Rocketship Summit: Diversity Panel
Transcript
Aakriti Srikanth
I want to start with Christine. Christine is an amazing advocate for women and she's been a great part of my journey as well. She is the CEO of a company called Scaylr doing amazing things with AI. Christine was formerly the SVP of Cisco, CMO for NetApp, and CMO for Juniper Networks. She's one of those people I look up to and follow as I move on and enter the next phase of my career. And she's also been a great mentor to me. So thank you for all the support, Christine, I'm so excited to have you here. I also want to introduce Rashida. Rashida has also been an amazing source of support. She's on the Fortune 40 under 40 List, recently announced, and she's one of those people who's just so passionate about diversity and helping women as well as African American leaders grow. I used to work in Rashida's Division at IBM Watson. And I actually reported to her. Rashida launched all of IBM Watson's initiatives, from implementation. She grew it from the ground up, built a team of almost 300 people over the years. And she spent 18 years at IBM growing and building IBM AI. One of the reasons I would say IBM's been so successful in AI is because of leaders like Rashida who've been so selfless in terms of growing the business. And I still get to work with her because she's an LP on some of the funds I work with. She's also started investing and she's an active board member of Misty Robotics and advocates for women in startups. I'm going to go on and also introduce Justin Norman. Justin Norman is the VP of Data Science at Yelp. Justin has been a great advocate for African American people within Yelp. He started a group to help mentor people there and was formerly at Cloudera. He's been featured on CNBC speaking about Yelp's vision. And he's one of those people who's visionary from the technical perspective. This is a really diverse panel with women and African American leaders. So I just think it's amazing to have people in the technical track like Justin. And now I'm going to introduce to you our moderator, Annie Brown. Annie is one of those people who's passionate about AI and diversity. She writes for Forbes as a contributing writer. She's also the founder of a company focused on diversity. She's just a great force of nature, who helps advocate for women founders. Annie going to be moderating this panel. So Annie, over to you.
Annie Brown
Thank you for having me. It's so nice to see you all and to be a part of this discussion. Like Aku said, I'm very passionate about this topic. The company I founded is Lips. We help with developing algorithms for LGBTQ, implemented through a social media platform that we're launching. I'm not going to take up too much space, as I really want the panelists to share their ideas, and perspectives. There's a lot of panels on diversity out there. I want to encourage the panelists that this is a safe space, because I think having a candid discussion about these issues is important. Feel free to share your perspective as openly as you'd like. We're going to be touching on a few different aspects of diversity in tech. That's a big topic and we're really digging into a few things. One is the cultural aspect. And another is the technological aspect. So without further ado, I will open it up to the panel and will have you guys share your expertise and insights with our audience. So I want to start out with the cultural bit, because I know that is something that several of you are passionate about. And so I'll open this up to the entire panel, whoever wants to answer. Technology is an aspect of our society, it's created by citizens in our society. What are some things that you're passionate about, whether it's education, whether it's our personal journeys as humans in society or in the workplace, that you feel are stuck. And then we can move on to maybe some of the roadblocks when it comes to creating diversity in technology and more diverse perspectives?
Christine Heckart
I'm happy to at least kick us off, I think there's a really tight correlation between the technology side and the culture side. And so I'll hit on both, and then turn it over to my fellow panelists. One of the things that has me very worried right now, and it's somewhat correlated with an election coming up, but not entirely, is because our cultures and our teams are not diverse. By most measures of diversity,we create products and algorithms and experiences and outcomes, that are probably not the optimized experience there. You know, we know that there's polarization that's being created just in general. But even beyond the polarization, you know, everything is designed to tell us what, what we already know and want to hear about, serve up products or experiences or whatever. And we end up in these horrible echo chambers. And even outside of that, when you just look at the way products are designed in general, because our teams aren't diverse, we only think about the experiences through a narrow set of lenses, you know, one lens, basically, instead of a broader lens. And I think there is a cultural aspect, because it's not only about hiring diverse candidates into teams, and that's its own set of challenges. And we need to do a better job. But a lot of companies will hire them in and they can't keep them. And they can't keep them because the cultures while we say we want diversity. And what we really want is to check the box of diversity and have people who look different around the table, but we don't necessarily want different experiences. And the only reason you want people who look different is because they have different experiences. And you want those experiences at the table, which means conflict. So until cultures are built for it, and a lot of tech companies, especially in Silicon Valley are not, they're built for consensus and it won’t happen until we’re built for constructive conflict and hearing and taking multiple ideas and finding the path through them. And this applies to Congress. And it applies to Silicon Valley and engineering teams till we have that we don't have the kind of products and society and outcomes that we want.
