American businesswoman and writer
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13 episodes with Ellen Pao
5 episodes with Ellen Pao
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2 episodes with Ellen Pao
2 episodes with Ellen Pao
3 episodes with Ellen Pao
2 episodes with Ellen Pao
2 episodes with Ellen Pao
3 episodes with Ellen Pao
For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and tech policy, for democracy, and society—beyond the moment we are in. Dubbed Through to Thriving, the first episode in the series features a discussion on how to build community and solidarity with Ellen Pao, currently the co-founder of a nonprofit called Project Include, which focuses on advancing diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. Previously, Pao was the interim CEO of Reddit and a venture capitalist.
Ellen Pao , the ex-CEO of reddit said in a tweet recently that they "all" knew what Maxwell was even as they kept inviting her to functions.We take a look.(Commercial at 10:03)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/ex-reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-knew-ghislaine-maxwell-allegations/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
In 2011, Ghislaine Maxwell attended a holiday party hosted by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in Silicon Valley. Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins and ex-CEO of Reddit, later revealed that Maxwell was present at this event. Pao noted that, at the time, there were already reports alleging Maxwell's involvement in procuring underage girls for sex, yet she was still included in the guest list. This revelation underscores the extent of Maxwell's connections within elite circles, even amid serious allegations.Following Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 conviction for sex trafficking, there was widespread speculation that she might cooperate with authorities to reduce her sentence by providing information on associates, notably Prince Andrew, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct linked to Jeffrey Epstein's network. However, Maxwell did not offer such cooperation, and Prince Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing. In February 2022, he settled a civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexual abuse, without admitting liability. Consequently, Maxwell's decision not to "flip" left Prince Andrew's legal standing largely unaffected by her trial.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com
In 2011, Ghislaine Maxwell attended a holiday party hosted by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in Silicon Valley. Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins and ex-CEO of Reddit, later revealed that Maxwell was present at this event. Pao noted that, at the time, there were already reports alleging Maxwell's involvement in procuring underage girls for sex, yet she was still included in the guest list. This revelation underscores the extent of Maxwell's connections within elite circles, even amid serious allegations.Following Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 conviction for sex trafficking, there was widespread speculation that she might cooperate with authorities to reduce her sentence by providing information on associates, notably Prince Andrew, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct linked to Jeffrey Epstein's network. However, Maxwell did not offer such cooperation, and Prince Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing. In February 2022, he settled a civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexual abuse, without admitting liability. Consequently, Maxwell's decision not to "flip" left Prince Andrew's legal standing largely unaffected by her trial.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.com
In 2011, Ghislaine Maxwell attended a holiday party hosted by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in Silicon Valley. Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins and ex-CEO of Reddit, later revealed that Maxwell was present at this event. Pao noted that, at the time, there were already reports alleging Maxwell's involvement in procuring underage girls for sex, yet she was still included in the guest list. This revelation underscores the extent of Maxwell's connections within elite circles, even amid serious allegations.Following Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 conviction for sex trafficking, there was widespread speculation that she might cooperate with authorities to reduce her sentence by providing information on associates, notably Prince Andrew, who faced allegations of sexual misconduct linked to Jeffrey Epstein's network. However, Maxwell did not offer such cooperation, and Prince Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing. In February 2022, he settled a civil lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexual abuse, without admitting liability. Consequently, Maxwell's decision not to "flip" left Prince Andrew's legal standing largely unaffected by her trial.to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
Tech's “meritocracy” is broken—Ellen Pao unpacks how to fix it. Alright, let's get real—tech's so-called “meritocracy” is doing more harm than good, and it's time to face it head-on. This week we're bringing you an episode of the Radical Respect podcast. Kim and Wesley sit down with Ellen Pao, founder of Project Include, to dig into how the industry's obsession with merit often masks deep-seated bias, exclusion, and outright harassment. Ellen doesn't hold back as she breaks down why quick fixes (we see you, generic unconscious bias training) just don't cut it, how unchecked bias erodes trust and psychological safety across teams, and the way Project Include is leading the charge with real strategies for change. From CEOs stepping up to own their role in DEI to addressing the messy realities of AI in the workplace, this conversation is all about building environments where everyone has a shot. Ellen's story is packed with takeaways for anyone who's struggled to balance compassion with calling out the tough stuff, and is ready to challenge the status quo and build workplaces where it's better to have a hole than an asshole. Get all of the show notes at RadicalCandor.com/podcast. Episode Links: Project Include Data & Society — Ellen Pao @ekp.bsky.social on Bluesky Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change Connect: Website Instagram TikTok LinkedIn YouTube Chapters: (00:00:00) IntroductionKim and Wesley introduce Ellen Pao, founder of Project Include.(00:01:37) The Genesis of Project IncludeHow Project Include started and its impact on improving workplace inclusivity.(00:05:25) Challenges of Virtual WorkspacesThe increase in bias and harassment in virtual work environments. (00:06:38) Meritocracy and the Tech IndustryThe role of meritocracy in shaping tech's culture and DEI challenges.(00:09:24) Overcoming Resistance to DEIData-backed methods for fostering DEI support among skeptics.(00:13:46) DEI as a Business ImperativeThe importance of CEO involvement in creating and sustaining DEI initiatives.(00:19:50) Balancing Morality and Market PressureHow leaders can make ethical decisions that align with DEI principles.(00:25:31) Governing AI in the WorkplaceKey considerations for ethical and inclusive AI adoption in workplaces.(00:28:33) Social Media's Role in Amplifying HarmThe need for accountability in curbing online hate and misinformation.(00:37:26) Impactful Investments in DEI-Focused VenturesStories of innovative ventures improving equity in healthcare and workplaces.(00:41:27) Conclusion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kim and Wesley welcome entrepreneur, investor and author, Ellen Pao. They talk about what inspired Ellen and her co-founders to start Project Include nearly 10 years ago. Historically, many firms have some sort of "bias busting" training session and then feel as though they have checked the box on this complicated topic. It has become especially challenging in recent years with notable pushback against diversity initiatives. The good news is there are still organizations that see it as a strategic advantage to their company's performance. Ellen points out how critical it is to get CEO ownership from the get go. Many diversity initiatives fail because it is delegated to a mid-level staff person who is not empowered to make any changes. So as a starting point, Project Include, will not engage with a company unless the CEO attends the planning meetings. One early effect they noticed was many CEOs feel pressure to "know everything about everything" and yet most knew very little about how to run a successful diversity program. So, part of the CEO coaching and buy in is to get them comfortable at not being the expert in this particular area. They would push CEOs to evaluate their diversity efforts as any other business project: What is working well and what is not, who is on the team, what are their metrics, what tools are they using, etc. Then, use this information to adjust as necessary. About Ellen Pao:Ellen Pao is the treasurer of the board of directors at Data & Society. She is the former CEO of reddit and the co-founder and CEO of the award-winning diversity, equity, and inclusion nonprofit Project Include. A long-time entrepreneur and investor, she is the former chief diversity and inclusion officer at the Kapor Center and a former venture capitalist for Kleiner Perkins and Kapor Capital. Her 2017 memoir, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, was shortlisted for the Financial Times and Mckinsey Business Book Of The Year.https://www.ellenkpao.com/
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 7:23)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
It’s a rare issue that can bring the political parties together in Congress, and the need to regulate social media companies ranks high on that very short list. Two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that sets safety and privacy rules for platforms — and enforces them. The status quo, they argue, is like letting airlines fly without Federal Aviation Administration oversight. The idea comes from Anika Collier Navaroli and Ellen Pao. Pao, an attorney and now CEO of Project Include, pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her tenure as interim CEO. Navaroli, an attorney and senior fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was involved in Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, when she was a senior policy expert there. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Navaroli and Pao about their proposal.
It’s a rare issue that can bring the political parties together in Congress, and the need to regulate social media companies ranks high on that very short list. Two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that sets safety and privacy rules for platforms — and enforces them. The status quo, they argue, is like letting airlines fly without Federal Aviation Administration oversight. The idea comes from Anika Collier Navaroli and Ellen Pao. Pao, an attorney and now CEO of Project Include, pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her tenure as interim CEO. Navaroli, an attorney and senior fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was involved in Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, when she was a senior policy expert there. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Navaroli and Pao about their proposal.
