Courtney Greer is a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Commercial Software Engineering team. She is also a Black LGBTQ woman in the tech industry with insights on diversity, inclusion and what more can be done within the tech industry to support people from all backgrounds.
Timestamps:
1:41 - Diversity in tech compared to other industries
4:01 - Retaining people of color in tech
6:33 - What topics should people be allowed to discuss at work?
13:27 - How much innovation are we missing out on by excluding certain groups?
16:00 - What is covering?
21:25 - Does the majority group within a population ever cover?
24:22 - Allyship
27:33 - Kaizen and inclusion
30:03 - How can executives better affect change?
33:19 - Black Venture Institute
34:50 - Bias in tech hiring
36:31 - Checking unconscious bias
39:52 - Should companies impose standards to increase representation?
42:28 - Conversations on diversity on Clubhouse
49:07 - Book recommendations
Courtney Greer is a Program Manager at Microsoft on the Commercial Software Engineering team. She is also a Black LGBTQ woman in the tech industry with insights on diversity, inclusion and what more can be done within the tech industry to support people from all backgrounds.
Timestamps:
1:41 - Diversity in tech compared to other industries
4:01 - Retaining people of color in tech
6:33 - What topics should people be allowed to discuss at work?
13:27 - How much innovation are we missing out on by excluding certain groups?
16:00 - What is covering?
21:25 - Does the majority group within a population ever cover?
24:22 - Allyship
27:33 - Kaizen and inclusion
30:03 - How can executives better affect change?
33:19 - Black Venture Institute
34:50 - Bias in tech hiring
36:31 - Checking unconscious bias
39:52 - Should companies impose standards to increase representation?
42:28 - Conversations on diversity on Clubhouse
49:07 - Book recommendations
If you guys clicked on this, you already know what the title is, that this is an episode of by diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. So our guest is someone we've already had on her name is Courtney Greer. And she talked to us previously about everything she's learned as a project manager and a scrum leader at Microsoft. But in addition to that, she's also a. Black LGBTQ women in the tech industry. She's also a really good friend of mine. So I've had a lot of conversations with her about how the industry can do better. And, you know, we just felt like this is something that we want everyone to. Hear what she has to say and hear other ways that they can be allies and help. The world be more fair, at least in their pocket of the world and the tech industry. So this episode is gonna be a bit different, but I think it's just going to be just as interesting. And I think it's going to be just as insightful. Courtney has so much to say about this topic, so let's get into it. So, Courtney, thank you for coming back our first recurrent. Yeah. I'm so excited and proud to be reoccurring. Yeah, you should be. Your first episode is really good and did a big dump. It's our number one so far. And these people liked their voice, which I never know. You, you don't like your own voice. So. So just to start with, you know over the past year, many Americans have been awakened to the ways that people of color and especially black people are discriminated against not given equal opportunities or not given voices in many institutions in this country. Lots of industries have recognized this and trying to make improvements. And you have a firsthand insight that the salt that I will never have as you're a black LGBTQ woman in tech. So do you feel like the tech industry has the same issue that so many other industries in America do. I would say yes. And I would actually say like Apple. Yes. Which is like hard to hear. It's an uncomfortable, well, truth where it is an industry that like address it a very long time ago. They were saying like, Hey, there is a big gap. Like even through college, I was understanding that people are saying, no, we need to focus on getting minority students involved in STEM technologies. But, but the sad reality is, is that it's like a really deep history. And unfortunately with it's so rooted and it's so such a long history to unpack. It gets harder when I'm talking about it's just within tech. Like even though we're making this big push and we're trying to do changes, like the majority of people that are involved in tech and involved in senior positions are white men or kind of Asian men in general, like in a lot of other tech forms. So because that is still there and it's rooted there. There's like a, a smaller, of course, population of people, of minority people that are coming into tech. And people always say like, Oh, there's just not enough people to hire. That's not the case. Like what are we doing systematically to keep people there and their jobs and looking at like black retention inside of tech. That's a problem that still is still an issue today. And making people feel comfortable. Inside a tech if there are a person of color or a woman, it's still like problems that we see in the media still where we hear about harassment, sexual harassment in the workplace, and people not actually facing real consequences against it, and we still are seeing those issues. And so it's a really big problem. Yes. And although we're making a lot of progress and this is an industry that's actually addressing it. Putting out data points to show what they're doing. The numbers are still low and it's still like, it's something that we have to talk about and have to be uncomfortable around and keep kind of making estate mistakes. It keeps getting effort. And so I say capital, yes. Because like, although we're, we're going towards the right thing, we're still have a lot of setbacks and we're still making a lot of like sideway paths that we just don't want to stop that momentum. And so we're like on a route, but it's still the reality is, is that it's a very male. White dominated field. And we're still seeing low numbers of people are getting invested into it at an early age, which means it's gonna, that problem is still going to keep repeating. Some people characterize this as just a pipeline problem where it's, there's a not, not enough women or people of color applying to jobs and they don't touch on retention. Can you explain the retention issue? Yeah. And it goes into this idea of like, So they say, okay, yeah, we hired, like we just hired a hundred, you know, African-American people to the job. Cool. You brought them in. And then when you're talking about like, are you promoting them? Are you giving them equal pay? Are you making them feel like unique individuals? Not saying like, we hired them in and then, you know, we're training them to act like the us we're training them to be like us. We're not addressing kind of their needs as individuals. We're just putting them at a seat to work. We're not inviting them to the main conversations. I know you had like back channel conversations, meeting, like you just catch up with a buddy during lunch, and you're talking about real ideas and real movements inside of your industry and you're leaving out people. They just look different from you. So it was actually like, It behaviors that are inside of the work environment. Aren't solved just by hiring a bunch of people in because the minority group isn't going to come in and just be like, Oh, we're changing everything we're doing this. No, usually they're going to often take the backseat just because they feel like imposters when they first walk in the door. And there's Nick kind of afraid of retaliation afraid of being the first person to speak up because they're going to get a