Podcasts about better allies everyday actions

Dr. Akilah Cadet is the Founder and CEO of Change Cadet, an organizational development consulting firm that offers services that support embedding belonging into overall company culture, identity and strategy. As a Forbes Next 1000 Entrepreneur her work is behind some of the biggest brands you use everyday. Dismantling white supremacy through storytelling is at the core of her work as a leader, speaker, creative director, producer, writer, editor, co-owner of the Oakland Roots and Soul soccer teams, and author of White Supremacy is All Around: Notes From a Black Disabled Woman in a White World. She literally has all the degrees, lives in and loves Oakland, CA, celebrates her disability, is a proud Beyoncé advocate, and has an incredible shoe game. Karen Catlin is a highly acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She has published four books: Better Allies®: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces (2019), The Better Allies Approach to Hiring (2020), Belonging in Healthcare (2022), and The Better Allies Way: A Workbook for Being More Inclusive at Work (2024). She also emails a roundup of “5 Ally Actions” to over 60,000 newsletter subscribers every week. Previously, Karen spent 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Adobe. During that time, she witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears and focus on creating more inclusive workplaces where everyone could do their best work and thrive. A self-professed public speaking geek, Karen is a highly sought-after and engaging presenter who has delivered talks at hundreds of conferences and corporate events. What you will learn in this episode: What it means to be an “accomplice,” and how it differs from being an “ally” Why allyship can feel performative, and what it actually means to be an ally How to use your voice and platform to do the work as an accomplice Why we must become comfortable with being uncomfortable to be better accomplices How we can become role models for the behaviors involved in making a meaningful difference Resources: Website: https://www.changecadet.com/ LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/company/changecadet/ Facebook Business: https://www.facebook.com/changecadet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/changecadet/ Twitter: https://x.com/changecadet? Website: https://betterallies.com/ LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kecatlin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/betterallies  

In today's episode I speak with workplace ally Karen Catlin and emergency medicine physician toxicologist Kavita Babu. We discuss Karen's book Belonging in Healthcare. We also highlight what belonging in the workplace can mean at the holidays. For 25 years Karen Catlin built software products and served as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Today, she is a highly acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of five books: Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, Belonging in Healthcare, The Better Allies Approach to Hiring, Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking, and The Better Allies Way.  ​​Kavita Babu, MD is a Professor of Emergency Medicine Chief Opioid Officer, and Director, Division of Toxicology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. She is a graduate of Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University where she also did her residency, followed by her Medical Toxicology Fellowship training at the UMass Chan Medical School.  

106. Karen Catlin - Generous Allyship  “One of my favorite approaches for giving people feedback on non-inclusive language or other non-inclusive behavior. And that is, seek common ground and then educate.” - Karen Catlin “Be curious, not furious.” - Karen Catlin Karen Catlin Guest Bio: After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. In 2014, Karen started the Twitter handle @betterallies to share simple, actionable steps that anyone could take to make their workplaces more inclusive. That Twitter handle became the inspiration for three books: Better Allies®: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, The Better Allies Approach to Hiring, and Belonging in Healthcare. She also emails a roundup of “5 Ally Actions” to over 30,000 newsletter subscribers every week. A self-professed public speaking geek, Karen is a highly sought-after and engaging presenter who has delivered talks at hundreds of conferences and corporate events. Her TEDx talk, “Women in Tech: The Missing Force,” explores the decline in gender diversity in tech, why it's a problem, and what can be done about it. In addition to speaking herself, Karen is determined to change the ratio for who is on stage giving keynotes and other presentations. To support her goal of bringing more diversity to speaker lineups at tech industry events, she coauthored the book Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking with Poornima Vijayashanker. In addition to speaking about her books, Karen coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies for members of all underrepresented groups. Her client roster includes Airbnb, DoorDash, Google, eBay, and Intuit. Her writing on leadership has appeared in Inc., the Daily Beast, Fast Company, and the Muse, and she's consulted on articles for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the New York Times. Karen is a graduate and active alum of Brown University, mentoring students on how to launch their careers. She's also a member of the board of directors of Digital NEST and on the advisory boards for the Women's CLUB of Silicon Valley and WEST (Women Entering & Staying in Technology). In 2015, the California State Assembly honored Karen with the Wonder Women Tech Innovator Award for outstanding achievements in business and technology and for being a role model for women. Guest Favorite Quote:  “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou R.O.G. Takeaway Tips: Share the spotlight. Take the 50 Potential Privileges Checklist  Share office housework Set up your profile with inclusive requirements. (closed captions, diverse panels, etc.)  Keep growing on the journey. Subscribe to 5 Ally Actions for specific ideas on how to continue to grow.  Resources: www.karencatlin.com www.betterallies.com Additional Better Allies Content Better Allies Weekly Newletter Karen Catlin on LinkedIn (ln/kecatlin) Karen Catlin on Twitter (@kecatlin) Karen Catlin on Instagram (@karencatlin) Better Allies on Instagram (@betterallies) Better Allies on Twitter (@betterallies) Network Diversity Index Quiz Coming Next: Episode 107, Building Bridges Coaching Tips for Generous Leaders with Shannon Cassidy. Topic: Generous V.I.B.E.   Credits: Karen Catlin, Sheep Jam Productions, Host Shannon Cassidy, Bridge Between, Inc.

After 25 years as a senior leader in tech, Karen Catlin saw a decline in the numbers of women in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, Karen became an author and coach focusing on helping women navigate the male-dominated tech industry and coaching men to be better allies. In this episode, we discuss hiring for a “culture add” and other tips to create a more inclusive workplace. Subscribe!  Time-stamped show notes are below. You can find a transcript of this episode on our webpage (link below). If you would like to learn more about today's topic: Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create More Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin Better Allies Approach to Hiring by Karen Catlin Waking Up White by Debby Irving 20 Books to Help Break the Bias for a More Gender Equal World Today's guest is Karen Catlin - this is part 2 of a 2-part conversation 1:09 Do women need to explain bias in different ways so male allies better understand 2:17 What should male allies do if a woman discusses her experience with gender bias 3:40 How to move from being a bystander to an upstander  4:13, 7:37 Does the U.S. being so litigious hamper conversations about gender bias 5:50 Story of a male boss who says “my wife will be jealous if I interact with female colleagues," how this view helps men get ahead of women, and strategies to counter 9:25 Job description best practices 10:10 Rethink whether a college degree is necessary for all jobs 10:45 Check job descriptions for masculine word choices like rockstar, driven, aggressive, and “right-hand man” because some women won't apply  12:40 Use diverse hiring panels so applicants see themselves on the hiring team 13:51 It's not challenging to find women applicants if you look in the right places and have the right hiring practices 14:50 The difference between a “culture fit” and a “culture add” - we need more “culture adds” and less “culture fits” in organizations today 19:18 Per Dr. Talitha Washington at Spelman College, HBCUs are excellent places to find Black women for STEM and other roles  17:40 Women receive less actionable feedback than men 18:45 The danger of “benevolent sexism” and “gatekeeping” 19:45 Story about male employee saying that a woman wouldn't want a role because of her young children 21:48 Strategies when people are resistant to change - focus on what you can do and don't worry about everyone else 22:35 How to be a “ripple” within your organization 23:25 How to incent people to be better allies through compensation and bonuses 24:21 “Stop trying to change women” is an element of the Parity Prescription 25:20 Strategies to adapt the workplace to be more inclusive of all instead of pressuring women and other people who are underrepresented to change 30:15 Confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson 30:45 Harmful effect of extra credential questioning to try to cast doubt on qualifications 32:38 Women and other people who are underrepresented face “prove it again” bias Where You Can Find Us Website: www.par-ity.com  Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn Co-Hosts: Deborah Pollack-Milgate and Cathy Nestrick  Email CathyAndDeborah@par-ity.com with questions or comments

After 25 years as a senior leader in tech, Karen Catlin saw a decline in the numbers of women in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, Karen became an author and coach focusing on helping women navigate the male-dominated tech industry and coaching men to be better allies. In this episode, Karen gives us 10 tips to be better allies. Subscribe!  Time-stamped show notes are below.  If you would like to learn more about today's topic: Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create More Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces Karen Catlin's list of 50 privileges Waking Up White by Debby Irving 20 Books to Help Break the Bias for a More Gender Equal World 1:28 Introduction of Karen Catlin 5:12 What to do if a woman's idea is hijacked in a meeting 8:09 How to understand your own privilege 14:11 How to talk to people who are resistant to change 17:09 Advocate by finding common ground and describing your own learning journey 19:27 Allies will make mistakes 21:47 How to avoid “Just Like Me Networks” 26:52 How White women can be better allies for Black and other women of color 34:42 Practice makes perfect

I'd like to begin this episode by acknowledging the land that I am learning and living on is the traditional un-ceded, un-surrendered territory of the Anishnaabeg Algonquin People. Listeners have heard me talk about my personal leadership development as I discovered the power of leading with my heart, and my leadership evolution as I found a way to blend leading with my heart and mind.The thing is, as emerging leaders, we're often trying to figure out how we want to lead so that we can get the most out of ourselves and our team, in short, we are striving for maximum team engagement.And so, in this episode, you'll hear from Natalie Robinson Bruner, the founder and principal strategist for Glad ED Leadership Solutions, who will discuss how emerging leaders can get the most out of your team while trying to mold your own leadership style.  We'll do this by discussing the leadership development principles that are near and dear to me, which are finding a blend between leading with your heart and mind.  We'll offer some of our own employee engagement attempts and their epic failures and their wins. Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front is humbled to have been listed in the Top 20 for Best Canadian Leadership-themed podcasts in 2021.Reviews are the best way for us to know what we are doing right, what we are doing wrong, and what we should talk about in the future, so please click on the links below and let us know if this episode was helpful.Connect Here:Trench Leadership Web-site: www.trenchleadership.caLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trench-leadership-a-podcast-from-the-front/?viewAsMember=trueFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/Trench-Leadership-A-Podcast-from-the-Front-10027091202630Instagram: trench_leadershipYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3DKPuh_ipqJqyeR0vv46QTwitter: @TrenchLeadersh1Iglen Studios: https://www.iglen.comConcussion Legacy Foundation web-site: https://www.concussionfoundation.caDispatches Adventure Ride web-site: https://www.dispatchesride.com Relevant Episode Links:1. Natalie Robinson Bruner:https://www.gladedsolutions.com/https://www.linkedin.com/company/gladedsolutions/https://www.facebook.com/gladedsolutions Natalie's Recommended Book List:1. Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces  by Catlin, Karen, McGraw, and Sally.2. How to Be an Antiracist (Books) by Kendi, Ibram X.3. Mayo Clinic Strategies To Reduce Burnout: 12 Actions to Create the Ideal Workplace (Mayo Clinic Scientific Press) 12 Actions to Create the Ideal Workplace Mayo Clinic Scientific Press  by Swensen MD MMM, Stephen, Shanafelt MD, and Tait.4. Carrots and Sticks Don't Work: Build a Culture of Employee Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT Hardcover – July 5, 2010 by Paul L. Marciano.5. Rising Above a Toxic Workplace: Taking Care of Yourself in an Unhealthy Environment by Gary Chapman, Paul White, and Harold Myra.

Host Clara Mount interviews Alex Manrique, Manager of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Universal Parks & Resorts. The first half of the show is the Crummer Connections interview recorded and broadcast in Fall 2021. The second half of the show is a panel Q&A session with Alex Manrique and selected Crummer alumni and students, featuring discussions on supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and helping employees feel a sense of belonging. 00:44 -- Introducing the panel 02:39 -- Service philosophy, importance of taking care of future generations 08:34 -- Backstory, growing up in Colombia, treating people with kindness 13:47 -- Career journey & turning points, helping employees find a sense of belonging best business advice, resources to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 29:20 -- Meet and greet with Alex Manrique 30:37 -- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices 45:32 -- Crummer Insider Free Association 49:15 -- Learning and growing as a result of culture change 54:26 -- Creating a culture where employees are valued 56:35 -- Closing message to the Crummer community Books So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo -- https://amzn.to/3s5eTUX Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin -- https://amzn.to/3s5SyGD How to Be an Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi -- https://amzn.to/3oaALx2 Resources Crummer Graduate School of Business -- https://www.crummer.rollins.edu Kobe Japanese Steakhouse -- https://kobesteakhouse.com Credits Guest -- Mai-Han Harrington https://www.linkedin.com/in/mai-han-harrington-52a88713/ Production by Victor Media Group, Inc. -- https://victormediagroup.co/ Creator -- J.B. Adams Host -- Clara Mount Executive Producer -- Gerard Mitchell Sound Editing -- Aaron Trnka Production Assistance -- Kyle Sawyer Crummer Panelists -- Kyle Sawyer & Rachel Valocchi

Host Clara Mount interviews Alex Manrique, Manager of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Universal Parks & Resorts. The first half of the show is the Crummer Connections interview recorded and broadcast in Fall 2021. The second half of the show is a panel Q&A session with Alex Manrique and selected Crummer alumni and students, featuring discussions on supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and helping employees feel a sense of belonging. 00:44 -- Introducing the panel 02:39 -- Service philosophy, importance of taking care of future generations 08:34 -- Backstory, growing up in Colombia, treating people with kindness 13:47 -- Career journey & turning points, helping employees find a sense of belonging best business advice, resources to support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 29:20 -- Meet and greet with Alex Manrique 30:37 -- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices 45:32 -- Crummer Insider Free Association 49:15 -- Learning and growing as a result of culture change 54:26 -- Creating a culture where employees are valued 56:35 -- Closing message to the Crummer community Books So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo -- https://amzn.to/3s5eTUX Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin -- https://amzn.to/3s5SyGD How to Be an Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi -- https://amzn.to/3oaALx2 Resources Crummer Graduate School of Business -- https://www.crummer.rollins.edu Credits Guest -- Alex Manrique, https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-manrique-9736814/ Production by Victor Media Group, Inc. -- https://victormediagroup.co/ Creator -- J.B. Adams Host -- Clara Mount Executive Producer -- Gerard Mitchell Sound Editing -- Aaron Trnka Production Assistance -- Kyle Sawyer Crummer Panelists -- Papaa Kodzi & Kyle Sawyer

Thank you for listening to our Finding Brave show, ranked in the Top 100 Apple Career Podcasts! “When we don't take action, we become complicit with the status quo, meaning we are ok with how things are, how things are unfolding, and how our culture is. That's why it's important to realize that we all have a role to play to stand up, to move from being a bystander of something to an upstander for what we believe is right.” - Karen Catlin Being an ally and building a more inclusive work culture is a job for everyone in the workplace, not just for people who work in Diversity and Inclusion roles. Today's Finding Brave guest shares how being an ally is a journey that starts with a single step, and in this episode, she reveals what we all can do to ensure equality in the workplace, and in all parts of society. After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a leadership coach and a highly acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books, including Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, which we will discuss today. There is so much that we're not aware of that gives us benefits and privileges, but as an ally, the more that we can become aware of and explore these seemingly small things, while not judging or avoiding these issues, the better we all will be. I encourage you to review Karen's list, “50 Potential Privileges in the Workplace” that is linked in the show notes for this episode, and explore the emotions that come up for you with each one. The work won't be easy to do, but it is necessary for us to see real change in the world. And check out our recent interview in my Forbes column on 5 Errors Managers Make When Providing Feedback To Employees. To learn more about today's guest, visit: https://karencatlin.com/  or https://betterallies.com/ 

In the 21st century, it is increasingly essential to put a sense of humanity at the center of business decisions. In this interview, Alex Manrique, Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Universal Parks & Resorts, discusses her approach to service through fostering relationships and embracing the differences of others. SUBMIT A QUESTION: Do you have a question or comment for this guest? Send your submission and Alex will respond to it on the Crummer Hour, our follow up discussion show that is broadcast on WPRK 91.5 FM. Be sure to include your name, hometown, company, and title. Send to clara@victormediagroup.co. 01:49 -- Service philosophy, importance of taking care of future generations 07:35 -- Backstory, growing up in Colombia, treating people with kindness 12:49 -- Career journey & best business advice, helping employees find a sense of belonging Resources So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo -- https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Talk-About-Race/dp/1580056776 Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin -- https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Everyday-Inclusive-Workplaces/dp/1732723303 How to Be an Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi -- https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283 Universal Orlando Parks & Resorts -- https://jobs.universalparks.com/universal-orlando-resort/life-at-universal-orlando/#uoldiv Credits Guest -- Alex Manrique, https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-manrique/ Host -- J.B. Adams, https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamslearning/ Production by Victor Media Group, Inc. -- https://victormediagroup.co/ Creator -- J.B. Adams Executive Producer -- Gerard Mitchell Showrunner -- Kyle Sawyer Audio Design -- Aaron Trnka Production Assistance -- Rachel O'Bryan

In the 21st century, it is increasingly essential to put a sense of humanity at the center of business decisions. In this interview, Alex Manrique, Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Universal Parks & Resorts, discusses her approach to service through fostering relationships and embracing the differences of others. SUBMIT A QUESTION: Do you have a question or comment for this guest? Send your submission and Alex will respond to it on the Crummer Hour, our follow up discussion show that is broadcast on WPRK 91.5 FM. Be sure to include your name, hometown, company, and title. Send to clara@victormediagroup.co. 01:49 -- Service philosophy, importance of taking care of future generations 07:35 -- Backstory, growing up in Colombia, treating people with kindness 12:49 -- Career journey & best business advice, helping employees find a sense of belonging Resources So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo -- https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Talk-About-Race/dp/1580056776 Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin -- https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Everyday-Inclusive-Workplaces/dp/1732723303 How to Be an Anti-Racist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi -- https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Antiracist-Ibram-Kendi/dp/0525509283 Universal Orlando Parks & Resorts -- https://jobs.universalparks.com/universal-orlando-resort/life-at-universal-orlando/#uoldiv Credits Guest -- Alex Manrique, https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-manrique/ Host -- J.B. Adams, https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamslearning/ Production by Victor Media Group, Inc. -- https://victormediagroup.co/ Creator -- J.B. Adams Executive Producer -- Gerard Mitchell Showrunner -- Kyle Sawyer Audio Design -- Aaron Trnka Production Assistance -- Rachel O'Bryan