It’s a rare issue that can bring the political parties together in Congress, and the need to regulate social media companies ranks high on that very short list. Two industry veterans want Congress to create an agency that sets safety and privacy rules for platforms — and enforces them. The status quo, they argue, is like letting airlines fly without Federal Aviation Administration oversight. The idea comes from Anika Collier Navaroli and Ellen Pao. Pao, an attorney and now CEO of Project Include, pushed to ban revenge porn on Reddit during her tenure as interim CEO. Navaroli, an attorney and senior fellow at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was involved in Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, when she was a senior policy expert there. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Navaroli and Pao about their proposal.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 8:29)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 8:29)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:22)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 7:24)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:25)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-epstein-chronicles--5003294/support.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:22)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:25)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:25)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:25)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 9:32)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5080327/advertisement
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 9:32)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement
Erik and Dan are joined by special guest Mike Solana, Editor-in-Chief of Pirate Wires (https://www.piratewires.com/) to discuss the recent AI congressional hearings, political polarization, Elon's reign at Twitter, and much more. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/zen RECOMMENDED PODCAST: The HR industry is at a crossroads. What will it take to construct the next generation of incredible businesses – and where can people leaders have the most business impact? Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows – IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners, Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors. Check out the first episode with the architect of Netflix's culture deck Patty McCord. https://link.chtbl.com/hrheretics LINKS: Mike Solana's Interview with Grimes (https://www.piratewires.com/p/base-reality-an-interview-with-grimes-6b3) Dan's sci-fi book recommendation: Delta-v by Daniel Suarez TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Preview of episode (01:44) On what Mike Solana would say to Congress about AI (08:30) Contrasting Zuck, Brian Armstrong, and Sam Altman's approach to regulation (15:09) Recommendation: Upstream (15:35) Sponsor: Secureframe (16:05) AI doomerism is just marketing for big AI (26:25) Elon's wins and losses so far as Twitter CEO (38:57) Taylor Lorenz Mythology (41:40) Twitter's regime change // How the tables have turned. Muahahaha. (45:00) What we'd do if we were Twitter CEO (51:00) Evolution of polarization (59:00) Silver lining of polarization (1:05:00) Distinguishing Elon's antics from his philosophy (1:14:00) Trump feels more familiar in 2023 vs. 2016 (1:18:00) The right is adopting woke tactics (1:22:00) Social media and depression follow up (1:24:00) Is half of Gen Z non-straight? (1:28:00) Ellen Pao (1:34:30) Is Pirate Wires conservative media? (No) Please support our sponsors: NetSuite | Secureframe -NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/zen NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/zen and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. - Secureframe: https://secureframe.com/ Secureframe is the leading all-in-one platform for security and privacy compliance. Get SOC-2 audit ready in weeks, not months. I believe in Secureframe so much that I invested in it, and I recommend it to all my portfolio companies. Sign up for a free demo and mention MOZ during your demo to get 20% off your first year.
We're excited to introduce Upstream listeners to Moment of Zen, a weekly podcast hosted by Erik Torenberg, Dan Romero, Antonio Garcia Martinez, and additional guests. This episode features special guest Mike Solana, Editor in Chief of Pirate Wires (https://www.piratewires.com/) in conversation with Erik and Dan. They cover the recent AI congressional hearings, The Culture War's evolution, Twitter under Elon, and much more. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/UPSTREAM We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE TO "MOMENT OF ZEN" Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/moz YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MomentofZenPodcast MoZ's first episode from Dec '22 featured Marc Andreessen and other guests who have appeared on MoZ include: Balaji Srinivasan, Katherine Boyle, Amjad Masad, Nic Carter, Noah Smith, Michelle Tandler, Byrne Hobart, and more. TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Introduction to this episode of Moment of Zen (00:48) On what Mike Solana would say to Congress about AI (08:00) Contrasting Zuck, Brian Armstrong, and Sam Altman's approach to regulation (14:20) Sponsor: Secureframe (16:30) AI doomerism is just marketing for big AI (26:00) Elon's wins and losses so far as Twitter CEO (38:00) Taylor Lorenz Mythology (40:00) Twitter's regime change // How the tables have turned. Muahahaha. (44:05) What we'd do if we were Twitter CEO (50:00) Evolution of polarization (58:00) Silver lining of polarization (1:07:00) Distinguishing Elon's antics from his philosophy (1:14:00) Trump feels more familiar in 2023 vs. 2016 (1:18:00) The right is adopting woke tactics (1:24:00) Social media and depression follow up (1:28:00) Is half of Gen Z non-straight? (1:32:00) Ellen Pao (1:34:30) Is Pirate Wires conservative media? (No) TWITTER: @MOZ_Podcast @micsolana (Mike) @piratewires @eriktorenberg (Erik) @dwr (Dan) @antoniogm (Antonio) Please support our sponsors: Shopify | NetSuite | Secureframe -Shopify: https://shopify.com/torenberg for a $1/month trial period Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of all ecommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries. From their all-in-one ecommerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/torenberg. -NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/upstream NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform -> NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/upstream and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. -Secureframe https://secureframe.com/ Secureframe is the leading all-in-one platform for security and privacy compliance. Get SOC-2 audit ready in weeks, not months. I believe in Secureframe so much that I invested in it, and I recommend it to all my portfolio companies. Sign up for a free demo and mention UPSTREAM during your demo to get 20% off your first year. Secureframe has just released Secureframe Trust, a new product that lets you showcase your organization's security posture to build customer trust.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:25)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5003294/advertisement
Jack Roehrig, Technology Evangelist at Uptycs, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud for a conversation about security awareness, ChatGPT, and more. Jack describes some of the recent developments at Uptycs, which leads to fascinating insights about the paradox of scaling engineering teams large and small. Jack also shares how his prior experience working with AskJeeves.com has informed his perspective on ChatGPT and its potential threat to Google. Jack and Corey also discuss the evolution of Reddit, and the nuances of developing security awareness trainings that are approachable and effective.About JackJack has been passionate about (obsessed with) information security and privacy since he was a child. Attending 2600 meetings before reaching his teenage years, and DEF CON conferences shortly after, he quickly turned an obsession into a career. He began his first professional, full-time information-security role at the world's first internet privacy company; focusing on direct-to-consumer privacy. After working the startup scene in the 90's, Jack realized that true growth required a renaissance education. He enrolled in college, completing almost six years of coursework in a two-year period. Studying a variety of disciplines, before focusing on obtaining his two computer science degrees. University taught humility, and empathy. These were key to pursuing and achieving a career as a CSO lasting over ten years. Jack primarily focuses his efforts on mentoring his peers (as well as them mentoring him), advising young companies (especially in the information security and privacy space), and investing in businesses that he believes are both innovative, and ethical.Links Referenced: Uptycs: https://www.uptycs.com/ jack@jackroehrig.com: mailto:jack@jackroehrig.com jroehrig@uptycs.com: mailto:jroehrig@uptycs.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: LANs of the late 90's and early 2000's were a magical place to learn about computers, hang out with your friends, and do cool stuff like share files, run websites & game servers, and occasionally bring the whole thing down with some ill-conceived software or network configuration. That's not how things are done anymore, but what if we could have a 90's style LAN experience along with the best parts of the 21st century internet? (Most of which are very hard to find these days.) Tailscale thinks we can, and I'm inclined to agree. With Tailscale I can use trusted identity providers like Google, or Okta, or GitHub to authenticate users, and automatically generate & rotate keys to authenticate devices I've added to my network. I can also share access to those devices with friends and teammates, or tag devices to give my team broader access. And that's the magic of it, your data is protected by the simple yet powerful social dynamics of small groups that you trust. Try now - it's free forever for personal use. I've been using it for almost two years personally, and am moderately annoyed that they haven't attempted to charge me for what's become an absolutely-essential-to-my-workflow service.Corey: Kentik provides Cloud and NetOps teams with complete visibility into hybrid and multi-cloud networks. Ensure an amazing customer experience, reduce cloud and network costs, and optimize performance at scale — from internet to data center to container to cloud. Learn how you can get control of complex cloud networks at www.kentik.com, and see why companies like Zoom, Twitch, New Relic, Box, Ebay, Viasat, GoDaddy, booking.com, and many, many more choose Kentik as their network observability platform. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted episode is brought to us by our friends at Uptycs and they have once again subjected Jack Roehrig, Technology Evangelist, to the slings, arrows, and other various implements of misfortune that I like to hurl at people. Jack, thanks for coming back. Brave of you.Jack: I am brave [laugh]. Thanks for having me. Honestly, it was a blast last time and I'm looking forward to having fun this time, too.Corey: It's been a month or two, ish. Basically, the passing of time is one of those things that is challenging for me to wrap my head around in this era. What have you folks been up to? What's changed since the last time we've spoken? What's coming out of Uptycs? What's new? What's exciting? Or what's old with a new and exciting description?Jack: Well, we've GA'ed our agentless architecture scanning system. So, this is one of the reasons why I joined Uptycs that was so fascinating to me is they had kind of nailed XDR. And I love the acronyms: XDR and CNAPP is what we're going with right now. You know, and we have to use these acronyms so that people can understand what we do without me speaking for hours about it. But in short, our agentless system looks at the current resting risk state of production environment without the need to deploy agents, you know, as we talked about last time.And then the XDR piece, that's the thing that you get to justify the extra money on once you go to your CTO or whoever your boss is and show them all that risk that you've uncovered with our agentless piece. It's something I've done in the past with technologies that were similar, but Uptycs is continuously improving, our anomaly detection is getting better, our threat intel team is getting better. I looked at our engineering team the other day. I think we have over 300 engineers or over 250 at least. That's a lot.Corey: It's always wild for folks who work in small shops to imagine what that number of engineers could possibly be working on. Then you go and look at some of the bigger shops and you talk to them and you hear about all the different ways their stuff is built and how they all integrate together and you come away, on some level, surprised that they're able to work with that few engineers. So, it feels like there's a different perspective on scale. And no one has it right, but it is easy, I think, in the layperson's mindset to hear that a company like Twitter, for example, before it got destroyed, had 5000 engineers. And, “What are they all doing?” And, “Well, I can see where that question comes from and the answer is complicated and nuanced, which means that no one is going to want to hear it if it doesn't fit into a tweet itself.” But once you get into the space, you start realizing that everything is way more complicated than it looks.Jack: It is. