Part one: Stories

I think growing up in Silicon Valley, even though I didn't quite understand what it was all about, made it seem normal for someone like me to be in tech, because I grew up in the area and my mom was a software engineer, it felt like it was at least a path that I could take. I didn't have a single epiphany about the lack of diversity and inclusion in tech. I know from very early I was at least somewhat aware that there were these issues because my mom would tell me and my sister about her experiences being one of four women in a class of 200 in her college class and her experiences in her PhD program and working in industry. So I knew that there was some baseline level of diversity issues. It was really much more when I got to working full time and the stakes were suddenly much higher because we were thinking about career prospects, and I was wondering what projects I'd be working on and what my path might look like that all of these issues around diversity and not just a lack of diversity, but also things like gender discrimination, whether very subtle or overt, became much more prominent for me. Unequivocally, I would not be doing the work that I'm doing now if it wasn't for me really seeing my daughter potentially have some of the same struggles that I had, you know, coming into my career, even from college. So really seeing her be in this space where she felt marginalized and even felt maybe overlooked is what really drove me to action. I was doing a lot of networking at different events and different tech conferences, and finding myself also in this very male-dominated environment, and it was surprising because my career field in biotech didn't look that way. Those two things, seeing this issue play out in my professional career, as well as seeing it personally through my daughters eyes, kind of came together as the impetus. I landed in the tech industry about a half a decade ago. When I got there, I realized that I was really the only one of me. When I started asking questions, I was really dissatisfied with the answers. Ideas like, "Tech is a meritocracy and we hire the best" sort of stood in opposition to this idea of data driven and empirically informed that the industry has. I decided to take data and research and apply it to this problem, because I fundamentally believe that the industry will be stronger and it really will be a meritocracy when we see diversity in the industry. There's a strong set of misconceptions about how the tech industry actually works versus how it believes it works. And so I think the biggest thing you see now is people are saying we want greater diversity, and there isn't an understanding that the industry just isn't a level playing field right now. And so a lot of the pushback you see comes from the assumption that it is. And so that's there. We've raised awareness that there's a lack of diversity, but we haven't deepened understanding that it's a problem of systemic exclusion discrimination and harassment. But it's important now for us to continue not just talking about the problems, but to focus on building solutions in an agile way. My path towards just trying to be fair about diversity and inclusion, basically, it starts with Sunday school and Mr. and Mrs. Levin who just told me that I should treat people like I want to be treated. I'm a nerd, nerd of the old school, take things literally. And that was pretty good back then, because all they were saying is try to be fair to other people. And, you know, as we grow into adults, we kind of forget that we've been told to treat people like we want to be treated. What got me involved in any kind of serious inclusion and in tech stems back to junior school, where a relative was valedictorian. But by the time we graduated from high school, she was way down in the list. Something happened there. I didn't understand it, but I started paying attention. And even in college, I saw a fair amount of a -- well, what I thought was unfair. For example, in the computer science building on the floor where all the computers were, there was only a men's room. Didn't seem fair, didn't know what to do about it, except I saw one of my fellow grad students, she would just go in and use the men's room, and that seemed just fair to me. That idea stayed in my headway through college and then into the workforce, where the idea is just to treat people like I wanted to be treated, which just meant to be fair and to treat people equally. I think we have evolved as an industry that we are now at a place where there's a pretty vibrant and robust conversation on diversity almost anywhere you go. So it's no longer like the elephant in the room, everyone's talking about diversity. But what I don't think that we as an industry have figured out yet is really how to shift the conversation to one about inclusion, because there's a difference, right? I think that we're just starting to scrape the surface of like, what we really need to do to make sure that everyone feels welcome in these spaces. And that is what inclusion is all about. It's not just getting folks in the door, is about making sure that once they get in the room, they feel comfortable bringing their full selves. They feel appreciated. They feel like they belong. And creating that sense of belonging is really the next step in moving the diversity and inclusion conversation forward.