 Hi, everyone. This is Representation Matters. We are introducing Open Tech Pledge, the latest conversation on inclusive workplaces. My name is Camille Eddy. I am a mechanical engineer by training. I currently work as a senior product engineer at a startup in New York, and I will pass it off to Chloe to introduce herself. Chloe? Hi, everyone. My name is Chloe Mastaghi, and I'm a security and tech changemaker. And when I'm not doing all those things, I'm also the co-founder of Hacking is Not a Crime, the co-founder of We Open Tech, also the co-founder of Open Tech Pledge with Camille that you just met. I'm also a weekly columnist for Security Boulevard. I have my own column called Ask Chloe, where I provide advice to people like you every week. I'm also a podcaster for the changemaking podcast on ITSP Magazine. Awesome. So we know that diversity talks, there's a dime a dozen, there's a lot of them. And we wanted to be aware of the fact that we might bring stats or ideas into the picture that might be uncomfortable. So we want to help you set an intention for this talk today. So our goal is to have you take one takeaway or a feeling that you would like to have at the end of this talk. And the idea behind that is if we don't hit on that feeling or that idea, you should go out and look for it, right? And then if we do, we want you to recognize that there are answers out there that people are thinking about these things. And we would like to help you if you don't have one of those phrases, thoughts or feelings. So if you don't know what you want to do, here is just one example that you might take. So that is we are going to walk through the discomfort comfortably. So if that's something that resonates with you, please reflect on that. I'm going to count silently to 10. And if you would just take a moment to reflect on that one takeaway or feeling that you would like at the end of this talk, I would be truly grateful. So here we go. All right, I'm going to bring us back together. Thank you for doing that. I know it will really help with this experience that you're about to have. So next, I want to go over Chloe and I's shared agreements. These are the, this is the lens that we come to this talk with today. Again, another example of intention setting. So the first thing I want to talk about is the fact that this is not diversity entrepreneurship. We are not looking for the easy opportunities to continue diversity. We want to make intentional steps towards improvement with a sense of urgency. And then also we're capable of achieving better. The status quo will not go unchallenged in this talk. So get ready for that. And we're going to investigate discomfort relentlessly. And the next, we need both the metrics and the acknowledgement of the problem. So you're going to hear a bunch of metrics in a minute, a bunch of stats, and these weren't stats weren't chosen just libly, because we thought we liked the sound of them. It's because we're trying to do something very specific. We want to show you the stats and also acknowledge the problem. So hopefully we can leave by example in that way. So as Camille was sharing, we're going to talk a little bit first about the benefits of effective diversity. And then we're going to go into statistics of the landscape. The first thing I would say is that when we don't have diversity in our workplace or in our industry, we have products that only work for a certain group of people. That means that the products that we're creating, we're thinking, oh, this can be applicable to everyone. But in the reality is that if your team does not have representation of diverse backgrounds, how are you supposed to create products that are going to work for those? And that could be just basically asking the questions of the user. And knowing what to ask is how we create things in life. So if we're not asking the right questions or asking the questions that no one else on the team is asking, we're not creating the products that are going to be useful for everyone. It's another thing to understand and acknowledge is that before diversity, we have a lot of lip service. And you probably have seen this quite a bit when it comes to companies and leadership talking about how they're trying to do better for diversity and inclusion and equity, but yet there's absolutely zero practice happening or there's not that much practice at all. It's also incredibly difficult to have conversations about diversity and especially when it comes to the availability of credibility of resources as well. But when we have diversity and diversity is celebrated and people are taking the initiatives at all times, we'll have products that actually work, products that work for all populations because that means that there's representation of those that are building the products and those that are marketing the products and selling the products. And that's the thing that's really missing right now is that we don't have representation throughout the companies, throughout our industry. And so because of that, not all the users feel welcome to use it or they don't feel like they were even recognized when it was built. So having diversity matters so much because it showcases in your products, also knowing that there's this interrupt bias and higher qualified applicants at a practicing level leadership, but also that there's best practices that are being implemented on a rolling basis as best for the community deployed in. And what that basically means is that it's acknowledging that it isn't just like, okay, we fix the problem. Now we don't need to do anything else. We have diversity, equity, inclusion, we have someone in charge, or we have a team of people that are doing everything for us. So we don't need to do anything else. The thing is, we also have to look at to be able to have diversity, equity, inclusion, we also have to look within ourselves, what are we doing that is making the situation better? What are we doing that's not making the situation better? And also that we need to consistently educate ourselves and understand that we don't know everything, and that's okay, but at least work towards knowing more. And last but not least, with company DEI, you've probably heard this before, but it is diversity, equity, inclusion, and Camille is going to walk through that in a bit, is the thing that you need to know is that how does it work today? The reality is that we don't really have it. And that's the sad part because we hear this quoted around all the time, you know, that lip service I mentioned earlier, you know, before you actually have diversity in a company. That's what's been practicing, because there is this limited research on metrics, there's faulty representation, there's no expert practitioners, there's a lack of implementation, a lack of consistency, and a lack of growth. And this is why