attract Black Employees, Companies Move to Them

Silicon Valley has a diversity problem, one that even Tristan Walker’s 4-year-old son could see.

In 2018, after making a trip to the supermarket with his father in Palo Alto, Calif., Mr. Walker’s son observed, “Palo Alto is where all the white people are.”

It was a moment that struck Mr. Walker, who is Black, not just as a father—but as a CEO. As the head of Walker & Co. Brands, a startup making personal-care products for people of color, he’d noticed it was sometimes hard to recruit people to...