Focus on Solutions. Notes from the 2018 San Francisco Tech… | by Lorien Smyer

The 2018 San Francisco Tech Inclusion Conference was held in the magnificent Bently Reserve, the former San Francisco Federal Reserve building built in 1924. The location, besides being stunningly grand, with excellent sound insulation between conference rooms, seemed like a fitting location for a conference that aims to bring more equality to the elite tech industry.

The San Francisco Tech Inclusion Conference is multi-track, so my perspective is influenced by the talks I was able to see, but it felt like this year’s talks were concentrated on changing the tech industry in three major ways: increasing diversity at existing companies, funding more diverse startups, and making the actual tech we use in our daily lives more inclusive. And, as Wayne Sutton, Co-Founder of Change Catalyst, the company that presents Tech Inclusion events around the world, said during this year’s opening statements, the conference has a “focus on solutions; so many people focus on the problems”.

The opening fireside chat was with Arlan Hamilton, the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in underrepresented startup founders worldwide. As Hamilton’s Fast Company magazine cover article states, “The story of how the former music-tour manager studied up on investing from her home in Pearland, Texas, and pushed her way into the rarified world of venture capital, scoring investments from the likes of Marc Andreessen and Chris Sacca, has become legendary in the industry.”

As Hamilton said in her fireside chat, “I want all of us to feel empowered, and in order to do that, you have to have representation; you have to see it. So, for better or for worse, I’m one of those people that’s influencing that; and I just try to lock in some authenticity every time, because I’ve heard more noes than yeses.” “It’s because the team is diverse; it’s because the team can pull from different backgrounds, and experience, and points of view, that we’re able to be this strong.” “If you don’t give people a chance to reach you in many different ways, you are really cutting off a lot of opportunity for yourself.” “If you count yourself out, you’re 100 percent not going to get in.”

The next fireside chat was with Suzanne Barakat, MD, Board Chair at Our Three Winners Foundation. Dr. Barakat is not in the tech industry, but has intimate experience with Islamophobia: her brother, his wife, and his wife’s sister were murdered in North Carolina in 2015, by a neighbor who didn’t like the women’s hijabs. She talked about having to ‘take back the narrative”; “if I wasn’t going to be sharing my story, then someone else was going to be sharing theirs on behalf of me.”

Melinda Briana Epler, Founder and CEO of Change Catalyst, asked Dr. Barakat, “What can we all do to be better allies for our Muslim colleagues in the workplace?” Dr. Barakat responded, “Most people are very well intended; these situations are very uncomfortable, and we need to be equipped with two things: the tools to respond in the moment, but also an internal recognition of our own implicit biases that we’re not always privy to and aware of. So, kind of a key thing that I take away is, if you see something that doesn’t sit right with you, prime yourself with a statement like ‘hey, that’s not okay’. It’ll give you that extra couple seconds to think in that moment.”

Various challenges and solutions were discussed in the panel on Mental Health, Wellness and Working with Trauma.

James Pratt, Vice President of People Development at Gravity Payments, organizes an informal men’s group to encourage discussion, because “it is a taboo in many groups of men” to talk about their feelings; he also is the founder and host of the Silent Superheroes podcast, where they have frank conversations about mental health at work. Pratt suggested “if you work in HR, think about the resources you can bring to bear to create that safe space; whether it might be on-site counseling, or therapy, or simply educating yourself, and letting it be known, ‘hey, I’m trying to learn more about this topic’.”

Amanda Gelender, Founder and CEO of Medusa Global, pointed out “the separation between personal and work is completely blurred, and so I think our managers really need to start to understand ‘how can I best support the people on my teams based on all the events in the world, and the types of things they’re experiencing’”. She referenced a useful blog post by Nicole Sanchez called ‘Business leadership in times of violence’.

Lakeisha Poole, CEO and Founder of Talent Karma, suggested “giving agency within the context of employment, so that people are more empowered”. “I think the most important thing is not just to get support from leadership, but really get engagement from leadership.”

Cynthia Overton, Founder of Inclusion Clearinghouse, stated that “we really need for our mid managers to step up. Mid managers set the culture.” “Just think about how much more productive a workplace environment could be if we were in safe spaces, and could talk about these issues.” “I think people are hungry for role models, so I think that it’s really going to take more people stepping up, saying ‘hey, this is something that I experienced, and this is how I’ve dealt with it’.”

Frieda McAlear, Senior Research Associate at the Kapor Center, gave a solo talk on the Women of Color in Computing Collaborative, a two-year initiative developing, testing and scaling ways to diversify tech.