it's important that we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, and why we need to continue having that conversation. It's not just a fad or a trend, it's something that we need to keep reiterating over and over and continue to roll up our sleeves and work together to do. So thank you, Chloe, for that. And what is DEI? So I'm about to walk through a definition of diversity. It's not in the Webster dictionary, so don't even look. But for practical reasons, it's important to understand how we're defining diversity for this talk. So for diversity in tech, we're on talking about marginalized identities, who have struggled to have their peers recognize and or validate their professional background and current passion for tech and leadership. I'm talking about walking into a room maybe on the first day of meeting a new team and being asked, where did you come from? How did you get here? Or some variation of that question? Looking and longing for that sense of belonging can be a preoccupying task when you're a fresh engineer, maybe early in your career, and trying to find that acceptance. So that's what we're striving for. We're not talking about removing people from power to put other people in. We're talking about expanding our notion of what it means to be in tech, what it means to be recognized and validated for the career or profession that has been chosen by an individual. So to that point, DEI equals belonging. Here's a bin diagram of different ideas that you've been hearing repeatedly, such as equity, which is the idea of constantly and consistently recognizing and redistributing power. But that doesn't stand on its own, right? There are other pieces to this puzzle, to this story. So inclusion, thoughts, ideas, and perspectives of all individuals matter. And then, of course, diversity. Multiple identities represented in an organization, which creates belonging. And that belonging definitely comes from some, an organization, a community, a spirit that understands the inner that innovation thrives when people are together and working on the same problem, but with the sense of belonging and being included, having that equity, having that diversity. So we have these actions for diversity. You don't have to take this all in. This is really for you to do a screen grab or picture to think about these steps. And they really do go in this order. First, you listen. You understand that immediately you need to understand what people's concerns are, their genuine concerns. And then you also need to understand their unwillingness and take that as fact. Maybe there's some resistance, be willing to listen to that and to hear it. And when we go through the stats in the next slides, that's what we hope to bring you into this period of listening and to be able to genuinely accept what is presented. The next step is where Open Tech Pledge comes in. And we'll talk about this a little bit later in the talk, but that's building consensus. You need people to understand where you're coming from and you need to find the common ground. And personally, I love running towards the tractors. I want to be more optimistic and to give them a platform to talk, but then also a platform to be more optimistic about the future because we're doing what it takes to get it done. So we're going to go into the problem and you will see disclaimers pretty much on every single slide because the reality is, is that our research reflects the lack of belonging or, as we were saying earlier, diversity, equity, inclusion. Because when you don't have people that are diverse on your team or researchers, you're not asking the questions that need to also be asked. You're not studying the populations that need to be considered in the study. And this is why it's all about us also recognizing that we have the ability to learn more and more about the world that we live in and the people that do as well. So first but least, I just want to say these are our sources for some of the stats that you're going to be seeing. So if you want, you can take a screenshot of this or you can take a photo of it. So then you have it at all times. So you can look these studies up even further. So first set I want to bring to your attention is that one study found that 66% of women's reviews contain comments about the personality, but only 1% of men reviews did. This is letting you know that we're still dealing with a situation where women don't feel belonging in their organization. But I want to address something really quickly here is that this study, it's more about cis white women. And the thing is that we have to acknowledge that a lot of the research that has been done on DEI has been focused on cis white women. And because of that, we're also missing a lot of other data points, such as BIPOC, which is Black, Indigenous, people of color, non-binary, gender queer, gender non-conforming, trans, LGBTQ as well. And another study was that while nearly half of men received detailed information and coaching for less spots, only 15% of women received the same details and encouragement according to one report. This is one of the things that we have to understand is that we still have a problem here. When we talk about gender equality, here's the statistic that showing we don't have gender equality. And by gender equality, I also want to expand that. Gender equality is one thing that we can say, but gender equality also needs to encompass that gender is not binary. And that there are other genders that deserve to be seen and heard. And we don't have research about them. But we do have research about cis women, but we are still blatantly missing those that are not cis women. We're missing the non-binary as well. And that's just that. But once again, this is a study that's mostly focused on white. Another thing to keep in mind is in another study was that only 7% of companies set representation targets for gender and race combined, which means too many companies aren't setting specific goals around advancing black women. In the next couple of statistics, you're going to see even further how bad the situation is. Right. So here comes the perception problem. While most people view black women as particular as having resources and allyship, it is actually skewed. So whereas a black woman might report seeing less sponsorship, less mentorship, less allyship, people in the same organization who are not black women would literally defer or not defer to the black women's experience and say, oh, I see black women as having allyship. I see black women as having sponsorship and mentorship. And that's a wrong perception because in that gap is someone like me who might not have any of those resources, but is told to go and seek them out anyway. So this can be a bit of a backlash. It can be a bit of a situation where it's like, am I the one that's crazy because