Rashida Hodge
For me as a black woman in tech, I clearly understand the harsh realities of what happens when we neglect to do the work of creating these inclusive, diverse environments. And I think it's clear technology serves as a mirror of our society. What we're seeing is that it continues to reveal our bias, or discrimination, or quite frankly, even our racism. The technologies that we're building and that we use, they're shaped by people. And there are people who are not impervious to the basic systematic effects of non-diverse and non-inclusive environments. We're all familiar with the stories about AI technologies that have incorrectly identified black people or struggled with recognizing the nuance in people's complexion. The quick fixes for these issues often have been concentrated on addressing the technology or the algorithm. However, in my view, the underlying bias of these technologies remains around the struggle to recruit and retain diverse talent. And so especially as we look at technologies like AI, we have to remember that these systems are a direct reflection of who we are as a society. And they're trained by humans, and they're based on data. So we have to make sure not only are the people that are training these systems diverse and part of inclusive environments. Diversity is not just race or gender, but vast experiences, if you all go to the same schools, and all grew up in the same state. What are the cultural dynamics, those things are all important, ensuring that we are building technology that is diverse. So it's important for us to ensure that but also to ensure that we're providing data that is inclusive and diverse as well.
Annie Brown
Yeah, and I'll just follow up with that really quickly Rashida, because you mentioned something really interesting. And I would like everyone's opinion on this. You were talking about authenticity in the workplace, but also in ourselves, and so because it's one thing if you hire me, and I'm a bisexual woman, but then I'm not allowed to express that at work, or bring that into my personality, or the way I dress, the culture of that. What are your thoughts on authenticity in the workplace, and how we can get better at not just hiring people with these identities but allowing them to express their identities in their workplace, but also in the technologies they create?
Rashida Hodge
Yeah, that's a really good point. It's something I'm truly passionate about, because I think we're taught to speak a certain way, act a certain way, dress a certain way. Or we're even given that, I hate this phrase, "Executive Presence," which to me, feels like you have to fit into a box. And I think it's really important that individuals become very comfortable with their nuance, you have a vibe, you should own your vibe, you should be allowed to bring your vibe to the workplace. And I think that's great. Thise nuances, your differentiators. And that's what's really important and up to now, in many instances, we're not able to bring our personal nuance into these spaces. And so we're not really able to differentiate like we ought to, because we're trying to be like someone else, we're trying to be like the norm, and the norm is not diverse.
Justin Normin
Oh, absolutely. And, you know, thanks to Christine, and for Rashida for bringing these great points up, I agree with all of them. The only thing I might augment that with is really having a conversation about inclusion versus belonging, actually belonging in an institution or an organization. And to me, when you belong, you're no longer othering yourself, but you're actually able to bring the best of your difference to the organization itself. And then from a technological standpoint, people don't code the same, they don't follow the same practices, they don't follow the same scientific processes. From a creative perspective, we've learned from those as we build these diverse teams, and I think it becomes a conversation as well about what an organization actually gains. And there is this desire to want to do the right thing, but also there is a business imperative around executing this well, and I think that gets lost in the sort of cycle of how we're evaluating the outcomes of businesses. We think they performed well, on EPS, they performed well, in deploying products in a certain timeframe. But we don't necessarily think about amplifying the success of the contributions of the diverse workforce, and even attributing those successes. When you belong, you actually have that done for you, it's not necessarily something that the oppressed population has to be responsible for. And I'm hoping we start to see shifts in this moment. When you have more and more people in leadership positions. It's not just that we're celebrating that you got to the mountain of having a certain percentage of people, but also that they have contributed significant, measurable value, and that's what persists over time. And to be completely candid, this is just not something the majority struggles with, they have that for free.
Christine Heckart
I love your comment on belonging, I think that is so critical. I always think about relationships in three phases. And this applies to companies and teams, as well as just between two individuals, when you first come into a relationship, you are looking for what you have in common. And then eventually you get to the point where you understand what your differences are, but you like people in spite of their weaknesses, their differences, the things you don't agree on. But eventually, you'll get to a related point where you like people because of those things, because of their quirks because of their weaknesses, because that's what makes them unique and different. And a lot of times the value in the strengths that we all have on the flip side is the weakness. And so that belonging happens when you get into those final stages.