After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies. Her client roster includes Airbnb, DoorDash, eBay, Intel, and Intuit, as well as motivated entrepreneurs and individuals. Karen's coaching offerings include tactics for increasing visibility, being more strategic, managing stakeholders, negotiation, and cultivating ally skills. Her writing on these and related topics has appeared in Inc., the Daily Beast, Fast Company, and The Muse, and she's consulted on articles for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the New York Times. In late 2014, Karen started the Twitter handle @betterallies to share simple, actionable steps that anyone could take to make their workplaces more inclusive. That Twitter handle became the inspiration for her books, Better Allies®: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces and The Better Allies Approach to Hiring. She continues to tweet and blog for Better Allies, and she also emails a roundup of “5 Ally Actions” to her subscribers every week. A self-professed public speaking geek, Karen is a highly sought-after and engaging presenter who has delivered talks at hundreds of conferences and corporate events. She speaks on a variety of topics, including inclusive workplaces and women in leadership. Her TEDx talk, “Women in Tech: The Missing Force,” explores the decline in gender diversity in tech, why it's a problem, and what can be done about it. In addition to speaking herself, Karen is determined to change the ratio for who is on stage giving keynotes and other presentations. To support her goal of bringing more diversity to speaker lineups at tech industry events, she coauthored the book Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking with Poornima Vijayashanker. Karen is a graduate and active alum of Brown University, serving as an advisor to the university's Computer Science Diversity Initiative and mentoring students on how to launch their careers. She's also a member of the board of directors of DigitalNEST and on the advisory boards for the Women's CLUB of Silicon Valley and WEST (Women Entering & Staying in Technology). In 2015, the California State Assembly honored Karen with the Wonder Women Tech Innovator Award for outstanding achievements in business and technology and for being a role model for women. What you will learn in this episode: Why Karen wanted to make workplaces more inclusive How our words and our actions can speak to people about being more inclusive What simple, everyday actions and language can we take and use to be more inclusive What is the difference between intending to be an ally vs being an ally How do you interject without making the perpetrator look bad How to seek common ground before educating someone What phrases or language is surprisingly racist or non-inclusive What behaviors and language can we stop doing and uses to be better allies Resources: Website: https://karencatlin.com/ https://betterallies.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kecatlin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kecatlin https://twitter.com/betterallies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karencatlin/ https://www.instagram.com/betterallies/

Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst talks with Karen Catlin, CEO of Karen Catlin Consulting and author of Better Allies, about how we can each build empathy and create positive change for others by first understanding our own privilege. About KarenAfter spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. She's now a leadership coach and acclaimed speaker on inclusive workplaces. Karen shares her expertise in three books: Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring, and Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking. Learn more at karencatlin.comYou can watch the live show on Change Catalyst YouTube Channel here, with live captioning and ASL interpretation: https://youtu.be/tdEpSDOeLJQThe live show is made accessible thanks to ASL interpretation by in-kind sponsor Interpreter-Now and live captioning by White Coat Captioning.This episode of Leading With Empathy & Allyship is sponsored by AppDynamics - builders of the world's only full-stack Business Observability platform. Join their team to help businesses thrive by turning performance into profit. Learn more at www.appdynamics.com/company/careers Find Leading With Empathy & Allyship useful? Subscribe to our podcast and like this episode! For more about Change Catalyst, and to join us for a live recording, visit https://changecatalyst.co/allyshipseries There, you'll also find educational resources and highlights from this episode.Connect On SocialYouTube: youtube.com/c/changecatalystTwitter: twitter.com/changecatalystsFacebook: facebook.com/changecatalystsInstagram: instagram.com/techinclusionLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/changecatalystsProduction TeamCreator & Host: Melinda Briana Epler Producer: Juliette Roy Project Manager: Emilie MaasFinance & Operations: Renzo Santos Data Analyst: Sally Moywaywa Director of Marketing: Ariyah April[Image description: Leading With Empathy & Allyship promo with Change Catalyst logo, photos of Melinda Briana Epler, a White woman with long red hair, and Karen Catlin, a White woman with short hair, and text reading “Episode 36: Understanding Privilege & Using It To Create Change”]Support the show (http://patreon.com/changecatalysts)