bunch of eyes that look back to them that either like ask them for a ton of advice and overwhelm them or. Don't want anything to do with that conversation feel it's uncomfortable and then don't want them near that many more. And so it's not enough to just hire a bunch of people in, it's just changing the behaviors of the people around and making them feel as included as everyone else in a very unique and authentic way. Like just being themselves and not, there's like a meme going around, like when I was first hiring that like a lot of black people use or they like, they go to work and as soon as they leave work, they shed their skin and they become their real self. Like that adds so much pressure to a person. If they have to change their identity, to walk into the office, watch how they say, like make sure their dialect. Matches their counterparts and had so much pressure that there can't even like, think of their job and do their job accurately. It's like so much more stress and so much more tax on a person than just showing up as you are. And so the more that a work environment can allow people to show up as they are and encourage that behavior, it leads to better retention. And also just like, it leads to just better innovation, which has been proven with like the accurate and the right hiring of minority people into offices. And actually wanted to get your take on this recent trend. I think that we're seeing in tech and specifically in startups. So I'm sure you guys heard about what's happened with Coinbase. So I think like a few months ago Coinbase came out, I guess there's like a few months before they IPO it. Obviously they came out with this all-encompassing. Internal policy that employees could not touch on politics religion. And there is a certain number of topics that they straight up just outlawed. And they were like, there's really no room for conversation here. This is a business organization. We're here to conduct business and we're here to create this great product, et cetera. They had a lot of blow back. I think. Unanimously Silicon Valley's like, I don't want to work at Coinbase. Coinbase is going to see a lot of turnover. Employees are going to leave to, to a company. That's going to give them the opportunities, opportunity to at least talk about politics. And I guess, whatever it is that they really care about. But then you fast forward three months. Coinbase has a spectacular IPO and all that criticism sort of went out the door. But then this last month we saw base camp, which is a much smaller company. They're just 60 employees. And they implemented the exact same policy that Coinbase did at the end of the week. They had lost 33 people. They all, they all the mass quit. And I thought that was really fascinating I guess my question is how, what's the difference here? What is the right thing to do. If you are conducting a business, our employees expect to come in every day and do what is expected of them as given to the details of their job. Or are they allowed this room to also talk to their coworkers about things outside of the scope of their work? Yeah. And it's been said for a while about like, don't bring up politics at work, don't bring up the kind of your sexual orientation at work. Don't do this. And like, if you think back to like, why not? It's so weird, like it's certain topics, but like, I don't know if the Pope made a weird announcement, like really odd announcement, like. That people wouldn't want it to talk about. They really, they probably would. They bring it to work. If the president kind of did some type of weird thing, we did something where they do bring it into work. It's usually what they're talking about. When they say like, don't bring politics, it's usually topics that they're uncomfortable with or topics that are kind of going to shake the foundation or shake anything that's going to be happening until in the work is going to make leadership, not know how to react. Right. They're usually not saying don't talk about like that big story that came out in the times today. They're usually talking about like, let's not bring this heavy news into here because it's going to burden all of us. It's kind of, it's going to make that white guilt feeling kind of weigh us all down today. And so. We're seeing this trend where a lot of young people, and I feel like we've seen some of the numbers, a lot of young people like want their company to take a stance on things. And they actually want people to start talking about this at work. I think a lot of stories that have come up or just like. When I was graduating college and was in, I was in college, that's when the Trayvon Martin was first shot and, and that story hit really hard for a lot of people. Like Trayvon Martin looked like my younger brother, so to like actually have that realization and start to thinking, talk about that. It's very hard to then just go to school and be like, okay, I'm smiling. No, one's talking about this because it is at the back of my mind. And as soon as I leave. On my Facebook feed and my Instagram and Twitter. That's all I see. And so to not have a place to go and talk about that. I can go talk to a colleague and just put on a bright face like that, actually, that does a lot for your mental health and to try to keep a smile on and not break down at work is a lot. And so not allowing your employees to have that space. It leads to a lot of burnout and leads to like a lot of emotional burnout of your employees. And it's comes to that conversation of more of like, if you can have people show up well, like mentally well show up. Full as a human being and allow them space to kind of grieve or process until they are full and a work environment. Like you get happy employees that are actually like contributing to the company culture in a much productive, much more productive way. And so we're seeing a trend that I feel like in the new hiring and recruiting phase, we're going to have to face that a lot of the old ways are going to have to go away around that conversation. Cause employees actually. Like young employees want people, their company to take a stance now, like they will leave if they don't agree with the policy. And I know that, you know, they want to take a bipartisan view. They don't want to lean left or right when it comes to politics. But a lot of young employees are actually, like they say, I will work for a company that follows my models and my views, and I will follow that company. If, if that counts, so it's a risky play. A lot of people are saying like, Oh, if we do that, we'll lose this, this amount of company. I even say, like, just opening up those conversations and having them is going to lead to better retention in the workplace. And it's going to lead to more productive, like. Productive conversations that are going to change the behaviors in your workplace that we talked about, you know, at the beginning of the call the other thing is You know, employees, especially young people should realize how desperately companies need them, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We are not a throw away talent. Like just kind of getting your degree and studying something for four years. Isn't something that, you know, employees are taking lightly. And especially now that the numbers and metrics are coming out and people are investing in quarterly, like minority talent. Leads to innovation. Now, people are saying that that is a direct thing. If you can have more people and more diverse perspectives and innovation meeting, and I think takes meeting, they're bringing their individual problems, problem statements, and solutions to the table that if you were just in this bubble, you would not know. And be able to solve with before. So it's