Lifting Every Voice: Initiatives Empower Underrepresented Voices in WordPress

[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.

Hello, Samah.

[00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello, Michelle.

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

[00:00:23] Speaker B: I’m good. How are you? I’m having a good time.

[00:00:28] Speaker A: I’m better now that I’m seeing your sweet face.

[00:00:31] Speaker B: Same, same. How, how is life? How is work? Everything’s okay.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Everything is okay. I’m tired. I haven’t been sleeping well. And I think that’s just like weather and stuff. It’s really, really hot here, and we don’t usually get really, really hot in this part of the world. So it’s just. It’s been a little weird. And my garage door broke, so I have to park outside. So I can’t park in my garage right now, which means extra walking because I have to go outside and around to the driveway. And I’m afraid because I don’t know how much it’s going to cost to fix it.

[00:01:05] Speaker B: Yeah, this is the security on top. You know, this is the extra thing.

[00:01:10] Speaker A: And I do realize that it is a great privilege to have an attached garage and electronics to open the garage door for you.

It really does help when you have disability to have these things working. And when they’re not working, life gets a little more challenging. But so, yes, I will get it fixed. I just don’t know what that’s all going to look like yet.

But it’s okay.

But that’s. That’s the biggest problem I have right now. I guess my problems are not terrible. So that’s good.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: That’s good. That’s good.

[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:01:44] Speaker B: I’m glad to hear that.

[00:01:46] Speaker A: And you are not in the Netherlands, where you usually are. Where are you?

[00:01:50] Speaker B: No, I’m running away from the Netherlands. I’m in Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, working remotely because my husband is here enjoying the good weather. Not like the weather in Europe, having a little bit break. I don’t know. I love to work remotely. Once in a while. You get more creative and you’re changing than working at home or working an office. So I think I’m more into this life balance. Work remotely once in a while. People make me feel creative.

[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah. It’s also nice to see your husband.

[00:02:22] Speaker B: Also. Yeah.

I love you, Tammo. It’s also nice to see you, too.

And I’m gonna see you at WordCamp US, so.

[00:02:33] Speaker A: I know.

So less than a month. I’m very excited.

Very excited. It’s gonna be great. I’ve got some things planned there that people don’t know about yet, some exciting things that you know about and I know about that we can’t talk about until afterwards. But there are some things going to be happening, people, and you’re going to be excited about them when you find out. So when. When we were. When we were young and my youngest brother was still staying at home, like he was still too young to go to school, my mother took him shopping to buy my father’s Christmas present.

My dad was into woodworking, so she bought him a beautiful saw—a handheld saw—right to do beautiful, intricate work on it. And so she said to Greg, “Make sure that you don’t tell Daddy what we got today, because it’s a surprise.” If you tell him, you will ruin the surprise.

Greg was about three years old. That night at dinner, my dad said, “What does everybody do today?” And, you know, I went to school, Rob went to school, and Greg said, “I went shopping with mommy.” We bought your Christmas present. You’re going to be so surprised when you open up your new saw.

He’s in his 50s now, and we still tease him about that.

So I was like, I always, like, people are going to be so excited when they find out about it, but I’m not going to say what it is. I’m not going to make the same mistake that my baby brother did 50 years ago. So.

Too funny. But what we wanted to talk about today has to do with WordCamp and not just WordCamp us, but WordCamps in general, and how underrepresented people fit into the whole WordCamp experience.

And that begins by finding a way there at all. We have talked in the past, Ali and I have, and you and I have, about supporting speakers and how there needs to be balance of gender, how there needs to be balance of ethnicity at wordcamps. One of my.

One of my most viewed tweets with the highest. What do you call it? The highest engagement was when I said something about WordCamp Europe several years ago in Athens, not having a very balanced lineup after the first. I don’t remember, but 20 or 25 speakers had been announced.

And, boy, did I come under a lot of fire for just pointing out statistics that were true and hoping and saying, I really hope that the rest is a lot more balanced. And, oh, my goodness, you would have thought that I had just, I don’t know, taken away baby Jesus or something. I was under so much fire for that. But I had a lot of Support as well.