Annie Brown
I also wanted to bring up one point, that it's not just about bringing people onto the team, but also the ability to or the willingness to give up some power as well and to realize that that's beneficial to all. I wanted to talk about that both in the workplace but also with technology. So the idea you're stepping down or stepping back to center someone else in the technological design, or just center someone else in the business discussion, how does that improve the way the business runs, the way that technology runs? How can we see this as something that's not just benefiting that person who's coming into power, but benefits the company, the technology society as a whole?
Justin Normin
I would say that this starts to speak more about investment. And looking to actually grow beyond just the momentary metrics of, you know, having inclusion and diversity accomplished, I'm really, if you can tell sensitive to the mission accomplished language. That's not really how things change in a durable way over time. So I first focused on decision making. So these are the executives, let's call it that in business. And let's be really honest, most of them in positions of power are from majority, most of them are men. That means that they're just inherently not going to have the skills to know how to grow cultivate, to really amplify diverse talent, it's just not something that is built through their experience. And quite frankly, I don't think if we're looking for meaningful change in this generation, they're going to get that skill set quickly enough. So now we're in a situation where we have people who are in positions of power without the correct skill sets to actually implement effects. So normally, if you abstract this particular problem away, and you think about if you were a startup leader, and the business scaled, and you didn't have the skills, what would we do? Well, we bring in people who had that domain experience, I had that skill set, and we augment that leader. And that leader would give up power, literal shares, literal voting rights, to be able to shape the business differently when that person came on board. Or in the most extreme scenarios, they would completely replace the executive with someone who didn't have those skills. And so what we're talking about here in the people side of things is we really need to have a natural power shift between those who have skills and between those who are quite frankly holding on to the beginning of, of power or power is the wrong word beginnings of a business that wants to develop In this area, and then transitioning to people who do. And I think if we can start to see that transition of power, we'll start to see the right investments being made over time. Throughout the business and less statements and clumsy donations don't really result in meaningful change.
Rashida Hodge
I would add there, you know, one of the things is, I think, I think when you have the privilege of seeing people who share your background consistently represented all the time, paying more attention to environments that lack inclusive diversity, quite frankly, it should lead to empathy, and ultimately an action for those who are underrepresented. And that's the shift that we need to see. I mean, no offense as a black person, I have personal awareness every day, in terms of in every space that I walk into, of how diverse or not that it is, I mean, for a lot of black folks, it's a daily exercise we perform right, we quickly count how many of us are in the room. And based on the count, we either sigh of relief, or we tend to in preparation for being the only one of one or few, the you know, the majority don't go through that experience every day. And because they don't, that should lead to a different action on their part moving forward.
Christine Heckart
I spent three hours last night on a call with 15 board members, all women as part of a directors group that I participate in every quarter, and our topic was diversity. And you know, like you guys, we’re used to being the only person who looks like us in most rooms in the boardroom and the executive suite, whatever. Or if you're LGBT, you're used to being that you know, the only person. And so one of the things we are focused on is how important it is for this change to start and go to the very top. So I'm playing hockey, Justin, that it really is about changing the power structure from the top down, as well as from the bottom up. And we talked about the three P's like actionable things that any board can and should be doing right now and executive team and the three P's are people and having a people strategy that has diversity and inclusion and the new Rooney Rule and talked about it like you are you're measuring for it, you're putting compensation in place for it, like you're taking it seriously, anything that's important to a business can be measured should be measured, and should be compensated. And philanthropy, you know, you talked about it doesn't, you know, yes, you can have some checkbox because you wrote a check, but like, how do you really make your philanthropy count, and supply chain purchasing? How do you think about minority-owned businesses and dealing with companies who have the ethics and the ESG, and really drive that through your purchasing change, because we all know, money talks, and this change won't happen until all of those things are started to add had started to be put in place?
Annie Brown
I think that's, that's awesome. And then let's maybe go on that and talk about some actionable steps forward. So whether that's from the cultural perspective, the technology perspective, Christine shared some points, what are some other things that we can really do, to take away not just to do something about it, but also to educate folks that this is something that's going to benefit everyone, if we really prioritize it in our everyday lives and in our companies?