kind of being able to even like go into new markets and solve issues that people care about that are coming to the table. And it's not even just like putting new products out there and making more money. It's actually making it, making changes in that, in their culture and their communities that they want to see made. And creating products that are going to just better and uplift our community as a whole. And it just starts with bringing the right people and bringing different people to the table for those conversations as well. And so we're seeing that direct correlation and the companies want that. They're like, yes, we have to have those people there. We have the half of them. We have to have them happy and healthy, and we have to give them space to have those conversations so that we can of, we can not just help our bottom line, but we can as like Microsoft, they say, we want to help. We want to help. We want to help every organization and every person achieve more. So every, if we, if we can't talk to every person, if we can't understand what every person's problem is authentically and uniquely, you know, how are we going to help? It's going to be a blind effort to go in and help if we can't do it, I've been in a lot of product development meetings. Where it was just so obvious that we were getting levels of innovation. That would have been impossible if we didn't have people from different countries, people from different hometowns, people from different backgrounds, all contributing their viewpoint and how we should develop this product. So scale that up and put that across corporate America. How much, how many orders of magnitude of innovation are we missing out on? Are we leaving on the table? Yeah, a hundred percent. I feel like we've also seen the reverse where the same people aren't there and they miss certain things. It's not even in tech. I think the latest, like my favorite thing or not favorite, it was just kind of the funny thing of like, I think Gucci, like they put out a product that was a new sweater and it obviously like had black face on it. And if you were just like, if they just had like one black person at that meeting, and it's not even just that they could have had one black person at the meeting, but a person who felt. I'm empowered at work to speak up because it could be one person who acts as that representative, but it's so like fearful of being retaliated against that. If they say something, they just stay quiet too. But just like one person would have said, Hey, this is not a good idea. And stopped a huge, huge PR nightmare for them. And we see that a lot in 3d different industries. And it's a little more harmful sometimes in technology when we're starting to build products that influenced the world. Like a lot of baseball stadiums use facial recognition to like, if they ban someone, they want to be able to scan and see like, Oh, that person's coming in. Well, if you don't train your algorithm to have more black faces to have more Asian faces, you're kind of starting to blend and it might actually target someone who isn't the person you are. And it might do that multiple times and cause it very dangerous situations. Like if. For say the cop is called because they don't know. There's trying to explain themselves that they're not it. Like, that's just something so small that you think like, Oh, if a person of color was there and could offer an insight into, Hey, we need to train more because our features like skin color is, is not the only feature we need to train for. You're able to eliminate that and that's just code bias and you can see that in different industries as well. Yeah, I also, I honestly just wanted to highlight, I think, two really interesting points that you've made earlier you suggested that maybe having a organization that's publicly leaning either right or left could actually be a competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting, which I think is really fascinating. I'm sure. At the Google level, or like at the Facebook level or Microsoft level, They could really not be leaning either. So just because they're, you know, international organizations and whatnot, but if you're like a hundred person organization, I could see that, that, that, that could make sense from a hiring perspective. And the other thing I want to pick up, you effectively described what covering is earlier, which is. Showing up to work and not being able to you know, share some sort of experience that you had or really be your true self. Could you describe what covering is? Yeah. So covering, like you just stated so wonderfully, there is kind of when you cover up certain parts of your identity so that you can feel safe. At work. So I am a black woman as you know, so an LGBT woman at work. And usually I'm just like, Oh, I got three bucket's already in the minority scale. So I, I definitely felt in my first job, like, it was kind of this thing. I don't want to be too black. I don't want to be too gay or I don't want to be too feminine at work. And those are the three things. And the more I started to cover, the less I felt there at work, the less connection I felt with my. Coworkers because I really couldn't be authentically myself. And I noticed that a lot of my friends were people outside of work and they look completely different from my coworkers and I felt much more detached from work just because I wasn't showing up as myself. And so covering can be as simple as for women. Not talking about their children, not talking about their, wants to become mothers because they feel like, Oh, they won't be promoted or they won't be paid enough because the company is going to be like, Oh, she's going to go on maternity leave anyway. For an LGBT man. It might be just not talking about his boyfriend. I've had an example where a manager, like, just assume that I had a boyfriend and was just like, Oh yeah, but your boyfriend, you can do this. And although, like, it could have not been a malicious statement, he's just coming from his own experience. It made me cover. It may be just be like, Oh, He probably wouldn't be comfortable if I did talk about my girlfriend. So I'm just not going to bring it up anymore. And that detaches me from him, actually knowing more about me and understanding more of me as an authentic person. And so when we cover at work and I kind of touched on intersectionality as well, just because I overlap a lot of my identities. It's just kind of holding back and identity just because you fear either. You're just going to be looked at different or you're not going to fit in with your peers. And as it is showing that the more people cover. The more they detach from work and pretension is affected as well. Because if you can't show up as yourself at a place where you spend eight hours a day for five days a week, you're just got to feel less happy and less fulfilled in that role. And you're going to go somewhere that you fit in a little bit more. And unfortunately what that causes them is people go where they fit in more and they start to go to places that are identical. And everyone looks the same. And then we come into this problem, diversity as well. And it's not possible for a lot of people to go to a company where everyone looks like themselves. So then where do they fit in? Do they switch industries? They go somewhere. They just stick where they are and keep their head down and not actually try to strive for leadership roles is all affected in that way. I think, no, I think you bring up a great point because for us, and I have this conversation all the time, where do we draw the line in terms of what is politics? Is diversity politics or is it diversity? Just diversity, something that exists in everyday life. Is it just