02:31 - Karen’s Superpower: The Ability to Simplify Things * Simplifying in a Team Context 05:55 - Better Allies (https://betterallies.com/) – Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces; Triaging and Curating Research * @BetterAllies (https://twitter.com/betterallies) * Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces (https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Everyday-Inclusive-Workplaces/dp/1732723303) (Book) * The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring (https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Approach-Hiring-ebook/dp/B082WR7F86) (Book) * Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking (https://www.amazon.com/Present-Techies-Guide-Public-Speaking-ebook/dp/B01BCXHULK) (Book) 14:15 - Maintaining Anonyminity (at first); Prove It Again Bias (https://genderbiasbingo.com/prove-it-again/) * Channeling White Men; Men Listening to Other Men * Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (https://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Vivaldi-Stereotypes-Affect-Issues/dp/0393339726) (Book) * [Podcast] 'Whistling Vivaldi' And Beating Stereotypes (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125859207) * Reduce the influence of unconscious bias with these re:Work tools (https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/fight-unconscious-bias-with-rework-tools/) * Build the Culture Instead of Fit the Culture 26:09 - Culture Add + Values Fit * Recognizing Bias Instead of Removing It * Meritocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy) 32:11 - Network Effect: Venturing Beyond Homogenous (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/homogenous) Networks * Marginalization + Privilege Can Be Self-Reinforcing * 50 Potential Privileges in the Workplace (https://betterallies.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/50-potential-privileges.pdf) 41:58 - Doing This Work is Everyone’s Job 48:12 - People to Follow * Minda Harts (https://twitter.com/MindaHarts) * The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table (https://bookshop.org/books/the-memo-what-women-of-color-need-to-know-to-secure-a-seat-at-the-table/9781580058469) * Jeannie Gainsburg (https://www.savvyallyaction.com/about) * The Savvy Ally: A Guide for Becoming a Skilled LGBTQ+ Advocate (https://www.amazon.com/Savvy-Ally-JEANNIE-GAINSBURG/dp/1538136775/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=savvy+ally&qid=1608561617&sr=8-3) * David Smith (https://twitter.com/davidgsmithphd) & Brad Johnston * Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace (https://www.amazon.com/Good-Guys-Better-Allies-Workplace-ebook/dp/B08412XCHB/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=good+guys&qid=1614095097&sr=8-3) * Corey Ponder (https://www.coreyponder.com/about-me) * Learning the ABCs of Allyship (https://www.coreyponder.com/single-post/abcs-of-allyship) 51:13 - The Decline of Gender Parity in the Tech Industry * Women in Tech -- The Missing Force: Karen Catlin at TEDxCollegeofWilliam&Mary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uiEHaDSfgI) 58:15 - Making Statements and Changing the Status Quo Reflections: Rein: Getting better at praxis: for every white dude with a beard you follow on Twitter, go follow 10 Black women in tech. Damien: How bias can interfere with an action right before the action happens. Chanté: We’re all allies. We cannot do this work alone. Today you might be the ally, tomorrow you may be the bridge. Arty: Expanding our homogenous networks. Change takes courage on all of our parts. Karen: Turning period statements into questions or adding “until now” to those statements. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: PRE-ROLL: Whether you're working on a personal project or managing enterprise infrastructure, you deserve simple, affordable, and accessible cloud computing solutions that allow you to take your project to the next level. Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode's Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Get started on Linode today with $100 in free credit for listeners of Greater Than Code. You can find all the details at linode.com/greaterthancode. Linode has 11 global data centers and provides 24/7/365 human support with no tiers or hand-offs regardless of your plan size. In addition to shared and dedicated compute instances, you can use your $100 in credit on S3-compatible object storage, Managed Kubernetes, and more. Visit linode.com/greaterthancode and click on the "Create Free Account" button to get started. REIN: Welcome to Episode 224 of Greater Than Code. Take two. So full disclosure, we recorded this or more specifically, didn't record this conversation so we're going to do it again. I'm your co-host, Rein Hendricks, and I'm here with my co-host, Damien Burke. DAMIEN: Thanks, Rein. And I'm here with my co-host, Chanté Thurmond. CHANTÉ: Everyone, Chanté here. And I'm here with Arty Starr. ARTY: Thank you, Chanté. And I'm here with our awesome guest today, Karen Catlin. So after spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice-president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a leadership coach and a highly acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books: "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring,” and "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking." Welcome, Karen to the show! KAREN: And it is a pleasure to be back with you and to be having this conversation today. Thanks so much for having me. ARTY: And we very much appreciate you being here again with us. So our first question we always ask at the beginning of the show is what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? KAREN: Okay so, my superpower is the ability to simplify things and I joke that I think I acquired this superpower simply as a coping strategy because there's so much information out there. We're all bombarded with things and maybe my brain is just not as big as other people so I constantly am trying to simplify things so that I can understand them, remember them, convey them, and so forth. And I'll share, I think it served me well, not only as I embarked on my computer science programming school and just trying to like grok everything that I was trying to learn as well as then entering the field initially as a software engineer. Again, simplifying things, divide and conquer, break things down into those procedural elements that can be repeated and generalized. Certainly, then as I moved into executive roles as a vice-president of engineering, you're just context switching all day long. Again, I just had to simplify everything that was going on so that could really remember things, take notes on things, and make decisions based on what I thought I needed to do. Yeah. So that's my superpower. ARTY: That's a great superpower. So in the context of the workplace and you've got teams trying to things out, maybe a design problem you're working on, trying to solve. How does simplifying things come into play in a team context like that? KAREN: Well, it comes into play a lot of ways. I'm remembering one example where there was some interpersonal conflict between two people and I was hearing both sides, as one does, and talking to them both. I got them both in a room because they just weren't seeing each other's point of views, I thought, and they were just working at odds to each other. Hearing them both talk, I was able to say, “So at the heart, this is what we're all trying to do. This is what we are trying to achieve together,” and I got them to confirm that. That was the first step in simplifying just the discussion. They were getting a little emotional about things. They were bringing in a lot of details that frankly, weren't necessary to really understand what was going on and I was able to focus them on that shared purpose that we had for the project. It doesn't even matter what it was. Actually, it was so long ago now I can't quite remember what the issue was, but I remember hearing afterwards one of the people say, “You are so good at simplifying things got down to the heart,” and I'm like, “Yes, I am. That's my superpower.” ARTY: It sounds like even more than that, or maybe a slightly different frame of just the example you just gave. It's not only simplifying things, you are distilling the essence of what's important or what someone is trying to say, and getting at what's the underlying message underneath all the things that someone's actually trying to communicate, even if they're struggling too, so that you can help two people may be coming from different directions, be able to understand one another. That's pretty powerful. KAREN: Well, thank you and I love the way you've just framed it, Arty and oh, those are big shoes to fill. Woo! I hope I've been able to do that in a number of different settings as I think back, but that's yeah, it is powerful. I think I probably still have some stuff I can learn there, too. CHANTÉ: Arty, thank you for teeing up this because what I am curious about in relation to what Karen just mentioned as her superpower, which I think is amazing, is obviously, you have authored a number of books. When it comes to allyship, it sounds like this is a great time where we can get somebody to distill and to simplify and not to oversimplify because there's an art to it. But I would love if you could maybe take us down the pathway of how did you arrive at this moment where you are authoring books on allyship and maybe you could give us a little bit of the backstory, first and then we could get into the superpower you've used along the way in your tech journey. KAREN: Okay. CHANTÉ: And how you're coaching people. KAREN: All right. Chanté, thank you. Yes, I'm happy to. So the backstory, first of all, I never set out to become an author, or to become a speaker, or this expert that people tap into about workplace inclusion. That was not my goal. I was doing my job in tech. I was a vice-president of engineering at Adobe. I was leading engineering teams and realizing that there was a decline happening before my eyes in gender diversity. Now I started my career in tech a long time ago and I started at a time when there was sort of a peak period of women studying computer science in the United States. And so, when I started my career, it wasn't 50-50 by any means, but there was plenty of gender diversity in the teams I was working on, in the conference rooms I was in, in the cube lands that I was working in and I saw a decline happening. So while I was still at Adobe, I started our women's employee resource group—goes back gosh, like 14, 15 years now—and I've started mentoring a lot of women at the company and started basically, being a vocal advocate to make sure women were represented in various leadership meetings I was in, on stage, at our internal events and conferences, giving updates at all-hands meetings, like well, thinking about that. I love doing that work so much and loved doing that work less so my VP of engineering work, I must admit. So about 9 years ago now, I decided to do a big change in my career pivot in my own career, I started leadership coaching practice. A leadership coaching practice focused on helping women who are working in tech in any capacity, any role. But women working in this industry, I wanted to help them grow their leadership skills so they could stay in tech if that's where they wanted to be and not drop out because they felt like, “I just can't get ahead,” or “I'm seeing all the white men get ahead,” for example, “before me.” So I started this coaching practice. I soon realized, though that I had a big problem with my coaching practice and the problem wasn't with my clients—they were amazing. The problem, I don't think was me. I think I'm a decent coach, still learning, still getting better, but decent. And realized the problem really that I was facing is that before I could truly help my clients, I needed to make their companies more inclusive. All of them were working at tech companies where the closer you get to the leadership team, to the C-suite, to the CEO, just the mailer and paler it got. With all due respect to anyone who's male and or pale, I'm white myself, anyone who's listening, who's male and/or pale, like that's just what the demographics were and still are in most of our companies. Also, that coupled with this mentality of, “Hey, we are a meritocracy. People get ahead in our company based on their merits, their accomplishments, the impact to the business.” When in reality, that's not what happens because if it were then the demographics across the company would be uniform, regardless of what level you are at. So the white men were getting ahead more than others. So I was like, “I need to make their companies more inclusive. In fact, I need to make all of tech more inclusive to really help my coaching clients,” and yeah, laugh, right? A big job, one person over here. Now, what's the first thing anyone does these days when they want to change the world? You start a Twitter handle. So I started the Twitter handle @betterallies. I started in 2014 with a goal to share simple everyday actions anyone could take to be more inclusive at work. In hindsight, I was leveraging my super power as I started this Twitter handle. I leveraged it because I started looking at the research that social scientists do about diversity in the workplace and not just gender diversity, but diversity of all kinds. The research that shows that they were uncovering, that shows the challenges that people of non-dominant genders, as well as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity, age, abilities, and so forth. What are the challenges these people face in the workplace as they navigate that? Others are doing this great research and I really am—and this builds on what Arty was saying—I used to think I curated this, but really, I was triaging the research. I was triaging it to simplify it, get it to its essence, and figure out with all this great research that gets published, what is someone supposed to do with it? How is the average person who works in tech supposed to take action with this great research that's out there? So I triage and curate and I do it not just based on the research, but also what I'll call cautionary tales that appear in our news, in our Twitter feeds, and so forth. I'll give you two examples to make it real. One is based on research. There's research that shows that men interrupt women more than the other way around and so, based on that research, I go over to Twitter and I type in something like, “I pledge to notice when interruptions happen in the meetings I attend and redirect the conversation back to the person who was interrupted with a simple, ‘I'd like to hear Chanté finish her thought,’” and something like that that's research-driven. Then the more, the cautionary tales that pop up in the research or in the news that we consume, I remember a few years ago when there was so much that was coming out about Uber and its non-inclusive workplace. Just one of the many things we learned about was that the CEO at the time and founder, Travis Kalanick, he was using the nursing mother's room for his personal phone calls. That's not cool because then the nursing moms can't get in there to do what they need to do. So I would go over to Twitter and just a little bit of snark added, I was like, “I pledge not to use the nursing mother's room for my personal phone calls unlike Travis Kalanick at Uber,” [chuckles]. That kind of thing. So I'm just tweeting a couple times a day. I start getting Twitter messages to this anonymous Twitter account—by the way, it was anonymous at the time—and these Twitter requests would be like, “Hey, does anyone at the Better Allies Initiative do any public speaking?” and I'd be like, ‘The initiative? Huh, it's just me tweeting a couple of times a day. Okay.” But I wanted to speak about this topic and I want to retain my anonymity. So I would write back and say, “Yes, one of our contributors does some public speaking. We'll put you in touch with her,” and I go over to my personal Twitter account type something in like, “Hey, I'm Karen Catlin. I contribute to Better Allies. I love public speaking. What do you have in mind?” So I started speaking on this whole approach of everyday simple actions people could take, the Better Allies approach, and every time I gave a talk, someone would ask, “Hey, Karen, do you have a book? Because we want more of this.” For a few years, “I kept saying, no, I don't have a book. I don't have a book. I don't have a book, sorry.” But I did finally write my book. In fact, I've written two books on the topic—"Better Allies" and also, "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring.” The Better Allies book, I just released a second edition. It's been out there for 2 years. I've learned so much that I wanted to do a full update on the book. So I've just released that a few weeks ago. CHANTÉ: I have a follow-up question then, because Karen, you mentioned that you wanted to maintain your anonymity when you started off that handle and I would just love to hear maybe why that's so important when you're doing this work of allyship and accomplishing in this space? KAREN: Yes, and I don't know if it is important for everyone—and I'm not anonymous anymore. I have claimed credit for this. As soon as I published my books. Writing a book is a lot of work; I'm going to claim the credit. But I didn't in the beginning because okay, I'm going to say this. A lot of people thought it was a man behind the Twitter handle and I must admit, I was kind of channeling white men that I have worked with over my career and thinking about what would they really do? What could I get them to do? All of my tweets are first person, “I pledge to do this,” “I will do this,” I'm going to do this,” and there were people I have friends even who were like, “Hey, have you seen this @betterallies Twitter handle? I wonder who's behind it. I'd like to interview him for my podcast,” That type of thing. So I think that there were people out there who thought it was a white man behind the Twitter handle and I was comfortable with that because not only was I channeling these white men I had worked with in the past, but I also think that there's power in men listening to other men. I'll just say that. I have actually gotten speaking engagements when I've said, “I'm a contributor.” They're like, “Are there any men who could speak because we think men would like to hear this message from another man.” So anyway, that's kind of why I started out with that anonymous Twitter handle and with this character behind the scenes of this fake man. [laughs] But now it's okay. I say that I curate it, it's me, and I'm comfortable with that. I still do it first person because I think that white women can also be allies. We all can be allies for others with less privilege than ourselves in the workplace and I think it's important for us, everyone to be thinking, “This is a job I can and should do to be inclusive at work and to look for these everyday situations. I can take ally actions and make a difference.” ARTY: How's that changed things like, revealing your identity and that you're not actually a big white dude? [chuckles] KAREN: I know. Well, I never really said I was a big white dude! Or even a small white dude, or whatever. But I think it's fine. I claimed the association with the Twitter handle when I published my book and it was just time to just own it. It's not like people stopped following me or stopped retweeting or anything like that. It's only grown since then. So Arty, it's a good question, but I don't know. I don't know. REIN: And this is more than a little ironic because when you were talking about your coaching—and I'm going to read into this a little bit, but I think you can confirm that it's backed up by the research—to appear equally competent or professional, women have to do more and other minoritized groups have to do more. So what I was reading in was that part of the problem you had with coaching was that to get them to an equal playing field, they had to be better. KAREN: Yes. What you're describing, Rein is “prove-it-again” bias and this is well-researched and documented. Prove-it-again means that women have to prove themselves over and over again where men just have to show potential. This often happens and I'm going to give you just a scenario to bring it home. Imagine sitting in some sort of promotion calibration discussion with other managers in your group and you're talking about who gets promotions this cycle. Someone might say, “Well, I'd like to see Arty prove that she can handle managing people before we move her to the next level.” When Arty, maybe you've already been doing that for a few years; you've already managed a team, you've built a team, whatever. “I'd like to make sure she can do this with this additional thing,” like, make sure she can do it with an offshore team or something. “I want to see her do it again.” Whereas a man's like, “Ah, Damien's great. I know he can do the job. Let's promote him.” Okay, totally making this up. But you see what I'm saying is that this is what the prove-it-again bias is. So whether it is women have to be twice as good or something like that, I don't know if that's exactly what's going on, but they have to deal with this bias of once again, I have to prove that I'm worthy to be at this table, to be in this conversation, to be invited to that strategic planning meeting, to get that promotion, and I don't want to coach women to have to keep proving themselves over and over again. Instead, I want to change the dynamics of what's happening inside these organizations so it is a better playing field, not just for my clients who are mostly women, but also, anyone out there who's from an underrepresented group, who might be facing challenges as they try to navigate this world that really has been designed for other people. ARTY: Wow, that's really enlightening. I'm just thinking about this from a cognitive science perspective and how our brains work, and then if you're making a prediction about something and have an expectation frame for that. If I have an expectation that someone's going to do well, like I have a dream and image in my mind that they'll fit this particular stereotype, then if they just show potential to fit this image in my head, I can imagine and envision them doing all these things and trust that imaginary dream in my head. Whereas, if I have the opposite dream in my head where my imagination shows this expectation of this person falling on their face and doing all these things wrong, I'm already in a position of having to prove something that's outside of that expectation, which is so much harder to do. So this is the effect of these biases basically being baked into our brain already is all of our expectations and things are set up to work against people that culturally, we have these negative expectations around that have nothing to do with those actual people. KAREN: Thanks. Arty, have you ever read the book, Whistling Vivaldi? ARTY: I haven't. I am adding that to my list. KAREN: It explores stereotype threat, which is exactly what you've just described, and the title, just to give you some insight into this, how this shows up. The title, Whistling Vivaldi, is all about a story of a Black man who had to walk around his neighborhood, which I believe is mostly white and got just the concerns that people didn't trust him navigating this public space, his neighborhood. So what he would do, and I don't know if it was just in the evenings or any time, he went out to walk to be outside, he would whistle Vivaldi to break the stereotype that he was a bad person, a scary person because of the color of his skin. Instead, by whistling Vivaldi, he gave off the feeling that he was a highly educated person who studied classical music and he did that so that he could navigate his neighborhoods safely. It's awful to think about having to do that, but this book is full of these examples. It's a research-driven approach so, it's a great book to understand stereotype threat and combat it. DAMIEN: So in the interest of us and our listeners, I suppose being better allies, you spoke about stereotype threat and gave an example there. You spoke about prove-it-again bias and specifically, with prove-it-again bias, I want to know what are ways that we can identify this real-time and counter it in real-time? KAREN: Yes. With prove-it-again bias—well, with any bias, really. First of all, reminding yourself that it exists is really important. At Google, they found that simply reminding managers, before they went into a calibration, a performance calibration meeting, probably some rank ordering exercise of all the talent in the organization. Before they started a calibration meeting, they were all given a 1-page handout of here's the way bias can creep into this process. That simple act of having people review the list of here's the way bias creeps into the process was enough to help combat it during the subsequent conversation. So I think we have to remind ourselves of bias and by the way, this resource I'm describing is available as a download on Google's re:Work website. I think it's R-E-: work. There's a re:Work website with tons of resources, but it's available for download there. So that's one thing you can do is before a calibration meeting or before you're about to start an interview debrief session with a team, is remind people of the kinds of bias that can come into play so that people are more aware. Other things, and I'll talk specifically about hiring, is I am a huge proponent of making sure that before you interview the first candidate, you have objective criteria that you're going to use to evaluate the candidates because otherwise, without objective criteria, you start relying on subjectivity, which is code for bias. Things will start to be said of, “I just don't think they'd be a culture fit,” which is code for bias of “They're different from us. They're different from me. I don't think I'd want to go get a beer with them after work,” or “If I had to travel with them and get stuck on a long layover somewhere when we can travel again, I don't think I'd enjoy that.” People just instead say, “I just don't think they'd be a culture fit. So you get away from that by, instead in your objective criteria, looking for other things that are technically needed for the job, or some values perhaps that your company has in terms of curiosity or lifelong learning or whatever your company values are. You interview for those things and you figure out how you're going to measure someone against those objective criteria. Other way bias creeps into interviews is looking at or saying something like, “Well, they don't have this experience with Docker that this other candidate has,” but really, that wasn't part of the job description. No one said that the candidates needed Docker experience, but all of a sudden, because one of the candidates has Docker experience, that becomes important. So instead of getting ahead of that, make sure you list exactly what you're going to be interviewing for and evaluating people for so that the bias isn't there and bias, maybe all of a sudden Docker becomes an important thing when you realize you could get it. But it may be that it's the person who seems the most like the people in the team who has it and that’s another – you're just using that as a reason for increasing that candidate’s success to join your team because you'd like to hang out with them. You'd like to be with them. You would want to be getting a beer with them. Does that help, Damien? DAMIEN: Yeah, that's very helpful. The framing is an absolutely pre-framing before an evaluation, before an interview what biases can happen. That's a wonderful tool, which I am going to be using everywhere I can. And then what you said about culture fit and really, every subjective evaluation is, I think the words you used was “code for bias.” Like, anytime you have a subjective evaluation, it's going to be biased. So being able to decide in advance what your objective evaluations are, then you can help avoid that issue. Culture fit is just such a red flag for me. You said, I wrote down the words, “culture built,” right? Decide what the culture is – because culture is important in the company, decide what the culture is you want and then interview and evaluate for that. KAREN: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Build the culture instead of just fit the culture. I've also heard people say, “If you ever hear someone say, I don't think they'd be a culture fit, respond with ‘Well, I think they'd be a culture add,’” or Damien, to quote you, “I think they build our culture instead of just fit in.” Really powerful, really powerful. CHANTÉ: Yeah. I agree with you all and Karen, I'm not sure if you knew this, but one of the many things I do, which takes up most of my life, is I'm a DEI practitioner and I have a firm, and I also work in-house at a company, Village MD, as a director of DEI there. So one of the things that I talk a lot about is culture add and one of the things I'd love to see more companies do is to think about like, basically take an inventory of all the people on your team and try to identify where you're strong, where you're weak, and look for the skills gap analysis, basically and say, “What don't we have here,” and then, “Let's go hire for that skillset or that expertise that we don't have that we believe could help us build this thing better this year.” That's going to require people to do that exercise, not just once because your team dynamic shifts usually a few times a year. So if you're a high growth company, you should be doing that probably every quarter. But imagine what the difference would be if we approach interviewing and promotion building from that lens instead. KAREN: Yeah, and Chanté, the way you framed it is amazing. I love it. You said, “What do we not have that we need to build our product to deliver to our customers?” I don't remember the exact words you used, but that I think is important because I've also, in conversations I've had around culture fit and culture and everything, someone say to me, “Well, wait a second, Karen, what if you we're evaluating a white supremacist? It's clear, there are white supremacists and we don't have one of those yet on the team. Does that mean we should open the doors and let them in?” That's when it's like, you can use the way you've just framed as “Well, if we're building a product for white supremacists, then yeah, probably.” But to be more serious about this, it's like what's missing from our team structure, from the diversity within this team, that is going to allow us to deliver on our product, on our offering better? I think that's important. Another lens to apply here is also you can still do values fit. Make sure people fit with the values that you have as a company and that should allow you to interview out people who don't fit with your values and just to use that example of a white supremacist. That would be the way to do that, too. REIN: I think it's really important to say that ethics still matters here and values fit as a way to express that. One of the things that I would maybe caution or challenge is—and this isn't a direct challenge to you, Karen, I don't think—but it's been popular in the industry to try to remove bias from the equation. To do debiasing training and things like that and I think that that's the wrong way to go because I don't think it's cognitively possible to remove bias. I think instead what we should do, what I think that you're talking about here is being aware of the biases we have. Accounting for them in the way that we hire, because the same heuristic that leads to a bias against certain demographics is the one we use to say, “We don't want white supremacists.” KAREN: Yeah. Plus a hundred, yes. [laughs] I agree. What I was going to say, Rein to build on what you just shared is that it's important to see