Does It Even Matter? The Quiet Power of Representation in Tech

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, where we talk about issues in underrepresentation and have difficult conversations.

Underrepresented in Tech is a free database with a goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech.

[00:00:17] Speaker B: Hello, Samah.

Hello, Michelle.

[00:00:21] Speaker A: How are you?

I’m good.

[00:00:24] Speaker B: Busy. I’m good. I’m working remotely from Congo. I’m enjoying Congo.

[00:00:30] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:00:30] Speaker B: I’m happy about going soon to WordCamp US planning, going really quickly, but other than that, I cannot really complain.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Very good. I’ve had a heat wave here for the last week. It’s finally starting to cool down a little bit. It’s been upwards of 30 centigrade, 100.

It’s actually reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit here.

And I am very, very blessed to have central air conditioning in my home.

[00:00:56] Speaker B: So.

[00:00:57] Speaker A: So I only have to experience it if I leave the house, which I’m trying not to do in the heat because I don’t want to melt. But anyway, I know I’m not a hot-house flower. I will not melt. But. But yeah, I just don’t need to be uncomfortable. So I stay in for the most part. But this past weekend, I was at Word Camp Montclair, so I do have a little bit of a gravelly voice because, as we all know, Michelle tries to talk over the crowds and things, and then comes back from every Word Camp with a little bit of laryngitis. At least it’s not as bad this time. So.

I’m waiting to hear from WordCamp US. I applied to speak at WordCamp US. Yes. I’m waiting to hear from WordCamp Canada. I applied to speak at WordCamp Canada, so fingers crossed on both of those. That would be exciting. This last weekend, were your ears ringing? Because I was speaking about you and me and Ali and this project, the talk, the. What I gave was titled Underrepresented in Tech: The Journey to Amplify Others.

Because we cannot, any one of us, represent everybody.

And so I can’t represent a black woman. I can’t represent a trans person. I cannot represent, you know, so many people right in. In this world. I can’t represent a blind person. I can be an ally for them, but I cannot represent them as I do not and have not walked in their shoes.

So we do what we can to discuss why we have this project and why we do what we do.

And I gave a really impassioned talk at the end. I was even crying a little bit, and I was, like, mortified that I was crying, but it was about the pride and the joy that I’ve had working on the underrepresented tech project, on our podcast, on our database, on the work that I’ve done with my selfie challenge raising money. And I think last I checked, it was almost $15,000 I’d raised in a little over three years. And all of that money has gone to help underrepresented speakers and organizers attend their WordCamps and all, all of that. And I was really weepy at the end. And then when I got back, a person messaged me and said they could tell. I was impassioned. They could tell I love what I do about this, but did it really matter?

And my first instinct was to be angry, you know, and snap back. Of course, it matters. Why would it matter? Kind of thing, you know, and. And this person is a minority, too. I’m not going to give any more information than that because I don’t want anybody to go after this person or, you know, or talk to them on our behalf, because it’s not about that. It’s about two questions.

One, does it matter?

I mean, I would argue that it does, or I wouldn’t keep doing this with you.

I keep doing the work that we do.

And two, when somebody asks, does it even matter?

What place are they coming from? Because this person, I think, is coming from a place of pain and from a place of. Of feeling downtrodden and wondering if their life is ever going to change, and if the work that we do here hasn’t impacted their life in any particular way that they could see or feel, then to them, none of it matters.

In spite of the fact that I think we have done a lot of good and continue to do good. I have no intention yet we’ve. We have perhaps been a little lax and have not recorded every week this year because schedules have been insane.

And, you know, being laid off earlier this year was very difficult for me, that kind of thing.

And we’re supposed to have done a newsletter every month. We haven’t done anything since last year. So, I mean, there are things that we want to do, and our time is limited, for sure, but I think the work that we do matters. And I have had other people say they’ve got jobs through our database. They have been asked on podcasts and blogging through our database, or to speak. People search our database looking for qualified individuals who will lend to the diversity of their company, not for tokenization, but because they know that various voices come with various experiences, and so it enriches their company, their stage, and their podcast to have different representation included. And so I would argue very much that yes, it matters. But that was after I kind of had to take a step back and not feel angry about somebody challenging me on it because I recognize they’re coming from a place of pain.