something else? Yeah. For some people, some people might say it's politics, but other people might say, that's my life, you know? Yeah. I'm just trying to live. I'm trying to live in like a lot of people will tie diversity into like, when you take an action or a government action out of it. Like a lot of people had a problem back in the day with affirmative action, because they're like, this is reverse racism, like politics and brought in reverse racism. They're taking. My job, quote unquote, because someone that was a privilege for them to have it. And so they kind of linked the two just because they feel like it's out of their control, which sometimes it's LinkedIn to kind of the way that politics is and you have to vote for this. Well, yeah, a lot of people are just like, no, this is just my life. Like I'm trying to be myself at work. I'm trying to make sure it's a safe place for me to go at work. And then like, I definitely think it's double politics sometimes when you talk about like immigrants and people that. Like work in the U S that aren't from the U S and people that don't speak English as their first language, and they're trying to assimilate and trying to become someone else. And so when they're talking about Western politics and they have like like a politician has a say over whether they get to stay here or not, like, it does become like a quote unquote political matter, but it's really just for a lot of people just about existing. Yeah. For some people. I think one thing which is very interesting about covering is that this is something which affects you, even if you're not a minority. So I remember I in my senior year of call of high school, my senior year of high school, I took a civics class and our teachers said that. Protection of minority rights and minority beliefs, which is useful to even the most selfish person. Even if all you care about is yourself, you will have some belief that is a minority belief. And if that, and if the ability to express minority beliefs is not protected, everyone is hard. Yeah. And we can't grow as a society if we can't take in new perspectives and we can't allow those news perspectives to just. Go into people's ear, go and think about it and be talked about, and even, you know, celebrated, like we will not advance as a society. If those things aren't brought to life and there's not a space for that to be shown. And like I said, work takes up so much time of your day. Like not to be able to be yourself authentically. In a place where you're supposed to be making a wage and making support for your family. It's a lot, it's very stressful to start to slip away your identity at a place that means so much, it has so much impact to you and to the economy and everything, you know, are there ever any examples of where the majority population within the group has to cover? It's not as common, it's just not as common. Because usually, you know, once you'd get around people that look like you or are like, you, you kind of just relax a lot more when I'm at home with my family or back home family reunions and things, and people would just look and act the way I do it just feels like I am, I'm doing my thing. I'm walking around. Hi, auntie, what's up? How are you doing? Like, it's very, just relaxing and you feel calm and at ease in the minute. That you walk into an environment that doesn't seem like you, when people start talking and you can see that they're connecting and you're just not making the same references or making the same statements, you start to just take a back seat by reaction. It's like more of an initial thing that happens that you really can't even control. And so it could totally happen. And a lot of people cover just because they look passing. And if you've heard that like, Gender a transgender man. You might not know he's transgender, transgender, and so he might pass as a CIS man. And so a lot of people might project things onto him, or, you know, he might be able to like, get the privileges of a white man assists white man just by existing, but he is covering because maybe he won't speak about that just because people already have assumed and he can't bring his transgender ideas, beliefs Stories to live and get help with things such as healthcare. When it comes to a work environment, he can't raise issues because he feels like automatically he had to cover just because he passes and people have those projections onto him. So there's a lot of intricacies when it comes to covering and how people do it. And a lot of people cover in like, just like they're saying, like their religion, like to assume everyone is a Christian and that they want off for Christmas and things like that, which we used to do. Like. People, if people will take a backseat and not talk about whether they're Buddhist or, or a Hindu or, or, you know, they are atheist and they just don't want to make a fuss. And thus, they can't bring that to the table. And people can't learn from you. Like my favorite thing is talking to someone who is so different for me and just listening to them, understanding where they come from, because it's just a new story that I haven't heard before. And it just brings my perspectives into so much of a different view and part of allyship. As we started to talk about it. It's just really putting yourself into someone's shoes and understanding how they want to be treated and supported. And so if we can do that and just kind of open up and allow spaces for people to authentically come to the table, like you're just learning and growing yourself as well. When it comes to even like the most selfish person in the world can grow just from someone else's viewpoint. One conversation, if they all, if everyone's guard is down and they're allowed to be their most unique self. Okay. Can you expand on allyship? Yeah. Yeah. Allyship is just a helping hand, simple simplest form. A lot of people are talking about allyship and work is like now that the conversation and we understand what we are as a society, we've woken up after a lot of people have woken up after in the murder of George Floyd last year. A lot of people reached in with like, how can I help. How can I help proactively there's right. Ways to help in these situations and there's wrong ways to help. And I want to be there and helping allyship is just, like you said, as a person who has certain amount of privileges offering a hand in allowing a space for someone who doesn't have these privileges to exist and grow inside of a company that we're talking about in tech. I think like at our company, we describe allyship as someone like. Or the way that you can be a better ally. It's just first, it's just being brave. A lot of people want to be. Or wanting to be allies, but they want to be careful and they want to toe as well. And they're really afraid to make mistakes. Allies, aren't afraid to make mistakes. A lot of tech companies are wanting to put their messaging out there, be on top and never want to have another PR disaster and byproduct. They play safe all the time and they kind of tiptoe around issues. And part of the, like, I don't know, BB of allyship and beauty of growing as a person, it's just making mistakes and having people correct you and not making a, such a big deal. Just like if you use someone or you misuse someone's pronoun and then they say, Oh, no you know, he him, then they're like, Oh, Oh, I didn't know. Okay. Yes. Let me know now I know to support you. And now I'm someone else comes into me in a conversation and it starts talking about you and uses the wrong pronoun. Like I will as an ally step in and correct them because it's what I'm doing and I'm learning from you in the moment. And so. And ally is like, is brave. They're courageous. They