things like color, for example, to understand. Even if you feel you're not biased, it's important to see it, to see color, to see disability, to see someone who is going through a transition, for example, on their identity. It's important to see it because that allows you to understand the challenges that they are facing and if you say, “I don't see color, I just see them as their new identity, post-transition. I don't see their disability; I just see the person,” it negates the experience they're having, as they are trying to navigate the workplace and to be the best allies, you need to understand the challenges people are facing and how you can take action to help them either mitigate the challenge, get around the challenge, whatever that might be, or remove the challenge. ARTY: So you're not being empathetic to the circumstances by pretending that they don't exist. KAREN: Yes. Well said, yes. REIN: It’s the idea that you can be on bias that I think is dangerous. I want to call back to this idea of a meritocracy; the idea that every choice we make is based on merit and that whatever we choose is indicative of the merit of that person is the bias that is harmful. KAREN: Woo, yes. I can't wait to refer to that. I can't wait to come back and listen to you. What you just said, Rein that is powerful. REIN: Because becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? We're a meritocracy so everything we've chosen is means – if we chose someone that means that they have merit by definition. There's no way out of that trap. KAREN: Right on. CHANTÉ: Yeah. When you say that, it makes me think, too of just the sort of committal to always transforming and iterating. So if you come in the door saying, “Listen, there's no way we can eliminate bias all the time.” We're going to make the assumption that we're always being biased and therefore, what things can we put into place and what tools can we use? What resources can we leverage here to make sure that we're on a pathway for greater inclusion, greater accessibility? Therefore, making our organization more diverse and more innovative. I think, like Rein, I just want to really underscore that because that is something that I've had to really try to lead with versus add to the conversation later. So I'm appreciating that you brought it up today. Thank you. REIN: It’s like some of the choices, some of the evaluations we're making are subjective. We can't make them objective in every case; I think what we want is a framework that allows us to do these subjective evaluations in a way that accounts for bias. DAMIEN: So that's amazing. Where do we go from here? ARTY: One of the things we talked about last time with regards to various people getting promoted, this effect of maler and paler as you get closer to the C-suite, is that one of the effects of that is when you're sitting down to hire someone, well, who do you know? Who's on the list of people that I know within my network? So one of the huge biases we end up having isn't necessarily a cognitive bias, it's just a effect of where our attention has been and who we've been hanging out and who we have relationships with that are preexisting. These existing network effects also keep us in the thinking and stuff and making decisions within the context of those networks. We promote people that we know. We promote people that we have relationships with. So even just some of the dynamics of if you've got existing C-suite dynamics that is dominated by men and you've got these dynamics where it’s difficult for men and women to have relationships for various reasons, things that get complicated, that those sorts of things can end up creating a self-reinforcing effect, too. I'm wondering what are some of your thoughts on some of the ways that we can expand our networks and expand the people that we know to shift some of those systemic effects? KAREN: Yeah. Most of us have homogenous networks. Homogenous networks meaning people who are just like us because we have something in common with them, whether that is hobbies that we share, music we like talking about, food we like to go out to enjoy whatever we have things in common. So most of us end up having a –and it's true. Most white people have networks that are full of other white people and this also is friendship circles. There's again, social science research out there that shows that we tend to have networks full of people just like us. As you just were saying, Arty this impacts so many aspects of work in terms of who we hire, who we recommend, who we promote, who we even ask to take on some like stretch assignment or tasks such as giving the update at the all-hands meeting for our team, or going in and exploring some new technology that might be on the horizon that we could leverage. Who are we going to trust with these stretch assignments are people that we know and the people that we know are the people in our network. So it is important to look to diversify our network. There's so many ways to do this. When I give talks, I share some of these ways. One is literally when new people join your team or from a different demographic than you, get to know them and get to know their work and their career goals and down the road, look for how you might be able to connect some dots. But really, take the time to get to know people who you might otherwise just like, “Oh yeah, they're joining the team, whatever,” but set up that virtual coffee or whatever. The other thing you can do is join Slack groups or other discussion forums at your company for people from that demographic. After checking first, if you'd be welcome and invited, of course, but many of these groups will be open to allies and if you are wanting to join that discussion groups so that you can sort of understand the conversation, understand the challenges, get to know some of this talent. That's a great way to do it. You can also go to conferences that are designed for members of other groups that you're not a part of. Again, asking first permission, if you'd be welcome as an ally, but in tech, there's so many of these, but there's lesbians who tech, there are Black women in tech or Black coders conferences. There are Latinas in tech. Meetups and things like that. So there's so many opportunities to go and hear incredibly talented speakers talking about the technology and the projects and the work that they do and it's a great way to expand your network. I'll share my favorite hack that I do when it's in-person and I'm going to a meetup or an event. I'm an introvert, I will let everyone know that. It's hard for me to go into a networking group like the meetup that's happening and there's some pizza and some drinks before it starts, or that conference reception. It's hard for me to go into a room like that. So when I do, I quickly scan the room and I look for someone who's standing by themselves or sitting by themselves, who is from a different demographic and I go over and say, “Hi.” That's the easiest introduction for me as an introvert is to go find someone who's all by themselves and maybe feeling a little awkward that they're all by themselves too and it's a great way to strike a conversation and again, to expand my network, meet some new people, not just my friends that might be coming to the same event. DAMIEN: So one of the things that I want to call attention to, too with what you're saying there is that this marginalization and privilege is self-reinforcing. You don't have to have – even though we all have cognitive biases, they aren't actually necessary for marginalization and privilege to self-reinforce and in fact, because that actually takes effort to undo these things. If we just go along, if we pretend not to see color, or whatever, we are actually reinforcing the problems that exist. KAREN: Yeah, and Damien, on that note. In my book, and it's also a free download on my website, betterallies.com. I have a list that I've curated of 50 ways you might have privilege in the workplace. I like people to read through this list and think about all the ways they have privilege that others might not. The top of the list are “I'm a male,” and “I'm white,” and those are the top two things. But then it gets into more nuanced things and nuanced things being, “I'm not the primary caregiver for someone else.” Well, why is that something we should be aware of as allies? Well, when you're the primary caregiver, that means you may have to drop things at a moment's notice to take a child or a parent to a doctor's appointment, for example, or you might be interrupted in your work. So there's privilege when you don't have that caregiving responsibility. Another one is that you actually have budget enough spare money so that you can do after work outings with a team that aren't company sanctioned. Like, “Yeah, I can afford to go out to dinner,” and gosh, this all sounds so weird now with the pandemic and how long it’s lasting. But “Yeah, I can go out for drinks or dinner with my team after work and pay my way,” or “I can do that whitewater rafting trip on the weekend that people are getting together with.” Even though it's not company work, it's still networking and that builds bonds that builds relationships and sure, work is going to be discussed. It also includes things such as “I am not holding a visa,” which means that I have confidence that I maybe can take some risks with my career. “I can move teams, move to another manager, try something new out because I have confidence that I'm not going to potentially lose my job, which means losing my visa, which means losing my ability to live in the United States.” So there's so many ways that we have privileged that I think at first blush, we might not realize and I think building on your point, Damien it's important for us to understand this privilege so that we can be understanding of how and why we should be diversifying our network and getting to know people who have different levels of privilege than ourselves. REIN: And if you're like a white dude who's like, “This is a lot to keep track of.” Yes. When you don't have them, it's obvious. KAREN: Yeah, you can be oblivious. Otherwise – not that you would be, Rein. I'm not saying that, but one can be very oblivious. REIN: I’m probably oblivious of like, at least 30 of them, so. DAMIEN: For people who are marginalized every axes, we really cannot be unaware. It's dangerous. Those of us who were unaware of it, suffer disastrous consequences. So in places where you are privileged, if one of the privileges is to not be aware of it and yes, it is a lot to keep track of and yes, as everybody else has to keep track of that stuff. KAREN: Yeah, and building on what you both just said, this is just like technology in some ways and let me explain what I mean by that. Let's not take it out of context because there's some nuanced stuff I'm about to share. But in tech, there are so many areas of specialty, whether that is in data science or product security or accessibility related engineering or internationalization engineering and, and, and like, there's so many areas of expertise. And Rein, you’re like, “As a white guy, how am I supposed to keep track of all of this?” Well, it's hard. I get it because the field keeps changing, things keep getting innovated on or brought to the surface and the same thing, I'm sure that Chanté sees this in the DEI space. We are learning all the time about how to create more inclusive workplaces where everyone can do their best work and thrive. It's the same as like what am I learning about writing the right kind of code that is going to have lasting impact, that is going to not cause incidents over the weekend [chuckles] when we all want to be doing something else? When it's not going to down the road because technical debt that is going to have to be retired? So yeah, it's hard work. I don't mean to say it's not, but we need to make sure we have people who are thinking about this around us, who are reminding us, who are teaching us the best practices so that we are getting ahead of this versus falling behind. REIN: One of the things you said last time that I really want to make sure we bring back up is that doing this work is everyone's job. KAREN: Yes. Yeah, and Rein, I think we got into that conversation talking specifically about product security, software security. You can have a team of people who are software security specialists/experts. In fact, when I was at Adobe in my department, that was one of the groups in my department was cross-engineering product security specialists and they know this stuff. They are paying attention to the landscape. They know when those zero-day incidents happen and what the response is like, and what bounties are being paid and they know all of that because they love it. They're paying attention to it, but they can't solve the problem for the whole company. They cannot make sure that every piece of code is hardened so that the viruses don't get injected. There aren't security violations. What they need to do is educate others, be there to support them when things go bad. But it's really about educating every engineer to be using the libraries the right way, to be allocating memory in the right way, whatever so that we don't have those security violations and it's the same thing with being inclusive. I have so much respect for anyone and Chanté, it sounds like you do this work, but like, you are responsible for diversity at a company and are looking top down at what are the measurements we're going to have? What are the quarterly or annual goals that we want to have to improve our diversity? How are we going to measure that, make it happen? But we also need people in every corner of the organization, in every code review meeting, in every interview debrief, in every casual hallway conversation, or a chat in a Slack, we need all of those people to realize they have a role to play in being inclusive and have some awareness of what it looks like to not be inclusive. What someone from a different demographic is experiencing in a way you might not and what are some of the ways you can take action? So I see so many parallels there and I firmly believe, it's something I say all the time like, you don't have to have the words “diversity inclusion” belonging on your business card to make a difference. It's inclusion as a job for everyone. CHANTÉ: Yeah. That's one of the things I wrote down that I wanted to make sure that we directed folks to. I love that on your website. That was one of the things that before I ever even knew you were going to be a guest here. That's why I started following you. I love that and I want to actually dive into that because one of the things that I hear often from people when I'm doing this work, they're like, “You're so good at this.” I'm like, “Yeah, but this is a skill that you have to work towards.” So it's just like any other thing you want to make a lifestyle. You have to wake up that day and make a decision. If you're somebody who wants to eat healthier, then you wake up every morning and you have decisions to make. If you are a yogi like me, you might decide that you want to get on your yoga mat or you might want to pick up a book and read the philosophy instead. So it's a lifestyle. I'd love it if you could maybe tell us a little bit about your journey because it's humbling to hear that you got into this work knowing that you wanted to coach women in tech, but you didn't necessarily aspire to be thinking about and writing about allyship, but that became a part of it. So what are some things that you did early on, or what are some things that you're doing now in terms of showing up every day and being a better ally? KAREN: Yeah. I think that one thing you have to be comfortable with and it's hard, but I do this a lot is being an ally means realizing you're going to be wrong some of the time, because you are constantly stepping outside of that comfort zone that is just so safe—"I know how to navigate this kind of conversation, using these kinds of words and everything”—and you have to keep stepping outside that comfort zone so that you are taking some risks and you're going to make some mistakes. You are. I make them pretty regularly. I might put something in a newsletter. I send out a weekly newsletter called 5 Ally Actions with 5 ideas and things people can take and I get emails back from people who disagree with me or say, “If I had written that, I would have changed it slightly this way,” or whatever, and I'm comfortable with that because I approach everything with this mindset of curious, instead of furious. I want to be curious about why someone's giving me the feedback and what's underneath there and what can I learn from it as opposed to getting furious at them for giving me feedback and like, assaulting my expertise, or whatever, or my voice. So curious, not furious, I think is an important thing here and I want to give a shout out. I learned that phrase from a podcast I was listening to and it was Kat Gordon, who has something called The 3% Movement, which is all about getting more gender diversity in the creative industry, like the ad industry. So hat tipped to Kat Gordon for that. So getting back to you got to get comfortable with making mistakes and when we make a mistake, acknowledge it, apologize. Heartfelt apology, folks. Apologize and then figure out what you're going to do differently the next time. That's what it's all about. So the journey is real. No one ever gets an ally badge or an ally cookie. In fact, I will tell you, I recently searched on LinkedIn in job titles for ally. I was curious to see how many people put in their job titles. There are people out there who have claimed it and I don't think that's right. Unless someone else has told them that, in which case, okay, someone else has said, “You are an ally,” maybe you can put that in your title and claim the badge, but it's really not about that. It's about being on a lifelong journey really, to be inclusive, to keep learning, to keep understanding how things are changing, and not putting the spotlight on yourself. Opening the doors for other people and just stand right behind that door and realizing that it's not about you. It's so hard to do this at times because we all want to be like, “Hey, look at the cool thing I just did for somebody else.” We want that feedback, but being an ally means stepping out of the limelight and letting someone else shine. CHANTÉ: Those are great. Thank you so much, Karen, for that. I want to ask one more question since we're there. In terms of not making it about ourselves and not necessarily centering ourselves and taking action in the moment and not giving ourselves the allyship title, if you will, who are some people that you either align yourself with or that you learn from, whether it's up close and personal or from a distance? Like who are people that you feel are providing you with gems and knowledge so that you are then sharing with folks like us, that we can at least either put in the show notes or give a shout out to? KAREN: Yes! Oh, I love this. So many people. One, I will say right off the bat is Minda Harts. Minda Harts is a woman, a Black woman, and she wrote a book called The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Get a Seat at the Table, I think is the byline. She and I spoke on a panel together a few months ago and I learned so much from her. I learned a lot from reading her book about the experience with Black women in the workplace, but then also, on the panel and since then, I feel that we have a nice professional, Twitter kind of friendship going on, which I just value so much. So I learned from her and what she shares all the time. Another person I learned from is Jeannie Gainsburg. Jeannie Gainsburg is an LGBTQ educator and wrote a book called The Savvy Ally and The Savvy Ally is all about – the funny thing is she and I connected. We realized we went to college together or the same class, but we didn't know each other in college, but we have the same mindset of understanding something and then distilling it into how an ally can show up. With her perspective, it's all about being an ally for the LGBTQ community and I've learned so much from her. In fact, I've quoted both Minda and Jeannie in my second edition pretty heavily. I also have learned a lot from David Smith and Brad Johnson. They recently published a book called Good Guys and their approach is also incredibly similar to mine, but they focus completely on how men can be allies for women and they don't focus on other aspects of allyship. But very much I learned about, they're the guys who are talking to other guys and basically saying, “Hey dude, it's your responsibility as a man in a professional setting to be an ally.” Like, it's part of your job to meet with the women on your team and sponsor them and support them. So, they tell it in a real way. Oh my gosh, I feel like I learned from so many other people, too and I'm forgetting, I'm not thinking holistically. So anyway, those are four people it's nice to give shout outs to. CHANTÉ: We put you on the spot so thank you, Karen. [laughs] KAREN: Okay. Here's another one. Corey Ponder, he works in tech, but he also does speaking and writing about diversity and inclusion on the side and he is a Black man. I just learned about his experience and perspective in such a real, raw way and I value that a lot. DAMIEN: Karen, I'd like to ask you a bit about something you brought up really early in our conversation today. You mentioned that before you got into this work with Better Allies and that sort of work, before you became a executive coach, leadership coach, you noticed a decline in gender parity in the tech industry. Can you talk about what that decline was, how it might've happened? KAREN: Yeah. So first of all, Damien a question for you. Were you surprised when I said that? DAMIEN: [chuckles] Well, no, not at all. I actually just today read about one of the earliest computers at NASA which is a woman, a Black woman, that the astronauts explicitly by name depended on, for example, Apollo 13. So I wanted to hear your story about what happened. KAREN: Yeah. Okay, okay. I asked only because there are many people who, when I just drop that into the conversation, they ended up coming back to it minutes and minutes later or towards the end of any kind of interview. At any rate, what happened? So I have theory and actually I gave a TEDx talk about this, exploring the theory. I won't do all 20 minutes of my TEDx talk, but when I decided to study computer science, I was a senior in high school trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life kind of thing, what I wanted to study in college. My father said to me, “Hey, well, Karen, you're really good at math and you enjoy making things. You're always crafting and sewing and knitting, and you like solving problems. I've just been reading this article about this new field called computer science which seems like it would combine all the things you're good at and maybe you would enjoy making software and by the way, this is what people earn in this field.” [chuckles] I have to admit, I grew up in a very humble financial household and so, I wanted to make sure I could support myself and earn a living when I graduated from college. So I'm like, “Okay, I'll study computer science. I'll learn how to build software.” That was 1981, the year I graduated from high school. Now get this, I had never touched a computer. Okay, we didn't have – I mean, 1981 was the year the IBM PC was released into the field. The Macintosh did not come out until 1984. So in my home, we did not have computers in the part-time jobs I had after school and summers, no one had computers and certainly, we didn't not have computers in my high school where I could learn to code where it would probably would have been in basic. This was a situation for many people across the United States. Going to college in the early 80s, if you wanted to study computer science, many people were coming with no experience. Maybe a little more than me. Maybe they had taken that basic class, but very little experience. It was almost like a level playing field at that point and we were encouraged to pursue this. My graduating class from college, I went back through my yearbook not too long ago to count, there were 38% of the computer science degrees went to women in my class and that statistic 38% is very similar to what was happening across the whole United States. According to the Department of Education, the year 1985, when I graduated from college, 37% of all computer science and information science degrees went to women. So that was pretty good. Now, fast forward 20, 25 years and that number dropped to a low of about 17%, I think and the overall number also went down of how many women were getting these degrees. And now, you don't have to have a computer science degree to work in tech necessarily, but in many tech environments and tech companies, the engineers are incredibly valued and are very visible and are paid very well. They are an incredibly important part of any tech company. So my point is that there used to be a lot more women computer scientists and it did drop. I do think it's this level playing field that I started at, but the decline happened because I believe a society, we as a society, started thinking and encouraging our young boys to get involved with robotics, with tinkering, with coding classes, with summer camps where you might learn to do coding or programming robotics. We encouraged our young boys more than our young girls and over time, that meant that a girl, if she wanted to go to the summer coding camp in her neighborhood, would show up and see only boys there, or see only a very small number of girls and be like, “Well, maybe this isn't for me.” Or coding assignments in colleges that were much more aligned with masculine interests and more feminine interests. Things that might be more – oh, I don't even really want to get into stereotypes. I don't even want to go there, but things that would be more appealing to an 18-year-old boy than an 18-year-old girl who just have different interests and just became self-fulfilling. What we're seeing now though, is that graph is moving in the right direction. The numbers are inching upwards because there's been so much focus across the United States – and hopefully, around the world, but across the United States, in terms of gender diversity is important in this field and we should be welcoming of all and we're making changes to all of these programs and encouraging our young girls to study this field, get involved with STEM, and pursue it when they get to college and beyond. DAMIEN: Yeah, you avoided giving an example so I'll give one that you reminded me of, which is for a very long time, the standard, the most common image used as an example of compression algorithms was that of a undressed woman and so, we can – KAREN: Lena. Her name is Lena. Yes, actually I know her name. She was someone when they were working on an image compression algorithm like, “We need a picture,” and someone just grabbed the Playboy magazine from their cube, took the centerfold out, and used that. REIN: You do. [laughter] Or at least as you did. The effect here is really interesting and also, really, it makes me very sad, which is that computing became seen as a prestige job. Once men realized that there was something to this, it requires expertise, they decided that they were going to do it and when they did—there's research that shows this both ways. When men enter a field, it raises the prestige and increases wages. When women enter a field, it lowers the prestige and decreases wages. KAREN: Yeah, that's a problem, but real. I don't mean to at all disagree. It's a real problem. ARTY: Just curious. Do we reinforce these things by saying them as a statement like that with a period versus bringing it up as a question? REIN: Yeah. ARTY: I'm just wondering. REIN: What I’m trying to do is describe and not be normative, but I think that's a valid point. ARTY: In my life coaching thing recently, we were talking about statements with periods and it's really easy to define the world of expectations of ourselves, define the world of expectations of everyone else for all time and all affinity as a statement with a period. As we go and do this, it creates these reinforcing effects, and then we go and do things and enact behaviors that reinforce those belief systems. So we're sitting here talking about biases and how all of this stuff gets baked in her brain and one of the ways that it gets baked into her brain is by making statements of “Well, this is how it is period.” I realize you’re making a statement of something to challenge, but I think it's something that we really need to think about that if we want to change the status quo, it starts with reimagining it different. Coming up with a different statement, with a period even as a starting point, and then letting that lead to questions of how do we go and manifest this new reality that is more what we want. KAREN: Can I embarrass myself? [laughs] ARTY: Yes, of course. KAREN: Okay, right. [laughter] KAREN: So I have two children. That's not embarrassing. They're in their early 20s now. That's not embarrassing. I had read, when they were younger, that there is research done that said that if you tell a girl just before she takes a math test, that girls aren't good at math, that her score will actually go down. This is the embarrassing thing. So before dropping my daughter off for like her PSATs and SAT exams, I just said, “Remember, girls are really good at math and you are really good at math, too.” [chuckles] So maybe already changing the narrative by using different periods statements, too [laughs] making up alternate realities. Oh gosh, I can't believe I just shared that story. My daughter would probably be so embarrassed. DAMIEN: That’s a modern story and I don't think there's anything to be embarrassed about there and I think Arty brings up an amazing and very valuable points. The suggestion I want to make in response to that is, because what Rein was describing is a fact and I’m sure it's important to know about and to know that it happened—and I'm already using that language now: it happened. In the past when men went into a field, it became more prestigious and higher paid. When women into a field, it became less prestigious and higher paid. And that's what has happened in the past and by stating it that way, now we can go, “Okay, what are we going to do now?” REIN: There's a thing I learned from Virginia Satir that I probably should have done here, which is when you find one of those ends with a period sentences Arty, like you're talking about, you add until now at the end. So when women enter a male dominated fields, wages go down until now. ARTY: And now they go up. Now they go up because everyone wants women because they're so awesome. Women bring so much awesomeness to the table so wages go up. The more women you have, the better the wages. CHANTÉ: Period. KAREN: Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, and—yes, and—the other kind of way to look at this is, I've been doing a lot of work with how might we statements and so the question is, how might we change the trajectory? How might we imagine the future of work where all people and all identities are welcome and we are building towards a future that is literally more equitable and more accessible for all? So how might we do that? We can maybe answer that question today, or we can invite folks who are going to listen in to weigh in when we post this online and talk to us on Twitter. ARTY: I love that, though. I mean, I think if we really want to change the status quo, part of that is realizing that we're the ones who make it. We're the ones that create our reality and our culture is just a manifest of all these beliefs and things that are in our head emerging from all of us. If we realize that we're actually the ones that are in control of that, that we're the ones that are manife