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you mention that about Twitter. I used to work for a company called Interactive Corporation. And Interactive Corporation is an internet conglomerate that owns a lot of those things that are at the corners of the internet that not many people know about. And also, like, the entire online dating space. So, I mean, it was a blast working there, but at one point in my career, I got heavily involved in M&A. And I was given the nickname Jack the RIFer. RIF standing for Reduction In Force.Corey: Oof.Jack: So, Jack the RIFer was—yeah [laugh] I know, right?Corey: It's like Buzzsaw Ted. Like, when you bring in the CEO with the nickname of Buzzsaw in there, it's like, “Hmm, I wonder who's going to hire a lot of extra people?” Not so much.Jack: [laugh]. Right? It's like, hey, they said they were sending, “Jack out to hang out with us,” you know, in whatever country we're based out of. And I go out there and I would drink them under the table. And I'd find out the dirty secrets, you know.We would be buying these companies because they would need optimized. But it would be amazing to me to see some of these companies that were massive and they produced what I thought was so little, and then to go on to analyze everybody's job and see that they were also intimately necessary.Corey: Yeah. And the question then becomes, if you were to redesign what that company did from scratch. Which again, is sort of an architectural canard; it was the easiest thing in the world to do is to design an architecture from scratch on a whiteboard with almost an arbitrary number of constraints. The problem is that most companies grow organically and in order to get to that idealized architecture, you've got to turn everything off and rebuild it from scratch. The problem is getting to something that's better without taking 18 months of downtime while you rebuild everything. Most companies cannot and will not sustain that.Jack: Right. And there's another way of looking at it, too, which is something that's been kind of a thought experiment for me for a long time. One of the companies that I worked with back at IC was Ask Jeeves. Remember Ask Jeeves?Corey: Oh, yes. That was sort of the closest thing we had at the time to natural language search.Jack: Right. That was the whole selling point. But I don't believe we actually did any natural language processing back then [laugh]. So, back in those days, it was just a search index. And if you wanted to redefine search right now and you wanted to find something that was like truly a great search engine, what would you do differently?If you look at the space right now with ChatGPT and with Google, and there's all this talk about, well, ChatGPT is the next Google killer. And then people, like, “Well, Google has Lambda.” What are they worried about ChatGPT for? And then you've got the folks at Google who are saying, “ChatGPT is going to destroy us,” and the folks in Google who are saying, “ChatGPT's got nothing on us.” So, if I had to go and do it all over from scratch for search, it wouldn't have anything to do with ChatGPT. I would go back and make a directed, cyclical graph and I would use node weight assignments based on outbound links. Which is exactly what Google was with the original PageRank algorithm, right [laugh]?Corey: I've heard this described as almost a vector database in various terms depending upon what it is that—how it is you're structuring this and what it looks like. It's beyond my ken personally, but I do see that there's an awful lot of hype around ChatGPT these days, and I am finding myself getting professionally—how do I put it—annoyed by most of it. I think that's probably the best way to frame it.Jack: Isn't it annoying?Corey: It is because it's—people ask, “Oh, are you worried that it's going to take over what you do?” And my answer is, “No. I'm worried it's going to make my job harder more than anything else.” Because back when I was a terrible student, great, write an essay on this thing, or write a paper on this. It needs to be five pages long.And I would write what I thought was a decent coverage of it and it turned out to be a page-and-a-half. And oh, great. What I need now is a whole bunch of filler fluff that winds up taking up space and word count but doesn't actually get us to anywhere—Jack: [laugh].Corey: —that is meaningful or useful. And it feels like that is what GPT excels at. If I worked in corporate PR for a lot of these companies, I would worry because it takes an announcement that fits in a tweet—again, another reference to that ailing social network—and then it turns it into an arbitrary length number of pages. And it's frustrating for me just because that's a lot more nonsense I have to sift through in order to get the actual, viable answer to whatever it is I'm going for here.Jack: Well, look at that viable answer. That's a really interesting point you're making. That fluff, right, when you're writing that essay. Yeah, that one-and-a-half pages out. That's gold. That one-and-a-half pages, that's the shit. That's the stuff you want, right? That's the good shit [laugh]. Excuse my French. But ChatGPT is what's going to give you that filler, right? The GPT-3 dataset, I believe, was [laugh] I think it was—there's a lot of Reddit question-and-answers that were used to train it. And it was trained, I believe—the data that it was trained with ceased to be recent in 2021, right? It's already over a year old. So, if your teacher asked you to write a very contemporary essay, ChatGPT might not be able to help you out much. But I don't think that that kind of gets the whole thing because you just said filler, right? You can get it to write that extra three-and-a-half pages from that five pages you're required to write. Well, hey, teachers shouldn't be demanding that you write five pages anyways. I once heard, a friend of mine arguing about one presidential candidate saying, “This presidential candidate speaks at a third-grade level.” And the other person said, “Well, your presidential candidate speaks at a fourth-grade level.” And I said, “I wish I could convey presidential ideas at a level that a third or a fourth grader could understand” You know? Right?Corey: On some level, it's actually not a terrible thing because if you can only convey a concept at an extremely advanced reading level, then how well do you understand—it felt for a long time like that was the problem with AI itself and machine-learning and the rest. The only value I saw was when certain large companies would trot out someone who was themselves deep into the space and their first language was obviously math and they spoke with a heavy math accent through everything that they had to say. And at the end of it, I didn't feel like I understood what they were talking about any better than I had at the start. And in time, it took things like ChatGPT to say, “Oh, this is awesome.” People made fun of the Hot Dog/Not A Hot Dog App, but that made it understandable and accessible to people. And I really think that step is not given nearly enough credit.Jack: Yeah. That's a good point. And it's funny, you mentioned that because I started off talking about search and redefining search, and I think I use the word digraph for—you know, directed gra—that's like a stupid math concept; nobody understands what that is. I learned that in discrete mathematics a million years ago in college, right? I mean, I'm one of the few people that remembers it because I worked in search for so long.Corey: Is that the same thing is a directed acyclic graph, or am I thinking of something else?Jack: Ah you're—that's, you know, close. A directed acyclic graph has no cycles. So, that means you'll never go around in a loop. But of course, if you're just mapping links from one website to another website, A can link from B, which can then link back to A, so that creates a cycle, right? So, an acyclic graph is something that doesn't have that cycle capability in it.Corey: Got it. Yeah. Obviously, my higher math is somewhat limited. It turns out that cloud economics doesn't generally tend to go too far past basic arithmetic. But don't tell them. That's the secret of cloud economics.Jack: I think that's most everything, I mean, even in search nowadays. People aren't familiar with graph theory. I'll tell you what people are familiar with. They're familiar with Google. And they're familiar with going to Google and Googling for something, and when you Google for something, you typically want results that are recent.And if you're going to write an essay, you typically don't care because only the best teachers out there who might not be tricked by ChatGPT—honestly, they probably would be, but the best teachers are the ones that are going to be writing the syllabi that require the recency. Almost nobody's going to be writing syllabi that requires essay recency. They're going to reuse the same syllabus they've been using for ten years.Corey: And even that is an interesting question there because if we talk about the results people want from search, you're right, I have to imagine the majority of cases absolutely care about recency. But I can think of a tremendous number of counterexamples where I have been looking for things explicitly and I do not want recent results, sometimes explicitly. Other times because no, I'm looking for something that was talked about heavily in the 1960s and not a lot since. I don't want to basically turn up a bunch of SEO garbage that trawled it from who knows where. I want to turn up some of the stuff that was digitized and then put forward. And that can be a deceptively challenging problem in its own right.Jack: Well, if you're looking for stuff has been digitized, you could use archive.org or one of the web archive projects. But if you look into the web archive community, you will notice that they're very secretive about their data set. I think one of the best archive internet search indices that I know of is in Portugal. It's a Portuguese project.I can't recall the name of it. But yeah, there's a Portuguese project that is probably like the axiomatic standard or like the ultimate prototype of how internet archiving should be done. Search nowadays, though, when you say things like, “I want explicitly to get this result,” search does not want to show you explicitly what you want. Search wants to show you whatever is going to generate them the most advertising revenue. And I remember back in the early search engine marketing days, back in the algorithmic trading days of search engine marketing keywords, you could spend $4 on an ad for flowers and if you typed the word flowers into Google, you just—I mean, it was just ad city.You typed the word rehabilitation clinic into Google, advertisements everywhere, right? And then you could type certain other things into Google and you would receive a curated list. These things are obvious things that are identified as flaws in the secrecy of the PageRank algorithm, but I always thought it was interesting because ChatGPT takes care of a lot of the stuff that you don't want to be recent, right? It provides this whole other end to this idea that we've been trained not to use search for, right?So, I was reviewing a contract the other day. I had this virtual assistant and English is not her first language. And she and I red-lined this contract for four hours. It was brutal because I kept on having to Google—for lack of a better word—I had to Google all these different terms to try and make sense of it. Two days later, I'm playing around with ChatGPT and I start typing some very abstract commands to it and I swear to you, it generated that same contract I was red-lining. Verbatim. I was able