listen and they proactively want to help someone who doesn't have the same privileges as them. It can be not like another example of allyship, which we've noticing is like, now that we're in remote work before we weren't, we had people that were. Working and East coast, but the whole office was in the the West coast. And so in meetings you have that one person who remote that one person always gets talked over. One person never really feels included. It's all like one way of it's like just to have a Proctor next to the computer that they can ping. And you can ask questions on behalf of them. It's a very small example, but it's just saying like, we are going to intentionally put some behaviors that I want to practice so that you feel included and safe. In the environment. And so an ally is always working to get there and there's a lot of talk tracks and like how to be a good ally because a lot of people would just want to go in and play the hero. Without checking, right? They wouldn't just go in and say, no, you're wrong. Like you hurt this person's feelings and you can't do that. And you're racist. And this is what we have to do without even checking for the person who might've been harassed or have been the aggressor. And so a good ally. Isn't just the person who yells the loudest. It's the person that actually puts themselves in their shoes, goes and checks on that person and says, how can I help? And if you don't want to talk about it, that's okay. But how can I do the work within myself to help. And in better my community, my organization in an impactful way. I love that example of having the person by the computer to make sure that they're listened to because I feel like, so to me, one of the most, one of the most impactful philosophies that I've ever read is this concept of Kaizen. So it comes from Japanese manufacturing and essentially Kaizen is constant improvement. If you accumulate small 1% improvements by every day, by the end of the year, you'll be like 10000% better. Something crazy like that. And I think this is an example, how can you do a Kaizen and allyship? This is totally example because we can't expect everyone to beat the same bar. When it comes to diversity inclusion, a lot of people, this is maybe the first conversation openly that they're having. And before they had it in their head, maybe they wanted to help. Maybe they wanted to make these mistakes. We were very afraid bringing politics, bringing the conversations and afraid of offending people. And now we're saying like, we're having this space where we're having these conversations where you can check your assumptions. By making mistakes by asking these questions. And if you allow me to have the voice to correct you and you don't get offended, like you're not like, Oh, well I'm not racist. You're just like, Oh wait, you were hurt by this. What happened? Can you, can I, can I learn from you? Let me speak. Let me see your perspective on things and see how I can change by behavior and just want a small change. Like I said, I'm just recognizing someone's pronouns. You got it wrong. You don't feel like terrible guilt about it. You're not going to go follow that person and send them roses and go make sure that like you pamper them every step of the way. Right? Just like, Oh, let me check my assumptions. Let me figure out like internally why that happened to me and now I'm going to be better going forward. And so that's what we have to do. And it's like, It's not a win or lose game. Like there's a lot of work that I'm doing with diversity and inclusion within myself. Like I would not say I'm an expert in any way. I'm a voice that has a perspective. And then I'm learning from people like myself. I'm learning from other women I'm learning from other African American women, elder, LGBT QIA plus people. And that's just part of my mission as a human is just to listen to people, get better, be courageous and not be afraid to make those mistakes. When it comes to just trying to be a better person. Right. I think you guys both made a great point for why a behavior needs to change at the lowest levels at the employee level. If we have to switch topics and focus a little bit more on what can organizations do at the C suite level or at the executive level. And I think historically we've seen like policies put in place or they've created groups or internal sort of overseen committees that, you know, they, they try to do some things. What do you think is the best approach at the C-suite level? Yeah. And we've seen a lot where we're seeing a lot more CEOs step in and say, Hey, this is my stance on it. This is how we want to help. And it's great. It's nice that we're seeing a lot of talk and I think they call it lip service when people are just talking a lot and we're not seeing actions that actually trickle down or we're seeing actions be put on the minority group, meaning they're doing all the effort, they're doing all the grassroots campaigning and Paul Policies that are supposed to make a difference when really the change comes from both sides. And a lot of it is heavy on the C-suite is actually around. Like, if you're saying we want to better diversity, let's see metrics, let's see some goals and let's see a plan to get there. Which we see with a lot of other strategies when you have a feature rollout and you're saying, okay, we want to grow this feature. Or we want to grow the metrics of users on this feature. And this is how we're going to do it. You can do that with diversity and inclusion too. And it's a lot of work. It's a big step, which is why it's kind of hard to take that plan. And then when you add intersectionality and it too, people are just double confused on how we're going to tackle that, but it's around. If we can see a C-suite level executive, put a plan in motion and to say, Hey, we're going to do something and here's how we're going to do it. That means a lot. And they have the power to start to make that work. We've seen examples of people hiring diversity and inclusion officers, but not giving them any power. Putting them underneath HR that barely has any power or influence with executives and people are saying no, that person should report to the CEO. That person should have influence on how the CTO works. They should have conversations with product groups and understanding biases and like training them on that. It shouldn't be a one-off unconscious bias training. And then the, the eighths. The diversity and inclusion officers, speaking of a bunch of events, though, they should actually be partnering with your executives to make changes that are going to trickle down. And then on top of that, what we're seeing and what we like to continue to see is that other executives are working with each other they're. So they're setting inclusion, acts as an industry. They're setting standards of how they want to go forward across, across the industry as a whole and collaborating on diversity inclusion efforts as well. Microsoft is at a diversity and inclusion inclusion conference for the first day was open to all of our partners in the community. So it was everyone could go and listen to, you know, all of the reporting that we've done, they could share. We had other organizations sharing and we had leaders and executives talking openly throughout each other's doors around the mistakes that they've made. What they're learning, what our metrics are and brainstorming with other diverse leaders of how we're going to make these changes. And so. We want to see the conversation. We want to see action more than just talk and saying we support black lives matter. What are you doing? What are the changes? And is this gonna fade away as soon as we're all done with this phase in 10 years, are we going to