Karen Catlin bio: After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is an acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books: "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," "The Better Allies Approach to Hiring,” and "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking."    “We all need to build our network *before we need it…” -Karen Catlin

Karen Catlin is a leadership coach and an acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. After spending twenty-five years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, she witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. She coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies for members of all underrepresented groups. Her client roster includes Airbnb, DoorDash, eBay, Envoy, Intel, Intuit, and Segment, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals. Karen's coaching offerings include tactics for increasing visibility, being more strategic, managing stakeholders, negotiation, and cultivating ally skills.  To help more people cultivate ally skills, she wrote Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces. She also published a companion guidebook, The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring, with best practices to recruit and hire people from underrepresented groups. In 2020, her unique approach to allyship was featured in the BBC's Ally Track tool. Follow her on twitter @kecatlin Dr. Peter Tomaselli  is an emergency physician and medical educator  in Philadelphia. He sees allyship and equity as crucial to providing a safe and effective learning environment and a healthy workplace. His other academic interests include professionalism and hospitality in medicine. Follow him on twitter @pjtomaselli In this episode we discuss Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces The highly-acclaimed, practical guide for how to be an ally in the workplace, now in its 2nd edition. Subscribe to the weekly 5 Ally Actions Newsletter.

Allyship at work is how each and every one of us, on an individual level, can support and empower underrepresented groups to ensure everyone can thrive at work - and that only leads to more goodness for the company. Today, author, speaker, and inclusive workplace expert Karen Catlin and I discuss how to be a real ally, what allyship means, and a shocking new way to look at privilege in your life. She shares practical tips on how to be an ally in your everyday interactions, thus creating a more engaged, inclusive workplace. Key Takeaways:Being an ally is very simple - it is using your position of privilege to create an opportunity for somebody else.Privilege doesn't mean you didn't work hard, it is just something we have because of the social groups we belong to. You can have a ripple effect in your own company. Pick a couple of things and just get started, others will pick up those behaviors and act in a different way as well.  "The first step to being a real ally is understanding that someone else's situation may be different from yours, and you can't discount it just because you've never experienced it yourself." —  Karen Catlin About Karen Catlin, Author of “Better Allies”: After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a leadership coach and an acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books:  "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring,” and "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking." Connect with Karen:  Website: KarenCatlin.comTwitter: twitter.com/betterallies & twitter.com/kecatlinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kecatlinInstagram: instagram.com/betteralliesCheck out all of Karen's books: BetterAllies.com  Don't forget to download your free guide! Discover The 5 Business Benefits of Empathy: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy Connect with Maria: Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.comLearn more about Maria's brand strategy work and books: Red-Slice.comHire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-RossLinkedIn: Maria RossInstagram: @redslicemariaTwitter: @redsliceFacebook: Red Slice

Allyship at work is how each and every one of us, on an individual level, can support and empower underrepresented groups to ensure everyone can thrive at work - and that only leads to more goodness for the company. Today, author, speaker, and inclusive workplace expert Karen Catlin and I discuss how to be a real ally, what allyship means, and a shocking new way to look at privilege in your life. She shares practical tips on how to be an ally in your everyday interactions, thus creating a more engaged, inclusive workplace. Key Takeaways:Being an ally is very simple - it is using your position of privilege to create an opportunity for somebody else.Privilege doesn't mean you didn't work hard, it is just something we have because of the social groups we belong to. You can have a ripple effect in your own company. Pick a couple of things and just get started, others will pick up those behaviors and act in a different way as well.  "The first step to being a real ally is understanding that someone else's situation may be different from yours, and you can't discount it just because you've never experienced it yourself." —  Karen Catlin About Karen Catlin, Author of “Better Allies”: After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a leadership coach and an acclaimed author and speaker on inclusive workplaces. She is the author of three books:  "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring,” and "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking." Connect with Karen:  Website: KarenCatlin.comTwitter: twitter.com/betterallies & twitter.com/kecatlinLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kecatlinInstagram: instagram.com/betteralliesCheck out all of Karen's books: BetterAllies.com  Don't forget to download your free guide! Discover The 5 Business Benefits of Empathy: http://red-slice.com/business-benefits-empathy Connect with Maria: Get the podcast and book: TheEmpathyEdge.comLearn more about Maria's brand strategy work and books: Red-Slice.comHire Maria to speak at your next event: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-RossLinkedIn: Maria RossInstagram: @redslicemariaTwitter: @redsliceFacebook: Red Slice

In this episode we talked about Diversity and specifically Diversity Awareness. While Diversity may be seem as part of an initiative a company takes on to  ensure people of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures are treated as equal, diversity is also an individual responsibility. Our guest today, Karen Catlin, is an advocate for inclusive work spaces. After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a Vice President of Engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, she noticed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. therefore, she decided to switch gears. She became a Leadership Coach to help more women become leaders and coach men who want to be better allies for underrepresented groups. She is the author of two books on the topic Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces and The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring. In todays’ episode we talked about her background and career shift. We also discuss specific steps you can take now to become an ally and help foster diversity. To get in touch with Karen Catlin, her website: https://karencatlin.com/ For resources and updates, visit our website https://hardcoresoftskillspodcast.com/ Follow us on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/hardcoresoftskillspodcast/ ),  Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hardcoresoftskills/) and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hardcoresoftskillspodcast

Karen Catlin After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen is a vocal advocate for inclusion, a leadership coach, a keynote speaker, and the author of three books: "Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking" (with Poornima Vijayashanker), "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces," and "The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring." --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/freeman-means-business/support

From job descriptions to onboarding, learn how to foster inclusive hiring practices.About Karen Catlin: After spending 25 years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, Karen Catlin witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears.Today, Karen is a vocal advocate for inclusion, a leadership coach, a keynote speaker, and the author of Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces and The Better Allies™ Approach to Hiring.Karen's TEDx talk "Women in Tech: The Missing Force"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uiEHaDSfgIInfo about the Better Allies books, newsletter, and morewww.betterallies.comKaren's web site with information about coaching and speakingwww.karencatlin.comConnect with Laura Khalil online:instagram.com/forceofbadasseryfacebook.com/CoachingWithCouragelinkedIn.com/in/LauraKhalilInvite Laura to speak at your event http://laurakhalilspeaker.com/speakSupport the show (https://www.paypal.me/bravebydesign)

We know that in order to create a workplace that truly supports diversity, women and minorities can’t take this on alone. Karen Catlin is a former Vice President at Adobe, author, keynote speaker and leadership coach. She coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies. Her client roster includes Airbnb, DoorDash, eBay, and Intuit, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals. This conversation is about how you can be a better ally in your workplace to women and minorities. You can learn about Karen here https://karencatlin.com/ Learn about and purchase "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces" https://betterallies.com/ Subscribe to Karen's weekly newsletter "5 Ally Actions" https://betterallies.com/more-content/ Follow @betterallies on Twitter and Instagram Get your Ambitious Everyday Journal for FREE here http://andreajanzen.com/journal Sponsor: https://www.duckish.ca/discount/DIVERSITYATWORK Enter promo code diversityatwork to get 15% off of your order. Duckish ships to the US and Canada.

Sam and I kick off the Fall 2019 season exploring what happened with the Forbe's America's 100 Most Innovative Leaders list, whether it truly reflects merit or, instead, historical privilege, and whether the "man box" had a role. In this season, we'll continue exploring how we all contribute to and are affected by the man box, and where it shows up in current events. Let us know what you think! Resources in this episode: Intro audio from MSNBC (https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/forbes-faces-backlash-for-leaving-women-off-innovators-list/vi-AAH2BaW) Abdu'l-Baha quote: “The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly." America's Most Innovative Leaders List (https://www.forbes.com/lists/innovative-leaders/#1ed1949c26aa) Forbe's Editor's Reflection (https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2019/09/08/opportunity-missed-reflecting-on-the-lack-of-women-on-our-most-innovative-leaders-list/#14ff7321c6b6) Privilege walk (https://edge.psu.edu/workshops/mc/power/privilegewalk.shtml) Recent books written by former Unraveling Pink guests: Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, by Karen Catlin (https://www.amazon.com/Better-Allies-Everyday-Inclusive-Workplaces/dp/1732723303/ref=asc_df_1732723303/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=266235278092&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=931641627450300950&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031912&hvtargid=pla-614689803116&psc=1) How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive, by Jennifer Brown (https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Inclusive-Leader-Belonging/dp/1523085177/ref=asc_df_1523085177/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=366446893595&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18155657442622920792&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031912&hvtargid=pla-804305575419&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=79033900511&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=366446893595&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18155657442622920792&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031912&hvtargid=pla-804305575419) Piloting Your Life: Take the Controls and Be the Pilot in Your Own Life, by Terri Mead (https://www.amazon.com/Piloting-Your-Life-controls-pilot-ebook/dp/B07VJ6RBCP/ref=sr_1_1?crid=316UIQLZBM7XD&keywords=piloting+your+life&qid=1569102733&s=books&sprefix=piloting+your+life%2Caps%2C213&sr=1-1) Elephants Before Unicorns: Emotionally Intelligent HR Strategies to Save Your Company, by Caroline Stokes (https://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Before-Unicorns-Emotionally-Intelligent/dp/1599186586)

Karen Catlin is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, author, and passionate advocate for inclusion in the workplace. After spending twenty-five years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, she witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Frustrated but galvanized, she knew it was time to switch gears. Today, Karen coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies. Her client roster includes Airbnb, DoorDash, eBay, and Intuit, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals. Karen's coaching offerings include tactics for increasing visibility, being more strategic, managing stakeholders, negotiation, and cultivating ally skills. Her writing on these and related topics has appeared in Inc., theDaily Beast, Fast Company, and the Muse, and she's consulted on articles for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the New York Times. To help more people cultivate ally skills, she wrote Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces. A self-professed public speaking geek, Karen is a highly sought-after and engaging presenter who has delivered talks at more than a hundred conferences and corporate events. She speaks on a variety of topics, including inclusive workplaces and women in leadership. Her TEDx talk, Women in Tech: The Missing Force, explores the decline in gender diversity in tech, why it's a problem, and what can be done about it. Website: https://www.karencatlin.com ATTEND THE PITTSBURGH BUSINESS DIVERSITY CONFERENCE | SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 | Get Tickets Here To comment or connect, visit www.belongingfactor.com or email ibelong@belongingfactor.com About the host: (www.devinhalliday.com, www.rudimentsolutions.com) Devin Halliday is a Northern California native, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He's explored the people, places and cultures across this beautiful planet. He's been amazed. He's been humbled. He's been outraged. But mostly, he's been inspired. After nearly twenty years leading people and delivering award-winning results in a Fortune 15 technology company, he started a new and fulfilling chapter. As Founder and Chief Belonging Architect of Rudiment Solutions - A People Empowerment Company, he is able to bring a lifetime's worth of inspiration and influence to those looking to achieve more. As the author of the book "BE/LONG/ING FACTOR" and host of the Belonging Factor Podcast, Devin gets to share his personal mission with the world. Check out Serendipity Labs at www.serendipitylabs.com if you want to experience the most amazing office and co-working space I've ever seen! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/belongingfactor/message

On today's episode of The F Word, Sheryl Brown is speaking with Karen Catlin of Better Allies. Karen Catlin is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, author, and passionate advocate for inclusion in the workplace. After spending twenty-five years building software products and serving as a vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe, she witnessed a sharp decline in the number of women working in tech. Today, Karen coaches women to be stronger leaders and men to be better allies. Her writing on these and related topics has appeared in Inc., The Daily Beast, and Fast Company, and she's consulted on articles for The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times. To help more people cultivate ally skills, she wrote Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces. In today's chat we will discuss: Recruiting Women: What does championing women in the workforce look like today? Why avoiding women today is a bad idea: #MeToo cannot be ignored Male Allies: How do men join the movement to support women? Be sure to connect with Karen Catlin: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kecatlin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kecatlin Website: https://karencatlin.com/ Email: karen@karencatlin.com