Rashida Hodge
There's multiple ways we need to look at this. Very early on, one of the things that I'm super passionate about is getting more individuals to opt-in into STEM engineering fields. For me growing up, I knew one engineer. One, that was it. And so, you know, it's really important for kids to be able to see what opportunities they have, what careers that they have, and what they can opt into. So really ensuring that we continue to just expand the visibility for children to be able to explore and have curiosity around these fields is important because once you get to college, that conversation should have happened before and I think it's a lifecycle. We get them on the treadmill, we continue to nurture them as they go through high school, through college, and also as they move into that first job, and that mentoring, that sponsorship needs to continue as well. If I look at when I got onto that treadmill, it was a phsyics teacher who said to me, I think you're good in math and science, you should go to be an engineer. That opened up my mind. Curiosity allowed me to then learn about the field of engineering. When I went into the workforce, I had a mentor that saw my potential way before I saw it, and opened up opportunities for me, bet on me before I even bet on myself, so that I can have those opportunities. So I think we need to make sure that as we measure, as we monitor, we also give people chances. We bet on individuals as well, because a lot of times the standard is, you have to be the unicorn, right? And that's a very isolating feeling, as a minority, when you're being told to you have to not just be better, you have to be 100 times better than the person that's sitting next to you. That is not a measure of scale. And that's not how we're going to be able to fix this problem. And so looking at it from a larger, more expansive, the inclusive scale is going to be much more critical.
Christine Heckart
Rashida, one thing you just touched on there, I think is really actionable for anybody on the call is, there's a big difference between mentoring and sponsorship. And you know, mentoring you, you've helped people behind the scenes. Sponsorship, you put your own political capital at risk, to help somebody, to advocate for them, to promote them, to pull them up. And the more that we, those of us who have made it, are sponsors to people who deserve it, the better the world will be, the faster it will be better.
Aakriti Srikanth
Yeah, we like all need more leaders like the three of you And you know, I've been fortunate to have found great mentors and sponsors in Rashida and Christine. So thank you, I'm very fortunate myself. We have Shruthi on the call now. Also, Maria, and Lillian. We are moving into the second part of the panel. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce these panelists. Feel free to stay on, Christine, Rashida, and Justin. You can still bring in your perspectives here, if you want to come, you know, kind of add more perspective, but let me go ahead and take this opportunity to introduce these new panelists. First of all, so excited to like have Shruthi here. She's also someone I work really closely with, she's a portfolio company of NeoTribe ventures. And she is like, you know, a force of nature. She was a former AWS executive who founded the blockchain practice for them. And truth is co founders, Tim Wagner, he is in fact, like the founder and the inventor of AWS lambda. So together they are building when dia which is like this rocket ship start-up. So a lot of my summit is centered around Nvidia and the rocket ship that is it is so you know, super excited to have Sruthi on here. And like I have Lilian on here to Lillian is like one of those super connectors she she's always bubbly and good energy and she's like, so helpful always. Lillian is like an LP in funds. And she's also an investor, she invests she's backed, like startups, and she's just very passionate about connecting people. And she's always like, full of energy. That's what I love about Lillian she's always so optimistic and positive. Like, even in the worst time, she's like, keep going. So um, and I have like Maria on the call, like I, you know, so excited to have Maria here. I got introduced to Maria by Lillian who's on this call. And Maria is like, just amazing as like a female in venture capital, who's African American, which by far is the only person I know right now, like personally. So kudos to Maria like, just creating that revolution and inspiring more African American females to get into the field of venture capital, which is primarily male-dominated. And, like primarily also were like, you know, white male-dominated. So like even having women and venture capitals one thing but having an African American female and venture capitalists like, different altogether. So thanks Maria for starting this revolution, she has a fund, she backs female founders who invest in digital health. And she's based in New York. So if any of you out there in the audience are African American founders, and minority women founders, who want someone who will really believe in you and invest in you, Maria's the person. I would like to introduce Corey White's, he's a senior executive at Future Point of View. Corey brings in a great perspective in terms of artificial intelligence and he's very passionate about building diverse teams. He's built a really diverse team and continues to make contributions to the field of diversity. And it's very important to also have people who are not in minorities, but also support diversity, so that we can actually make this happen. And it's so great to have supporters like Corey, who's a good example of a great ally.
Annie Brown
Welcome, all the new panelists. And thank you, Justin, Rashida, Christine, for your insights. We talked a lot about culture, just now. And so I want to jump a bit into technology and investing. Dig a little bit deeper into that. Although, before I do, I know you said you had some really good points when we talked before on the cultural aspects. So before we jump into technology, and investing, would you have anything you'd like to add about culture, and how to create fertile ground for diversity in tech?
