Part five: Bird's eye view

When I graduated, I went to work for IBM, who was pretty serious about diversity and inclusion, and I got involved in small ways, encouraging people, telling them that the tech stuff, which sounded hard, really wasn't. The terminology and the way things are presented make technology seem difficult, and that was mostly an illusion. My deal was in that area and, I guess, everything else, is that you give people a break. I mean, I grew up in New Jersey. That's the phrasing that I grew up with. More recently, I think Jack Lemmon says, "If you're lucky enough to do well, then send the elevator back down." One of the things that I think that is part of the work that we're doing with -- the workshops that we do with Black Girls Code, the experience is really creating resiliency and self-confidence between the girls that are participating. So I think that allows them to be able to go outside of this very supportive environment, which is a safe space into the broader community. For Black Girls Code, we really want the girls to be able to go into higher levels of computer programming. So be that a program manager, a software engineer, a lead engineer, or even starting their own companies. So we want them to engage at a leadership level and not just, you know, go into companies as a technologist, but be able to be leaders. I think that's a key to, like, changing the industry. Is making sure that we give them the skills and we give them the confidence to be able to create this change from the seat of power. A really key part of what we're doing is trying to create not just computer scientists, we're trying to create leaders of the tech industry. More so than ever, I'm seeing folks who are incredibly well-intentioned beginning to tie that intention to actual forward progress. Whether that's because they're changing attitudes based on something they've learned in the last year or it's just becoming more and more obvious that this is a requirement to future proof your business, the fact is that the world is globalizing. That everyone is trying to serve a globally diverse customer base. Trapping yourself in a bubble where you don't have access to that diversity of ideas is really going to be a business killer in the future. And so I think there are some companies who will get it right sooner and reap the benefits from that. But I'm really hopeful that this can be a much more industry level change. It's important if you're doing something that matters to get the word out, because if you're not communicating about it, it isn't happening. And that's hard to do because in traditional business communications, when you talk about that, it comes off as insincere or phony. The idea is to not only talk about what you're doing, but to do something that means something that might be outside your business. I recently supported the next Women Startup Challenge, having to do with getting a whole bunch of women-led startups to present in front of VCs who can give them really good advice, who can help them network, and they can compete for valuable cash prizes. That also includes supporting women groups like at CASE, which is my alumnus, and at the University of San Francisco, not far from there. I'm trying to help out, like, supporting them to get to the Grace Marie Hopper Conference on Women in Tech because that's starting relatively early. That helps. Again, putting my money where my mouth is, supporting Girls Who Code. Now I'm on that board. I don't think it's easier to help, whether from within the industry or from within philanthropy, supporting the efforts of Girls Who Code because that's kind of within the industry, and yet high school girls, no matter where they want to wind up, are being helped. Because if you understand technology, particularly information technology, that gives you confidence and power in the business world as it evolves. The biggest reasons diversity and inclusion is important is because you can't have one subset of folks creating all the tools as the tech field continues to grow. The diversity of ideas and the things that these girls will create and work on is vitally important. And women and girls have a tendency to be very socially focused in terms of being very engaged and concerned about what happens in their environment. So getting women to the table and girls involved in tech will create a greater diversity of ideas that we can solve using tech as a tool. Who is the face of technology and who you think of when you think of a technologist being much broader. You know, being a face of a woman and face of students of color and women of color, that's important. And if we can leave a legacy that really allows that to come to fruition, I think we would have done our job. This ability to, like, give back, mentor down to the girls and being a part of what they see as a future path for themselves is extremely important.