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder, President and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world.   Questions   Couldyou share with us a background of how did you end up in this arena of diversity and inclusion, what was your journey like? As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us some of the issues that have been may be barriers to preventing a fully diversified and inclusive workplace based on your experience? As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us maybe one or two strategies that you think small and medium-sized business owners could employ? Now in terms of how this impacts the customer experience, could you share with us some of the best practices that you've seen in organizations and how it has translated into retention and better customer experiences overall? Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day? Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in business? Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can our listeners find you online? What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus?    Highlights   Jennifer shared, as we like to say in this field not a lot of standard paths towards a career in diversity and inclusion. In fact, if you try to find academic programs that address or degrees that address this topic you probably will come up empty-handed. We all come from different places, for her,she was an activist in nonprofits in her 20s, but she was also always a musician and it was sort of an amateur pursuit in those early days in her life, but it was a huge passion. So, she decided to make it her profession and give it a shot, she moved to New York to become an opera singer and study at a conservatory and get her Masters in voice which was really exciting and heady times for her.But unfortunately, through the course of training she injured her voice and ended up having to get several surgeries on her voice to repair it but ultimately, she realized it wasn't going to work, her voice just would not be an instrument that she could count on for a career where she could make her living.   It was heartbreaking but it's led her towards where a lot of theater people go because they love the stage and they're so good in front of people, a lot of them become trainers and educators. In fact, we find a home in leadership in the whole kind of field of leadership whether that's as consultant or a learning and development person. So, she ended up getting a second Masters in Organizational Development/ Organizational Change, it goes by a lot of different names but it's basically the HR education realm and she was a corporate learning and development, training and development leader for a while as an employee and then she got laid off and she said, “I think I can have more impact from the outside if I became kind of that third party, that expert.”That really appealed to her, it still appeals to her to this day, it's the best role for her to play which is that agitator, but not the employee which helps give her some authority, gives her some distance, gives her some credibility earned or unearned or deserved but it is what it is. People tend to want to listen to people who've written books on things and people who are external when they don't do a very good job of listening to their employees, which is another maybe we'll talk about that. So she ended up hanging her shingle out about 12 years ago and doing leadership and team development and morphing into DNI because she felt pulled in that direction to specialize because she’s a member of the LGBTQ community and she has been out since she was 22, and yet she had really struggled with being out throughout her life and even in the nonprofit world certainly in the opera music world and then as an entrepreneur where she felt very exposed to bias if she were to be honest and authentic about who she actually is and it's a huge part of our lives to deny and to walk around and do business without talking about it, without kind of leaving that hole and not feeling it's going to be accepted and it's also going to hurt your ability to make a living which is really problematic.   So, now they do specialize in Diversity and Inclusion, and she’s fully out all the time, you could Google her and it's very plain.It is actually, she considers part of her secret sauce, it's part of where she has cut her teeth on developing her own voice, her bravery, her courage, her resilience has a lot of that has come from that identity and the pain of some of the painful lessons of exclusion that that has allowed her and enabled her to feel, to think about, to empathize with and hopefully made her a more inclusive leader, not just because she’s LGBTQ, but for all communities that needs her voice as an ally. So, it's a very cool place to find herself where she gets to write books and speak about all this stuff and it's particularly timely because the topic is, she would say, there's never been more attention on the topic than there is now.   Jennifer stated that it has a lot of reasons and a lot of factors, it's rather complex and yet it's kind of simple at the same time because the mandate is simple, the need to reflect your customer base which is diversifying quickly who has the spending power for example that non-white communities are the fastest growing consumer communities with the largest spending power.She thinks the gay community now has a trillion dollars of spending power. So, consumers are getting smarter, they're getting organized, they're finding their voice, they're using it to hold brands accountable which is exciting and make spending choices that reflect their values. And yet companies in terms of their employee mix particularly in the top half or third of organizations really don't reflect that diverse world and companies structures are old school, there is no better way to say it, they have been unchallenged and they haven't challenged themselves in terms of the makeup of their senior leadership in particular and many companies not all but many companies have kind of gone about their merry way trying to make money and really not focused on anything larger than that, whether it's how employees feel, who's succeeding and feels they can thrive in the organization, who may be reaching senior leadership roles and who's not and why they're feeling thwarted in that process up the pipeline. And so, she thinks there's this business as usual, we're here to make money, we’re here to generate shareholder results and there's not been a lot of attention paid to values, the importance of the workforce and what they want and need in order to stay and thrive and there is honestly a lot of bias around, “Well, I worked hard and all you need to do is work hard too and you'll achieve what I've achieved.”So, this belief and meritocracy and it's really easy to believe in meritocracy when people that look like you have benefited from that, it hasn't been a challenge, there haven't been stereotypes that have affected you, you have been pulled forward by others that look like you without even knowing it sometimes, and so there's this willful blindness to the difficulties that are faced by anyone that is not of a certain demographic in workforces, it’s sort of, “I write it off. I don’t take it seriously. I don't listen to it. I don't even know it honestly.”So, there's a lot of education that's needed around micro inequities, unconscious bias, HR processes that are so critical like recruitment, retention, promotion and advancement, all those moments in the employee life cycle where bias occurs, it's in a large part still allowed to kind of continue and so what their job is to interrupt those things and come in as a company and build strategies that help companies wake up, get educated, care about it, honestly have empathy for other people which you shouldn't even need to say but it feels that it's hard, it feels that if I explain something to you and you don't care and then you don't take action, that hurts, there's a ton of research on this it's not even like this is a mystery. It's right there and so the best leaders and the best companies are really forward, they're asking all these great questions, they’re humbling themselves to their own learning, to their own mistakes, they're publishing their data and saying, “Hey, here's our data and I know it sucks and we're working to change it.”That's what courage looks like, that's what leadership looks like these days and she wish she saw more of it.   Yanique shared, I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not something that people are accustomed to and change is hard. Unfortunately, human beings don't adapt to change very readily, and I don't think it's based on the geography in terms of where you're from in the world, I think it's just general human nature. So, it would mean that you have to put yourself in a place of being uncomfortable in order to move from one stage to the next.   Jennifer agreed and stated that nobody wants to be uncomfortable, but the flip side is it makes you so much better of a leader and a better team member, better colleague and by the way better parent, better community leader, all of these. There's a reason that you open a paper today and diversities in every headline, it's everywhere because institutions are really struggling with it of all kinds for profit, nonprofit,community organizations, church leadership, so there is probably, no area of your life where you can afford to not understand and embrace this conversation and do your work, your kid could come home tomorrow and say, “Mom, I think I'm transgender.”You would be completely ill-equipped to deal with that and to be fair most parents are, it's something that is life and does not prepare you for that but at the same time don't you want to be ready? Even if you're interviewing for jobs, even if you're leading teams at a company that values diversity and you don't or you haven't paid attention to it, you've assumed it's somebody else's job to care about it, none of that is going to work for you in the long run, it's a little bit of a scare tactic but she has to use every tool she has to convince people that this is important which is really tiring and honestly kind of depressing sometimes because you're wondering how they don't get it, “Please have empathy for people that haven’t had as easy of a road as you.” It's just that and then she doesn't know why we have to ask and convince and scare, how many different techniques do we need to basically talk about something that's such a human right and is all about the dignity of everyone in this world to do their best work and to feel their sense of purpose every day.   Yanique agreed and stated, and to feel appreciated, a lot of people work in organizations and they just don't feel appreciated and I think they've lost the purpose if there was even a purpose from day one, they've definitely lost it. It comes out in the interactions that they have with customers, it comes out in how they relate to their team members sometimes unconscious of the fact that the customer is observing you in every interaction once they're standing in front of you or you’re on the phone and you ask them to hold but you didn't actually put the phone on hold, so they're hearing everything that's happening in the background.   Jennifer shared that small companies have a great opportunity, it's actually much easier to shift things than for large organizations, and certainly remembering that if you build it right from the beginning, you will have a much easier time down the road. So, it's very important to think about how you are recruiting and retaining all kinds of talent, how comfortable they feel once they are in your organization and really being open to feedback about when that inclusiveness, the desire for inclusiveness is actually though being interpreted and the impact of an intention is one of exclusion. She thinks that sometimes we don't want to know the answer to that question so we don't ask and so it's very critical, particularly, if you're not a person of a marginalized or underrepresented background yourself, you're going to have some blind spots, your network is going to look a lot like you so you will tend to recruit from that network. You will have blind spots around how people perceive your brand and by even blind spots probably about your desired customers so that to the extent that you can ensure your team that you build reflects the world that you're doing business in, it will allow you to resonate and to see around that corner and to anticipate that audience and that customer and gear your communications accordingly and have kind have a check in balance on how are we coming across in the marketplace and like you said, we're being observed all the time, so your future talent is looking at your current organization and looking at your website and thinking about, “Would I be comfortable there? I don't see anyone that looks like me there.”That's something that's hard to fix in some cases because when you're an entrepreneur you're grabbing warm bodies, you're trying to get work done, it's very fast, you are going to pull from your own network because it's most expedient and that network is going to tend to look like you and so you've got to actively counterbalance that in your outreach, in the talent pools that you're seeking, in the way you talk proactively and very overtly about your commitment to inclusion.Shewould really recommend you have that in all of your marketing materials, it doesn’t matter what business you're in, there's always a way to talk about what inclusion means as a value to you and to what you're trying to build and to the customers you're trying to serve, there are ways to do that and she would recommend you do it because it's a beacon, not only for talent you hope to recruit and to say, “Hey, this is a safe place for you.This is a place that you are wanted and needed not just tolerated or accepted. We need all of you to bring your full self to work, this is a place in which you can do that.”Then we want to best serve the customer and their needs and wants, and companies are at real risk of missing some key….There's just a lot of mistakes that are made because diverse talent is not at the table when creative decisions are made or marketing collateral is designed, we've seen very high level mistakes made by brands like PepsiCo with the ad that they had where there was like a mock black lives matter march and one of the Kardashians was handing a Pepsi across the police line, it’s a nightmare and they pulled it immediately. And it became a kind of a case study that a lot of us talking about where we wonder who was at the table making those decisions, and if they were at the table, were they listened to, were they really considered, was that feedback taken into account?So, she doesn’t know where the error happened in their process because she doesn't have the inside look into them but at a smaller scale this stuff can happen all the time and she thinks you've got to make sure your mentored and coached and you run things by people, you think about the nuances of the diversity conversation because it is really nuanced, languages changing all the time and she gets a lot of complaints about are trans and gender non-conforming friends will say, “Yeah, I identify as they, them.So that's my preferred pronoun.”People will literally say, “Well, I don't feel comfortable referring to you as that, it's grammatically incorrect and I feel uncomfortable.”It's just amazing to her, to the point earlier, it’s a small action on your part that allows somebody to feel seen and heard is that so much work, she thinks it's such a red herring, it's just an excuse to not grow and she doesn't understand it. Jennifer thinks if you're in business, you should want more language, you should want more ways to talk to people in and resonate with them, that's what you should want.   Jennifer shared that she thinks that companies that are designing products for example for different communities, some of the larger organizations she worked with literally have something called Employee Resource Groups or they're called Business Resource Groups, but they are diversity networks, maybe they're a multicultural talent network, maybe they're a black employee network, maybe there are an LGBTQ network and most companies are trying to reach those diverse demographic so they can sell more to them, but they realize that they don't have the intelligence on the inside to really do this well and effectively, the smart ones realize that so they have these groups or these networks for a lot of reasons, these networks serve a lot of purposes in organizations and these can exist in small companies to by the way. She has worked with 200-person companies that have a full diversity committee, they have several Employee Resource Groups that are literally playing kind of this market intelligence role for the company so you don't have to be big to access this idea and they are at the table informing product design, informing marketing strategies, informing sales, educating the sales team and anyone that's external facing around cultural nuances and behaviors and language.In banks and financial services, a lot of the financial advisors are tend to be white and to be male and yet the biggest growth and wealth is in diverse wealth holders, female heads of households, people of color and yet you have a financial advisor community in all the big banks and insurance companies that doesn't really look like that and they're struggling to diversify those ranks on the inside.So, literally there are certifications you can get for example as a financial advisor, you can get certified in selling to the LGBTQ community, selling financial products to that community and you go somewhere, and you get a designation that you can put after your name and yes, you're an ally, you're a straight ally, you're not in that community but you know and you're investing in how to be culturally competent when you are selling to that community. So, you're listenership probably selling a lot of different kinds of things, we're all in sales all the time, we all have customers and it's all about resonating with them and making sure you're staying up to speed on what their care abouts are and how they talk about themselves and how they kind of getting inside their lives and anticipating what they want and need.It's just that awareness and there's just a lot of examples of brands that have done this really well. Heineken had a great ad that aired a Super Bowl ago that she would encourage everybody to go look at where they introduce people to each other without providing a lot of demographic information about the person and they give them some questions to talk about and they pair somebody who might have very conservative views with somebody who's in the military and who identifies as transgender.But they don't tell them any of these things and then they encourage some conversation and then they kind of reveal later on, “Well, actually this person that you've bonded with, this is who they actually are and how they identify and are you surprised and do you feel your bias is being challenged?”It's really, really neat and there's a lot of interesting ads, Gillette just came out with an incredible ad, she would encourage everyone to go and watch it on masculinity, it was so good and there was a lot of threatened boycotts and she watched it with her partner and they literally cried and it was so moving and to think that something that could move us and touch your soul could make so many people angry is really indicative of the polarized times we live in but by the way, Gillette's sales went up after that ad, by a considerable amount.So, threatened, boycott or not, anger or not and social media, they correctly diagnosed the bump that they would get through putting their values out there and saying, “Here's what we want to be about and we know that as a brand we haven't always been all that hip to the issue, so, we're trying to be.”She thinks it really worked.It definitely burnished the brand for her and a countless other potential customers.   Yanique stated, so this is definitely something that's new and of course it's definitely going to continue into another couple of years as you said people are trying to flesh out what does that mean for them based on their organization, based on where they operate in the world, based on who they are trying to target and as you said, how much sales they're trying to increase in what community and if they can connect with these people because as you stated at the beginning of our conversation, people are now buying from brands that represent the values that they hold near and dear to them and sometimes that's very hard to find and it's amazing that consumers are taking this stance because it just goes to show that the power is really in the hands of the consumer and it's going to be continuing even more, social media has given themso much power in terms of the things that they do, the comments and the feedback that they give and so it's not so much about what the brand says about themselves, but what the consumer has to say based on their experiences with the product or the service.   Jennifer agreed and stated that it goes beyond the four walls of the company, there is no such thing anymore, there's total transparency as you said, there's a lot of accountability and a lot of communities are diverse communities who are questioning - Do we want to work at a place like that? Do we want to patronize a place like that? What do they stand for? People really now want to hear what do you mean and are you walking the talk?And she’s really excited to see this accountability and the visibility that they have, they can peer into how companies do business and employees are finding their voice and really being public about it like the Google walk out of a couple months ago had 20,000 employees all over the world walking out and protesting their whole process that they handle sexual harassment claims and pay equity.They had his whole list of demands and it was really inspiring to seeing Google had to pay attention. They just had to and they've been kind of on a journey of addressing some, not all of the requests/demands that the employees had, so, we're going to see this is not going away, this accountability and it's exciting because brands have gotten away with a lot in the past, they've gotten away with unfair workplace practices, they've protected their data, they haven't been forced to admit where they're board is entirely white and male but it's never been talked about in the news before, those days are over and if you're in a company where you haven't been called out publicly, it will happen.And so, a lot of their work is actually these days about helping brands and companies make sure they're doing their work internally, and so hopefully that day never comes, hopefully they never mess up but that accountability is fierce and swift and she almost feel like we need to start teaching the art of the apology to our customers because they're going to make mistakes, they are absolutely going to and so the question is, how do you come back from a mistake? How do you apologize, own what happened, say you're learning, talk about what you're going to be recommitting to, what are you going to do differently in the future, even that as something you're prepared for, that's a new idea but she thinks it would behoove all business owners and even all managers to think about when I say the wrong word, do people trust me enough and they know that they can come to me and tell me, that's what you really want, you want to ask for that, you want to earn people's trust because by the way, you can't just one day and once only say, “Hey, can you let me know if I ever make you feel uncomfortable?”It's not a one and done. So, you've got to earn that trust that somebody then will trust you enough to be honest with you and say, “Hey, that joke you say or that saying you say or you know that you stole that person's idea in the room or assigned it to, you took it and you attributed it to somebody else or did you realize that men did 90% of the talking in that meeting?”We've got to be sensitive to these things and we just haven't been in the past and we need help to learn and so it's not just something you do need to do a lot on your own, you need to educate yourself, you need to read a lot of books about bias and team dynamics and being an inclusive leader, her book is helpful she has been told by a lot of people, she hopes it's helpful, so read these books, but they commit to making behavior change in yourself and inviting feedback and then act on that feedback, adjust, be humble be resilient, have that growth mindset which is failing forward.You know you're going to fail, it happens to all of us, we're all bias and it's hard to keep up with this, but you just have to try, that's huge points for trying.   Yanique stated, I like the fact that you made a point to the fact that the change starts with you because I find in a lot of organizations, the managers or the leaders are quick to say well they need to do so and so and they're not including themselves in the process because it all starts with them as well and as a leader or a manager, if I'm in an organization, I'm looking to see what you are doing because I'm taking lead from the behaviors that you've demonstrated, the attitudes that you've demonstrated and yes, I may have my own values but in an organization people kind of watch what's happening and they kind of conform to the culture that exists and if they do anything out of the norm, it means that they're going to stand out and because most people don't want to stand out, there kind of just going to go along with whatever is happening there, whether it's good or bad sometimes.   Jennifer agreed and stated that the best example of what Yanique is talking about is watching how many men take paternity leave or parental leave. We don't get a lot in this country, some companies are really trying to become much more generous around leave and actually going as far as requiring some employees to take leave because there's such a stigma around taking leave and particularly for men and male parents in any family configuration, it is particularlyshamed to take. Even the leave that's provided, take all of that leave, it's not viewed as a positive, you get pressure, it's spoken and unspoken pressure and men follow other men and follow what they do and they decide what the norms are based on what they see particularly senior people doing so you're right that we take our cues from everyone we watch above us in a way and we say, “Well, that's acceptable, that's not acceptable, that's a boundary I can cross or that's a boundary that I shouldn't cross.”This is why it particularly would leave and also vacation interestingly, there are some companies that are starting to require vacation because we don't take all the vacation we haveand that’s not because we don't want to take the vacation, it’s because we don’t think it's going to be okay to do. So, the norms that are communicated through behavior of others particularly senior people, we are watching, and we are then deciding, “What should I do that's not going to hurt my career in this particular culture?”So, she wouldn't encourage people to think about, it almost needs to be mandated because until such time as we can change this dynamic of pressure and peer pressure and watching these role modeling behavior happen and kind of employees not taking care of themselves and not really doing what they need to do to have a balanced life, we may need to mandate some things. She just interviewed this woman, Erica Keswin, and she really recommend her book called Bring Your Human to Work  and she has so many examples of what companies are doing in this vein to encourage leave, to encourage parenting and to encourage balance and flex and literally power to the employee to really have that balance that is the theme, the theme of women's month is how do we achieve this?But remember men need balance too, we single parents need balance, people without children need balance who are caregiving, we may be doing none of those things, but we may need just balance for our time off. So, let's not be biased in terms of how we set systems up as well and assume that only one group of people needs to manage their work-life balance, but traditionally was spoken of as a sort of women's challengeand that's really changing, and she hopes it's changing. She hopes men are thinking about what they need and they're advocating for themselves, younger men, she has a lot of hopes for millennial generation to say, this is what I need and want whether that's a sabbatical, whether it's flexible work assignments and arrangements, whether it's different career opportunities and moving around a lot more often and she just hopes that employees are in the driver's seat, it's time to assume our more powerful position as you mentioned earlier.   When asked about how she stays motivated every day, Jennifer shared that she calls it self-care and when you do diversity work, it has to be radical self-care because it can get kind of depressing to have to have these conversations over and over about why empathy matters. We have not succeeded in building healthy workplace cultures and that is wearing us down, it's tiring us, it's actually making us physically ill from stress-related issues when you can't be yourself, it’s harmful. So, talking about this all the time as is equally inspiring and also kind of depressing and makes her angry and frustrated and she has days when she wants to give up but that's also entrepreneurship. You have this passion, you're trying to raise money, you're trying to hire your team, you're trying to get contracts signed. So, how she fills her cup is gathering with people that care about what she cares about and just being able to let her guard down and be real about the frustrations and how it feels every day and for her, that might be in a room of women entrepreneurs as it fills her up to think about how are you growing your business?Just to see herself in them is a way of finding that space where you can say, “I'm not alone.” As she thinks isolation is really dangerous for us. So, who your community, where can you be real and let your hair down and let your guard down, be honest. Where can you go to feel re-inspired to realize the size of the community that's trying to do similar things or that shares your values.There's a lot of conferences on conscious capitalism and so, it's not just diversity conferences, it's conferences about values at work and culture conference, which is about why workplace cultures matter, there's a lot of great HR conferences that are talking more and more about what she does. So, it's this incredible convergence that she’s seeing in her conversation to many other sort of parallel worlds, which is a really cool thing to see. So, she would just recommend find your community, gather with them, put yourself around people that are having the highs and lows and everything in between, find folks you can be really real and honest with where it's off line and so nobody's watching and people who will hold your confidence. But ultimately, to her that has really sustained her. She has an amazing team as well, she doesn't try to do this alone, she has always wanted to build this beyond herself because she knew she wouldn't be able to touch all the lives that she wanted to without a team of people that could be going out and being in those classrooms and building those strategies for the companies and bringing those practices back to their group, so that they could do more of it. So, she has an incredible consulting team that does client work but also has a great marketing team that feels like they are all very aligned in terms of how much they believe in what they're doing every day and they're all sharing articles all the time, they're sending inspirational stuff to each other, they're sending discouraging new data to each other which just fuels the fight. So, she’d say if you're the kind of person that for maybe a team would feel that it would help you do the work and get up every day for a reason, then you might want to build a different kind of organization.There's a lot of us that just want to do it alone and that takes a certain kind of personality, it was never really her so, it's important to know what kind of leader are you? What do you need around you? Who do you need around you to be able to do your work and really find your sweet spot and your voice in that work and then who needs to surround you to enable that so that you can focus on what you do best.   When asked about an online resource, tool, website or app, Jennifer stated that it's such a hard choice, there is so many, she has her favorite podcasts, she has her favorite research institutions.She really relies on research by McKenzie and Deloitte are probably her favorite things, her go-to resources for data on the way the workforce is changing. So, there are these amazing think tanks, they very well resourced, they are very cutting edge and a lot of that information fuels their consulting work, they just take that to clients and they hadn't seen it, it's compelling data about the future and they can help kind of flush it out because of their expertise, so it really works well. And then on the personal side, she really loves this woman who runs a daily Facebook live called, Resistance Liveand that's more of a sort of for her personal fuel.It talks about what's happening in our political system, the new generation of democratic leaders and candidates and the whole developing conversation around progressive values is exciting to her and again, kind of feeds her the certainty that she’s going in the right direction and that there is a big community that is asking the same questions that she’s asking so, but there's so many women's podcasts that she listens to, so many where she also gets her education around difference.She listens to code switch which is an NPR Podcastabout race and ethnicity and code-switching which is a critical foundational principle in terms of what we talk about diversity and all of us are code-switching all the time around a variety of aspects. So, that's one of her go to podcasts to learn about how other people experience code-switching and how she can be an ally to lessen some of what people feel that need to code switch every single day, how she can lessen that need and support people to bring their full selves to wherever and not have to put all that energy into hiding and minimizing and shifting and speaking a different language to different people, it's exhausting stuff and we shouldn't have to do it.   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Jennifer shared that she has many favorite authors that are difficult to narrow it down as usual, but there's a new book called Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplacesby her friend Karen Catlin and literally she's a woman in Tech.She was a VP in a technology company in a technical role and today she's an author and keynoter and she has a million ideas for how to be a better ally. She's got a hashtag and a handle on Twitter called #betterallies, which she really recommends everybody follows but she has a new book that literally pulls all that together in one place which is so helpful.So, that's one book that she would encourage reading. She doesn’t think there's a lot written on Allyship, so, this is an emerging area. Her new book coming out in August does talk about this a lot as well and sort of the allied journey, how you can get on board, how you can put one foot in front of the other and whether it's adopting one new word and trying to understand what it means and using it all the way to kind of advanced Allyship, which is she’s an advocate in her organization, she’s a big-time voice, she’s challenging the system and everything in between so, Better Allies is great. David Smith wrote a book called Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Womenabout why men should mentor women and she really pays a lot of attention to men and there are not many men who are writing about inclusion and men who speak on it because it's so important in so many ways. The (a) that they're involved but (b) other men are going to listen to them and read them in a different way and she thinks maybe many people are used to people who look like me and you speaking about all these things but for a man to speak about it is powerful.So, those are two amazing books she would point people towards that are great reads and full of practical advice.   Jennifer shared that they are embarking on a big shift in their business strategy at her company, they've been highly like white glove bespoke consulting has been their bailiwick and then she gave a lot of key notes, which is great, and she loves, and she just plan to do a lot more of them. She thinks it's really her sweet spot honestly, but she thinks they're moving into the online product arena and they've launched their first online program in the last couple of months and have their first cohort of students and thinks their programs could be so many things. They're going to launch a new assessment behind the second book that's coming out in August around how inclusive of a leader are you and actually give people a score and then kind of break down their score within 6 different domains. And so, it’s the first assessment they've ever really had like that as a company. She thinks it has a lot of potential because people want to know where they are and then they want resources and tools whether it's a quickie online program that's really affordable or whether it's much longer, six months multi-course program where they can really do a deep dive. They're starting to build all those things on the back end, to get access to their knowledge, you don't need to hire them to come into your company basically, there's going to be a whole way to access what they do online. So, she’s just really excited to investigate that, it's a great revenue generator for them, a different kind of workstream business unit and who knows what's in store for them with the economy, but it's been a long time since they've had a correction and corrections and recessions are really difficult for consulting companies, a lot of us don't make it through and she thinks they're recession-proof now but it's very important and every entrepreneur that listens to you will know this, that we must diversify your revenue, spread out the ways that you make money in as many ways as you can to protect yourself against downturns particularly if you are a service company, and you're attached to corporate budgets.And diversity has been viewed as a nice to have traditionally and so, she thinks a lot of us, it really would behoove all of us to think about how are you going to weather storms? Because we know storms are going to happen and so that's another aspect that she’s really excited about having these online offerings.They're more affordable, they are something that people can do even with in a recession environment to invest in themselves, continue to learn and grow and prepare for the upswing, not to be morbid but it is something that has crossed her mind and she’s sure has crossed everyone's minds that are listening to you if they run a business.   Jennifershared listeners can find her at – info@jenniferbrownconsulting.com Stitcher Radio – The Will to Change: Uncovering True Stories of Diversity & Inclusion Twitter - @jenniferbrown Instagram - @jenniferbrownspeaks Facebook – Jennifer Brown Consulting LinkedIn – Jennifer Brown Consulting   ****Special Note: the book is available for pre-order on Amazon in order to get into the flow that way   Jennifer shared that she likes to think about the quote that was on President Obama's rug in the Oval Office. It says, “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”You talked about like an idea that keeps you working and getting up in the morning and thinking that what you're doing is making a difference, there's no better quote than that. I think Martin Luther King originated it, but she thinks about it a lot because it is a struggle, because progress can feel slow, sometimes it's a real galvanizing idea for her and many others who do the work that she does.     Links   Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change by Jennifer Brown Bring Your Human to Work: 10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That Is Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World by Erica Keswin Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women by David Smith  

Leadership coach, speaker, author, and passionate advocate for inclusion and diversity Karen Catlin talks about how to be a better ally, ways to improve inclusion in meetings, meeting more people at conferences, how her career grew in this direction, her reluctance to being on video and more Karen's latest book is Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces (https://amzn.to/2Y2I5fu) and get the tweets which built the book at her @betterallies twitter account: https://twitter.com/betterallies You can see more about Karen at her site: https://karencatlin.com/ Intro music is "I'm Going for a Coffee" (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Music_For_Podcasts_3/02_Im_Going_for_a_Coffee) by Lee Rosevere, which is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Special Guest: Karen Catlin.