[00:06:01] Speaker B: Anyway, your thoughts first. Yes, I absolutely agree it matters, especially when people go do things out of their comfort zones. I will talk about myself as an example, it can make a big difference, especially when it comes to diversity education or the topics we talk about, and the research, and I’m talking personally about myself. There was one of our episodes where we talked about self-advocacy with Shailvi, and everyone thinks I’m a very strong, spoken person. But I always had an issue promoting myself to say Hey, I’m doing a good job or I deserve an extra salary raise or I deserve that position.

After the episode with her I read her book and I follow her on YouTube and I was really happy because after it I went for a promotion at work and I was speaking like promoting myself and I get it and that was like one episode I know talking about myself it helped me a lot and and I was really happy and I was saying like I hope there’s a lot of people or some people listening and there’s. I know a couple of our colleagues also listen to the podcast and they bought her book, and they also they starting like to exercising. This is one simple example.

Of course, we want to make a huge difference, and we’re doing it, maybe sometimes baby steps, maybe you take about topics people don’t feel comfortable talking about. We’re. We’re talking about educating, and it really matters what we’re doing. And I know sometimes you have very serious conversations, sometimes you talk about our life, because we are also human beings.

That’s my email.

[00:07:56] Speaker A: Just kidding.

I didn’t hear it, but I was like the bell went off.

Yeah.

[00:08:03] Speaker B: And if we’re going to talk about the sometimes one action that changed the whole history, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama, and she sparked the civil rights movement in the U.S. Of course, I would love to do something like that. The history reminds me remembers me all of the time what I do. And also like there’s Emma Watson used her fame to launch her He for She campaign in the United Nations, encouraging support of gender equality quality which is sometimes you think that you’re doing something small but ends up big. Of course, my dream for our podcast is to have the same effect on human beings as those Amazing things. But of course, with our database, I know a lot of people find jobs, invited to a podcast changed my life personally.

And I become stronger, more comfortable talking about diversity, talking more about the example, the salary gap, and raising my voice more and more in my work and outside of work.

And it’s really important. It matters because in the end, it’s not about the quantity, it’s about the quality, what we’re doing. If we change one person’s life for the better, that’s all I’m happy about. I don’t care if it’s 1 million. One person said, Yes, you changed my life better, or you helped me to find a job, or you helped me to put me under the spotlight. And I was a guest on a podcast, and I started my career. That would make us happy. That will make everything we do worth it.

[00:09:39] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think when you have a project like this, you have to think of your audience as the bell curve. And the bell curve has the tails that are outliers on each side, right? So our audience is that middle part of the bell curve. They are people who don’t know, but aren’t opposed. They are people who are unaware of how to make positive changes. They are not the racists on either end of the tail who are so stuck in their ways that we’re never going to change them because they want to hate. I am not expecting that through anything we do here, we are miraculously taking the Grinch and growing his heart three times that day. Right? Three sizes that day. Because I think that people who are set in their ways are set in their ways.

I would love if that happened. Absolutely hasn’t happened. Maybe. I don’t know. Nobody’s ever told me. But that. But the goal of our project isn’t to change the world so that every single person stops being racist and every single person stops being misogynist and ageist and ableist and all of those things. It is to help the mass of people who want to do better and don’t even realize that they’re not doing their best, and that their companies could do better. And I think about those kinds of things. It’s moving the needle. It’s not flipping the record. It’s. It’s absolutely.

It’s baby steps, and that’s okay because baby steps are the ones that usually stick. Sometimes, it’s two steps forward, one step back. That’s still one step in the right direction. And so we have to think about the fact that it isn’t necessarily about. We’re not here, changing the world.

We are not politicians. We are not.

We don’t command a global stage in the way that Malala Yousafzai, right? And Greta Thunberg and some of these women, who by virtue of either sheer will in Greta’s case, or having been victimized in Malala’s case, were thrust into the spotlight and this global arena, they could choose what to do with that. They’ve chosen to be amazing women that I could only ever aspire to have their confidence and their stage, and their gumption. I can’t even think of all the right words, but to do the work that they do. We’re not on that global stage. We are within the tech community, and we are in a small part of that tech community. We don’t have hundreds of thousands of people listening to our podcast. We have people listening to our podcast. We have hundreds of people listening to our podcast. But we are not in. There are not a million people are not the Seth Rogan, thank goodness, of the world, you know, who are sensationalist about what they do. We have a simple desire to help our parts of the world and the parts that we connect to be better and do better. And I know that we are moving the needle on that from the feedback that we get.