McAlear said “we don’t know a lot about the intersectional experiences of women in computing”; “most data sets focus either just on racial difference or on gender difference, and very few take into account the intersection of those differences”. “We wanted to take a look at how we can develop, test, and scale strategies to increase participation of women of color in the tech ecosystem.” She asked the audience to please help support and validate women of color.

Next was a solo talk by Komal Ahmad, Founder and CEO of Copia, on Technology to Solve the World’s Dumbest Problem. Copia built “a platform that connects businesses with excess food directly to nonprofits in need, anywhere across the country”. “The business gets to take advantage” of the “financial savings that are available to them for their food donations”.

Ahmad stated “Copia is not a non-profit; we are not a charity. Copia is a for-profit company that’s built proprietary technology to solve both hunger and food waste at scale.” They’re also providing the businesses that are donating the food “data and analytics that help them understand” why the waste is happening. They’re “using AI and machine learning to provide predictive analytics that help these businesses reduce over-purchasing and production altogether”. Copia has diverted over 1.5 million pounds of food from landfills, and will feed over 2 million people in 2018. Ahmad suggested that this same model could be used for other supplies, like medicine.

The Pathways to Success for the Diverse Entrepreneur panel emphasized focusing on the monetary value of your idea, on doing something every day, and on not giving up despite obstacles.

Komal Ahmad said when she was fundraising, she didn’t talk about feeding hungry people; she emphasized the multi-billion dollar business from the world’s leftovers.

Chloe Alpert, CEO of Medinas Health, agreed: “The thing that’s interesting when it comes to fundraising is that it’s not important that I’m a woman, walking into this room”. “What I try to do is really steer the conversation down, it’s money; the end of the day, venture capital is a business model; it’s focused on outsized returns. You have to be able to show the fundamentals of your business.” “When you’re looking at any sort of funding pre Series A”, “get the investor focused on the money machine, focused on the problem; focused on what you’re trying to prove; it doesn’t matter who, what, when, where. And then the conversation stays focused on the right things; not are you qualified, are you going to go get married, are you going to focus on your kids. It’s here’s the business, here’s the problem, here’s what we’re proving.”

Cynthia Yeung, COO of Cafe X, said trying to find investors is like dating; you go on a lot of dates, often you don’t get second dates, and then “eventually you find that one person, or one entity, that really loves you, sometimes maybe for completely irrational reasons, against all odds”. “It’s very serendipitous”; “you just have to keep on chugging along”.

Lisa Fetterman, CEO of Nomiku, advocated for doing something every day to engage potential customers, because any customers you get early on may be more likely to buy into your new idea. “What is the easiest customer to have? The easiest customer to have is the one that you have already.” Alpert had a similar take on loyalty: “Your earliest adopters are going to be your most loyal”.

The New Face of Financial Technology panel discussed practical solutions to increasing access to financial products.

Wendy de la Rosa, Principal at Common Cents Lab, stated “everything we do is all about changing the decision-making environment; and the timing, and the framing of how we asked ‘how do you want to save’, ‘when do you want to save’ rather than just focusing so much on financial education.”

Eden Kfir, Co-Founder and CPO of Fido Solutions, said her company, which works in developing markets, asked a lot of questions of people in communities before building anything. “What are the cultural norms, and what are the perceptions about finances?” “It was all about understanding the people first, and then designing around that.” “Even just having a solid biometric identity can open doors”; in much of the world, “the majority of people don’t have access or means to get a verifiable biometric identity”. They’ve taken alternative approaches to identifying customers: they use selfies as facial recognition, with multiple forms of image processing and verification.

Yuliya Tarasava, Co-founder and COO of CNote, talked about removing barriers to adoption of your platform: they decided to replicate the kind of banking platform most of us are already familiar with, but with no minimums and no fees for investing, to make the platform more inclusive. “We really had to listen carefully to what our users say.”

Paria Rajai’s solo talk was on How to Ensure an Inclusive Recruiting Process for the New Wave of Nontraditional Candidates. Non-traditional candidates can come from bootcamps, community colleges, and self-teaching through online programs; as Rajai pointed out, “non-traditional candidates are all over tech companies right now”; “the point is, it works, and none of these folks have computer science degrees”.

Rajai recommends setting up “partnerships with the programs that are out there; diversify your recruiting sources”. “You want to formalize the partnership for two reasons: one, make it a systematic part of your recruiting process; and second, imposter syndrome is real, even for non-traditional candidates. They see that other people have CS degrees; so when you create that formal partnership, it sends a message of ‘we’re excited to learn about you and it doesn’t matter what school you went to; we just want to see what skillset you have’.”