Our next guest left a successful career in Silicon Valley at Adobe and Macromedia when she realized that a major shift had been happening—the women who had been working in the cubes and offices around her were gone. Karen Catlin turned her attention to writing, speaking, and coaching on creating more inclusive workplaces and adding diversity to speaker line-ups, particularly in tech.   Author of Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, Karen Catlin shares several practical tips for creating an atmosphere of inclusion. "At every level of an organization, we can be a better ally." SHOW NOTES/LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE PRESENT! A Techie’s Guide To Public Speaking Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces Grace Hopper Celebration:  World’s largest gathering of women technologists Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg Why Most Performance Evaluations Are Biased and How to Fix Them report by Clayman Institute for Gender Research Amplification: Washington Post article “How a White House women’s office strategy went viral” How women can say no to ‘office housework’ Ladders article MUSICAL INSPIRATION FOR THIS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY: "Brand New Day" by Sting   ABOUT THIS PODCAST Stayin' Alive in Tech is an oral history of Silicon Valley and technology. Melinda Byerley, the host, is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley and the founder of Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing intelligence firm, based in San Francisco. We really appreciate your reviews, shares on social media, and your recommendations for future guests. And check out our Spotify playlist for all the songs we refer to on our show.  

After spending 25 years working in tech and serving as a VP of engineering at Adobe, Karen Catlin is now a leadership coach, speaker, and author. Her latest book is "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces." You can learn more about Karen here: www.karencatlin.com This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite here: http://authorsunite.com/. Thank you for listening to The Business Blast Podcast! Tyler --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/authorsunite/support

Karen Catlin was a vice president of engineering at two public software companies, and served as the CEO of an early-stage startup. Today she's a leadership coach and author who is helping folks cultivate ally skills. Most recently she wrote "Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces." http://betterallies.com

Last week on Build, we shared what allyship is and why it can help build inclusive workplaces. Anytime new approaches like these come out our defenses go up because it can be challenging to change mindsets and best practices. Plus there’s some fear around what the unintended consequences will be.   I hear ya!   Here’s the thing about allyship, you don’t need to get the green light from someone at the top or put in a ton of effort to make an impact. Turns out there are everyday actions that can benefit your team and workplace and make you a better ally.   In today’s episode, we’ll be sharing them with you to help you get started as an ally!   To help us out, I’ve invited Karen Catlin, co-author of Present! A Techie’s Guide To Public Speaking, a leadership coach, and an advocate for inclusive tech workplaces. You may recall seeing Karen in a few episodes from last year on mentorship.   I invited Karen back on to the show to talk about the work she has been doing coaching allies.   Given Karen’s rich career in tech spanning 25 years, she has a lot of experience to draw from, and it has inspired her to help other become better allies and create inclusive workplaces.   Here’s what you’ll learn as you watch today’s episode:   How You Can Get Started Being An Ally How Karen went about testing a number of simple everyday actions people can take to being an ally 3 simple everyday actions you can start to take immediately How Companies Have Benefited From Allies Taking Simple Everyday Actions A Best Practice For Being A Better Ally In Your Community   Want to get in touch and learn more from Karen? Reach out to Karen Catlin on her website Follow Karen on Twitter and follow Better Allies on Twitter to get more simple tips Sign up here to be notified when her new book is out, and receive 5 simple actions each week to create a more inclusive workplace -- Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.   --   ## 3 Simple Everyday Actions You Can Do To Be A Better Ally And Create An Inclusive Workplace Transcript   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     In the last episode, we talked about what allyship is, and why it's important for helping with diversity in the workplace today. If you missed that episode, I've included a link to it below this video. In today's episode, we're going to dive into some best practices on how you can become a better ally through simple, everyday actions. So stay tuned.                                                   Welcome to *Build* brought to you by PivotalTracker, I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker, in each episode of *Build*, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Now two big misconceptions that a lot of folks have when it comes to being an ally for diversity is thinking that they need to have a green light from some high level executive in order to have their initiative come out, and thinking that the initiative has to make a big impact in order to even pursue it.                                                   Well it turns out that there are some everyday actions that you can do that will cause a ripple effect and improve diversity in your workplace, and we're going to share what those are in today's episode. And to help us out, Karen Catlin is back. Karen is my co author for our book Present, she's also a leadership coach and an advocate for diverse and inclusive workplaces. Thanks for coming back on the show.   Karen Catlin:                     Thanks so much for having me again.   What Allyship Is And Why It’s Important   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah, so let's do a quick recap for people who might be joining us. Tell us what allyship is, and again why it's important today.   Karen Catlin:                     Mm-hmm (affirmative), so allyship is simply using your position of privilege to make more inclusive workplace, and help other people be successful if they don't have quite as much privilege as you. And this is so important today, because we have a war on talent, it's hard to hire people so you want to cast a wide net and keep those people once you've hired them, keep them productive and working hard at your company, and stayed, staying there.                                                   And, there are all these studies showing the economic benefits, benefits of improved innovation, problem solving, and decision making. So that's why it's important.   How You Can Get Started Being An Ally   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah. So let's talk about how people can get started, because I'm sure there's people in our audience who would love to get started as an ally.   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah, so it's really not that hard. And I love the way you started out saying you don't have to have a huge initiative, you don't have to be the VP of people at your company, or head of diversity and inclusion to start being an ally. You simply I think need to just start paying attention to what's going on around your workplace, and raising awareness yourself, and if you're not really aware of like what are some of the things I could be doing, it's fine to ask someone who is an underrepresented gender, or minority, just ask them for some feedback of what are some of the challenges you're facing, and what's one thing I could be doing to help you out?   How Karen Catlin Went About Testing Simple Everyday Actions People Can Take To Being An Ally   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     So in your upcoming book, you provide a myriad of best practices, but before we dive into some of those, let's talk about how you went about testing these practices.   Karen Catlin:                     So I start testing these ideas actually on Twitter.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     OK.   Karen Catlin:                     About four years ago, I started a Twitter handle called @betterallies. And it was anonymous, it still is anonymous until this show actually.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     And I started tweeting simple, everyday actions that someone could take to create a more inclusive workplace. And my whole goal was that I didn't want it to be, you didn't have to feel like you were the head of people at your company, or head of diversity and inclusion to make a difference. It really was something that the normal person could do. So I started tweeting these ideas based on my experience working in tech, based on coaching clients I had, as well as the research that was being published at the time of the challenges that are happening in tech workplaces as well as other workplaces by people who are underrepresented.                                                   Based on the reaction, I kind of started realizing, OK that works, that's helpful, that's not so helpful, and where it was helpful it was really helpful, and I started getting again, positive reinforcement that these messages were making a difference to the people who were consuming them. And checking out my Twitter handle too it's like, there's some, you can use Twitter Analytics to find out a little bit about your demographics.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Mm-hmm.   Karen Catlin:                     And I have about 50% followers who are men, 50% women, so I know that there are a lot of men who are paying attention to this and appreciating the content.   How Companies Have Benefited From Allies Taking Simple Everyday Actions   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Nice. I know you've coached some men, so do you mind sharing maybe one or two examples of how these best practices have helped their team, or their company?   Karen Catlin:                     Sure. One that's just so memorable to me is I was coaching a man about, he wanted to hire more diverse talent for his team, and we started talking about just different aspects. I asked him just so how does the team socialize today, like you know, to go out to lunch or after hours? What's social life like for the team? And he looked at me, and he said, oh, you mean I probably should've told those guys going to the strip club for lunch last week that that's not cool? I'm like yeah maybe that wasn't exactly the most inclusive social event.                                                   He honestly like, bless him, he just hadn't realized how other people might feel that they couldn't go out to lunch that day with some of the team members, right. Another example is some of the language we use, and I know Pivotal Tracker I was reading a blog post that they now have something in their daily stand up, and in their bill process for the week called the Inclusion Thing of the Week.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Oh, cool.   Karen Catlin:                     And they just come up with the idea of something they can be doing to be more inclusive, and they talk about in their daily stand ups and everything, and one of them was simply don't use the word “guys.” Some people may be thinking, “Wait a second Karen, what do you mean? Guys is gender neutral, we use it all the time.” To them, I always like to say well if you were a woman, you need to use a public restroom, and there was a door marked guys, do you go in? Probably not.                                                   Or if someone were to ask you, a man, how many guys did you date in high school? They're not thinking women, right there, right? So “guys” is not gender neutral, so that's another thing that as Pivotal Tracker learned is a simple thing they could do. As I've started coaching other people too, examples come up such as, “Well what's your spirit animal?”                                                   Well maybe that's not very inclusive because spirit animal is actually an important part of some Native American cultures, and spiritual component of it. So it's really kind of appropriating their culture. So I can't believe this is such a beautiful example of an alternative. Why not use patronas instead from Harry Potter right? So just swap that out, and have everyone feel that they can be included in the conversation.   Best Practice #1 For Being A Better Ally And Creating An Inclusive Workplace: Reviewing How We Give Feedback To Women Versus Men   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Got it. OK so let's dive in now and have you share three best practices from your book.   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah. So the first one I'll share is all about performance feedback. People who do research into performance feedback have done things like study performance reviews, written performance reviews, thousands of them, and found that there is gendered difference in how we give feedback to women versus men. Some of that gender difference shows up in the form of the feedback that we give to women is more vague.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     OK.   Karen Catlin:                     And with men, it's more specific. We're telling men more often that this is how your work has impacted the business, here's how you can keep impacting the business, here's a skill you need to learn to have a bigger impact on the business. And with women less so, it's more vague. And at the same time there have been studies showing that we actually tend to hold back from giving constructive feedback, the hard feedback, to people who are different than us.                                                   So whether that's a different gender, different race, or so forth, we hold back from giving the constructive feedback probably because we don't want someone to think that oh he's only giving me that feedback because I'm a woman. So as a man we might think I don't want to give a woman feedback because she's going to think I'm sexist if I criticize her. I don't want to give a person of color feedback if I'm white, because they're going to think I'm racist, right.                                                   So we hold back, and we soften the feedback. But that doesn't do anyone any good, right.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     We really need that feedback, constructive as well as the positive feedback to keep growing our careers. So in the book there's a whole chapter on giving feedback with best practices of doing things like looking at the language you're using, and are you actually tying the feedback that you've giving someone to their performance? And to the impact they're having on a business?                                                   Are you providing skill based suggestions about how they can grow their career that way? And, at the end of the day, are you writing reviews of roughly the same length for men and women, for all of your staff? Because that's one indicator that you might be skimping on the feedback, real easy thing to check.   Best Practice # For Being A Better Ally And Creating An Inclusive Workplace: Give Credit To An Idea’s Owner Publicly   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Nice. Well that's a very comprehensive best practice, thank you for sharing. Do you have another one?   Karen Catlin:                     Sure, pay attention to what happens in meetings. So much of tech and frankly any workplace is driven through meetings. And, in meetings there are a number of dynamics at play that really prevent people who are in the minority from speaking up and fully participating. Perhaps it's that they are interrupted, we've talked about that already.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yep.   Karen Catlin:                     And number of reasons why that might happen, but if that is part of your culture, or perhaps there are some repeat offenders who interrupt frequently, that could be something you could be paying attention and stopping. It could be that the ideas are not being credited appropriately when women or people in minority positions are bringing them up.                                                   It may be that someone's asking a question, like in a client meeting of what they, they asked the question to the person who they think is in the power position of the meeting. Probably a man, when really it should go to a woman. So redirect that question to well, you say something like, that question would be best answered by Poornima, the founder of Femgineer, like throw that question to the right person. So look for ways that you can create more inclusive meetings by just paying attention to these social cues that are happening.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Got it. So this is great in meetings, but I think sometimes we're not sure if we're doing it the right way. So is there a way we can solicit feedback from our peers, from our boss?   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah, why not use the back channel?   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     OK, yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     The back channel that's in any meeting, I mean we all use them right. The DM's or the text messages, private chats to just like touch base with people, like what did you think of that point they just made? Or did I clarify everything I should've clarified? We're constantly using the back channels, why not just ask people in the meeting that you trust, have someone DM you when you could've been a better ally, when you could've stood up for someone who was interrupted or had trouble making a point in the meeting, or whatever it is right. Use the back channel.   Best Practice #3 For Being A Better Ally And Creating An Inclusive Workplace: Saying No To Office Housework That Isn’t Your Job   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     OK. Your third best practice that you'd like to share with us.   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah, so the third one is I think I'll choose office housework. So office housework is the stuff that needs to happen in any office and it's no ones job really to get it done, and it's important work, but not really leading to business growth, career growth, and so forth. The classic example is taking the minutes at a meeting. When that's not your job.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     OK.   Karen Catlin:                     That's your job, that's not office housework, that's your job. But if it's no ones job and you just have called a meeting and someone needs to take the minutes, it often falls on the shoulder of a woman sitting around the table. The problem with that is the person taking the minutes is usually a step behind, so they're not participating in the meeting at full force so to speak, so they're being left out, their voice is counted as much. They're also put in a subservient position to maybe their peers who are sitting around the table, and that's not fair, and that might have longer impact right, well beyond the meeting.                                                   So it's much better to set up a rotation.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah. Actually did that at my second startup, yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     Excellent, so you were a great ally there. But office housework isn't just meeting minutes, it's also things like maybe it is someone's got to clean up all the comments in the code before we ship it off to our partner, or to make it open source, right. That important work needs to happen, but it doesn't really lead to career growth, right. It could be oh we need someone to mentor the intern again this summer, Susie did it the last five summers and she's awesome at it, right.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Right. Maybe Susie doesn't want to do it again, she wants to do something else, yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     Exactly, because the first time yeah maybe there's some career growth area, you learn to mentor, you learn to have that leadership skill, but the fifth time you've probably mastered it and maybe it's time to spread the wealth.   A Best Practice For Being A Better Ally In Your Community   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah, that makes sense. So these three are great for inside your company, do you have maybe a couple best practices you would share for the community at large?   Karen Catlin:                     Sure, so I think we should think about our networks, the networks we build professionally. Our networks, and there's research on this too, that they become very homogenous, or just like me, because we meet people and hang out with people, and connect with people, and stay in touch with people who we share some common interest with, right. So it's not that that can't cross gender bounds, or racial bounds or anything like that, but we tend to have networks that are primarily just look like us.                                                   So the impact of that is that then we only have people who are like us that we connect with opportunities, whether that is to get a new job, or to speak at an event, or some other career growing opportunity, right. We recommend people in our network. So the call to action here is diversify your network. The next time you're out at any kind of professional event, go say hello and introduce yourself to someone who does not look like you.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah.   Karen Catlin:                     Whatever that means right. Start a conversation, see if you can't connect them with an opportunity, and reverse might happen to. So diversify our network I'd say is the first one. The second thing is, and this is such an important part of being an ally is, don't just be a bystander, or like I don't do these bad things, right. Be an upstander. When you see something bad happening, don't just like say that's not my problem, like say something, and see something, say something.                                                   There is a story that was shared on Twitter just I think a week or two ago of a woman saying that one of the worst things that ever happened to her as a public speaker was that there's a man who asked a question during the Q&A and kind of demanded to know was she single, because he wanted to pursue things with her. And at the time, I mean I wish there had been an upstander in the audience who would just stand up and say basically, hey dude, we don't do that here.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Right.   Karen Catlin:                     That's all it takes, defuse it and put the guy in his place, and show some support for the woman.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Yeah. Well you remember when I was in Canada, I fortunately had a team that helped when I had a heckler in the audience, and just kindly took this gentleman outside, and I could kind of move on with my Q&A, so it helps to have those folks in your kind of corner.   Karen Catlin:                     Yes, absolutely.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     So be one of those people.   Karen Catlin:                     Be one of those people, yes.   Better Allies: Everyday Actions For Creating More Inclusive Engaging Workplaces   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     So I know we just scratched the surface. So tell us more about the upcoming book as well as how people in our audience can work with you.   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah, so the book is *Better Allies: Everyday Actions for Creating More Inclusive Engaging Workplaces*. And you can get in touch with me at KarenCatlin.com, but I really encourage you to follow @betterallies on Twitter, or other social channels, we're on Instagram, Pinterest, and Medium as well. And there's a newsletter also so if you go to betterallies.com you can get the subscription link to the newsletter.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Wonderful, thank you.   Karen Catlin:                     Yeah, thank you.   Poornima Vijayashanker:                     Well I can't wait to read Karen's book, and that's it for this episode of *Build*. Be sure to share this episode with your teammates, your friends, your boss, anyone who you think may be wanting to be an ally, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode. Ciao for now.                                                  