And actually, more people said, Hey, that’s right. And what are we doing about this? And since I have a loud mouth, since I say things like that from time to time, sometimes without thinking, sometimes decidedly, pointedly so oftentimes things change because people take a look when somebody with a loud voice, and by a loud voice, I mean I have a big following on social media and people listen when I say things whether they like them or not, and they will tell me whether they like them or not.

But we want to see more balance. We want to see more underrepresented people on stage. We want to see more underrepresented people in attendance. We want to see more underrepresented people on organizing teams and volunteering, and doing all of the things. And one of the things that it’s often an argument as well, balance looks different in Europe than it does in the United States. Michelle.

Well, that could be true for ethnicity. I don’t know for certain. You have said not really. Other people have said not really.

Gender balance is not different in Europe than it is anywhere else in the world.

It is important to have a level of balance on your stage. To support organizers and speakers, there are initiatives to help people understand how to apply to speak and to help people afford to attend. Because if you’ve never attended a WordCamp before, perhaps you don’t know. I know you know. But if you’re listening, perhaps you don’t know that speakers are not paid to attend WordCamp.

They are not paid for their speaking for the time that they put into any of that. And they are not given any kind of funding to be able to attend at all. So their airfare is not paid, and their hotel is not paid. None of attending to be a speaker is compensated other than gratitude and usually a small thank you gift as a speaker, which is lovely. And if you can afford to attend and your company sends you, that’s awesome. I love that sometimes I’ve been at a company that can. Has sent me to speak at places. Sometimes the camp that I wanted to attend and speak at was on my own because it wasn’t something one of the ones they were sponsoring. And that’s fine too. So we make decisions and we apply to speak places, but if we can’t afford to attend, then that’s. That’s problematic. And so over the last few years, some initiatives have risen up, some about Word camp, some in general, to help support underrepresentation.

And you have a it may not be a definitive list. People might know of some things that we’re not aware of or forget to include. So if you’re listening to this and we don’t mention an initiative that you know about, please tell us kindly that we missed it and we will bring it up in future episodes to make sure that we are highlighting all the good that is happening in our community.

So that said, I’m going to start by selfishly talking about my own initiative and then I’m going to turn it over to you to pick the next one.

But one of the things that I have done since WordCamp Asia, the first one, so the one in Bangkok, is do what I call the selfie challenge at flagship events.

And the selfie challenge is take a picture with me, tweet it, post it on any social media. It doesn’t have to be Twitter. That is where I see them aggregated the most. But put it anywhere, but make sure you tag me and use the hashtag michelleandme.

And different companies and different individuals over the years have sponsored that initiative.

And I have given out two WordCamp speakers and organizers who are underrepresented folks, almost $15,000 in three and a half years that I’ve raised, some of it my own money, but most of it coming from other people who want to support the initiative. It’s not a donation that is supported; that is not tax-deductible. So if you’re in the United States and you’re thinking, oh, I can give her $500 and I’ll write it off, nope, you can’t write it off. I’m not a non-profit. It’s just out of the goodness of your heart or your business’s heart to support underrepresented people.

It doesn’t feel like it should be a lot of work on my part. And yet it is. Because having that money come in, dispensing that money, you know, deciding how much people get, the very first person, and I’m not going to remember exactly where he was located, but he was somebody who was attending his first Word Camp as a speaker on the African continent. And he reached out to me. I had no idea who he was, but he’d heard about the initiative. He needed a hundred dollars to be able to speak at his first Word Camp. And the only way I could even get him the money was to PayPal it to a friend of his and hope that everything was on the up and up. And I got messages from him afterwards with photos showing how he was able to successfully give his first WordCamp talk because of the initiative of other people helping me raise money to support that. And so there are very grassroots initiatives like that that people just have to know about, really. And money has dried up in a lot of wells lately. So I think the fund right now has $0 sitting in it. All of the funds have been spoken for, and I have not raised any others recently.

Maybe we will at WordCamp US, or maybe it’s time to retire the Michelle and me selfie challenge, and let somebody else pick up the reins. So we’ll see. I don’t know what that will look like, but.

But it is exciting to be able to support others that way. But that’s not the only initiative, and of course, that’s the smallest of all of them, quite honestly. So. So you pick one and talk about the next one.