to get into generating multiple [laugh] clauses in the contract. And by changing the wording in ChatGPT to save, “Create it, you know, more plaintiff-friendly,” [laugh] that contract all of a sudden, was red-lined in a way that I wanted it to be [laugh].Corey: This is a fascinating example of this because I'm married to a corporate attorney who does this for a living, and talking to her and other folks in her orbit, the problem they have with it is that it works to a point, on a limited basis, but it then veers very quickly into terms that are nonsensical, terms that would absolutely not pass muster, but sound like something a lawyer would write. And realistically, it feels like what we've built is basically the distillation of a loud, overconfident white guy in tech because—Jack: Yes.Corey: —they don't know exactly what they're talking about, but by God is it confident when it says it.Jack: [laugh]. Yes. You hit the nail on that. Ah, thank you. Thank you.Corey: And there's as an easy way to prove this is pick any topic in the world in which you are either an expert or damn close to it or know more than the average bear about and ask ChatGPT to explain that to you. And then notice all the things that glosses over or what it gets subtly wrong or is outright wrong about, but it doesn't ever call that out. It just says it with the same confident air of a failing interview candidate who gets nine out of ten questions absolutely right, but the one they don't know they bluff on, and at that point, you realize you can't trust them because you never know if they're bluffing or they genuinely know the answer.Jack: Wow, that is a great analogy. I love that. You know, I mentioned earlier that the—I believe the part of the big portion of the GPT-3 training data was based on Reddit questions and answers. And now you can't categorize Reddit into a single community, of course; that would be just as bad as the way Reddit categories [laugh] our community, but Reddit did have a problem a wh—I remember, there was the Ellen Pao debacle for Reddit. And I don't know if it was so much of a debacle if it was more of a scapegoat situation, but—Corey: I'm very much left with a sense that it's the scapegoat. But still, continue.Jack: Yeah, we're adults. We know what happened here, right? Ellen Pao is somebody who is going through some very difficult times in her career. She's hired to be a martyr. They had a community called fatpeoplehate, right?I mean, like, Reddit had become a bizarre place. I used Reddit when I was younger and it didn't have subreddits. It was mostly about programming. It was more like Hacker News. And then I remember all these people went to Hacker News, and a bunch of them stayed at Reddit and there was this weird limbo of, like, the super pretentious people over at Hacker News.And then Reddit started to just get weirder and weirder. And then you just described ChatGPT in a way that just struck me as so Reddit, you know? It's like some guy mansplaining some answer. It starts off good and then it's overconfidently continues to state nonsensical things.Corey: Oh yeah, I was a moderator of the legal advice and personal finance subreddits for years, and—Jack: No way. Were you really?Corey: Oh, absolutely. Those corners were relatively reasonable. And like, “Well, wait a minute, you're not a lawyer. You're correct and I'm also not a financial advisor.” However, in both of those scenarios, what people were really asking for was, “How do I be a functional adult in society?”In high school curricula in the United States, we insist that people go through four years of English literature class, but we don't ever sit down and tell them how to file their taxes or how to navigate large transactions that are going to be the sort of thing that you encounter in adulthood: buying a car, signing a lease. And it's more or less yeah, at some point, you wind up seeing someone with a circumstance that yeah, talk to a lawyer. Don't take advice on the internet for this. But other times, it's no, “You cannot sue a dog. You have to learn to interact with people as a grown-up. Here's how to approach that.” And that manifests as legal questions or finance questions, but it all comes down to I have been left on prepared for the world I live in by the school system. How do I wind up addressing these things? And that is what I really enjoyed.Jack: That's just prolifically, prolifically sound. I'm almost speechless. You're a hundred percent correct. I remember those two subreddits. It always amazes me when I talk to my friends about finances.I'm not a financial person. I mean, I'm an investor, right, I'm a private equity investor. And I was on a call with a young CEO that I've been advising for while. He runs a security awareness training company, and he's like, you know, you've made 39% off of your investment three months. And I said, “I haven't made anything off of my investment.”I bought a safe and, you know—it's like, this is conversion equity. And I'm sitting here thinking, like, I don't know any of the stuff. And I'm like, I talk to my buddies in the—you know, that are financial planners and I ask them about finances, and it's—that's also interesting to me because financial planning is really just about when are you going to buy a car? When are you going to buy a house? When are you going to retire? And what are the things, the securities, the companies, what should you do with your money rather than store it under your mattress?And I didn't really think about money being stored under a mattress until the first time I went to Eastern Europe where I am now. I'm in Hungary right now. And first time I went to Eastern Europe, I think I was in Belgrade in Serbia. And my uncle at the time, he was talking about how he kept all of his money in cash in a bank account. In Serbian Dinar.And Serbian Dinar had already gone through hyperinflation, like, ten years prior. Or no, it went through hyperinflation in 1996. So, it was not—it hadn't been that long [laugh]. And he was asking me for financial advice. And here I am, I'm like, you know, in my early-20s.And I'm like, I don't know what you should do with your money, but don't put it under your mattress. And that's the kind of data that Reddit—that ChatGPT seems to have been trained on, this GPT-3 data, it seems like a lot of [laugh] Redditors, specifically Redditors sub-2001. I haven't used Reddit very much in the last half a decade or so.Corey: Yeah, I mean, I still use it in a variety of different ways, but I got out of both of those cases, primarily due to both time constraints, as well as my circumstances changed to a point where the things I spent my time thinking about in a personal finance sense, no longer applied to an awful lot of folk because the common wisdom is aimed at folks who are generally on a something that resembles a recurring salary where they can calculate in a certain percentage raises, in most cases, for the rest of their life, plan for other things. But when I started the company, a lot of the financial best practices changed significantly. And what makes sense for me to do becomes actively harmful for folks who are not in similar situations. And I just became further and further attenuated from the way that you generally want to give common case advice. So, it wasn't particularly useful at that point anymore.Jack: Very. Yeah, that's very well put. I went through a similar thing. I watched Reddit quite a bit through the Ellen Pao thing because I thought it was a very interesting lesson in business and in social engineering in general, right? And we saw this huge community, this huge community of people, and some of these people were ridiculously toxic.And you saw a lot of groupthink, you saw a lot of manipulation. There was a lot of heavy-handed moderation, there was a lot of too-late moderation. And then Ellen Pao comes in and I'm, like, who the heck is Ellen Pao? Oh, Ellen Pao is this person who has some corporate scandal going on. Oh, Ellen Pao is a scapegoat.And here we are, watching a community being socially engineered, right, into hating the CEO who's just going to be let go or step down anyways. And now they ha—their conversations have been used to train intelligence, which is being used to socially engineer people [laugh] into [crosstalk 00:22:13].Corey: I mean you just listed something else that's been top-of-mind for me lately, where it is time once again here at The Duckbill Group for us to go through our annual security awareness training. And our previous vendor has not been terrific, so I start looking to see what else is available in that space. And I see that the world basically divides into two factions when it comes to this. The first is something that is designed to check the compliance boxes at big companies. And some of the advice that those things give is actively harmful as in, when I've used things like that in the past, I would have an addenda that I would send out to the team. “Yeah, ignore this part and this part and this part because it does not work for us.”And there are other things that start trying to surface it all the time as it becomes a constant awareness thing, which makes sense, but it also doesn't necessarily check any contractual boxes. So it's, isn't there something in between that makes sense? I found one company that offered a Slackbot that did this, which sounded interesting. The problem is it was the most condescendingly rude and infuriatingly slow experience that I've had. It demanded itself a whole bunch of permissions to the Slack workspace just to try it out, so I had to spin up a false Slack workspace for testing just to see what happens, and it was, start to finish, the sort of thing that I would not inflict upon my team. So, the hell with it and I moved over to other stuff now. And I'm still looking, but it's the sort of thing where I almost feel like, this is something ChatGPT could have built and cool, give me something that sounds confident, but it's often wrong. Go.Jack: [laugh]. Yeah, Uptycs actually is—we have something called a Otto M8—spelled O-T-T-O space M and then the number eight—and I personally think that's the cutest name ever for Slackbot. I don't have a picture of him to show you, but I would personally give him a bit of a makeover. He's a little nerdy for my likes. But he's got—it's one of those Slackbots.And I'm a huge compliance geek. I was a CISO for over a decade and I know exactly what you mean with that security awareness training and ticking those boxes because I was the guy who wrote the boxes that needed to be ticked because I wrote those control frameworks. And I'm not a CISO anymore because I've already subjected myself to an absolute living hell for long enough, at least for now [laugh]. So, I quit the CISO world.Corey: Oh yeah.Jack: Yeah.Corey: And so, much of it also assumes certain things like I've had people reach out to me trying to shill whatever it is they've built in this space. And okay, great. The problem is that they've built something that is aligned at engineers and developers. Go, here you go. And that's awesome, but we are really an engineering-first company.Yes, most people here have an engineering background and we build some internal tooling, but we don't need an entire curriculum on how to secure the tools that we're building as web interfaces and public-facing SaaS because that's not what we do. Not to mention, what am I supposed to do with the accountants in the sales folks and the marketing staff that wind up working on a lot of these things that need to also go through training? Do I want to sit here and teach them about SQL injection attacks? No, Jack. I do not want to teach them that.Jack: No you don't.Corey: I want them to not plug random USB things into the work laptop and to use a password manager. I'm not here trying to turn them into security engineers.Jack: I used to give a presentation and I onboarded every single employee personally for security. And in the presentation, I would talk about password security. And I would have all these complex passwords up. But, like, “You know what? Let me just show you what a hacker does.”And I'd go and load up dhash and I'd type in my old email address. And oh, there's my password, right? And then I would—I copied the cryptographic hash from dhash and I'd paste that into Google. And I'd be like, “And that's how you crack passwords.” Is you Google the cryptographic hash, the insecure cryptographic hash and hope somebody else has already cracked it.But yeah, it's interesting. The security awareness training is absolutely something that's supposed to be guided for the very fundamental everyman employee. It should not be something entirely technical. I worked at a company where—and I