The conversation around diversity in tech persists. One effect of this has been the creation of executive positions designed to oversee a company’s approach..
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The conversation around diversity in tech persists. One effect of this has been the creation of executive positions designed to oversee a company’s approach to inclusion. That’s great.
TechCrunch Sessions: Justice brought together activists, union organizers, advocates and tech leaders to for lively conversations examining the intersection of justice and tech. Leslie Mac, DeRay Mckesson, Maxine Williams, Tony Prophet, Malkia Cyril, Matt Mitchell and Nicole Sanchez joined folks from the ACLU, the Last Mile, Measures for Justice and the Hidden Genius Project to examine criminal justice reform, diversity and inclusion, tech and the so-called pipeline problem that hiring managers like to bandy about. You should have been there. TechCrunch Sessions: Justice
If you weren’ t among the lucky ones to have the privilege of attending, we have you covered. Below is every single panel that made up TechCrunch Sessions: Justice. Watch them, share them and continue the conversation.
Why did Elon Musk wait until it was about the climate to pull out of Trump’s councils? Why shouldn’ t a tech CEO run for governor? Federal policies affect local constituencies and people in tech have an opportunity to fight for change at the local level. Erica Baker, soon-to-be director of engineering at Kickstarter, and Catherine Bracy, co-founder and executive director of TechEquity Collaborative, discussed the interest the tech industry has taken in social justice issues. soon-to-be director of engineering at Kickstarter TechEquity Collaborative
When you’ re a first-time founder of color trying to get funding, what do you have to do? According to Michael Seibel of Y Combinator, you have to be 20 percent better at everything. Monique Woodard of 500 Startups and Laura Gómez, CEO and founder of Atipica, debate whether an aspiring founder needs to be in Silicon Valley and offer practical advice to getting that first meeting. And the second. Michael Seibel Atipica
You might not know that you need a big crypto hug, but Matt Mitchell of Crypto Harlem has one for you. But why for the black community in particular? Crypto Harlem
“Surveillance is a tool of oppression, and black folks have been surveilled since before the slave ships. You look at a manifest of a slave ship and people were numbers and cataloged. You look at an overseers diary and it’s basically a CCTV camera but written out in handwriting. All the way up to COINTELPRO where a who’s who of civil rights and racial justice leaders from the 60s and 70s [were surveilled] . It’s part of a program, especially in this country, to dismantle those organizations because they’ re disruptive.” COINTELPRO
That’s why. That’s why.
It’s no secret that Silicon Valley has a diversity problem. But who doesn’ t? “The legacy of this country — we were founded on slavery and stolen land and genocide, ” says Nicole Sanchez, vice president of social impact at GitHub. “Silicon Valley alone isn’ t going to be able to upend that.” This question is impossible to answer unless those who are asking it are willing to go far deeper than the numbers from a diversity report.
Wayne Sutton of Change Catalyst, Rachel Williams, head of diversity at Yelp, and LaFawn Davis, global head of culture and inclusion at Twilio, talked about what it takes for tech companies to get at the root of their diversity problems.
Cognitive diversity + programming: That is the “yes-and” equation that Maxine Williams, head of diversity at Facebook, employs at the company in its pursuit of a more diverse workforce. When you have cognitive diversity, a foundation where people think differently, that is where you achieve diversity of thought. At that point, Williams says, is when the “and” part of the equation emerges. “When I say it’s yes-and, we lay the foundation with cognitive diversity as a principle, and then we talk about the programming, and the programming does in fact go heavy on things like gender, race, ethnicity.”
She also touches upon hiring practices in tech. You know when you tell the people you know about the jobs open in your company? Williams isn’ t a fan of that. “I’ m not in the people you know thing; I’ m into skills you have.”
Many of us will never serve time in prison, and many of us will never serve time in the military. Yet, those who have will sometimes find themselves suddenly thrust back into society, forced to make livings that they might not be prepared to make.
Kenyatta Leal, having served 19 years in prison, was released from San Quentin and immediately began working for RocketSpace. Donald Coolidge, a veteran of the Marine Corps., is the co-founder and CEO of Elemental Path. Organizations like Chris Redlitz’s The Last Mile and Katherine Webster’s VetsinTech help bridge the gap for those who want to break into the tech industry as a returning citizen. The panelists have stories that I’ m sure not many of you can relate to. Elemental Path The Last Mile VetsinTech
Living in the Central Valley of California and commute two hours each way to Cisco taxes your time, energy and bank account. Do this as a low-wage worker and your life is dramatically impacted in ways most people will never understand. Jennifer Morales, who works in a cafeteria at Cisco, kicked this panel off by talking about her job before and after she and her colleagues organized a union. kicked this panel
Derecka Mehrens of Working Partnerships for her part is trying to challenge the narrative that Silicon Valley is working for everyone. Because as she says, it isn’ t. “ Silicon Valley Rising came out of this idea that we had to not only push to create middle wage jobs we had to upgrade the conditions of low-wage work especially in profitable industries.” Guess what industry is profitable? And Y-Vonne Hutchinson of Project Include flipped the conversation to the 1099 workers whose roles aren’ t all that great, either. Oh, and Morales is just getting started. Working Partnerships Silicon Valley Rising Project Include
“You cannot inject technologies into a condition or situation of white supremacy and expect anything but white supremacy to be the result, ” Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice says about the role that technology plays in the quest for racial and economic justice. It’s a grim reality; when body cameras focus their gaze on black and brown bodies and social media platforms readily police the words of black activists, the pursuit for justice becomes harder. Center for Media Justice
Cyril says we need to shift the power dynamic and demonstrate more directly what communities of color want. Silencing voices and limiting action is not the way to achieve that goal.
Hiring reps at tech companies will tell you the reason their companies’ demographics lean heavily toward the white, cis and male is because there is a pipeline problem. Karla Monterosso from Code 2040, Michael Essien of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Academic Middle School, and Brandon Nicholson of The Hidden Genius Project will tell you differently. It’s about access and it’s about opportunity. Code 2040 The Hidden Genius Project
We’ re in a time of resistance. If you haven’ t felt it, social activist DeRay Mckesson of Campaign Zero and Pod Save the People broke it down for you. He talked Twitter’s role in activism and what it’s like to walk the resistance road in 2017 and beyond: “I try not to let the fear get to me too much, because I know that people want to see me too afraid to do the work.
