 Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Rochelle. How are you today? I'm doing well. Thank you. How about yourself? I'm okay. Thank you for agreeing to chat with me. I appreciate this very much. So may I start by asking you to tell us your name, a share, anything you feel comfortable sharing? Sure. Yeah. My name is Helen Norris. I'm the Chief Information Officer at Chapman University in Orange County, California. I've been at Chapman for about six years. I've worked in technology my whole life and in higher ed since about 1997. I've been at two other universities, UC Berkeley, and also at the California State University System at the campus in Sacramento. One thing that people don't always gather about me is I actually was born and raised in Ireland. I know I don't sound like it. I've been in America for a long time, but you know, so I feel like I have an interesting journey as an immigrant and working as a woman working in technology. They're very, very important to share that I think because for people that are coming behind you, it's good to know your path. So can you share your past? So from Ireland, how did you get to America? What was your interest in IT? How did that all come to be? So I grew up, as I mentioned, in Ireland. I grew up in the 70s and the early 80s. And I often joke with Americans that when Americans graduate from college, if they want to move away from home, they go to another city. Well, in Ireland, I mean, there's more than one city, but I was from the big city. And so when I graduated from college, I actually moved to Frankfurt in West Germany or it was West Germany at the time. It's Germany now. And my interesting choice to move to Germany because my German was not very good. So I actually ended up working for the United States Army as a computer programmer. I met my first husband there. When he was in the army, when he was restationed back in the US, I moved with him. And I think I kind of stumbled into computer programming. My degree is actually in mathematics. And I didn't, you know, I was the first of my family to go to college. So I thought, you know, that the path that was open to me was to be a teacher. So I kind of assumed I'd be a teacher. And so I was lucky that I stumbled into a field that that was really a great fit for me. So a lot of luck in success, I think. And I've been lucky, I think a lot through my life. Yeah. So you come to, you work for the US Army, your programmer. So now today you are CIO. That's not an easy path to get there. So can you share a little bit more about from being a programmer to who you are today? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's my title when I was working for the Army was a computer programmer. But it was a an interesting place to work because it was a small organization. And so, you know, you kind of got this was in the 80s. So you kind of got your hands on a lot of different things. I worked on technology. People in my age group might remember this. Wang technology. And so when I work to the I see some recognition. When I moved to the US first, I actually got a job working at Wang labs and worked on the customer service side. But over my career, I've been fortunate in being able to do a lot of different types of jobs. I've been a systems administrator and network administrator. And I think that that has helped me in preparation for becoming a CIO. I've worked mostly when I moved to the US first, I've worked mostly on the corporate side, but I moved into higher ed in 1997. I wanted to for personal reasons, I wanted to move. We when we moved to the US first, we lived in St. Louis, Missouri. But for personal reasons, we wanted to move to California. And I was hired at UC Berkeley in and I know you're at Duke. So this will resonate with you. You know, a lot of the big or ones have highly decentralized IT. I was hired as an IT manager for a local IT organization. One of the things that's great about being in a big organization or big or one university is you can move around and get lots of different experiences. So I actually was able to make a couple of different moves. I moved from the local IT group the first one I managed to another one. And then the second group that I was in was actually managing IT for the budget and finance division, I guess. And so that was really pretty high profile. And I got the opportunity to work on central campus systems, things like PeopleSoft and so forth. And then and I kind of say, I sort of went over to the dark side. I went to work in the central IT group as my final stop at Berkeley. So I was at Berkeley for a total of 12 years. One of the things, and I think my experience is that this happens to women, maybe a little bit more than men, when you're in an organization, especially at like a university where it can be really pretty political. When you're in an organization for a long time, sometimes you it's hard. It gets to the point where you sort of have some baggage if you've had to do unpopular things. And I did because you know you go through budget cuts and so forth. I think I got to the point where I knew I couldn't advance because I had too much of that baggage from some of the things that I had done. So I took a lateral move to move to the California State University system, CSU Sacramento. And one of the things I say to people is I think a lot of times people think their careers are going to go like that. And in my experience, that's not the case. It goes you go up, you'll go over, you might even take a little dip and it's all good. So for me taking that lateral move was probably the best thing that could have happened to my career. One of the great things I know you've been in higher ed for a long time. You move to a new campus, you know a lot of things, right? I mentioned that I'd worked on PeopleSoft. I go to a new campus. So you walk in and you're sort of an automatic expert and you know all the lingo. But yet my experience has been that different universities operate differently. So you still have the opportunity to learn. So that was great for me when I moved to the Cal State system. And now that I'm at Chapman, which is a private university, again you come in with a great deal of knowledge but a lot to learn about different things that we do. Very, very interesting. Thank you for that. So as a CIO, how many other women, regardless of their ethnicity, do you see in that same role across the higher ed? I mean is that something where women are entrenched or is it we're still trying to find our way in? I think we're still trying to find our way in. I know when they EDUCAUSE and other organizations do some surveys and so forth. I think we see about 18% if I'm remembering correctly of women in the CIO role. And it's even much less for women of color. It's just much, much harder. The other thing, I'm very active locally and in Southern California and a lot of IT networking organizations and professional organizations. And I spend a lot of time, well, when we could network in person, you know, I went to a lot of events and I would say it's even worse outside of higher ed. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. But I do know that I go to meetings all the time where I'm the only woman in the room, right? Or there might be one other woman in the room. So I think we still have a long, long way to go. And I think also that there are still it goes to, it comes from very early in our careers. You know, you do see, I think women coming into technology and then kind of not staying. And you also see this sort of funnel effect where as you go higher and higher in the organization, you'll see fewer and fewer women and definitely fewer and fewer people of color. So it's kind of like we funnel out as we go through the organization. So I think we have a lot that we have to do to, there's still a lot that we, there's still a lot of ground to make up for women and particularly I think for black women and black men, you know, I just don't think that the same opportunities have been there for people like us. Yeah, I agree with you completely. If I were to parallel my career to yours, I should be in charge of the CIO. That's how much I've done, but I'm still down in the trenches. And I was on a panel earlier in the summer, I think July, I don't remember when it was, but I was on a panel for CLAC, you know, liberal arts college. I was really surprised to see how little diversity was there. You know, there are a few black men, you know, a few women, but it wasn't really as diverse as you would think, especially considering liberal arts has a high uptake of people of color and rare as STEM has been the exact opposite. You know, we start off with a STEM career and end up in the humanities or something. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting, I'm glad you raised that I just want to make two points. First of all, you know, I've been passionate about women and technology for a long time, but no matter, you know, I know it's hard for women in technology. I am aware that I bring so much privilege to the workplace on a daily basis because of how I look, because of the color of my skin. But also, you know, and I mentioned that I'm an immigrant also because of how I speak. So I look and I sound, I think the way people expect a CIO to look and sound, right? And that's, I, in some ways, I feel like I've been told I'm kind of the right sort of immigrant because I don't bring an accent, you know, I look like I've assimilated into American life. The other thing that's interesting is you mentioned that women start in the STEM fields and then they women and people of color start in the STEM fields and then, you know, we end up in different fields. But actually, I think we're discouraged a lot from being, from going into STEM. And I will tell you a story about when I grew up and I grew up in Ireland. And it was the 70s and 80s. It's a very different place now. It really is. When I grew up, you know, we saw the traditional, what we think of as the traditional models, right? My mother stayed home with us and my dad went to work and everybody in my community, everybody that I went to school with, that was the same experience. And we have a very different educational system to the US. And so we do, I think, I mean, this is what we did when I was a girl. It may be different now, but you kind of go through the equivalent of high school. And at the end, you do this exam called a leaving search. And everything counts on that exam, right? If, how you get into college, they look at your grades in the exam and they calculate it and then you get accepted or not. And I happen to be very good at math. And I wanted, in the leaving search, you can do higher level or honors or lower level math. And I wanted to do higher level honors math. I went to an all girl Catholic school, and they didn't offer that. And so, you know, I talked to the nun that had none about it. And she just kind of told me, well, you know, girls don't need honors math. You know, and it was like, oh, well, so what I actually did is there were a lot of, there were places you could go to get tutoring, but the intent was really for people who were studying at school and to give them an extra help. But I can, I, that's what I did. I did that. And I studied honors math to go through that. Now, another interesting anecdote. So that was like the 70s in Ireland. So I, we have a student at Chapman, a young woman actually, and she is a young black woman who I've, I've done some work with. And she went to school in Los Angeles in obviously in the last five years, because she's still the last few years, she's still a student. And she went to some kind of fancy magnet school. And she was in a technology program. She's actually studying computer science at Chapman. And she actually had a teacher tell her he was going to assign her some of the more kind of administrative work, not the, the networking cause, and what he told her, you know, girls don't like to crawl around under desks. And so, you know, it's the same thing that happened to me in Ireland in the 70s happened to this young, young black woman in Los Angeles in the, in the 21st century. And it's just, you know, and you just, so when you start from there, you're all, you know, when you're, when you're hearing that in high school, it just, it just makes it harder. Yeah, absolutely. And I will tell you, that's not unique for that black woman. A lot of people told that, you know, the opportunities for advancement or, you know, even to get to the place where you are, I was looking at your LinkedIn bio, I was just so impressed, you know, you sit on this board to do this, you do that, you do the other, you know, and so those opportunities to spread out and to grow and to network and to build your, your opportunities, right? So I mean, you said earlier it was luck, but I mean, like, as you said, you, you look like what we want in America, right? You know, this, you're not going to be overly assertive, not going to be aggressive, you know, and they're not these labels that they can easily stick on the bottom of you and say, Hey, this is who you are, whereas a black woman, you know, I think that the injustices that have happened to black and brown people over the years, we are more, I guess, vulnerable to opportunities because we are, you know, whatever it is that they believe about black people, whatever it is about brown that we're there. So coming in as a white woman, you have a lot on your plate, but I will say this, it's not so broad. I mean, because as you said, you go to meetings and you're the only person who looks like you are one of the only one or two people, right? So that's my experience too. Yeah. And I think I may have shared this at some other time, but, you know, one of the CISOs in higher education came and did a talk at Duke and she told us this word, he peed, right? So you can be in a room and say something and no one responds to it. Right. Man takes what you've said and rephrases it. Yeah. And it becomes a thing, right? So if you say today is Sunday, it's three o'clock or three 30, nobody says anything, but if man comes and says, hey, today might be Sunday, all of a sudden it becomes a thing. It's gospel. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so I think that that is true even for white women that there's still a little bit of finding your voice. And one of the things that I am a proponent of is advocacy, you know, like people talk about mentors and mentors are great to have as a mentor because a mentor is that person you share, you express what's happening to you and your job and kind of give you some advice because they've been there and done that, right? So they're great mentors, but advocacy is when you're willing to put some skin in the game, right? To put your name, your credentials, your cash, capital, whatever it is into the game and have other people respond to what you want, right? To you, Helen Norris were to pick up the phone and call somebody say, hey, I have this person who I think I made a great fit for your company. That's the whole traction than if I did the same thing, even with more experience and more opportunities to get the same thing. So I think that's really a tough road to hoe for people of color and some white women as well. Well, you know, a couple of things I'd like to say about that. The first piece you talked about our voices, right, that were in meetings and, you know, and I've had it happen where a man has taken credit for my idea and, you know, sometimes you just kind of go with it. But I know that there's research that shows as there are more of us in the room, if there are, and in fact, the kind of the tipping point is sort of three, if there are three women in the room in the meeting, you can amplify each other's voices, you know. So I do think that one part of advocacy is especially for me at this stage of my career and, you know, it's to be in the room with other women to amplify what they're saying and to make sure that they get credit for it is something that I can take on as a form of advocacy. The other thing you mentioned is, you know, whether it's kind of putting in a call or something for someone and you mentioned that I serve on a lot of boards and I feel really, again, I feel very fortunate about that. And one of the things that happened for me is a former boss of mine recommended me to be on a board. He was leaving the board and he was asked to nominate someone and he nominated me. And I really appreciate that for him. So one of the things that we can do as women, women like me, when I have the opportunity to nominate someone or for a position on a board or for an award or something like that, it's important for me and one of the things I've done for years is to nominate women. That's not to say I don't nominate men, I do. But, you know, every time there are plenty of deserving women out there who aren't getting noticed and that's something that I can do to do that and I've done that. But one of the things I realize I haven't done and that I really want to work on is to make sure that I especially do the same for Black women or other women of color or men of color because I have that. The person who nominated me to be on the board was a man. He was a Hispanic man and I really appreciate him lifting me up like that. And I think it's important for me to, how do people say pay it forward to do the same thing for other people who don't look like me and that's something that I think I can do better at. Absolutely. And so in your organization, when you go to hire or you have a vacancy in your organization, how do you deal with that? What are your steps that you take to make sure you have a diverse pool? You're picking the best person and you're really getting some buy-in from your leadership about that? So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah. And so over the years I think I've done, you know, it is hard. I think you can only do that with the support of leadership and frankly with the support of the HR organization because you've got to know even how to find the right candidates. I know when I look at my organization, I've actually had this situation where I've thought, you know, I'm doing great. Our IT organization looks good. I have six direct reports for them or women. I have people of color and we implemented a new kind of a dashboard in our data warehouse and I was shocked when I really looked at the numbers and saw how much work I had to do, you know. So it's easy to kind of think that you're doing really well. But it's hard. I think you have to continue to do networking and reach out to people explicitly to try to bring them into your organization. You can't just put something on LinkedIn or on a job site and expect to get a diverse pool. So, you know, if you're working with recruiters, you've got to seek the right people. But I do think it's the networking. The networking, that's how people get jobs, right? It's who you know. And it's as you pointed out earlier, having somebody make that call for you to say you should look at this person. It's something I think we can all do better with. I recall when I was early in my career, I wasn't in higher ed at the time. I mentioned that when I moved to the U.S. first, I lived in St. Louis and I worked. I was like an IT manager, I guess, for a good size law firm. But it would be a small IT organization, right? And we needed to hire someone. So in those days, we didn't have the internet, you know, we put it in the newspaper at St. Louis Post Dispatch and an organization called me and asked me, there was a newspaper in St. Louis, the St. Louis American, who marketed to the African-American community and they would literally go through the job ads in the Post Dispatch, call the recruiting people and say, can we run your ad in the St. Louis American? And to me, that was a real eye-opening moment