love this, by the way; this is one of the best things I've ever read on Slack—and it was not a message that I was privy to. I had to have the IT team pull the Slack logs so that I could read these direct communications. But it was from one—I think it was the controller to the Vice President of accounting, and the VP of accounting says how could I have done this after all of those phishing emails that Jack sent [laugh]?Corey: Oh God, the phishing emails drives me up a wall, too. It's you're basically training your staff not to trust you and waste their time and playing gotcha. It really creates an adversarial culture. I refuse to do that stuff, too.Jack: My phishing emails are fun, all right? I did one where I pretended that I installed a camera in the break room refrigerator, and I said, we've had a problem with food theft out of the Oakland refrigerator and so I've we've installed this webcam. Log into the sketchy website with your username and password. And I got, like, a 14% phish rate. I've used this campaign at multinational companies.I used to travel around the world and I'd grab a mic at the offices that wanted me to speak there and I'd put the mic real close to my head and I say, “Why did you guys click on the link to the Oakland refrigerator?” [laugh]. I said, “You're in Stockholm for God's sake.” Like, it works. Phishing campaigns work.They just don't work if they're dumb, honestly. There's a lot of things that do work in the security awareness space. One of the biggest problems with security awareness is that people seem to think that there's some minimum amount of time an employee should have to spend on security awareness training, which is just—Corey: Right. Like, for example, here in California, we're required to spend two hours on harassment training every so often—I think it's every two years—and—Jack: Every two years. Yes.Corey: —at least for managerial staff. And it's great, but that leads to things such as, “Oh, we're not going to give you a transcript if you can read the video more effectively. You have to listen to it and make sure it takes enough time.” And it's maddening to me just because that is how the law is written. And yes, it's important to obey the law, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, it just feels like it's an intentional time suck.Jack: It is. It is an intentional time suck. I think what happens is a lot of people find ways to game the system. Look, when I did security awareness training, my controls, the way I worded them, didn't require people to take any training whatsoever. The phishing emails themselves satisfied it completely.I worded that into my control framework. I still held the trainings, they still made people take them seriously. And then if we have a—you know, if somebody got phished horrifically, and let's say wired $2 million to Hong Kong—you know who I'm talking about, all right, person who might is probably not listening to this, thankfully—but [laugh] she did. And I know she didn't complete my awareness training. I know she never took any of it.She also wired $2 million to Hong Kong. Well, we never got that money back. But we sure did spend a lot of executive time trying to. I spent a lot of time on the phone, getting passed around from department to department at the FBI. Obviously, the FBI couldn't help us.It was wired from Mexico to Hong Kong. Like the FBI doesn't have anything to do with it. You know, bless them for taking their time to humor me because I needed to humor my CEO. But, you know, I use those awareness training things as a way to enforce the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct requiring disciplinary action for people who didn't follow the security awareness training.If you had taken the 15 minutes of awareness training that I had asked people to do—I mean, I told them to do it; it was the Code of Conduct; they had to—then there would be no disciplinary action for accidentally wiring that money. But people are pretty darn diligent on not doing things like that. It's just a select few that seems to be the ones that get repeatedly—Corey: And then you have the group conversations. One person screws something up and then you wind up with the emails to everyone. And then you have the people who are basically doing the right thing thinking they're being singled out. And—ugh, management is hard, people is hard, but it feels like a lot of these things could be a lot less hard.Jack: You know, I don't think management is hard. I think management is about empathy. And management is really about just positive reinforce—you know what management is? This is going to sound real pretentious. Management's kind of like raising a kid, you know? You want to have a really well-adjusted kid? Every time that kid says, “Hey, Dad,” answer. [crosstalk 00:30:28]—Corey: Yeah, that's a good—that's a good approach.Jack: I mean, just be there. Be clear, consistent, let them know what to expect. People loved my security program at the places that I've implemented it because it was very clear, it was concise, it was easy to understand, and I was very approachable. If anybody had a security concern and they came to me about it, they would [laugh] not get any shame. They certainly wouldn't get ignored.I don't care if they were reporting the same email I had had reported to me 50 times that day. I would personally thank them. And, you know what I learned? I learned that from raising a kid, you know? It was interesting because it was like, the kid I was raising, when he would ask me a question, I would give him the same answer every time in the same tone. He'd be like, “Hey, Jack, can I have a piece of candy?” Like, “No, your mom says you can't have any candy today.” They'd be like, “Oh, okay.” “Can I have a piece of candy?” And I would be like, “No, your mom says you can't have any candy today.” “Can I have a piece of candy, Jack?” I said, “No. Your mom says he can't have any candy.” And I'd just be like a broken record.And he immediately wouldn't ask me for a piece of candy six different times. And I realized the reason why he was asking me for a piece of candy six different times is because he would get a different response the sixth time or the third time or the second time. It was the inconsistency. Providing consistency and predictability in the workforce is key to management and it's key to keeping things safe and secure.Corey: I think there's a lot of truth to that. I really want to thank you for taking so much time out of your day to talk to me about think topics ranging from GPT and ethics to parenting. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Jack: I'm jack@jackroehrig.com, and I'm also jroehrig@uptycs.com. My last name is spelled—heh, no, I'm kidding. It's a J-A-C-K-R-O-E-H-R-I-G dot com. So yeah, hit me up. You will get a response from me.Corey: Excellent. And I will of course include links to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.Jack: Likewise.Corey: This promoted guest episode has been brought to us by our friends at Uptycs, featuring Jack Roehrig, Technology Evangelist at same. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment ghostwritten for you by ChatGPT so it has absolutely no content worth reading.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 7:20)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
A decade ago, Ellen Pao sparked the #MeToo movement in the tech industry when she filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Since then, she's worked to make tech a better place for women and people of color. Hear Ellen reflect on the industry's progress with diversity, why meritocracy in the workplace is a harmful myth, and how companies and employees in any field can make their workplaces more inclusive. In Mailbag, we hear from a listener whose parents are struggling to handle their finances because of memory issues. In Thrive, how to refresh your resume for 2023. HerMoney is conducting its annual Podcast Listener Survey. Take eight minutes to help make the podcast better, and get the chance to score gift cards and HerMoney merch!
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:22)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party.(commercial at 8:22)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
Ellen Pao is the co-founder and CEO of Project Include as well as the former CEO of Reddit.Part of [ending online harassment] is just having a backbone. As a leader, just saying: “The people who are using my product and who are creating all the content, they actually matter to me. And I don't want them to be abused. I don't want them to be harassed.” It's not that hard to make that change.Notes and references from this episode: @ekp - Ellen Pao on Twitter Project Include - home page “The Reddit Revolt That Led to Ellen Pao's Resignation,” - by Alex Abad-Santos, Vox“Adam Neumann's $350 million comeback is a ‘slap in the face' to female founders and founders of color,” by Emma Hinchcliff and Paige McGlauflin“Jada Pinkett Smith and Ellen Pao - Red Table Talk” - YouTubeNotes and references from this episode: @ekp - Ellen Pao on Twitter Project Include - home page “The Reddit Revolt That Led to Ellen Pao's Resignation,” - by Alex Abad-Santos, Vox“Adam Neumann's $350 million comeback is a ‘slap in the face' to female founders and founders of color,” by Emma Hinchcliff and Paige McGlauflin“Jada Pinkett Smith and Ellen Pao - Red Table Talk” - YouTube===== Produced, hosted and edited by Stu VanAirsdaleTheme music: Sounds SupremeTwitter: @WhatCaliforniaSubstack newsletter: whatiscalifornia.substack.comEmail: hello@whatiscalifornia.comPlease subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked What is California?, please rate and review What is California? on Apple Podcasts! It helps new listeners find the show.
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 8:29)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
We have discussed Ellen Pao and her tweets saying that everyone knew what Maxwell was up to previously and in this episode we take a look at the party that they were all attending together, and the people who threw that party. (commercial at 8:29)to contact me:bobbycapucci@protonmail.comsource:https://www.businessinsider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-attended-kleiner-perkins-vc-party-alleges-ellen-pao-2020-7
Quick episode answering the question I've been getting about my opinion of this staggering investment amount and second (10th?) chance for Adam. Backstage Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Ellen Pao all get a mention. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/yfm/message
Ellen Pao , the ex-CEO of reddit said in a tweet recently that they "all" knew what Maxwell was even as they kept inviting her to functions.We take a look.(Commercial at 10:03)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/ex-reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-knew-ghislaine-maxwell-allegations/
Ellen Pao , the ex-CEO of reddit said in a tweet recently that they "all" knew what Maxwell was even as they kept inviting her to functions.We take a look.(Commercial at 10:03)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/ex-reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-knew-ghislaine-maxwell-allegations/
Our anchors begin today's show breaking down Berkshire Hathaway becoming HP's largest shareholder with CNBC's Mike Santoli, and Satori Fund Founder Dan Niles looks at tech investment opportunities in today's market. Then, Thoma Bravo Co-Founder Orlando Bravo discusses the private equity firm's latest ventures, his thoughts on the future of Bitcoin and more. Next, Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao offers her insight on Twitter's content moderation in light of Elon Musk joining the social media platform's board, and our Jon Fortt recaps his recent interview with tax software maker Avalara CEO Scott McFarlane. Later, our Deirdre Bosa shares highlights from her conversation with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on digital currency and fee compression for crypto exchanges.
Ellen Pao , the ex-CEO of reddit said in a tweet recently that they "all" knew what Maxwell was even as they kept inviting her to functions.We take a look.(Commercial at 10:48)To contact me:Bobbycapucci@protonmail.comSource:https://nypost.com/2020/07/08/ex-reddit-ceo-ellen-pao-knew-ghislaine-maxwell-allegations/
Kate Davis talks with Ellen Pao about the rise in workplace harassment during the pandemic, what's possibly causing the problem, and what companies should be doing to fix it. Pao is a tech investor and advocate, the former CEO of reddit, and CEO and cofounder of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include.