[00:11:31] Speaker B: You know what, I’m going to pick my favorite one, and the one I work personally on is Yoast Diversity Fund. Yes, at Yoast, we really care about diversity, and that’s why we started the Yoast Diversity Fund, which aims to increase diversity and help the underrepresented to speak up and make sure that all conferences have more diverse, more inclusive speaker lines. This amazing fund it removed the financial burden for the speaker, for example, if you need it for travel, accommodation, visa, child care, or sign language, helper visa-related cost, everything.

When you go to speak at an event, the fund will help you. And I know last year, only last year, we helped more than 40 speakers in the WordPress community all around the world. And we always do it case by case per event because sometimes, as you said, like some people look at it like there’s an amazing human being from Cameroon, he’s gonna go speak in Kenya and he’s a male, he’s an African male going to an African speaking also country. But the thing is, in Cameroon, he’s from the Anglo-speaking area. There was no WordPress community there. There’s not a lot of world camps, and I know this year they’re making their first WordCamp.

So every event we look at it with the person at diversity. Of course we support all of the diversity and you can check in the application. Hopefully we cover all of the diversity which present under presented in group you belongs to.

And this year until now I can say we have almost helped 35 people. So this year I’m hopefully going to break the record, and I’m really happy that more and more all around the world, all from South America, North America, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe, this fund helped a Lot of amazing people to shine on the stage of WordCamps.

[00:13:40] Speaker A: I love that you get to be the spokesperson and the orchestrator for that because it makes you so happy. And I love to see your smile when you talk about it.

Oh my goodness. Okay, so the next one I want to talk about is brand new. It’s the Open Horizons Scholarship and it is from Automatic and excuse me, my goodness.

We’re going to put the links to all of these by the way, in the show notes so you don’t have to go looking them up later. But the Open Horizons Scholarship is for anybody with an official role within a Word Camp.

[00:14:17] Speaker B: So.

[00:14:18] Speaker A: So you’re speaking, you’re organizing. I think it covers volunteering as well, although I’m not 100% on that.

But it is a fund to help people be able to attend WordCamps. And so that is the new Open Horizons Scholarship from Automattic, which I love seeing Automattic supporting initiatives like this.

All right, you pick the next one.

[00:14:43] Speaker B: The next one is a WordPress theme, a diverse speaker training group.

It is hosted by the WordPress community. Of course, this amazing initiative is to support underrepresented voices, particularly women and nonbinary folks, and racial minorities in becoming confident public speakers. But this amazing program offers free online workshops and public speaking, one-on-one mentoring, and group coaching tips on writing, talking proposals, and preparing for presentations. A supportive community of pairs and allies. It’s really awesome. This program has helped increase the diversity of speakers broadcast around the world. Because also not the important the financial burden, also sometimes the knowledge you have the knowledge, I mean the knowledge of learn how to speak, to stand to address the questions, or how to write your pitch to apply to speak at an event. And this is an amazing skill that the WordPress community offers for free to people to encourage them to apply to speak.

[00:15:47] Speaker A: Nice.

The next one I’ll mention is the WP Community Collective which has fellowship programs to help us learn and grow in WordPress. And so there are different initiatives that they have done over the years including having their first fellow was Alex Stein who did research and work on accessibility in WordPress.

I’m not sure exactly what projects they have going right now. I’m trying to find another website really fast.

But they are working on it. Let’s see, the projects can be broadly defined as discrete self-contained initiatives with clearly defined objectives and involving more than one contributor.

So they are a 501c3 project. So they are a nonprofit organization here in the United States, and they support community-based projects. And so that is something.

And that does include underrepresented projects. And so if you’re interested, you can go to WPCC Collective. I just closed the link. Hold on one second.

My goodness.

With the wpcommunitycollective.com the wp communitycollective.com and you can see all of the information about that there. And I just dropped that in the notes for you Samah as so you don’t have to look for it later.

Okay, you’re up next. Pick another one.

[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yeah. WordPress global mentorship program this led by WordPress contributor working group. It’s pilot according to the website to match new contributors especially those from under presented region or background with experienced mentors to help them grow their skills in WordPress contributions area.