see the number of black employees stay settled or only increase when it comes to VCs? Are we going to see the actual investment in the black community, into black founders or into women founders? We want to see your plan or that work. And we actually want to see that momentum and hold you accountable to what we're saying as well. Actually, I'm glad you brought up sort of the black VC community. I came across this really interesting organization the other day. It's called the black venture Institute. I don't know if you've heard of that. No, I haven't heard of them. So there's this sort of trend now where we have a lot of these short 10 week. Sort of boot camps and I guess black venture Institute runs it. Some, some of these boot camps, they attract black people they're interested in entering the VC industry. And then they run masterclasses where they bring in a really well renowned VCs and whatnot to teach them the ropes get them in the industry, you know, build networks. I think that's a perfect example of, and that sounds like allyship. That sounds like actively going. Here's my privilege. Here's my ex. Experience, let me share it with you. Let me not give you a roadmap to say, Oh, this is my idea. You guys can take it and do what you want. But you're saying like, let me train you with the skills that I've had such a long history you know, I'm training in and let me go and share them to you. It's. Inside of companies are saying like let's actively mentor people in an authentic way. And that's a wonderful example of how they're saying. Okay. We see the, we see the difference. I think I saw the metric of like black female, or I think 0.0, there were 0.0, zero six. Black female founders or investors that got like over a million dollars of funding. I think either yes, year or the year before that. And so just like, how do we address that problem? Cause that's a problem. It's not that there are no black women founders, like they're not getting the training, they don't have that information available to them, those resources. And so that's a wonder, a full example of how you're seeing that problem in the community and an active way to go in as an ally to help and improve. Sure. Yeah. And I'll actually on the topic of encoded bias and also the C-suite and what executives are trying to do. I came across a really interesting anecdote that Eric Schmidt gave. Eric Schmidt for those that don't know was the CEO of Google. And he actually joined in the really early days. And you explaining hiring when they're blitzing and Google. So they're going from like a hundred employees to like 10,000 in a two year period or three year period. Which is just ridiculous. How do you hire the right people, et cetera. And the scale that they came up with is three or four interviews would go and interview the candidate. And each of them would give a number between one to five, five being the best and one being the worst. And then they'd average it. And then if it hit, I think like, even in some cases that even hired people that averaged like a 2.5 or three just because they're growing so fast. And then what they would do to see if their original calculation was actually correct is give them a number after a year into their tenure at Google and see, and compare it back to when they first hired. Right. So how do they perform in the past year? W what are the same five people that interviewed them give them now. And what they found is that. Unanimously women were being under counted or getting underscored on average when they were being hired. And then a year later they were performing way better than the score they were given on the interview interview day. And I think that's like, and that's sort of the bias that. People would have never agreed that they had how'd you ask them a year earlier when they were interviewing people. Like I'm not enough, I'm not going to show any bias against women. I'm not showing any bias against this minority. But the fact of the matter is it's in uncoated and we ourselves are not aware of this bias. So it's, it just seems like such a tough problem to bring to light people are stubborn people. Are they ignorant in some cases it seems like a very hard, yeah. And then on top of that, it's like the cognitive bias as well that people usually go for the information that aligns with their belief. And that's like, More strong. If you only have friends that like agree with you, or you only around coworkers that have your same belief pattern. And so like unconscious bias is like that. Like you become aware of it and you start to have those conversations at work. And you're like, we talked about being brave and checking your assumptions. It's an active practice that you have to do and start to model every single day. And so a lot of more of actionable things you can do in those hiring rounds is making sure it's a diverse panel of people. Making sure that there's double checks on those panels. It's not like just one or two people calling in a friend. And having them hire and kind of do what they need to do, but actually making sure that the representation of people that are hiring are the people that you're trying to get into the company. It's where you're actively looking and are the people or the communities that you're going to hire in, or the people that are hiring or reflection of those communities, if you're targeting, targeting them. So there's ways to kind of make sure that we're checking. Our unconscious bias with actual policies. But a lot of the work is just internal. It's when our, without ourselves it's things that we have learned from so many years and the media has put out and like entertainment has done to our brains that it's like, unwiring something that's been in your head for 25, 27 years that we have to actively untrain. It's really, really hard. But you can't like. You can't be afraid to start that training and know that it's happening every single day and know that you're going to make mistakes. You're all, you're going to mess up so much, but if you're understanding why, and you're making sure that you're coaching and you're under, and you're you're helping people when you start to coach other people, it helps you realize it as well. I think I talk about this example all the time when it comes to like educating people around you in a productive way. I think the word now people are talking about like, Council culture versus cancel culture. Meaning like if you have the energy, I always say, if you have the energy, if you have the wherewithal, if that person isn't worth losing to you and someone sends something that might be offensive, someone says something that just like, you don't understand why they said that. And you don't know if they're trying to be malicious. A lot of things that you can say is like ruins the smallest, just like asking. I wonder why he said that if someone says Courtney, your pink shirt looks stupid. You're like, why did you say that? And like, you're not shutting them off you're now that you're a pink shirt, racist. You're that? You're like, why did you say that? And they're like, well, I don't like pink shirts. And you're like, why don't you like pink shirts? Oh, well, someone in eighth grade punched me with the pink shirt. You're like, okay, what does it have to do with me? Like, is that an unconscious bias you have because of a situation that happened personal to you. Okay. Like now you recognize that. And you're like, Oh, And then you start to unwire that, but that's just like one small piece of information. It's a continuous practice. But once you understand what that word is, and you understand like kind of scenarios of hurt and pain and systematic kind of trauma that it has on people, if you want to take that action to be