for me because I was very young, you know, and I hadn't been in the country very long. I didn't know anything, you know? But it was eye-opening for me to understand that you have to explicitly look. And in those days, that was the way, that was one way that you could look was to go, to meet people where they are. Don't expect everyone to always come to you. Yeah, exactly. And I think that one of the interesting things about what you just said really hits home. It's like, you know, someone came to you and asked you, could you put that ad in their paper? But like, you know, one of the key parts of that, it's like finding historically black schools and universities where there are candidates that are in these areas. It is looking beyond the typical answer of diversity. So, you know, there's, there are these stereotypes about people, right? So there's this thing, all Asian people are smarter than anyone else. They do really well in math. And so you have an organization that has a tremendous number of Asian people. You may have one or two blacks, one or two Hispanics or Latinos, but it's not like it's a diverse pool. So it is right. And we're hiring leadership dogs because every aspect of IT specifically, all ethnicities are represented. There is no, you know, if you're starting at the bottom, there's lots of diversity at the bottom. At the top, where the diversity doesn't, you know, it's really hard to try to make sure that that's the place it is. So I mean, just like you were talking about the gentleman who nominated you for a board, you know, when you look in your Rolodex and see all those people that you know, how many of those people are you thinking about that opportunity transition off that board or if there's a board vacancy, where's that happening? And so I think that it's very important that we think about this in ways that are really inclusive because, you know, I tell this story often and I have two, I'll tell you, my first one is, is Google. So in 2015, Google released its facial recognition software. All white male team did the development of that. And so whenever this facial recognition software popped up, when it saw a person who was not particularly, you know, a certain schedule, it would put up a picture of a gorilla. And there's no way in the world people did that intentionally. That's not, you know, it would be bad business for them. But the problem is when you have homogeneous groups, you're going to get a homogeneous output. You know, so, you know, so the old term is garbage and garbage out. And first out, you know, there's that piece right there. But, you know, I think in a lot of ways that, you know, this is one of the problems. And then the other part of that for me is like, you know, we assign stereotypes to people, right? So women are considered emotional. We're extremely passive. You know, we have all these things that, that people stick on us to say, this is who we are. Whereas men, if you were as in your role to go in and be extremely assertive, not even aggressive, just extreme, you'd be labeled by that. Where a man who goes and does that exact thing, that's not expected, right? So, it's one of those things where we're in a world where there's so much complexity and labeling of people that, you know, it's hard to understand why we're not making any progress, but it's also very simple to understand. Yeah. And you know, I think that's one of the things that we have to do. So a couple of things as individuals, I think it's important for us to understand, to acknowledge that stereotypes exist and to recognize them. You're right on the Google thing. They didn't go in and say, let's do, you know, but recognize that you're, if you don't think about it explicitly, you're going to unconsciously and use your bias in decision making or in producing a product, you know. And so, so it's important to keep that in your mind at all times. At the other point you made about, you know, when you look at organizations, you have a point to make again, then I want to ask you a question. You do see diversity in IT at the kind of at the entry level positions, but not as I said, you know, it kind of funnels off. So it gets back to that advocacy thing. There is some mentoring involved or sponsorship. It's important for the leaders in the organization to develop that, to develop that talent, right? And to bring it, bring it up in the organization because you're hiring great people and you give people opportunities in the organizations that they are. But I have a question for you that I related kind of to the pandemic. I think one thing in certain areas and a little bit where I am, even though it's in California, sometimes it's difficult to get the diversity because you don't live in a diverse area, right? You live in an area where it's predominantly whatever. With the pandemic, we've kind of proven that we can work remotely. So does it open up for us the opportunity to hire people from a more geographically, from different geographies? And can that help us to diversify the workforce? You know, that's a very interesting question. I think the fact that we have shown that we can work remotely, like many companies are going to remote work only, you know, are going to some some form of it. I know a lot of the companies in Silicon Valley have talked about that for a year or two. You know, they've said that people don't have to come into the office. I think that's a change of mindset, right? Because one of the problems that working remotely introduces is measuring the productivity of your people when you're not right there with you. And I think when you kind of juxtapose that to in-person work, so the person has basically an hour for lunch, two 15 minute breaks, you know, and because of the social nature of being in-person, so measuring productivity remotely has to be put against measuring productivity in place. When you measure those two things, it's kind of hard to say that the person is more productive in the office than they are at home, right? At home, you feel more, you feel driven to do more because you know, you just feel like, you know, I'm at home, you know, I can get in my pajamas, I don't have to, you know, whatever it is. So there's that. And I think specifically for Black people, where that rubber hits the road is, is that we aren't given the benefited doubt in the office. So when we go home, you know, you're kind of... You really don't get it. Right. Because, you know, you're assuming that we're lazy, we're going to be late, we're going to do whatever it is that we're going to do. And there's these, again, it goes back to those stereotypes. I think