Enlarge / Oculus diversity lead Ebony Peay Ramirez speaks about a $10 million pledge toward diversity-minded initiatives. (credit: Oculus)

Oculus’ annual conference revolving around its VR products just happened to be scheduled two weeks after the company’s founder, Palmer Luckey, was revealed as a major contributor to a “shit-posting” political meme organization. Coincidentally, this third edition of Oculus Connect began with a major no-show on its keynote stage: Palmer Luckey.

Luckey could have used the Oculus Connect stage to address the controversy over his donations to Nimble America, which my colleague Kyle Orland so succinctly described in September as “an unofficial pro-Trump political nonprofit that is powering the tsunami of white supremacist and other racist image macros that have plagued Reddit.” Instead, Oculus gave a few minutes of stage time to Ebony Peay Ramirez, the company’s head of diversity, who announced that Oculus will commit $10 million to “diverse programs for virtual reality.”

“VR will only succeed if it reflects a diverse ecosystem,” Ramirez said to the Oculus Connect crowd. “Diversity matters, not just in the storytellers lending their voices to the medium but to the audience as well.” Ramirez described a variety of Oculus-run initiatives, including VR For Good, Launch Pad, and The Diverse Filmmakers Project, to offer access and assistance for more diverse VR creators. However, she frequently stumbled over her words throughout her speech, even when asking, “Can I hear it from the women in VR, please?”