[00:12:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you. And at the same time, it’s not competition like we’re not, as you say, there are a lot of amazing human beings who change history with one simple act, or they really went for it. As you said, we are trying to make things better in the IT world for the underrepresented people. We try to highlight some topics, and we also try to share our own experience.

Of course, we cannot click on all of the beautiful diversity rainbow. We can’t, you and I, but we still, want to talk and educate people. And as you said earlier, if one topic educate and makes people things in different way when they’re hiring a new people or they look at things and especially with the, with the salary gap or the digital gap or even with the, with the inequality of hiring people based on their name or based on the looks or the laws in the US or in Europe or what’s happening now with all the changing in our life and word by our world leaders when they decided one day to change something and then they come and, and change the whole diversity thing, especially in the States. And now I also think Europe is going in the same direction. We want to talk about it.

In the end, I think we’re doing an amazing job. Yes, we don’t send the newsletter on a monthly basis. And you said we’re also human beings. We’re not.

We are busy with our work, with our lives. Also, we go up and down, and you and a lot of people listening to us, going to WordCamps and preparing and planning and organizing and even traveling, can take a lot of energy and time. And sometimes we are not doing it on a weekly basis because we are really busy. But hopefully we’ll do better. But we’re still hoping to do more helping, more educating, and changing people’s lives more and more in the future. Yeah.

[00:14:56] Speaker A: And the other thing I want to point out is that, you know, allyship is a journey. I strive to be a better ally every day. I learn more every day, and that goes into me being a better ally as I go forward. I’m a better ally today than when we started the podcast, you know, years ago with Allie. I think I’m a better ally today, understanding, having learned and grown, and read more.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily going to move the needle for every single person out there. And if you are only relying on allies to change your life, you need to take a more active part in your life and take a look at what that means. And I understand there is burnout when you are an oppressed person, when you are part of a community that is targeted with racism, you can burn out from being the person who’s standing up and taking those, you know, those, those arrows, if you will.

I get it. And it’s really good when somebody else steps forward and takes the arrows for you. That’s a great thing. I think it’s, I think we do that for each other a lot.

But you and I cannot change every single person’s life and what they experience.

But if we can help companies think about how to hire, if we can help podcasters think about the diversity of their shows, if we can help people think about making sure that there’s a diverse lineup at their events, and that there’s accessibility both online and in-person. And I know at 100% that my horrible travel experiences have made incredible changes with the physical spaces that we occupy when we have Word camps, because people come, you know, reach out to me all the time and ask me, would this be wide enough for a wheelchair? Is this tabletop too high for somebody who’s in a wheelchair? If somebody was walking, like, I had a call yesterday and they’re planning a word camp and they want to know if the Parking is two blocks away.

How can they help accommodate somebody who walks with a cane or with a walker but doesn’t have a mobility device like a wheelchair? Wheelchair, great. Especially a motorized wheelchair. Two blocks, no big deal. Like, I’m just turning on my battery and scooting down the road. But if I had to walk it, even with the cane, I wouldn’t be able to attend. So they’re asking me, how can we make these things more accessible? So I know that we’ve made huge strides in certain areas and less so in others because we can’t. I can’t represent a black person. I can’t represent a Jewish person. I can’t represent a trans person. But I can be an ally to those people and do what we can to try to help raise awareness of how the world should treat people who are different than themselves?

One of the things I talk about when I give that talk is that I wish we had the opportunity to give this talk together.

But very early on, when Ali and I first launched this program, and before we even had a. It was just a database, and there was no podcast or vlog or whatever we tried to do. At the beginning, there was. Nigel Rogers asked us if we would speak to his group, which was.

I’m going to try to remember, I think based in Zimbabwe. Okay, In Africa.

Ali couldn’t be there, so I was on a Zoom call with about a dozen black men.

And I, you know, and Nigel were asking questions, so why are you doing this? And blah, blah, blah, and, you know, to even the playing field and all of the things we talk about.

Turns out that none of those men felt that they were a minority. None of those men felt oppressed. None of those men, because they live in an area where I am the minority, being a white person.