Shruthi Rao
I hope October stays as pleasant as this panel has been. That's my hope, given the way 2020 has gone. From a cultural perspective, when I was at AWS and before that, when I was consulting and doing M&A, I found myself to be alone in a room full of men, most of the time, white men. Most of these white men, thankfully, were very supportive to me. I'm sure all of you have wondered, why are there so few women CEOs, why are there so few women leaders? Why are so few women salespeople? We're really good at being persuasive. What is the problem here? And I was thinking about it, and i recalled a time when I was 14. And I asked a boy out. I grew up in a small town in India, I asked a boy out. I was 14. Cardinal sin, the worst thing that I ever did in my life. I'm sure a few of you agree. And why is that? Because culturally a boy is supposed to ask a girl out, not the other way around. What does this have to do with diversity and women in leadership and women in sales? But think about it... when a boy needs to ask a girl out, he scopes the market, he finds out who else is out there as competition. He looks at his subject. And then he sees, what does she like? Does she like milkshakes or not? Does really good market research, does competitive analysis, does a SWOT analysis, even before he knows what it means. He is already ready for rejection. And he goes in there ready to be rejected. And rejection is a muscle. You get rejected over and over again, that fear goes away. He doesn't have to be perfect. He just has to land one before the school season's over. That's all he needs. That teaches you something. I felt like I had been robbed of that when I was 14. There are many cultural things we were all raised with. It doesn't matter if you're Indian or you were born in America, this is pretty universal. There are cultural things that make women a minority. Don't lift up your head too high, keep your head low, and don't dream too big. This is not something someone like you can do. We've all been told that. We all had to learn it the hard way. And Rashida and I have talked about this many, many times. I'm sure the rest of you have had to overcome this as adults, maybe even in college. But my request for everyone listening is when you raise your own children, your nieces and nephews, make sure that they don't have to go through these cultural barriers, make sure they have opportunities, maybe they don't take advantage of it, not everyone has to, but now you give them an option. A small change when you're 14 leads to disproportionate changes when you're 24. And that's just stuck to me culturally, now I have four boys. They would be delighted if a girl asked them out. So folks, if you have daughters, ask them to ask someone out. And don't shoot the messenger.
Corey White
Shruthi, I've worked that failure muscle a lot in my life. I'm sure the failure is strong with me. So I will say I heard somewhere that, when you give a bunch of 20-year-old white guys money and tell them to start solving the world's problems, the problems they're going to solve are the problems that belong to 20-year-old white guys. And that's why we need more diversity when it comes to tech fields. Because these problems are so important. And technology can solve them in such a wonderful way. But we need to know what those problems are? And if we just listen to 20 and 30-year-old white guys, we're just going to solve the problems of 20 and 30-year-old white guys.
Marissa V
I totally agree. And that's why we started a fund to invest in women and women's health care. These guys don't care about women's health care, they don't even want to talk about women's health care. So we're able to be to give money to people that are actually creating treatments and products to make the lives of women better. And so it's trying to find more people that we can give money to and funding companies that need to be in the world outside of those that are just catering to this majority demographic.
Annie Brown
I think the women's healthcare thing is so interesting, because it kind of ties into the technology as well, because a lot of times the algorithms I'm working in, we're actually working with women's health companies who are banned from advertising on social media, because they use the words vagina, which is a health term, but it's banned because 20-year-old white guys are writing the Facebook code. And so I think it's really interesting the ways technology ties into investment, because it's more of a risk to invest in these companies if they don't show up in the social media algorithms and things like that.
Marissa V
I also think it's a risk not to invest in these companies. Because if we don't, nothing's gonna change. We were just a part of an article calling Facebook out on this. But if we don't call people to and hold them accountable, we can't create change. So just avoiding the issue is not the solution, addressing the issue face on, getting a policy behind you, getting the social networks behind you is really what's going to drive change. Then we don't have to stay away from women's health care. We want to break down those barriers. So all of these women's healthcare investors are banding together to not only create great returns but to also buck the system and change outcomes for female founders as well.
Annie Brown
Yeah, and I would love to read that article. We clearly have a lot to talk about, I also want to touch base with the panel on creating these technologies, not just investing in women backed companies and LGBTQ backed companies and black led companies, but also thinking about how do we create and then how do we also invest in companies that are changing some of these problems. First of all, what the what needs to change with the technology? What kinds of technology do we need to build to address some of these biases in technology? And how do we support them? How do we find them? How do we invest in them?