Rajai also stated that apprenticeship programs are becoming more and more popular. “Apprenticeship programs are good for two reasons”: one, it gives internal stakeholders direct experience with non-traditional candidates, so they can see the talent these candidates bring; and two, it mitigates any feelings of imposter syndrome a non-traditional candidate might have. “You can start small; it does not have to be big; I’ve seen companies do it with a cohort of four or five. Test it out; see how it goes, and then what I’ve seen work is it ultimately becomes a funnel of talent over time.”

Nidhi Gupta, Senior Vice President of Technology at Hired, gave a solo talk on The Role of Machine Learning in Building a Diverse Workforce. Gupta stated “we use algorithms on Hired today, to completely obfuscate and hide all self-identifying information, so that you, as a hiring manager and a recruiter, can focus solely on the skills of that candidate.” She suggested moving from search (which enables looking for the right pedigree) to recommendations; “the algorithm can be trained to focus on the hard skill sets that you absolutely desire in your candidates”. But “algorithms cannot do it alone”; you need a diverse team for different points of view.

John Cheng, a UX Researcher at Google, stated in his talk on The Challenges of Measuring Offensiveness: “Our past, and our experiences, all the people we’ve met, all the things we’ve experienced, are, in some way or another, influencing what we create; and if we’re not conscious of that, we can pull in things that are familiar to us, things that resonate with us, things that we think will resonate with people like us, and therefore potentially exclude people who don’t have the same backgrounds, and didn’t know the same people, and have the same experiences.”

Cheng recommended we “be transparent about what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to achieve”.

The first fireside chat of the second day of the conference was with John Maeda, the Global Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic.

Wayne Sutton and Maeda started the chat by discussing the microphone covers the conference uses, which are available in various skin shades, but not every conference thinks about providing more than one shade. Maeda said “if you say something, they’ll change it sometimes”, and Sutton thanked Maeda for speaking up, because sometimes people don’t realize that kind of thing, because it’s not in their day-to-day lives.

Maeda spoke about being influenced by books: reading Barack Obama’s ‘The Audacity of Hope’ inspired Maeda to leave “the ivory tower” of academia and go to Silicon Valley; after reading J.D. Vance’s book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ he went to Appalachia to talk with people there.

Sutton and Maeda also mentioned Hajj Flemings, a leading brand strategist and Founder of Brand Camp University and Rebrand Cities; Maeda said Flemings is kind of a superhero.

Molly Q. Ford, Senior Director of Global Equity Programs at Salesforce, interviewed KR Liu, Award-winning Accessibility Advocate, in the next fireside chat.

Liu was diagnosed with hearing loss when she was two and a half. She said “there’s a super power in having hearing loss in certain situations” — reading lips, reading body language — but it’s not great in meetings or social situations. People don’t realize “it’s a lot of work”, having a conversation and trying to stay engaged.

Liu stated “The unemployment rate is about double the current unemployment rate for people with disabilities. One example is, a lot of colleagues of mine are deaf, and they require an interpreter.” Companies don’t always have interpreters for interviews, so deaf people don’t get a call back for an interview as often as hearing people. “With technology that’s out there now, there are so many ways to support somebody with technology to make them successful in the workplace.”

At the request of Senators Warren and Grassley, Liu lobbied for the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act of 2017, which passed unanimously, and will greatly help to make hearing aids more accessible and affordable. Liu’s experience with helping to pass this landmark legislation taught her that “when you’re really passionate about something, and you really believe in your mission and your voice, and your own personal struggle; when you go and you to talk to people about that, they may agree with you and they may not agree with you, but you’re also educating them at the same time. They may have no idea, and then you get them engaged, and then that conversation grows and grows, until you realize there’s more than one of you out there. And they may know somebody who knows somebody; that’s how you get those conversations going.”

Ford asked Liu how we can all be better allies to persons with disabilities; Liu responded “ask questions, learn about them; learn about them as a person, who they are, not just about their disability; and a lot of times, in those conversations, you find common ground.” “I think we all need to just learn from each other and be open and be vulnerable.” “Be open, ask questions, and don’t feel like you can’t; and if they don’t want you to ask that question, they’ll tell you; but if you don’t ask, then you’ll never know.”

Liu’s advice for companies: “Work from home is a huge thing for our community”, because “sometimes the journey just to get to work is hard, or being in an office is mentally, cognitively draining”, and “the open office thing for people with hearing loss is horrible”; and for individuals: “Try to think about what it would be like for a day if you lost one of your main senses; something that you take for granted, and see how long you can deal with that in everyday life. You’ll have a lot more empathy and understanding for the challenges that we face. But then, also important, is: how would you solve that problem, for yourself, or someone else?”