a better person and start to make those changes. Like you have that power to do it, but it's, it's not a, it's not an overnight switch. What? I think a lot of people want it to be, to kind of alleviate themselves of the guilt and the pain. Right. Okay. I'm doing better. I took the training. I'm good now guys. Okay. Unfortunately it's not. And when you have a certain amount of privilege as well, it's harder to shake. So, let me ask you this. Do you think it'd be progressive for companies to say, if you're going to have a particular type of meeting that is going to affect more than the sort of the representative population within this meeting, you should have X amount of black people or minority or et cetera. I would say like, yeah, you don't have to put a number to it, but there better be someone at the table and you better have them. You have better have the space for them. There to talk about the issues and ask you don't have to direct all of your questions to that person, but you should be able to call on them for guidance because. Person that's being affected or the people that are being infected. And in that community, like you have to talk to them. You have to listen. That's part of being an ally and actually making a change like a CEO needs to listen to the issues. It would be the same as if you rolled out a product. And you had so many negative complaints about it. Everyone hated that feature and you just kept trucking along. You're like, Nope, this is it. We got it. We're not listening to anybody else. You're not taking any consumer feedback. We were just going to keep doing that. You're not going to take a very positive path long term. And so part of it is like listening to the community that is in pain. When you make a mistake or you're trying to do some stuff and all the policies might not work either. And that's okay. Like, don't stop trying if you have a women's event and you accidentally, like for somehow you put all men on the panel to talk about their experience and everyone's just like, that was, you know, that was awful. Why would you do that? Don't shut down the women's conference. Just do it better next year. Learn and grow from it. So it, yeah, and I forgot the question that we started with, but yeah, yeah, exactly. I think you answered it, which was would it be progressive to set limits on or say specifically, you know, have a particular person at the table exactly. Go to the root of the problem. Don't be afraid to be yelled at. But like that, person's probably going to be the angriest too, which is good. Get it out. Let them talk to you about the issue. Don't take it personal or taken an event as a fence, unless it is personal, but maybe you should take it personal, but just listen, be there. And don't be afraid of that pain because it's not anger. Maybe towards her directed towards you. It's just pain. People are in pain. People are fear and feel. It are feeling a lot of discomfort unfortunately where they work and where they find passions enjoy. And so to actively ignore that and just say like, Oh, we're helping without going. And talking to that person is very hurtful and very painful and people know. People can tell when a statement is rolled out and you're just like that, that didn't hit home. That didn't have anything to do with me. And it, it makes your trust level so much more worse when you're just gloss over the issue. Yeah. Actually, I just wanted to share one more story in the early days of clubhouse, I remember going, and this really showed me the power of clubhouse. I go in and there's this ongoing room about the it was titled like SF is terrible, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, the title SF sucks. And then on the stage where four or five white VCs and they were just going off about SF and all the things wrong with it. And then at some point to the credit of Chesa boudin, who's the attorney general, I think, or. He, Oh, he's a da, sorry. He's a da district attorney. He jumps in and he's one of, they were blaming him for a lot of things. He just jumps into the clubhouse and he jumps on stage and he takes them out because he is a trained lawyer to his credit. And so he had great arguments and whatnot. So this entire thing goes on. Obviously it wraps up. Boom, it's done. Immediately after it's done. I think it had numbers like 2000 people immediately after finishes. Another clubhouse room opens up and it's all the people of color that were not included in the original conversation with, I guess, quote, unquote, more powerful people, more influential people. And people from Oakland is people from SF people who have been in the Bay area for generations. You know, they. Born and brought up in Oakland versus all these people are more like they moved there for their jobs they're like, how did they have this entire conversation without any one of us being there on stage? When we make up almost half of the population BNSF we've been here far longer than them, we built this city to what it is. We bought the, the, the, you know, we, we did the work. And I think for me, that was like really insightful because this is the allyship. And this is having somebody in the room who can speak for more than people being represented. A hundred percent. And it feels like when you come out of those, you're like, how does someone miss that? You're like, no one thought to put another person, like one person of color on that stage. But it's so easy to miss. If you're just in this bubble, if you think you're doing a common good, or you're just trying to hit a bottom line, it's so hard to reflect unless you have someone there to check and it's not someone who's like policing you. It's just someone with a different perspective that would see that and be like, Hey, the people in this panel that are complaining the most, don't actually make up the population and maybe someone can counter that argument and it might be a better conversation, like, and that's okay. It's an uncomfortable conversation, but it's something that needed to happen. Yeah, that's a really good example of just like. Right over the head bread for the head. Yeah. I think you should listen to this episode after it comes out. I hope they learn. How about that? We just learn and grow for sure. Yeah. Great. So I I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of your wisdom with us, Courtney. I think it's been incredibly enlightening and I'm going to take this with me forever. No expert, by the way. I know expert in a lot of times, like, I think over this past like I said, after the murder of George Florida and everyone kind of jumping on with the black lives matter movement, a lot of minority people in tech and a lot of minority people inside of their industries were kind of forced into the front. I got a lot of people asking me questions and I'm just like, I had to like check my own biases and kind of have those conversations with myself too, that I wasn't ready for. And a lot of like that I had to take the time to go learn because. One thing is that I'm an educated African-American woman and that doesn't make up the majority of my community either. So even sometimes going and connecting back to. My population, like I have a privileged that I don't understand. I'm also an African-American woman who was born inside of an African-American community, but grew up in a predominantly white community. So I have different biases that I have different privileges and things that I don't understand about someone else's perspective in the African-American community. So I, when I was kind of starting to answer questions and I'm like, wait, I don't make up the makeup, everything, I don't have the answers. That's kind of my thing. Like I have my perspective. And I like it. I