Corey White
Jack Dorsey from Twitter was on The Daily several weeks ago, and Michael Bavaro, asked him if you could go back and redo the Twitter algorithm and rebuild Twitter, what would you do differently? And he says, "I really just wish we had hired an Ethicist on staff." That 'move fast and break things,' we've realized we can't do that anymore, we have to step back and we have to design these things. With a bigger picture in mind, how are they going to impact the world? How are they going to impact communities? How are they going to impact individuals? A lot of these algorithms on social media, were designed just to hook you, but what we're realizing is the havoc that is caused in the world and so from the design aspect, we have to make better design.
Aakriti Srikanth
I think being vulnerable, and speaking out sometimes helps. I was recently talking to a founder, he was African American and many people didn't want to invest in this founder, they actually kept asking the founder to go find a white male cofounder. So someone started a Twitter thread and we just tagged a bunch of VCs who support people of color. One of my friends, Sami Ghoche, his cofounder is African American. It's a company called Forethought.ai, which is an NEA-funded company. But I know one person, who was African American and went to raise with a bunch of VCs, but he kept being turned down. The VCs just told him, "I'm taking a meeting with you because I have to invest in African American founders," which isn't nice. You want someone to like invest in you because they believe in you. and they believe in your product, not because you belong to a particular sector. Not for that reason. But I'm curious to hear your perspectives, how can we like change things like this?
Shruthi Rao
One of the things that we forget, or we don't make it as evident to folks is that all of these nontraditional, like women's health, which is mainstream actually, but not traditional in a VC investing sense, but a pretty large market segment. The total addressable market for all of these non "I'm creating a b2c app for another cooler, better mousetrap." The market segment is huge, from just a Vendia perspective, we're working with 600+ Black Lives Matter nonprofits in the US to help them share data with each other. That was the genesis of one of our products shapings. I mean, just think about the market size of that! You could have two black lives matter groups or multiple Black Lives Matter share data with each other, to organize with fine grained control. Let's say they don't want to share their donor data. Isn't this applicable to climate? Isn't this applicable to three or four manufacturing companies that are working together? It's the same thing. Now you have we have a product shaping that we are scaling through the market, and it came out of working with Black lives matter. That's the type of total addressable market working with "non-traditional" people generates for you. That's the opportunity you can take advantage of. Not only is diversity good for everyone, it's also profitable. So if we start talking about profitability, I think the players who are just used to listening from the angle of, is it low CAC high LTV, we'll get that message. This could also be more than just good for the world, which should be good enough on its own, but start speaking their language, I think that is the way we start creating these new products.
Christine Heckart
And you have power there because a lot of it is about sharing data, and data talks, because money talks and there's a lot of data, I reviewed a bunch of it yesterday, on that call, I was on, of how much more profitable and more successful countries and companies who have explicit diversity programs are relative to everybody else, and getting the data out is really critical. And then for every bigot and small-minded person, there's some fabulous person in power who's willing to help. And I love the fact that we have Cory on because the white men have the power in the world. And until the good ones are willing to help and share the power, as Justin talked about, there is no equality. And so we can't talk to ourselves about the problem, we have to have support from the powerful people. And those are mostly white males around the world, we need them at the table and advocating.
Marissa V
To your point, Corey, about the Twitter example is these companies need to start with culturally competent design, design it upfront. So then you don't have to dress it on the back end after you've made the mistake. So I think your point is exactly what we need to do. And Jack Dorsey exactly hit the nail on the head. If you start at the beginning, architecting these companies so that they can serve different parts of the market, then we won't have to fall into the traps that we've fallen in today. And then they could be more equitable because even when we're creating platforms that address women's health needs, they're for white women, they're not for black women, because black women, Hispanic women, Asian women, they have different needs, different health care needs. So I think we need to start thinking about cultural competence when we're starting that early, early design of these new tech companies.
Aakriti Srikanth
Yeah, I think that's a great point to bring up Maria. Has anyone experienced a moment where you've been called aggressive, just because of the same leadership qualities when men are looked at as, this person has leadership skills, and this person is awesome. And if you do the same thing, as a female, you're aggressive? Has anybody encountered that? What do you think the solution for that is? How do we change this norm? It's in the mindsets of people like this, how can people start changing this?