As the year comes to a close, you’re probably getting ready to attend a holiday party, maybe your company’s. And maybe you’re concerned about what to talk about with your teammates and boss. Diversity and inclusion may be hot buttons to stay clear of, especially with people scrutinizing practices and scoffing at the benefits.   But you know it’s important…so what can you talk about? How can you set your team and company up to see a change next year?   Allyship.   Wondering what it is and how to be a better ally? Well in today’s episode, we’ll cover what allyship is and how it can help you build a more inclusive company.   To help us out, I’ve invited Karen Catlin, co-author of Present! A Techie’s Guide To Public Speaking, a leadership coach, and an advocate for inclusive tech workplaces. You may recall seeing Karen in a few episodes from last year on mentorship.   I invited Karen back on to the show to talk about the work she has been doing coaching allies.   Given Karen’s rich career in tech spanning 25 years, she has a lot of experience to draw from, and it has inspired her to help others become better allies and create inclusive workplaces.   As you watch today’s episode, you’ll learn the following:   What an ally is and what allyship is How people can develop an awareness for allyship Why you don’t need to be a leader to be an ally in your company Why men care about being an ally How to spot or approach an ally to work for Want to get in touch and learn more from Karen? Reach out to Karen Catlin on her website Follow Karen on Twitter and follow Better Allies on Twitter to get more simple tips Sign up here to be notified when her new book is out, and receive 5 simple actions each week to create a more inclusive workplace -- Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA. -- ## How Being An Ally Can Help You Create An Inclusive Workplace Transcript   Poornima Vijayashanker:         You've probably read a number of headlines around discrimination in tech. Despite all of the diversity initiatives, it seems like change is pretty slow. So, what can we do to make change faster, both in our teams and our companies? Allyship. If you're not familiar with what allyship is, well, in today's *Build* episode we're gonna talk about it. So stay tuned.                                 Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode of *Build*, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. As you're well aware of, diversity is a hot topic today. There are a number of practices, but people are scoffing at their benefits and they're wondering if there can really be anything done in the near term.   Well, there is a new approach called allyship. In today's episode, we're gonna share how allyship can help you and your company. To help us out, I invited Karen Catlin. Karen is my co-author on our book, Present. Karen is also a leadership coach and an advocate for inclusive tech workplaces. In the episode today, we're gonna be talking about what allyship is, why it's important, and in the next episode, we'll be sharing some of the best practices that you can put in place every day.   Karen Catlin:                  Thanks so much for having me on the show again, Poornima.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Yeah.   Karen Catlin:                  It's great to be here.   Why Diversity And Inclusion Have Been On A Decline In Tech For Two More Than Two Decades   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Thanks for coming on. You've had a rich career in tech. Why don't you share with us what you've done, as well as problems you've experienced over that time?   Karen Catlin:                  Yeah, so I spent about 25 years working in tech. I started out as a software engineer writing code for a living, and over time moved into management roles, and eventually into executive leadership. Most recently, I was a VP of Engineering at Adobe Systems. During that time, I definitely saw this interesting thing happening where there was a decline happening in the number of women coming into the field. There's a lot of research that backs this up, but there are just fewer women studying computer science. Not that that's the only way you get into tech, but it is definitely a key way, here in Silicon Valley, to get into tech.                                 So, there's a decline happening with the number of women who are into the field, and at the same time, women leave tech at twice the rate of men at that mid-career point. As a result, over the 25 years that I spent working in tech, I really saw the impact. I saw that there were a lot fewer women around and less diversity in general.   Beliefs That Have Held Leaders Back From Creating An Inclusive Workplace   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Were there specific problems that maybe you incurred or you saw happening within the companies?   Karen Catlin:                  Yes. And I worked for some really good companies, so I don't wanna throw my companies under the bus that I used to work for at all. But I will say that most of the men I worked with really, firmly believed that their company was a meritocracy, that you got ahead based on your merits, that if you worked hard and did good work you'd be recognized and promoted. But the numbers just really didn't back that up. In any company there are more women in the entry level, and as you get up to the C level, it just declines like a pyramid. So, definitely there was something going on.                                 Personally, some of the things I witnessed...and I think this will resonate with a lot of women who are watching this, is something called bro-propriation where you say something in a meeting, as a woman, and it's a pretty good idea but it kinda falls on deaf ears, doesn't really go anywhere. And then in the same meeting, a little bit further on, somebody says the same thing, usually a guy because there's mostly men in the meetings. A guy says the same thing in the meeting, and gets all the credit. We call that bro-propriation, because a bro has appropriated your idea, of course. That happened to me so many times.   Examples of Unconscious Acts That Contribute To A Lack Diversity And Inclusion In The Workplace                                 Then there's also this thing, and it still happens to this day, where people give me what is called an unconscious demotion. An unconscious demotion...I bet this has happened to you, too. You meet someone for the first time and you might say, "Oh yeah, I work in tech." And they say, "Do you work in HR or marketing?" That's an unconscious demotion. Nothing wrong with those fields at all, but if you're a woman who's already in a very male dominated field, like engineering, computer science, tech in general, it's like this yet another reinforcement that you don't belong there. That's just not cool.                                 It happened to me just a couple months ago. I was visiting my husband at his office and I met one of his new colleagues. Sure enough, he said, "What do you do?" I said, "Well, I used to work in tech, was VP at Adobe for a long time." And just told him something like that. And said, "Oh, well at Adobe, were you in marketing or HR?" I mean, literally, he said those words, and I just kind of...I wanted to punch him. But I ended up just sort of smiling and saying, "Actually, I was a VP of Engineering."                                 So those are just a couple examples of things I've seen. I could share some more, but I think you probably have some more questions you wanna get to.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Yeah, of course. It's unfortunate that you're experiencing this and seeing this happen inside of your companies and other companies. Were there things that you were also seeing in the community at large over the years?   Karen Catlin:                  Yes. Definitely started seeing...First of all, in support of women as well as other kinds of diversity, there's a lot of activity going on, a lot of conferences, a lot of discussions, a lot of research. All of that's great. And I'm starting to see men wanting to also really get involved and help with diversity initiatives, help support women in their companies, and so forth. I saw that first hand. I also saw it at places like the Grace Hopper Celebration.   The Grace Hopper Celebration...I mean, you and I know. We've been there a number of times—   Poornima Vijayashanker:         It's the largest technical conference for women.   The Origin Story of Better Allies: The Bingo Card At Grace Hopper 2014   Karen Catlin:                  Yes, exactly. In 2014, there was something called the Male Allies Panel. It was a panel of men who were leaders at their company, and talking about what they did for women in terms of allyship, to support them, to champion them, and so forth at their workplaces. Unfortunately kinda fell flat. It fell flat because ahead of time, some women were upset that men were taking up valuable stage time at this conference, right?   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Sure. Yep.   Karen Catlin:                  Some women also were concerned that these men really weren't the best allies.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         OK.   Karen Catlin:                  So they created a bingo card. They created a bingo card of phrases they expected those men to be saying that would show exactly how far they still had to go to become real allies. They handed the bingo card out, right? And of course, during that panel, the men were saying different things and falling short, and the women were checking off those bingo squares and started yelling bingo at different points during the panel.                                 Now, when I heard about this...I wasn't at that panel, I sort of was following it on social media. When I heard about this, I sided with these poor men. These were actually good men, their hearts are in the right place. They wanna do the right thing. They just don't know exactly what women need. They certainly don't know what people of color need, or you put those together, women of color, and so forth. So, I see people wanting to do the right thing but not quite knowing what to do.   Why Diversity And Inclusion Initiatives Are Important Now More Than Ever                                 Poornima Vijayashanker:         Got it. Why is this even important, right? There's so many of these diversity initiatives that come out and benefits just are slow-coming or maybe not existent at all in some people's eyes. Why do you think this is important?   Karen Catlin:                  Yeah. First of all, especially in the whole me too era right now, you kinda hope that people just wanna do the right thing, and it feels maybe like a moral imperative to support people of all types of backgrounds. So you kinda hope that. But at the same time, there's so much research that shows that diverse companies are more economically profitable and successful, that there's better decision making, there's more innovation, there's better problem solving. It's so many benefits that have been proven in social science and economic research studies coupled with it's the right thing to do. Then you layer on top of all of that, there's a big talent shortfall in tech as well as across the whole United States in terms of we've got the lowest unemployment numbers in...I don't know, in a generation. So, we have a problem finding the talent to fill a position, so why wouldn't you want to cast the widest net possible?   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Yeah.   Karen Catlin:                  One more thing. Women can lean in all they want and all they can, but until we start changing our workplaces so that things that have always been done a certain way change, the women aren't going to be successful. We really need to start looking at our workplaces and changing our workplaces.   Why Workplaces Are Slow Or Resistant To Change And Embrace Allyship   Poornima Vijayashanker:         OK. What do you think is hindering that change?   Karen Catlin:                  There are a couple of reasons. I would say one is this is the way we've always done it. Why would we bother changing? An example of that is, well, I've always hired the best people for my network. Why would I go outside of my network? Well, if you don't go outside your network, and your network is your best buds, people who are probably just like you, you're gonna continue hiring people who are just like you and you're gonna have homogenous hiring, right?                                 So, if we've always done it that way, maybe that's something that's holding us back. Another is that there might be concerns that we are taking away something from men who are in positions of privilege right now, right? If we hire more women or people of color or whatever underrepresented minority you wanna fill in the blank there, if we hire more of those people, there's gonna be less opportunity for me. That's not exactly a growth mindset. If you think about hiring the best people, assembling the best team, the pie and the opportunities are just going to expand and there's gonna be larger slices for everyone as a result. That's another thing that's holding people back.   The third, I'll say, is that there's just, at times, a lack of awareness. Unless you're living these situations of being interrupted or having your ideas appropriated and so on, and so on, you just might not be aware it's happened to other people. You might not be aware that...even walking around a trade show floor and seeing maybe a sexy pinup image on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker or something, or a laptop sticker even, you might just think oh, that's sort of funny, not thinking about how a woman might feel is she sees such a sexualized image on a conference swag giveaway. So I think that we need to raise awareness as well.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         What drew you into this?   Karen Catlin:                  What drew me into this is this desire, especially after hearing about the bingo card in, at the Grace Hopper panel of all the male allies, that, coupled with just hearing from man after man that I would just be talking to, maybe casually, or coaching, men really being curious of how can I help here, I really do care about diversity. I wanna create a diverse workforce. I wanna work with all kinds of people. I care. I'm a good person. But what am I supposed to do? There really seemed to be this desire without the information.   Why Karen Catlin Decided To Become Coach Others Into Becoming Better Allies   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Why did you decide to embark on this mission?   Karen Catlin:                  I decided to embark on the mission because I felt like I couldn't not get involved. I really felt like I had a unique perspective. I had been working in tech for 25 years. I understood this industry. I also had this desire to really help make the industry more diverse. I really wanted to have an impact.   I started tweeting. After that Grace Hopper conference, I started a Twitter handle called @BetterAllies. I started tweeting answers to this question of what am I supposed to do, and simply talking about here are some simple, everyday actions you can take as an ally to be better for people of all sorts of underrepresented groups in tech.                                 So I started the Twitter handle. Then I started a newsletter and started getting some really positive feedback from both of those channels. People say Twitter is just a cesspool and everything, but I actually have fan tweets that I get.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Nice.   Karen Catlin:                  People like my content. So I got positive reinforcement there. My newsletter is growing like gangbusters, so super happy about that. Again, positive reinforcement. I just decided recently that I had to write a book on the topic, too. I had to take the best of what I learned on Twitter, through what I've been tweeting as well as the reinforcement I was getting there, and the content from my newsletter, and create a book for people to be better allies.   What Is An Ally And What Is Allyship   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Let's dig into what allyship is. What is an ally, and then what's allyship after that?   Karen Catlin:                  Yeah. So, an ally is someone who uses their position of privilege to help someone who has less privilege. So, in tech, that typically is a white, straight, CIS man who has a lot of privilege. They can use that position of privilege to help others. They can do that by doing things like mentoring, sponsoring, championing, speaking out on behalf of them, looking for opportunities, connecting them to different opportunities, being just somebody who's an all around good person, but not just sitting still, not just not being a bad person, but actually taking action to help promote other people.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Got it. So taking initiative.   Karen Catlin:                  Taking initiative, yes.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         You already touched on this, but who can be an ally besides the straight, white male?   Why You Don’t Need To Be A Leader To Be An Ally In Your Company   Karen Catlin:                  Definitely. So, allyship is not limited at all. That's the beauty, it's anybody can be an ally. You can be a leader at your company. In fact, I'll share a quick story about a leader that was my manager, a senior vice president at one point in my career. I still remember this time. I had just started working for him. I was new to the company, and I was in a very senior meeting with him. I heard him say, "Well, what I learn from Karen is the following." And then he said something.                                 I thought at the time, first of all, I didn't say those exact words. So he took what I had shared with him in a one-on-one earlier and reframed it in the company speak. So he taught me how to speak the language as a result. But also, what a shout out he gave me. What he, the SVP, learned from me, was the following. So that's a great example of how a leader who has a lot of cred within the organization can be an ally.                                 But an individual contributor can be an ally, too. An individual contributor sitting in a meeting and noticing someone might keep interrupting another person, might just pull them aside later and say, "Hey, dude, do you know you interrupt a lot?" And just raise awareness. So it's really a job for everybody.   Why Men Do Care About Being An Ally   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Yeah. I know we're gonna go into more best practices. Thank you for sharing those. I also know that there may be some people in our audience or just wondering are men really interested in this and questioning if they really care. Maybe you can share from your experience.   Karen Catlin:                  I'm sure there's some men who don't care, and that's fine. But there are so many men who do care. I get emails from people, they don't even know who I am. They're just emailing to or DM'ing the Better Allies handle, and they're asking for advice. They're asking for advice about...well, with everything that just recently happened around Judge Kavanaugh and the hearings there, how do I actually support women at my workplace who might be feeling upset about the way that Dr. Ford was treated? I'm getting emails, and messages, and questions of things like well, I just got this great job and I'm thinking about taking it, but hiring me is like the opposite of improving diversity, 'cause I'm a white guy and I really care about working at a diverse company that values that, so help me...Should I take the job? And the answer was yes. If you want the job, take it and go in and be an ally and a champion for diversity from your position of privilege.                                 So, I hear about that. I get questions of just how can I...I want to respect women I work with. Is it cool to invite them out for coffee, for a one-on-one, just to get out of the office. Can I do that? So, there are so many men who are thinking about this very thoughtfully and really want to make sure that they are being supportive and doing the right thing.   How People Can Develop An Awareness For Allyship   Poornima Vijayashanker:         That brings up a good point, that you wanna be well-received should you choose to become an ally. How can people develop an awareness and make sure they're headed in the right direction?   Karen Catlin:                  Here's what not to do. What not to do is to assume you're the knight in shining armor riding in to save the underrepresented person from whatever-   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Princess, yeah.   Karen Catlin:                  The princess, whatever. Because there are a lot of women who don't need to be saved, frankly, and don't want to be saved and so forth. And so, instead, what I recommend you do to make sure that you're having the right kind of impact, is look for systemic changes as opposed to one off changes where you are maybe just saving the day. What I mean by that is, let's say you notice that someone on your staff is being substantially underpaid for her grade level. You could make just that fix, potentially, if you have the budget and assuming you have control over their salary. You could change the budget for that one person, her compensation.   But better is to look more holistically at your department or the company and request that a salary review be done by gender and perhaps by other minority kind of aspects, such as race, or sexual orientation, and so forth. But make a systemic change, not just a one off. So that's something that’s a best practice to follow.   How To Spot Or Approach An Ally To Work For   Poornima Vijayashanker:         For our audience out there who maybe want to work for an ally, how can they approach and spot one.   Karen Catlin:                  If you are thinking about in an interview setting, like let's say you're going to a company you wanna be working for, someone who is going to be a good ally for you, perhaps your manager, or perhaps coworkers, during that whole interview process, you can literally just ask them. It's like, so what have you done to support a diverse, inclusive workplace here? Just ask them to give you some examples. And then I think you'll be in a pretty good situation for seeing whether or not they're going to be the kind of allies you want them to be.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Well, thank you for coming on the show, Karen, and sharing what allyship is. I can't wait to read your upcoming book. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about it.   Karen Catlin:                  The title of the book is Better Allies: Everyday Actions for Creating Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces. It's coming out early 2019.   Poornima Vijayashanker:         Now, Karen and I want to know if you've acted as an ally inside of your company, what did you do and what was the impact that you experienced. Share it with us in the comments below this video.   That's it for this week's episode of *Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive the next episode where we're gonna be diving into more best practices for becoming an ally. Ciao for now.