that it is possible for it to be a better thing, but we really have to change our mindset. Really, you know, if you think about slavery and I don't know how familiar you are with American history, but, you know, first, if people come to America from Europe and they colonize Indigenous people, right? And then eventually slaughter as many of them as they could, then they go to Africa and they bring over another group of people and they colonize them as well. You know, so when you think about things like that, you know, it's kind of one of those things that you have to get buy in from white people to be willing to make this change. Because, you know, we didn't, black people didn't not enslave her. You know, we didn't just walk out one day and say, we're done. You know, it took white people being in the fight with us to get us there. This is another one of those examples. White people being in the fight with us. If you, in your organization, you look across your IT staff and you've got Asian, you've got Hispanics, you've got black people, and whatever else that you've got, do you sit down and assess how valuable they are to the organization and what they bring? And I think, you know, I've said this in several of my chats, you know, like, when you're getting ready to hire someone, typically, especially for a senior role or a leadership role, typically what you do is you bring the people in that are just like that, right? People who are already CIOs, a CIOs or whatever senior directors or whatever it is. And the problem with that is group think it's the same. So everybody in that space has the exact same experiences. Where if you take that person that you just hired, he is first in your organization, he's desktop support or field support or whatever you want to call him, and you bring him into the meeting, he has things to tell you that you've long forgotten, right? You know, what it was like when you first started an IT, the struggles that you have, some of the issues that you experience, if you bring people from other parts of the organization into your, your interviewing or hiring process, you get a diverse pool of people. If you're only bringing in CIOs, you're going to hire someone that's just like that or CTOs or CISOs, whatever they are, they're going to look and that's what you see. And I think that working from home introduces a whole bunch of other pieces to that that are not necessarily accurate, but they allow us to feel comfortable that we did our due diligence, right? So if you're hiring a CTO and you hire a search agency to find you a CTO, that search agency is probably going to be predominantly white and male or white somehow or another. It's not, the candidates they're going to do, they're going to start excluding people immediately that don't fit this model, right? So you create a job description that says you want this, this, and this, and this, and you want somebody who's had 10 years experience in this, people have done all these things, they then start looking for that person and that person almost inevitably is a white person, most likely a white people. So I hope my question wasn't too long, answer wasn't too long. No, it's, it's, it's, and I just want to kind of, you know, it's not even just at the leadership levels, it's in these highly technical jobs, right, that we go out and we say we want you to have five years experience with Oracle or whatever, that naturally excludes people. And it's not even necessary. And so, you know, what, what I've observed through my years in IT is often the route to the CIO is through some of these really highly visible, highly technical parts of the organization. So women in particular are often on the customer service side and you won't necessarily see people move from, from that part of the organization up to the CIO level, which is one of the reasons it was important for me to do some lateral moves to kind of fill in some of those gaps. So, you know, it's, it's, I think it's even important to change our thinking on roles that aren't at the leadership level, but that are highly visible technical roles in IT. And I want to also comment on one other thing you said, it's, it's, it's, you know, I think I probably saw this on a meme or something on social media. White people, we need to see the race issue as a problem for white people. As long as we look at it and go, well, we want to help black people, you know, we want to make it better for black people. It's our problem too. The Google example is a great example. You know, the, the exclusion didn't just impact the people who are excluded, although it impacted them the most, but it impacted the team that was working because they did a, they produced a less, a less, an inferior product. And so, you know, so I think that's the thing, you know, and it's, it's, it's something that we hear a lot these days. We have to, as white people, own the race issue as, as our issue. Right. And that's very important that you say there, because I think that the problem with where we are in our society as a whole, you know, so we've got all this, you know, law enforcement violence portrayed on, on black people, you know, you know, the first question you ask is, do you see me as human? You know, so I have two children. I have a black son, a black daughter, and a black husband, all of this. And every time they leave me, my fear is really turned to me. So I think that law enforcement, to some degree, has this stereotype that's so embedded into what we are. So we're drug users. And I'll give you an example. So if you take the crack epidemic, I don't know if you really were. Yeah, I was here. Then you take them, the, the oxycodone, these, these opioids and, and methamphetamines, these are described when white people are in these epidemics as mental health issues. Right. But crack was a criminal issue. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So when police apply the logic that someone has come up with and said, this is who we are, then you're going to have the outcomes that we have. Yeah. The point is so valid that we need white people to join us in the trenches. You know, right. So, you know, my relationship with you fairly new. We haven't known each other for a long time. But you know, I want to be a part of what you're doing, because I find it so impressive when I, like I said, when I looked at your LinkedIn profile, and I think even Chapman has a biology, a biography of you there. It's just, I mean, it's impressive is all get out. I know a lot of CIOs. I know a lot of people who have done some great things, but none of them compared to what you are doing and what you have done is just very impressive, you know. And so I think that you have the power to bring change. And I hope that you and people that think like you and have the same opportunities you have, that you think about how can I make my organization different? How do I make this world a better place? Because it's one thing to go to work and do your job, right? So you're the CIO, you make sure the organization has supplies, its needs, its customers and all that. But do you make an impact on the world? Do you change society? And with us in these roles, emerging technologies are coming fast and through. You know, so think about who's going to be hit by that. Another example. So I love Sam's Club. I go to Sam's Club. Okay. About a year ago, they introduced an app. You put on your phone, Sam's Club, right? And you go in, you open your phone, they say, yes, you're right. And you scan. When you scan, you can just walk out the door because yeah, you know, so who's going to be displaced? Because I don't know what California you are in, but you know, all these things that are coming up, you have to be purposeful and intentional about what we're doing. And you know, if we are not, then we are really doing a disservice to all because I think that Black and Brown people bring a unique perspective to all of technology, all of STEM, a very unique, right? So yeah, all of these things. So I just think that people like you really hold the chance for there to be better. Well, that's what I really want to do. And that's one of the reasons that I'm so happy to be connected with you. Because I do feel like for the last, you know, several years, I have focused so much on the issues of women and gender issues in technology to the exclusion of other issues. And it's hard in some way. It is hard. I have to put myself out there, right, to talk about race. And so that's why I so appreciate that you're having this conversation with me and willing to listen to what I have to say and to share your knowledge with me. But that's I think the thing that I really want to challenge myself to do better. As I, you know, I'm, you know, I'm in my late fifties, you know, I don't have, I don't know how much time I have left, but that's where I want to focus. You have a lot of time here. I have a lot of time left. I hope so. I hope so. But it is, I feel for you, I, I'm obviously, but my children, I think I've mentioned this to you before, are African Americans. So I have a slight sense of what you feel. And, you know, I think as white people, though we can't, it's so much harder for us to internalize that or to, to understand what you said about it's the, the interactions with, with the police force, you know, that there's so much implicit bias built in. And it's not just the police, because we've seen a rash right of things happen over the last couple of years with women who look like me call on the police because, you know, black persons having a barbecue. And how do we kind of turn ourselves around? All I'm sure they're all really nice women who really just have this implicit kind of bias that they didn't even realize they had. And so how do we kind of work on that? I think the first part is to kind of say, I need to work on it, you know, and I need to work on it. So, so thank you for being there for me. Oh, absolutely. And I, and as I said to you before, is if you need anything from me, I am right that you don't even have to just call or text or email or something. I'm right there. I think the thing that's really interesting about you, you know, like so the younger people use a word called woke, like you're awake or a woke. I, I still haven't mastered what that means. But I think that maybe it translates to intentional, you know, being paying attention, you know, to be intentional in your actions and your thoughts and your way, where you go, you know, it is necessary for you. It is necessary for Helen Norris to be in the fight with everybody else. You know, it is necessary for Helen Norris when you're, when you're thinking when a job opening comes up or a board opening comes up or somebody comes up, you know, automatically think about the people that you're most comfortable with, right? This, this word I learned when I was getting my doctorate degree, but you know, as old as I am, you think I would have known this, but it has to translate as a whole more social reproduction. We prefer to be with those people who look like us, right? That in the old days called the old boys club, right? But you know, the problem with the firm to be with the people like us, is we don't grow as a society. We don't grow and mature as human beings, right? Because if I'm only with black people, my experience is only going to be what their experiences are. The lens they see the world through. Whereas I don't want to be stuck in a space that's all I know. I lived in Miami, doing the Muriel boat with, when the Cubans came in, and you know, there was a lot of talking, there was a lot of racism associated with that because, you know, they were told that these were the people who Castro led out of his jail, who were criminals. Oh my God, yeah. For all of that kind of stuff. And the problem with that, though, is that when we make these assumptions with people by some physical characteristic, that means absolutely nothing. That you have blue eyes and blonde hair, that you're six foot tall, or that you're thin, or whatever it is. These are physical characteristics that change over time, right? And if you look at any person when they die, they turn darker. So why in the world will we care about physical characteristics? Is the person a decent person? Is the person willing to help? Is the person contributing to the society as whole? You know, and I've been asked a lot about these diversity cats, right? So when Mr. Fuller was killed in May, it hit me so hard to see that. And again, going back to technology, technology makes these things, right? Because they were long time ago. We can watch you on TV and see them on TV. It's in our social media feed. What are we doing? What are we as a society doing to think about justice, race, opportunity, education, all of these places, right? I had a chat yesterday with a young man. He is in Pakistan. He is going to a predominantly white school here in America. And when the virus hit, he went home to see about his family and to help his family. And the story he told was, you know, so some of the immigration policies that are driven by politics, you know, how he's seen, you know, all of these things, you know, be in Pakistan. We just had 9-11 a couple of days ago. So, you know, all of these