Lillian Chan
From a business perspective, we put on our website our culture or our inclusive values, and that actually brings in customers that are more inclusive, more of our tribe, and we get more strong, loyal customers that way. And I believe that when you're explicit and clear about your values, that brings other great people to the table. So allow people to understand that you're very conscious about these issues, and you want to change things. Because if we want any change for our system, we have to be the change.
Aakriti Srikanth
Christine, do you have any points on that? I know, you've also faced that in the past. Do you want to share that perspective?
Christine Heckart
Yeah, that's an example of my entire career. There's definitely a double standard. And quite frankly, women have the double standard just as much as men do. And it's not about race. In this case. It's really about gender bias. And it's deeply embedded for all the reasons that you talked about earlier. And so I do think the thing we can all do is if companies write down what they expect out of leaders or team members or whatever it is just write it down, make it part of the culture, these are the attributes. This is how we expect our leaders to show up, then it becomes an objective conversation. I'm either showing up in these ways, in which case I should be rewarded for it. Or I'm not showing up in those ways, in which case, I should be penalized. But we all should be showing up in the same way I shouldn't be penalized, and somebody else rewarded for the same behaviors.
Marissa V
But I would disagree a little bit. And I would point to Justin on this, I think it is gender too, because if he speaks up, he's an angry black guy. So he is still experiencing the same thing we are, and it's not based on just on gender, it's race as well. So I just don't want to leave that out. And I'm sure, Justin, you have plenty of examples where this happens. And you can't even share your ideas. You can't even be an authoritative leader that you want to be because you don't want to be labeled the angry black guy.
Aakriti Srikanth
Rashida, would you like to share that perspective on things that you face personally?
Rashida Hodge
I think as minorities we face this every day, I think early on in my career, I felt like I had to assimilate. And you know, as I grew on my career, and became more confident and had a film of confidence, I didn't assimilate anymore. And I just brought my full self. And it's up to you to decide if you want to roll with me or not. And so what I tell my mentees a lot of times, I want you to get to that point that I got to much faster so that you can have that film of confidence. And you have to stand up, because, "why should I have to change how I act? How I speak, how I show up? Because you're not comfortable?" That's not right. So that's where we have to be much more inclusive around what is standard, what is the norm not because it may not be familiar to you, or because where I may express myself may make you feel uncomfortable. That doesn't mean that it's wrong. But that's what being inclusive, and what diversity is all about.
Annie Brown
I think something that came up when we were discussing this panel was centering, and what that means. Because I think a lot of times what happens is, you can include people at the table, but if they're still at the margins of the table, then those norms remain the norm. How we can center marginalized voices in investing? How can we center them in technology? So at our company, we've been doing a lot of centering in design. So we specifically take those marginalized voices and design for that. What are some other ways we can center for technology and investing?
Corey White
Well, for technology, it's about creating a greater data set, it's about having more equitable data. Right now we have unequal data sets, and it's causing many of these problems that we're seeing, we're seeing that facial recognition software is misidentifying women of color at alarming rates. And that's really because the internet is white-centric, it's why we see in word association things, women are associated with nurses and maids and men are associated with janitors, because it's feeding these historical biases for us. We need to ensure that we've got an equitable data set and that these technologies are being monitored constantly, not just rolled out, and then just let go. We need to be constantly auditing these technologies to ensure that they're not causing issues in marginalized communities.
Heidi Rozen
You know, look, I mean, I was very fortunate in that I had a great mentor, Anne Winblad who became a VC 10 years before I did. So, I was super lucky to have been an entrepreneur backed by a female investor and a former CEO herself. And I continue to be so thrilled to see the successes and improvements that we're making, both in the venture capital industry and of dual importance, in all the female entrepreneurs that we're seeing in funding.
Lila Tretikov
I have a very positive and optimistic point of view. I think the most amazing part about our brain, which we're trying to model with AI now, is that we're constantly changing, constantly growing, and like Heidi was just saying, we're making strides, but this is not a binary situation, we're going to have to keep working at it. And we're going to have to keep getting better. And we're going to have to keep improving ourselves in terms of being more inclusive, listening to others, continuing to do that, and one step at a time where we will get to the destination that we're envisioning for ourselves. So I'm, you know, this is one of the very, very few places in the world where you can be an immigrant and you can be very, very different from everybody else, and still be successful. So I have very high hopes for where we're going.