This week on All Ears, Abby is joined by Ellen Pao. Pao made headlines in 2012 when she sued venture capital firm Kleiner-Perkins for gender discrimination. In 2015 she lost the lawsuit, but it sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley and got people talking about the rampant bro-culture, sexism and bad behaviors that had gone unchallenged there for so long. She went on to become the interim CEO of Reddit, where she banned revenge porn and shut down some of the worst subreddits. Now she runs Project Include, a non-profit that is focused on increasing diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. In this week's conversation with Abby, she talks about the impact of her lawsuit, her brief but influential time at Reddit, Silicon Valley's obsession with 26 year-old white, cis men in hoodies, and her hope for the future of the tech industry. Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on what can go right and what does go wrong in Silicon Valley. EPISODE LINKSEllen Pao's Website Project Include Website Reset: My Fight For Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao The Pao v. Kleiner Perkins Gender Discrimination Lawsuit The Guardian, 'They don't think it's important': Ellen Pao on why Facebook can't beat hate, 2020 New York Times, Ellen Pao Disrupts How Silicon Valley Does Business, 2015 New York Times, Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins, 2015 New York Times, Lawsuit Shakes Foundation of a Man's World of Tech, 2012 VOX, A Who's-Who of the Kleiner Perkins-Ellen Pao Trial, 2015The Verge, Ellen Pao shifted hiring practices at Reddit to improve diversity, 2015The Guardian, Reddit chief Ellen Pao resigns after receiving ‘sickening' abuse from users, 2015The Verge, Timnit Gebru was fired from Google–then the harassers arrived, 2021
This week, Ellen Pao (CEO of Project Include) and McKensie Mack (CEO of MMG) join Remote CEO Job van der Voort to discuss their new report on harassment in remote workplaces and share strategies for companies to create welcoming remote environments for all.
Welcome back to the Queer Circle Podcast where Queer Healers come to the mic to share their journeys and what they'd tell their younger selves. Today's guest is McKensie Mack (pronouns: they/them), a Black, Queer, Non-Binary person based in Chicago, IL/Occupied Ojibwe, Odawa and Bodewadmi land. McKensie Mack is a trilingual anti-oppression consultant, researcher, facilitator, and the founder & CEO of MMG. MMG is a global social justice organization and change management firm that specializes in organizational change management; helping people transform culture, practices, and policies at the intersection of race, gender, class, disability, and LGBTQ+ identity. Their clients are currently based all over the world in the U.S., the UK, France, South Africa, Nigeria, Germany, Spain, and Peru. McKensie is the former Executive Director of one of the largest social justice projects on Wikipedia and recently completed research with Ellen Pao, former interim CEO of Reddit, and machine learning designer and researcher, Caroline Sinders, on the dynamics of harm and repair in the remote workplace. To learn more about McKensie's work, check out their website mckensiemack.com or on Instagram @mckensiemackgroup and @mckensiemack. Music by Purple Fluorite (Bandcamp // or all the streaming platforms) QueerCirclePodcast.com
From allegations that Bill Gates had been coming on to Microsoft employees to the $22.5 million settlement of a gender discrimination suit against Pinterest, women in Silicon Valley are speaking out against what is still a male-dominated culture.Ellen Pao was one of the first to do that. In 2012, she sued the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for gender discrimination. Back then, she says, she was met with skepticism at the very idea that the industry suffered from sexism at all. Pao ultimately lost the case, but it raised a question that hangs almost a decade later: What will it take for Silicon Valley to become less sexist?In this conversation, Kara Swisher talks to Pao about the “thin skins” and “giant egos” of powerful people in tech, how these attributes define the work culture of Silicon Valley and why it may take a “perp walk” from a venture capitalist or a C.E.O. to see real change.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.
In this episode, I am excited to have Karen Fleshman on to talk about a different view of racism and the immediacy of the call to action she aims to instill in the future generations. Karen Fleshman is an attorney, activist, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, workplace fair practices, and police brutality. Her recent video plea to white women to stop calling cops on people of color went viral, with over 4.2 million views. In 2014 Karen founded Racy Conversations, a training company to inspire the first anti-racist generation in the United States. She facilitates workshops on racism, unconscious bias, microaggressions, sexual harassment, inclusive management practices, and raising anti-racist children. Topics Covered What inspired her to leave the law, and how she stumbled upon her current career of activism and inspiration. How anti-racism can be considered a mindfulness practice, and how she defines mindfulness and wellness as a communal environment. Why she is so focused on white women, and how sexism and racism are intertwined irrevocably in their fight for justice and equality. She even shares her thoughts on how white sexism has been used to propagate racism. How we fight against diversity apologists who "would hire more diversely, but can't lower our standards." We talk on how this mindset started, how it has been spread through white privilege, and how we can communicate and seek each other out more to show diversity in it's true form. Learn more about Karen at: Racy Conversations Twitter Questions? Comments? Email Jeena! hello@jeenacho.com. You can also connect with Jeena on Twitter: @Jeena_Cho For more information, visit: jeenacho.com Order The Anxious Lawyer book — Available in hardcover, Kindle and Audible Find Your Ease: Retreat for Lawyers I'm creating a retreat that will provide a perfect gift of relaxation and rejuvenation with an intimate group of lawyers. Interested? Please complete this form: https://jeena3.typeform.com/to/VXfIXq MINDFUL PAUSE: Bite-Sized Practices for Cultivating More Joy and Focus 31-day program. Spend just 6 minutes every day to practice mindfulness and meditation. Decrease stress/anxiety, increase focus and concentration. Interested? http://jeenacho.com/mindful-pause/ Transcript Karen Fleshman: [00:00:04] I think that's where we get confused about what racism is; racism is a system of privilege and wealth accumulation, it is not a personal fault. And I think that's where white people start to have the breakdown because they associate racism with a bad person. Intro: [00:00:25] Welcome to The Resilient Lawyer podcast. In this podcast, we have meaningful, in-depth conversations with lawyers, entrepreneurs, and change agents. We offer tools and strategies for creating a more joyful and satisfying life. And now your host, Jeena Cho. Jeena Cho: [00:00:46] Hello my friends, thanks for joining me for another episode of The Resilient Lawyer podcast. In this episode, I'm so happy to have Karen Fleshman. She is an attorney, activist, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, workplace fair-practices, and police brutality. Her recent video plea to white women to stop calling cops on people of color went viral, with over 4.2 million views. In 2014 Karen founded Racy Conversations, a training company to inspire the first anti-racist generation in the United States. She facilitates workshops on racism, unconscious bias, micro-aggression, sexual harassment, inclusive management practices, and raising anti-racist children. [00:01:32] Before we get into the interview, I want to tell you about my new course Mindful Pause. So often I hear from lawyers that they know they should practice mindfulness, but they just don't have the time. And I always tell lawyers, start with just six minutes or .1 hour. Of all the hours you dedicate to your clients, work, and others, don't you deserve to have at least .1 hour to yourself? Mindful Pause is designed for lawyers like you to fit into your hectic schedule. Try practicing mindfulness for just six minutes a day for 31 days and see for yourself the difference it can make in your life. Think about it like taking your daily vitamins to boost your well-being. Head on over to JeenaCho.com to learn more, or check it out in the show notes. And with that, here's Karen. Karen, welcome to the show. Karen Fleshman: [00:02:15] Thank you so much, Jeena. I'm so excited to be here and to get to have a conversation with you. Jeena Cho: [00:02:21] Thank you. Before we get started, can you just give us a 30-second introduction of who you are and what you do? Karen Fleshman: [00:02:28] Yes. So my mission is to inspire the first anti-racist generation in America. 43% of millennials are people of color, 47% of Generation Z are people of color. And I'm trying to inspire 10% of white people in those generations, as well as 10% of white women, to flip anti-racist so we can have a majority anti-racist generation that will transform our society for the betterment of all people. That may be more than 30 seconds. Jeena Cho: [00:03:03] Wow, I love your vision. When you say anti-racist, what does that mean? Karen Fleshman: [00:03:11] Anti-racist, I really got that language.. I'm very much influenced by Dr. Ibram Kendi, the author of "Stamped from the Beginning," and he defines racist thought as the belief that one group is inherently superior to other groups, and therefore are deserving of domination. And to be anti-racist means to not believe in the inherent superiority of any race, or believe that any one race should be dominant. And to actively engage to actually dismantle racism within oneself, within one's community, within one's sphere of influence. I'm really convinced if banning discrimination were enough, we wouldn't be where we are 50 years after a very successful movement that got our laws changed to ban discrimination. This has to be a grassroots, from the bottom up movement. And some people look at me like I'm crazy, but I do firmly believe that racism is not in the self-interest of the vast majority of white people. It is definitely in the self-interest of a tiny fraction of white people, and they have been able to convince the rest of us that it's in our self-interest too. But it's actually not, and I'm trying to help people to see that. Jeena Cho: [00:04:52] Say more about that, how is it that racism doesn't benefit the majority of whites? Karen Fleshman: [00:05:00] Well, we are a society in which 20% of the people control 95% of the wealth. And apparently that's not enough, they're trying to make it be 100%. Which I really don't understand, that just does not end well. [00:05:18] So you have many white people in the 80% of people in who are controlling 5% of the wealth, and they are somehow lulled to think that the 20% has their interests at heart by this notion of racial superiority. And that's been the whole history of racism in our society, is that it was created by a tiny group of white men as a means of wealth and power accumulation. And then they were able to persuade white people without power and wealth to be their enforcers of it, by persuading them that they were racially superior to other people. And then, of course, it makes sense to massacre and genocide Native Americans. And of course, it makes sense to enslave people from Africa and run around capturing them, bringing them back and torturing them, and doing all the horrible things that we've done. And I really do think this whole concept of white fragility is our post-traumatic response to all of the horrible things that our ancestors did and that we've never reconciled. We've never faced this history, we've never confronted its outcome and how it continues to impact us today. And I think that's why many, many white people experience a lot of trauma if you bring up the issue of race. Because I think we have very deep-seated fear and shame and guilt. Stemming from generations of trauma that we inflicted. Jeena Cho: [00:07:18] Yeah, I get the sense that when we talk about racism and the privilege that whites have, the pushback that I often get is something like, but I'm not