And so we had a little bit of a chuckle, because they were literally saying, “So why are you talking to us?”

We. Everybody around us looks like us. And that’s when I said, but the global stage doesn’t. The global community doesn’t. And if you want to stay local with what you do 100%, that’s fantastic.

Go for it. Then maybe what I’m doing doesn’t affect you at all. Maybe what we’re doing doesn’t affect you at all. But if you want to participate in the global community, you are now a minority, an underrepresented group in that. In that.

In that arena. And what we do makes a difference there. And all the light bulbs, it’s like, oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. They were like, at first, Why are you talking to us? That. Okay. Yeah. Because we don’t just live locally. We live globally, too, you know, and so.

So that was kind of. I talked about the situation where I was the minority and the underrepresented person in the room.

But realistically, talking about the global effect that representation has, it was like, okay. They’re like, okay, we’ll let you keep going. You know, they. They had a chuckle at my expense, which I think was funny.

Laughing, but. And I talked about that too. Right. And I talk about sitting from a place of privilege and understanding that I. I still have more privilege than a lot of people in our community, regardless of the fact that I don’t walk well.

And I’m an older woman, you know, so to speak. So. But, yeah, so I have a lot of fun with that.

But then to have been challenged, you know, a few days later, just felt I had to think about it, and I. And that’s why I brought it to you as well, because I thought it was important that we talk about it.

Does what you and I do here and what Ellie did here, does it matter?

I think the answer is yes. But we ask our listeners to chime in all the time, and very often it comes in the form of a dm, which I’m happy with. That’s fine.

But if you’ve listened this far and think that the work we do matters, please tell us. Tell us publicly or privately.

And if you think that the work we do doesn’t matter, I want to hear why. Tell us why it doesn’t matter.

And if it just doesn’t matter to you, but it matters globally, then you need to think about what. How you can change things within your own life, or you have to think about how you can use our program, program, our project, to help further yourself as well. So, I don’t know. I guess I’m pushing the challenge back on people a little bit, you know, with the acknowledgment that we can always do more. We’ll try to get our newsletter out, I promise.

But honestly, the news. The newsletter is at the bottom of our priority list because the other work that we’re doing, the podcast, speaking, and helping people one-on-one, really does rise above.

So I don’t know. I guess I’m done talking. I’ll let you close it out.

[00:22:03] Speaker B: No, no, for me. I was gonna say that I know why they’re reaching out to you, because I don’t.

The other day, it took me forever—like 15 minutes—to create a LinkedIn profile. After adding my studies, I wanted to add my. Like I was opening my old TV, just adding information. I said no, this is going to take too much energy. I don’t want it.

That’s why people. So, reach out to Michelle; don’t reach out to me. You know, I’m really bad at social media. Unless you don’t mind me replying in two months.

[00:22:38] Speaker A: That’s so funny. And it’s true, though. It is true.

[00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it’s. I don’t know. I hope today that if people are not convinced, what does we do really matter? I think that maybe they think differently, and also it’s fine. Everyone has the right to think whatever they want to think. We know what we’re doing, and I’m really happy and I’m looking to do more and more with you, and I think, of course, we should work a little bit on the newsletter more.

[00:23:08] Speaker A: Yes, for sure.

[00:23:10] Speaker B: But that’s something. Of course, we’ll do it because I also want to keep our mental health in check and the way we’re being busy and you being laid off and me taking a new responsibilities, a new job. So I didn’t. Don’t mean the new job. I mean the new task at my work is sell it yours, sell up yours, still be at yours. But all of those things. Sometimes you need a little bit to juggle priorities. But hopefully we will do better. You know, we are doing.

We are.

[00:23:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. All right, well, thank you for listening so far. Let us know what you think. Let us know what you think of the work we do, topics that we should talk about all of the things. And we hope you have a wonderful week. Next week, we’re going to dig into AI a little bit and how AI may have some biases as it comes to underrepresentation. So do a little more research, and we’ll talk about that next week. In the meantime, we’ll see you all on the next episode of Underrepresented in Tech.

[00:24:06] Speaker B: Bye-bye.

[00:24:09] Speaker A: If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode or just want to say hi, go to underrepresented in tech dot com. See you next week.