things kind of fluctuate. And so this young man is brilliant. I mean, he's got great skills and, you know, he will be a great contributor to America's all go. And he wants to work in America. He wants to help his family and his community in Pakistan, which to me is an example of a true human being. You know, I know I can contribute something to this society, but I also want to help my family, which is what we all want, right? You know, contribute to society. I shouldn't say we all, but there's probably some people do. Yeah, you know, so I think that there's just too much in the environment about race and gender. And, you know, I applaud you for, you know, doing what you're doing for women. But I ask that, you know, you think about the entire spectrum of what a society is like, right? So I asked this question at a panel I was doing a while ago. May Jemisin came to my university and did a lot. And so I asked, how many Native Americans or Indigenous people does this university have? You know, how many Native Americans or Indigenous people are CIOs who are faculty? Where is that? And, you know, it was almost like crickets. No one said a word to my question. I still don't know the answer to that question. So if we think just simply about that. So when you talk about true Americans, if there's such a thing, that's the true Americans. They don't care long enough all the rest of the same. But when you come to here where we are now, we don't even consider them. We don't even think about it. We don't make a concerted effort to hire them and bring them into our organization. So we consider the Indians from India or, you know, Asia, that's our new substitute for diversity. And you look at both colleges, there's a huge Asian population, faculty, all of those things. But no other group. And that's something I think that we should change. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And we have to do it all. We all have to do it together. And it's true. It has been a very hard time, you know, with the, there's the pandemic. And then, and it doesn't feel like when you watch the murder of George Floyd, which we get to see. And it's just, and then you see another and another. It's, it's, yeah, if I'm not always hopeful, it makes me sometimes feel even for me, just like, how, how can this be? And it makes me worry for the next generation, the next generation of black boys who are going to, who could experience this? I wouldn't even say for your daughters. I mean, you have, whether you want it or not, an obligation to take a path for them. Because though you identify as white, society is not going to identify them as white. I don't care. You're right about that. They're, what kind of hair they have. Society is not, you know, going to, No, it's true. So your role as a parent should translate into making sure opportunities are available for people, especially based on the fact that you have two daughters, Heidi is going to paint their own plans, right? So they're going to see them in this way, which may not even be true, may not even be factual, you know, but just automatically assume. And so I don't know if you've seen the movie, The Blind Side, but it's about this. Yes. Yeah. About that. When you think about that perspective, you know, it takes a white person to save a black person. You know, it takes a white person to, to, to make opportunities available. And I think there's a little bit of truth for that. But I think the problem is that we already assumed that this is not possible in our society for black people to get up and, you know, I've heard this story. So pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What happens if you don't have boots? What happens if you don't have the strings to pull yourself up? There is assumptions and so for black women, your daughters, my daughters, me and all the black women that you know, we're depending upon you to think about this and to engage people in uncomfortable conversations and they need to be very uncomfortable. If they're not uncomfortable, you're just going to be able to walk up and say, oh, well, you know. Yeah. No, I know that, that makes sense to me. That, that makes sense to me. And it is, it is, it makes, that's the thing is we white people, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable because we have, we're pretty comfortable. And so, you know, that's the, the, the, that's what what we have to do. That's all. And I would just add this one thing you said earlier about privilege. You have privilege. You are visible in your IT community, probably in the overall IT community throughout. Yeah. You're, you're, you're visible. So when your children come, if they decide they want to be an IT or they want to be a doctor or they want to become an engineering or whatever it is, will they get that same opportunity and have the same luck that you had to get where you are? If you do not put things in place to make that happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's true. And it's interesting, you know, the word privilege, a lot of people, it, it, it are kind of offended or insulted to think that they have privilege. It doesn't mean you would, I mean, I've worked hard. It didn't mean I didn't work hard, but I have privilege. You know, it's, it's, it's just, it doesn't make me a bad person. I just need to understand that for a person like you who didn't come into the world with the, the same level of privilege that I did, it's so much harder. And what can I do to change that and to, to make, to make that better? Absolutely. And how can I use my privilege? I know my, you know, one of my daughters sent me a video one time of, it was after a police shooting and the young man, the victim's brother was, went to the city council meeting or something and she literally, he was really upset. Naturally, his brother had just been killed by the police. And she literally, the white woman literally put her body between this young man and the police. And that's, you know, to me, that was a, an example of how to use your privilege, right? And, you know, that's a pretty gutsy way. And, you know, that's the kind of thing that we have to do as white people is put our bodies, put our beings in the way of, of danger. So I think that's absolutely correct. We're running out of time. I want to ask you a question first. I want to ask you, have you gone back to Ireland since you left as a little girl? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I go, my, my entire family, most of my family is there. So we go every couple of years or every, lately I've gone more often because my father has been sick and it has changed so much, you know, when, as I said, when I was young, it was very, the role of women you know, we were really in a different place, you know, we were not treated equally. And I, I see change, I see change at lots of different levels. Some of that is because it is a little island. And when I grew up, you know, we weren't like off completely isolated or something, but people didn't travel the way that they do now. I didn't get on a plane until I was like 15, you know. And so I think that that has helped us bring in some outside influences. We also, when I was a girl, we had a really difficult economy. And so we didn't have immigration, we had immigration, we used to kind of joke that our biggest export was our children, you know, we'd send our children all, you know, everybody in America claims to be Irish, right? And in the 80s and early 90s, we began to have immigration because our economy improved and the Soviet Union collapsed. And so you first, you started to see a lot of Eastern European immigrants and then immigrants from African nations. And so it is a more diverse, when I was a girl, everybody looked like me, you know, it was really homogenous. And now we see more diversity because we have immigration and it's changing the country. We have a booming, well, we did have, it's not booming like it was, but we went through an economic boom as we went through this. We also, I think the role of the Catholic Church has really changed when I was a girl. The Catholic Church was really powerful. That's not true anymore. I mean, people in Ireland, I think, still identify as Catholic and they go to mass. But actually, I would say, you know, the Catholic Church reinforced a lot of those gender stereotypes. I mean, they literally told, you know, because of the influence, you know, women couldn't, they, we couldn't have contraception. It was actually illegal, you know, let alone divorce, you know. And so in the last couple of years, we have actually had a referendum and voted gay marriage. So we have our, in fact, our last prime minister was a gay man. And so to me, that would never have happened. I'm shocked to see that it turned around in a single generation. But I think the church had a lot of influence that it's recently lost. Yeah, I went to Catholic school early on. And I remember the rigidity of the Catholic religion, you know, and I think that, you know, a lot of what we know about the world, people use religion to condemn, penalize, destroy whatever it is that suits their agenda regardless. And I think that's very unfortunate for us. That is indeed the case that we are, you know, I am not, I don't, I don't subscribe to any religion. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. And that's, that's as far as I can get. I can't get any further than that, because the fact that you can use religion to, you know, like, so black people, for example, there's a quote that the Klan and white supremacists use is about the story of Ham. So Ham supposedly went into a tent and had relations with his daughter. And so from that, God put a stamp on people and anybody that comes out black is because of Ham. You know, so that's Christian religion, right? So, and there's so many pieces and parts of that. You have Catholic, you know, with the, you know, children being molested by all the things that happen, you know, that people wrap themselves up in religion and become so absorbed in it, they don't, you can't see your lenses are right. You can't see what's really happening. So, you know, I'm glad that Ireland has made that choice. And, you know, it's always been one of those places I wanted to go. You know, I've been to Germany a couple of times, you know, and I, my daughter went to Finland. You know, and, you know, I traveled a lot when I was younger, but I've always wanted to go to Ireland, but I've always been afraid because like, I think what would a black person do in a whole wide country, you know, what would happen to me, you know, when I make it out, you know, and so. Oh, yeah. It's, I think, well, now it's, it's, it's way more diverse. I brought my children there when they were little and they were, and they were, and it was, it was fine. But, you know, they were, you didn't see many other kids who looked like them at the time. So, it's, it's changed quite a bit since then. Well, thank you so much for chatting. Thank you. We have a couple of minutes left. So, if you have anything you want to add, please, please, and as soon as the video converts, I'll send you a link and you can review it and let me know if I may upload it. That sounds great. You know, we've covered so much. I don't know that I really have anything to add other than, you know, one of the things, as I said, I want to kind of rededicate myself in some ways to making IT, particularly in higher ed, a more welcoming place for people of color, as I've done for women for many years. So, I know you have quite a following and I just want to encourage people to reach out to me the way I'm sure people reach out to you at the way you reached out to me because I'd love to have a conversation and, and, and I'd love to get advice. And I, I don't know, I'll just say my email address is hnauras at Chapman.edu and I encourage, I'd love to hear from any of your, your connections. So, thank you again, Rochelle. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you very much. Stay well and you have my contact information. I do. And please reach out and I'm sorry, I normally don't use my phone over the weekends, so I turn it off before to somewhere so I'm happy to be able to do this today. So, I have a great rest of your day. But let me ask you one question before we go. Are you not susceptible or vulnerable to the fires that are in California? Oh, well, we're a little bit away from the fires. We, so actually I'm looking out the window now and it looks pretty nice, but the last few days it's just been really smoky. And so actually I was telling my husband, I felt it in my throat and my nose, you know, so to me, so I'm again very fortunate that I'm not somewhere where my home is in danger. Even my, one of my daughters lives in the Bay area and saying much smokier up there. So that's the worst that we felt. So then hopefully it stays that way. But man, it was smoky and it made, I was like, do I have the coronavirus or is it just the smoke? You know, hopefully it was just the smoke. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much again for chatting. I'm glad you're safe and your children are safe. Thank you. So thank you and stay in touch, please. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Bye.