racist; I'm not doing anything to contribute. I have black friends. So when we're having this conversation, what is it that you're trying to get people to do or see or think about in a different way? Karen Fleshman: [00:07:58] Well I think almost all white people in our country grow up learning what racism is from our white parents. And I don't think it's intentional on their part, they just literally did not know what they were doing. So I grew up with learning racism is terrible, Dr. Martin Luther King is wonderful, and the way to be not racist is to be colorblind and to treat everybody equally. But I grew up in an all-white community, so I never saw my parents interact with people of color. It wasn't intentional on their part, we just literally did not know any. [00:08:49] As I grew older and started to notice, well why is there so much racial inequality in our society? The story I got back was we used to have terrible racism in our society, but then there was the civil rights movement led by Dr. King, who is wonderful. And now opportunities are distributed equally. And some families, like ours, choose to work really hard, and that's why we're in our situation. And other families choose not to, and that's why they're in their situation. And no recognition of all the racial wealth accumulation strategies that my grandparents had access to that other families did not have access to. And it's undoubted, my grandparents, great-grandparents, they worked their tails off. They were farmers, they were the general contractors. But everything that they did, they had access to because they were white. And other families did not have access to that. And all of that magically lands on me, and I have no idea that racism played a role in that. And I'm sure probably they weren't racist either, I don't think they harbored.. I think that's where we get confused about what racism is. Racism is a system of privilege and wealth accumulation. It is not a personal fault. And I think that's where white people start to have the breakdown because they associate racism with being a bad person. And I am not a bad person; I'm an ethical person, I'm a kind person. I am all these things that are good, so therefore I can't possibly be racist without understanding. But when you exclusively associate with white Americans and maybe a few Asian Americans, and when you do all these different things. Who we who we believe when we serve on a jury, who we socialize with, where we send our kids to school, where we live, who we hire, who we promote, who we listen to. [00:11:11] Yes, you are racist; because you are perpetuating white supremacy in all those daily interactions, in all those little decisions that cumulate to the situation that we are now in. And I think that's where the breakdown occurs, is that they say, "I'm not racist," because they think that racism is to harbor ill-will toward black people. But we all have extremely deep-seated, unconscious bias that has been intentionally manipulated for us to fear black people. And if we don't recognize that and start to work on it, we just keep perpetuating it. I'm sorry, I'm going on and on. Jeena Cho: [00:12:06] Yeah, I am totally on board with you and everything that you're saying. And then my next question is so then, what? And I know you speak a lot to white women, and I want to get more into why it is that focus on that group. But let's say you're a white person and you're like okay I see what Karen is saying, that there is a system set up that is there to make things easier or make things more challenging, depending on the color of your skin. And I am part of that system, but I am just one person. How do I fix it, what do I do? Karen Fleshman: [00:12:50] Oh my God, I love that question. And I will say this, if you are a white person and you want to become a radicalized white supremacist, you have 18 bazillion, right? You've got your InfoWars, you got your Breitbart, you've got StormFront, all these places to go. But if you are that white person that's like, I think there might be something wrong, where do you go? I think this is a really bad problem. And what I would say to that person is that it's about mindfulness and changing your heart and your mind, the way that your mind works to come in alignment with each other. And then paying attention to these everyday interactions; things are happening all the time. And I think that because our brains are not designed to handle the way we are just bombarding them with so much information, like social media and online. We need to pause (I like your pause thing), take some time, pause, slow the heck down, spend some time in nature, get really quiet, and really start to think about why do I have these beliefs? Where did they originate, what kind of narrative about race did I grow up learning? And how am I demonstrating that in my daily interactions? And then start to change; start to intentionally seek out and develop relationships with the people against whom you're biased. [00:14:51] All the literature on unconscious bias says that the way to get rid of it is to start to supplant all those negative stereotypes with actual relationships with people that you know and care about. And then we're not dehumanizing people based on race, then we are re-humanizing them and we can start to recognize things. And in the building of those relationships, we also start to share social capital, which is a big part of this. Like if a white friend invites me to any kind of social event, their kid's birthday, a barbecue, a networking event, 9 times out of 10 90% of the people there are white, with maybe a few Asian Americans. If a woman of color invites me to a networking event, 9 times out of 10 I'm one of maybe 2 white women at the networking event. So we have to get to know each other because in these social settings is where we're exchanging all this social capital that is also really leading to the wealth inequality, right? How did you get your kid into that school? My company has an awesome opening I think you'd be perfect for. Oh, can you help my kid get an internship at your company? Whatever it is, that's where these things are happening. So if there are no people of color present, then we are perpetuating the racial wealth gap in these social settings. And then the next step beyond that of the building of the relationship is to really take a look at, you know people are like systemic racism, institutional racism, it's out of my hands. Bullshit, okay? Institutions and systems are created by people. [00:16:52] So look at whatever sphere of influence you have; it could be your kid's school, it could be your workplace, it could be your faith-based organization. Whatever it is, how does racial inequity show up in this organization and what am I going to do? Am I going to change where we're recruiting positions for, apply the Rooney Rule in recruiting? Whatever it is, each of us can do something that is going to move us toward racial equity. And that's how these systems are going to change. The people in power in these systems could not give a hoot, they have absolutely zero interest in changing them. I mean, I'm really so down on the whole Diversity and Inclusion profession. And I feel sorry for my friends, I have many, many friends who are heads of diversity for organizations. It's an extremely stressful and isolating job because, in the end, very few companies have any interest in actually changing this. It's going to take a groundswell of people saying no this is unacceptable and this has to change. Jeena Cho: [00:18:14] Yeah. And I often find that those people that are responsible or put in charge of diversity and inclusion get scapegoated. Because it's like, well yes it's true that all of our incoming group of new hires is white, but that woman of color over there was supposed to fix this whole diversity thing. So why isn't this happening? Karen Fleshman: [00:18:38] Yeah it's all her fault, right? Meanwhile, she's looking at them like, I told you what needs to change and y'all don't want to do anything. So don't scapegoat and isolate me. And that's why the role of the white ally in the workplace is so important because the poor woman of the color head of Diversity and Inclusion needs real supporters pushing for her to be listened to and for actual change to happen. [00:19:31] And you asked why do I focus so much on white women? It's many, many reasons; I do believe that white women are sexism's number one tool. Because white men use white women to maintain racism, and we cannot end sexism without ending racism. But no matter how many times black women have tried to tell us this, for centuries and centuries we're like, "Oh no no no, we must end sexism first." And we remain factionalized as women, and this is how sexism just keeps going and going and going. [00:20:23] That's part of it. I also think white women in the workplace can be very harmful to other white women; I've been harmed by white women in the workplace, as well as to women of color. They're not leveraging their positions of power within the workplace to open up opportunities for other women; they view other women as threats, and they don't ally with the women of color in the workplace. And this is why we don't ascend. We cannot ascend if we remain divided, we only ascend when we unite and when we have the numbers to actually transform this. So I firmly believe it is in white women's self-interest to get over our racism, unite with women and men of color, and really take on the inequality in the workplace. Jeena Cho: [00:21:23] I think how this normally shakes out though is you have a bunch of white males on a board or some executive committee and they're like oh, we need a little bit of diversity so we're going to open one seat up. So now you have all the people of color and all the women competing for that one seat. And when you get into that one seat, you don't want to be like hey can you pull up some extra chairs here? Because you don't want to be thrown out of the group. Because I think the perception is that then the other men in the room will say, we'd be happy to, you can surrender your seat. Karen Fleshman: [00:21:58] Right. And they intentionally seek out people with the Clarence Thomas viewpoint for that role. Like we just want you for the photo opportunity, but we don't really want you to change anything. And that's kind of an unfair characterization, there are plenty of people in that one seat who don't have the Clarence Thomas viewpoint. I agree with you, but people have to take some risk. We only have one life, are we going to allow this inequity to just keep going? Or do we actually care about our children? Do we actually care about this more than we care about our own narrow, short-term self-interest? And people have to take some risk and they have to make other people uncomfortable. All of this gets perpetuated because, well making so-and-so feel uncomfortable we're putting so-and-so on the spot. Who cares?! Go for it! You know what I mean? And if you wind up losing your job, I think you have a lot to be proud of. Look at the woman from Uber (whose name is eluding me) who memorialized all of the terrible things that were happening, and then found another job and went public with her memo. Look at all the change that has been spawned from that one blog post. Or look at Leslie Miley not signing the nondisclosure agreement about why he left Twitter, saying he mentioned in front of an all-hands engineering meeting, "What are we doing about diversity?" And the head of engineering turned to him and said, "Well diversity is important, but we're not going to lower the bar." [00:24:07] How much of an impact did his going public with that have? And it's not like these people are now destitute, because you become like a paragon. Look at Ellen Pao; you become a role model for other people. So I think those are the people that we need to highlight and uplift and support when they're going through this. I am friends with one of the plaintiffs in one of these horrible Silicon Valley sexual harassment cases, which we can get into another conversation about how it's Asian American women who are being targeted for the sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. [00:24:54] It is emotional to be a whistleblower; it is extremely difficult. So when women are bold enough to do these things, we need to be by their sides, holding their hands and supporting them in doing this, because it