liked my perspective. I kind of can share with other people, but definitely having conversations. And I'm just saying, like, if you listen to this podcast, like keep talking to other people, go learn from other people, go learn from others as many different voices and perspectives that you can. Cause that's how we grow as a society is if we go around people that don't look like us and go learn as much as you can, because you can learn from everybody. That's how I live my life. Everyone has something to learn. Yeah. Th th there's a great essay called the invisible knapsack. So that essay is about that essay says that minorities in America are carrying and knapsack are carrying this additional weight that the majority never has to carry. For example, when you do something as a minority, you represent. Your entire community. Whereas if a majority person does something, that's just one individual, you know, when you speak, you speak for everyone that shouldn't be the default assumption, belted. It definitely in college. And it's actually something that I studied in college because it does affect like test scores and things like that. Like I graduated with a class of maybe 80 to 70 people and I was the only black woman. There were three women and I think maybe two other African-American people. So like that's. In 2017 in you know, in Ohio. So I felt bad that like, Oh, if I talk too loud, everybody here is in a lot of people and my friends that were there, they were just like, yeah, I grew up in a predominantly white town. Like you're the first black friend I have. You were the plus black folks that I've actually had a conversation. Right. Which is great. But also like now they think that all black people act like me, like isn't the Kings and they haven't solved their issues yet. Like, and so you feel that pressure. And I definitely had a lot of testing anxiety, which is, I don't know if it was linked to that, just because like, I love learning. I love teaching people and my friends would always say like, why. Like you teach us everything. Why are your test scores always lower? And I'm just like, I don't know. I have test anxiety. I just don't like the pressure. And so like, it's felt still to this day and it's talking about that weight of like, you have to do two times amount of work for just the amount of recognition as everybody else. It's very true. And it's a lot of pressure and it's a lot of walking into his face and always looking different and trying to control your behavior to make everyone so everyone else uncomfortable, comfortable. So it's there and it's financial too. They talk about the black tax. A lot of people like African-American community don't come to generational wealth. And a lot of times when they do get to wealth, because of the fact that their parents didn't have it in a lot of American grants feel this first-generation Americans as well that they have to now support themselves and their family above them. And that's a reality for a lot of people like who start in the industry. Okay. I got this wonderful paycheck, but now I got to pay for my brother's house and my mom needs help. She has some health care problems and like, even that weight is a black tax that they talk about too. So there's just a lot of work that still needs to be undone, which is why when people say like, Our industry is doing well. What do you think we're doing good. It's just like, no, one's doing great. Like the bar is super low and we have to put that bar up a lot higher. Yeah. So just to wrap things up here, are there any books, any essays, anything that you think people should Google? Oh, actually let me, can I get a list out real quick? Yes, we have it nicely enough. We have like an internal diversity page for my organization and we have a book list. What's the organization. Let's see commercial or commercial software engineering. So the org inside of Microsoft. Yeah. Our organization to a light, like when the black lives matter movement started kicking off, like we had a. Like project Rosa is a grassroots project that we started, like a lot of African-American employees and it's still going. A lot of great leaders are taking that effort that they were just like, Nope, we're sick of this. We're actually gonna start making noise now. And luckily we have a very our leadership was like very empathetic and like, yes, take the floor. Like. Like we're putting ourselves accountable. We're partnering with this organization to like hire more African-American people then have these uncomfortable conversations every month and put this wonderful patients in there. So a lot of people recommend like how to be, how to not be, or how to be, let me do this again. So we have, Oh, examples such as like lead from the outside by Stacey Abrams. Who's a wonderful activist that you've probably heard of during the elections. We have a couple other ones such as algorithms of oppression, which is a good tech book. So just understanding unconscious bias when it comes to Technology invisible women is a wonderful book as well. Automating inequality is a good book when it comes to tech as well. The age of surveillance capitalism, which is cool. I like that. I've read that one. That's really cool. I'm trying to think of other ones as well. There's like. There's a lot of documentaries as well. One of my favorite documentaries Washington college's 13th that really just shakes you to the world. Like that's just a rough punch in the face of like, Oh, this is what's happening. Oh my gosh. Like I did not know a lot of people that came to me like. Was just like, Oh Courtney, what are some books I can read? I'm just like, we'll start with 13th. Go watch that first. And then it's kind of a trickle down for there. And anti-racist reading lists by there's a list online. Ebrum X Kennedy's lists. And it's just a good list of books there that you can kind of start to watch it a lot of fiction too, which is nice. Cause you can learn from fiction is just like people writing about their perspectives that are rarely nice glamorous way back. Right. But they were having some pretty hard reality. So like the color purple, which is one of my favorite books and their eyes were watching, God is just like a very. Beautifully told story. Just kind of about racism in a way that like the moral of the story generally is just like, be a good goddamn person but so it's cool that, that book, that lists has a lot of fiction and nonfiction lists as well. Cool. Well, these are conversations that we should constantly be having. You know, it's not going to end after one year. It's not going to end after a few laws are passed. It's not going to end. The minority representation hits some percentage. You know, these are things that we need to constantly improve and grow at the stations with people that don't look like me. There have them with people, people that look like you have them at your family dinner, because a lot of times the conversation is lost when a person of color or an LGBTQ plus person isn't in the room. And so those needs have happened and you can inform yourself with people like me, but actually like. Speaking up for someone like me when I'm not in the room is something that really needs to happen a lot more. Absolutely. Thank you, Courtney. I learned a lot too. No problem. Thanks for having me again. I can't wait for spot number three. I'm not looking myself early, but I am. No, we'll we'll definitely have you back. Please stay. I love talking to you. That's our episode for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to subscribe to us and rate us on Apple podcasts. We would really appreciate the support. You can also follow me on Twitter at F Z from Cupertino and Busan. The ad next facade. See you guys next week.