What this program offered one on one mentorship for several weeks learning path for contributing to different WordPress teams like Core marketing photos, polyglot documentation, peer support and onboarding.

It’s still in the pilot phase in 2024 and 2025. I would love to see this grow more and more because I believe now connecting someone from Europe, from someone in Asia, or someone in South America in Australia, or in Africa to someone more experienced contributors, this is really awesome because then we add more diversity towards the next one.

[00:18:23] Speaker A: The next one is the Kim Parcel Memorial School.

Kim Purcell, it says was a woman whose commitment and valuable contributions to the WordPress open source project are recognized by the foundation the WordPress Foundation.

The goal is to further the efforts of contributors who demonstrate Kim’s spirit by helping ease the financial burden of travel to WordCamp US.

This is open to women only and women identifying. I believe I am an active contributor to the WordPress project, and have never attended WordCamp US before. This one is very specific to WordCamp US and who also requires financial assistance to attend. Every year for WordCamp US they open up. The scholarship deadline for this year has passed. That was July 25, so that was last week. But. But every year they do open this up, and then they will announce who the person or people in the past years they have actually given it to. More than one person was awarded the Kim Purcell Scholarship.

So that is another initiative.

[00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Over to you, the other one at BlackPress for the Black community.

It was founded by Joe A. Simpson Jr. to build awareness, connection, and support for black professionals using or contributing to WordPress. They offer virtual meetups, mentorship, and speaker opportunities.

Of course, they have their own community Slack for connection and collaboration. It highlights the achievements of black community members and the world’s oppressed communities.

It’s a live and impactful initiative actively facilitating community connections, spotlighting black professionals.

To be honest, I checked their website and it’s not active and I hope they become active and I know in 2025 they didn’t have a lot of active activity online or they didn’t plan anything yet. But hopefully in the future to see them more bringing more active and they have more virtual event.

[00:20:30] Speaker A: There is a Slack channel that has active participants, so that at least there’s a group of people there. So I’m in there as an ally.

The next one is wp includes me, so that’s the website, but wp includes a is a Women in WordPress mentorship program. On the website, it says Scheme, which has a different connotation in the United States. So I didn’t want to say it right away, but it is a program or scheme for women whose aim is to increase the representation of women in boardrooms and leadership of businesses within the WordPress ecosystem. It’s a free mentorship program, runs twice a year and matches experienced leaders from the WordPress business world with women who want to grow their career, overcome business challenges, and improve their confidence. I did just complete my first time as a mentor in that program, and I was paired up with a lovely woman in Brazil, and we’re still meeting even next wee,k even though our official time has stopped, because we have also grown fond of each other as colleagues and friends now.

So we continue to to meet. The WP includes is open right now for the next the next mentorship program. So the the application deadline do I remember I actually wrote the the article because I am the new program director there so it’s going to kick off in October. Applications close on September 5th.

So if you are a woman interested in being mentored or you are a woman who wants to mentor others, apply at WP includes me by September 5th.

Over to you Samah.

[00:22:19] Speaker B: This is one of my favorite ones to be honest, but I think maybe you will add more information to it. Under Presented in Tech podcast. It was founded by Michelle Freshet and Ali Nimmons. I’m sorry, yeah, I butchered your last name.

This amazing podcast is to connect under presented people in tech and WordPress and tech space with job opportunities, speaking engagement, mentorship and community support.

It’s offer amazing searchable database where under presented people can list their skills and interest and they can find or job employers can find them there Research for companies to looking to hire inclusively Podcast episode discussing inclusion and success stories and important information and of course a lot a lot of topics related to diversity and how to support each other in the community.

Did I present it in a good way? You did very well.

[00:23:20] Speaker A: And when Ali stepped back from the project, this amazing person named Saman Azer stepped in. So yes, being underrepresented in tech is so close to my heart. Obviously, we’re still here doing it years late,r and I think there’s still a lot of work that we need to do, so that’s why we’re still hanging in there.