does take a lot of courage. But that's who makes change, the meek don't make change. The bold do. And I want to encourage everyone listening to this to be as bold as they can be. Jeena Cho: [00:25:28] I love that. I want to go back to something that you just said a moment ago because it comes up for me all the time; that idea of "we're not going to lower our standards." I cannot tell you the number of times I have heard this, because I will be at some conference somewhere and I'll see a sea of white male speakers, all the "manals." And I'll be like, hey you have a diversity and inclusion issue here. And they will say, well we wanted to have the best or most qualified speakers. And it drives me crazy, I mean it's frankly insulting. Like how dare you, how can you think that? But where does that idea come from, that we're only going to pick the best people, and the best people happen to be only white men? And also, how do you respond to that? Karen Fleshman: [00:26:29] Well you know, our society is very intentionally set up that way. You look at the Declaration of Independence where it says, "All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," then 30 lines below it it says, "The merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is the destruction all ages, races, and sexes." So it's in the founding documents. Because when they were talking about all men, they were talking about white men who were landowners, and many of whom were slave owners. This is who the United States has always been designed to serve. I mean, look at the U.S. Senate. And I really do think that the rise of 45 is white men's freaking out about the demographic change. They're like, oh my god we are going to ban Muslims, we're going to build a wall, we're going to do everything in our power because our numbers are dwindling and we have to go into battle to preserve our power. [00:27:56] It's this zero-sum game notion of power where only we can have power, and if we were to share power with other people that would mean there's less power for us. So I think this whole, "these are the best people," is the grassroots manifestation of that and the accumulation of privilege and status conferred upon white men. Well, of course, they went to Stanford, and of course, their IPO was successful and now they're millionaires; all these things without any recognition of the fact that all of this success was totally weighted in their favor because of their status as white men, to begin with. [00:28:47] And this notion that everything they accumulated is to their own individual merit, and their own individual intelligence, to their own individual work. And this notion of rugged individualism is such an important narrative in American history, and it's completely inaccurate. But try convincing them of any of it. They literally don't see women and people of color as fully human; they don't see them as their equal. So it's very difficult for them to imagine that a woman of color or man of color has a viewpoint that could possibly be as intelligent or as insightful as they are because they don't see them as fully human. Jeena Cho: [00:29:40] Right. Or if they are going to choose someone that's a person of color or a woman, then the person has to be so incredibly exceptional. It's not enough that you went to Harvard and Yale, you must have clerked for a Supreme Court Justice. It's just all the nonsense, and it happens so often. And I always struggle with what do I say? What do I say that isn't going to make the person feel defensive? Karen Fleshman: [00:30:19] Listen, I just troll the hell out of it. I quote them, I make fun of them, and then at the end I write a blog post about it. Because honestly, I don't care about making them feel defensive. That's my style, other people have different styles, but I am so tired. And also quite honestly, these "manals" or the white woman equivalent, it's just boring. It's completely irrelevant. You're only talking to other people with your shared life experience, you know what I mean? There are no real learnings to be had there. So those are the types of things that I like to point out. [00:31:13] But if you look at some of my blog posts, I wrote one after going to a UCLA Anderson Women Lead conference about how you can't throw a women's empowerment event and only focus on white women. Especially if you're UCLA! But we're so in our little bubble that we don't recognize this until somebody points it out. My style of pointing it out is not very gentle, other people's is more gentle. I think we all have to do what works for us. Jeena Cho: [00:31:52] Yeah. For me, it's a constant trial and error. Sometimes I say, okay I am going to write an article about this conference where it's a sea of white men speakers; I'm going to write an article about you on Above the Law and call you out on your bullshit. And then they will issue a non-apology and basically, say, but we're not going to lower our standards. Karen Fleshman: [00:32:24] Oh yeah, that's what UCLA did. I started tweeting, it's noon and we haven't heard from a single woman of color at this conference, unacceptable. So then UCLA Anderson tweets back, oh my god you're 100% right. We should have a conversation about this. And then they never actually follow up to have a conversation. Again, they honestly don't give a hoot but they just don't want to publicly make it seem like they didn't acknowledge the criticism. So just keep at it Jeena, just keep at it. And you don't have to do it all the time either. Sometimes we're tired and we don't have to fight this battle every single day, you have to practice some self-care in there too. But when it does feel right and we're feeling bold, I say go for it. Jeena Cho: [00:33:20] Right. And also, I will say it's exhausting to be the woman of color in the room that's constantly the one that's pointing it out. I'll have other white friends tweet at me and say, oh look at this "manal", expecting me to do their job. And I'm like no, you call them out on their bullshit; that's not my job. But somehow they think that's now my job, to call out all the "manals." It's like no, you can also take part in this movement. Karen Fleshman: [00:33:49] Since they obviously only want to listen to white men, wouldn't it be more effective for a white man to call them out on it? Use our privilege, use our power; that is something that we can use. Sometimes I think I shouldn't comment on something because this is for a person of color to comment on - no it's not. Calling white people out on their bullshit is white people's 100% prerogative. Go for it. Jeena Cho: [00:34:33] Yeah. What I have heard, and I've had this conversation with several white men, is that they feel uncomfortable saying there are no women or there are no people of color sitting around the table. Because then the room, whoever's sitting around the room, is going to look at them and say, "Well what do you care? You have a seat." Karen Fleshman: [00:34:54] Well yeah, that's what this is all about; making people feel uncomfortable, including ourselves. When you start to go down this path it is not a path of comfort, because white people want nothing to do with you. And then a lot of people of color, because this is such a very sensitive, longstanding, painful thing. When white people start to engage in it, then you get a backlash from people of color too, who don't trust you or who don't think you're engaging in it in the right way. Which I totally welcome, but some white people are like, oh my god why did I do this? Now I've alienated both the white people and the people on whose behalf I was trying to be an advocate. My whole thing is, apologize if you've made a mistake. Take ownership of it, learn from it, but don't stop; just keep going. There are people of color who are always going to be offended, there were some people of color who were mad at the video plea I made for white women. They were saying it should have been done by a woman of color, you know why are you making this video? My whole thing is, just like everybody else, white people can't be who they don't see. So I'm going to keep raising my profile. We don't have a single example, there is not a white woman celebrity, executive elected official, we do not have a single example of a household name white woman who can be a role model of what it is to be an anti-racist white woman. And so I'm going to keep raising my profile because I want to encourage many, many people to come on this path. Is everything I'm doing 100% right? No. I'm a human being, I'm making mistakes left and right. But I want to encourage 10% of my white millennials, 10% of Generation Z, 10% of white women; if we can flip those people (and we have the numbers) we can actually have an anti-racist generation. And that's what's going to transform our society. That's what I'm trying to do, is build a movement that's big enough to have a transformative impact. Jeena Cho: [00:37:30] Powerful message. Karen, for the folks that are listening to the show and want to learn more about you and your work, where is the best place for them to do that? Karen Fleshman: [00:37:42] RacyConversations.com, there's a contact me form on there. I do workshops on unconscious bias, microaggression, sexual harassment. I'm an attorney admitted in New York, so I'm able to do California-compliant sexual harassment training. I love to work with a company to facilitate the creation of their harassment policy, and then train everybody up in the company. I also give talks and I host a lot of events around interracial sisterhood, and I'm super passionate about stopping Cavanaugh; I wish we had time to talk about that. Jeena Cho: [00:38:24] I might have to have you back to chat again now. Karen Fleshman: [00:38:27] Yes! If you are in a red state and you have a women's group, a young people, a group of people of color, I want to come to your state and talk to you about what we can and must do to stop the Cavanaugh appointment. It is the number one threat to every marginalized group in this society, we have to stop this appointment. So please contact me and I would love to meet you and to work with you. Jeena Cho: [00:38:58] Karen, thank you so much for being with me today. Karen Fleshman: [00:39:00] Oh my god, Jeena thank you. I'm delighted and I can't wait to hear this, I'm so excited to listen to it. Closing: [00:39:11] Thanks for joining us on The Resilient Lawyer podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. It's really the best way to grow the show. To leave us a review on iTunes, search for The Resilient Lawyer and give us your honest feedback. It goes a long way to help with our visibility when you do that, so we really appreciate it. As always, we'd love to hear from you. E-mail us at smile@theanxiouslawyer.com. Thanks, and look forward to seeing you next week.
DONATE TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE HARVEY: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/hurricane-harvey-relief-fund/ JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheEnthusiasmEnthusiast/ This ep is about how people are combatting sexual harassment. I talk about Taylor Swift's recent legal victory: http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/taylor-swifts-best-comebacks-at-her-sexual-assault-trial.html. I also get into Tig Notaro addressing the Louis CK rumors: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/tig-notaro-louis-ck-one-mississippi Read up on Ellen Pao's experience here: https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/ellen-pao-silicon-valley-sexism-reset-excerpt.html My guest is Tammy Cho of https://www.betterbrave.com. It's a free resource guide to help people targeted by or those who witness sexual harassment. Tammy and her co-creator, Grace Choi, were motivated by Susan Fowler's story: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber Find us all on twitter: @betterbrave @tammywcho @gracechoi @katiefward
The Insider's Outsider - The Ellen Pao Episode - Part 3 by Brandon Jones
The Insider's Outsider - The Ellen Pao Episode - Part 2 by Brandon Jones
The Insider's Outsider - The Ellen Pao Episode - Part 1 by Brandon Jones
Sorry it took so long to get the podcast up this time guys and gals, Rob was moving over the weekend and didn't have access to the interwebs to make it happen. He's back in action now though, and here's the latest episode of the Computer Guru show!
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