I will mention the Women in WordPress podcast that exists and has been dormant for a little while, but I have it on excellent authority that it’s coming back very soon because we are now Post status is partnering up with them to lend my team of post production experts, namely Lindsay Irvine and Olivia Bessette, who are both amazing at transcriptions and getting those posts published for us over there are going to be working with Angela Bowman, who is carrying on that podcast from where it started with four women and now it’s Angela. And so they are highlighting women in WordPress. I have been a guest on there twice. I am very blessed and able to talk about some of the work that I’ve been able to do with women and in WordPress and so definitely worth a listen. Go back through, listen to some of the old episodes and listen to the different women in WordPress tell their stories. Pretty, pretty cool stuff.

What do we have left? Is there more? Do we miss any?

[00:24:48] Speaker B: I don’t know if we missed any.

[00:24:50] Speaker A: I’m, I think we got them. I think we got them all.

[00:24:53] Speaker B: And if you missed something.

[00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah, tell us.

I was just gonna say the same thing.

[00:24:58] Speaker B: Yeah, tell us. Reach out, post it, and tag us there. Or if you want to reach out to talk about new initiatives and you want to be a guest to hear on our podcast, that will be awesome. Also, that will be great. Yeah.

[00:25:16] Speaker A: I will mention two other resources that could be good. If you aren’t already on the WP World, I would suggest claiming your free profile there.

Thewp World. It was created by Marcus Burnett, who is just such an amazing gift to our community.

[00:25:36] Speaker B: I love him, and he’s the best.

[00:25:38] Speaker A: He is.

And he’s coming to WordCamp US. I get to see him there. I’m so excited.

So claim your profile there does help you get found and it does help you connect with other people in WordPress.

Marcus and I also started a new initiative last month called sponsor BWP, so you could go to sponsorbwp.com and claim your free profile there as well. If you are somebody who’s volunteering your time in the WordPress open source project, you can be found there by companies that support others. So, I know, for example, that Kinsta Elementor and other companies are there. There are others listed on the site who are supporting individuals who are volunteering their time in the open source project.

So you can claim a profile there. We did add. He added it also to the WP world, but on both of those, you can add your Buy me a coffee link. So if somebody wants to support somebody but they can’t do it on a regular basis so they’re not setting up a, you know, Patreon or something like that, you can just go buy a coffee or 2 or 30 or however many you want on those people’s profiles so that you can help support some of their time in the open source community there.

And I think that’s all I got on all of that. So. But there are definitely a lot of opportunities to support one another, and if you’re looking for support, there are a lot of opportunities there as well to be able to find some support. I hope.

Yeah.

Any last words about this, Samah?

[00:27:18] Speaker B: I think I hope more initiatives come around also not only to support speakers but also to support contributors. I know like there was amazing project was launched at the end of World Camp Europe to bring more to students, and we can also have this new mindset. New, I don’t want to say fresh blood because that sounds so horror.

Fresh blood.

[00:27:44] Speaker A: Fresh talent. How about fresh talent?

[00:27:49] Speaker B: But also to support contributors who really are really denominating their passion time and effort and everybody know now life is more expensive and everyone needs to have a job so something also to support contributors especially who is really contributing to not only Core or testing but also other teams like Documentation Photos, Polyglot. Because all of the teams important.

I hope that one day that we also we start talking about a lot of programs also so to support all of the contributors.

[00:28:23] Speaker A: So yeah. Yes, likewise. I hope so too.

I can’t say it any better than that. So I’ll just say we’ll see you next week on Underrepresented in Tech, where who knows what we’ll talk about. We. We never actually have an idea until we get her,e but if you have an idea for us, please send it our way because we would love to discuss the things that are important to you. Dear listener. I always want to say dear listener. It always sounds posh or something I don’t know.

But it’s nice. It’s nice.

[00:28:52] Speaker B: Let’s go for it.

[00:28:53] Speaker A: If you are coming to WordCamp us. Please make sure that you say hello to us. Samah will probably be at the Yoast booth. She spends a lot of time there. But we’ll also be grabbing coffee and around. And we would love to. To see you, so. And get selfies. We love selfies, so get some selfies with us.

All right, we’ll see you all next week. Bye.

If you’re interested in using our database, joining us as a guest for an episode or just want to say Hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com See you next week.