I don't see it, but other people are seeing it for me. The next one is about being severely underrepresented in senior leadership. You know, when I think about black women CEOs, my thoughts go a couple places, but really it goes to one bright spot in the sky. And that's Ursula Burns, who was the former CEO of Xerox. But there's just not enough women, black women in particular, being mentored, sponsored and sought out for these roles. And it's very important to understand that, that we still have a problem, a lack of representation to even be available. There are people with education, there are people with interest, but not necessarily finding that spot or that place of belonging within the organization to be recognized for the skills that they do have. And here's another one. LGBTQ women, especially women of color, are dramatically more likely to experience being and only. This is the same thing that I just mentioned, right? We still have this lack of representation, this lack of being amongst other people that understand and also have compassion for maybe a lack of mentorship and sponsorship in the past. And so that's what we're looking for. We're not looking to replace people. We are looking to be a part of the community just as well. But it's really hard to do that when you're the only, when you're the first, when you're the only, it means you're going through barriers that have never been crossed before. And if we're here to do work, it can be distracting to have to also look for and understand why people aren't relating to us in the same way that we are relating to them. So here's the truth, the rotten core truth. We are still tackling a system of bullying and exploitation. People are being brought into work. They are doing the work. They are putting in the time. They are raising their hand. They are asking for this mentorship and that sponsorship. And instead of being told, yes, you have been here and you deserve this, they are often rejected. I've often experienced this myself of just being rejected flat out for an ask or request for sponsorship and mentorship. And then also turned it around, it was turned around to say, you still have more to do, so wait. And that's where it turns into exploitation of this perpetual wait to find those spaces of belonging. So one of the things is to keep in mind is that in this study itself, we have still an ongoing problem when it comes to inappropriate comments and sexual harassment. And especially within tech, but I'm going to be very blunt and say especially in infosec. And here are some statistics for you, is that LGBTQ plus women face more inappropriate comments and sexual harassment at work. What this means is that they're experiencing microaggressions heavily. But I want to also reiterate in here that we do not know the race that different races that were collected during this research. But we have to assume at this point from that research and that paper collected that it was the majority of white participants. So this is actually something much worse for those of BIPOC. So once again, that's black indigenous and people of color. The other thing is to understand that there's still this increase of experiencing form of sexual harassment for even for men, but also for LGBTQ men. And even for straight women. And this is something that we still need to make sure that we understand is that we have to understand this bullying thing that keeps happening in our environment or even if it's just a joke. The thing is, it may be a joke to you, but it's not a joke to someone else. And this is the thing to keep in mind. But once again, I just want to reiterate that this study itself only scratches the surface of the ongoing problems that we have when it comes to harassment and especially sexual harassment. Because the truth is, is that 76% of LGBTQ feel safe at their company. And 64 of trans or gender non conforming community feel safe at their company. And I want you to understand that I know this is statistic looks like, Oh, okay, so then mostly people feel comfortable. But the reality is that they don't feel belonging, they don't feel like their company is supporting them, they don't feel like their colleagues, respect them, recognize them, hear them, listen to them, judge them not so and by judge not so to not judge them. And this is something we need to take in consideration is that we're not doing enough self practice in our workplace leadership isn't doing enough practicing of DI by reading or watching videos. And that's including human resources as well. We need them to get involved more as well. Now I want to reiterate that this research that was collected to get these statistics, black indigenous and people of color were not represented fully in it. So please do keep that in mind that the statistics are different for other populations. So to finish up here, we also have been talking about the stat kind of going around it but here it actually is, right? The total board seats by race and ethnicity with the top 82.5% being filled by white people, 8.7% filled by black people, 4.6% filled by Asian and Pacific Islander people, 4.1% by Hispanic and Latino people, and then other people 0.1%. So we are still looking for that representation. And we want to encourage that we expand board seats and bring in more diverse representation with the current team. Here's the demographics for 4,500 CEOs. And you can see over the course of the years, especially if you look further up the chart, you can see that there was a loss in representation in 4,500 CEOs over time. So everyone has made some type of loss and they haven't actually fully recovered as of yet. So black people have suffered a loss in seats. People of Asian descent have suffered a loss in seats and Latino and Hispanic have suffered a loss in seats. And you can see that very clearly on the graph. So we need to understand why this is happening. Why is it that the tenure is not long? Why is it that the period of growth does not sustain? That those are the problems that we're asking ourselves and the questions, the new questions that we want to ask to you. Well, again, here are the sources just in case if you did not have it. So I want to reiterate that you saw every single disclaimer there is that we just want you to understand that our research reflects the lack of DEI practices since we're missing a lot of data because there's this lack of intersectionality happening because we don't have representation on even when it comes to research groups. And because we don't have that, we're missing other questions. We're missing other data points to look into or other areas that need to be researched even further. And it's also because of this as a contributing factor that there's a lack of published research that shares any data of the following groups in tech such as non-binary, neurodiverse, biopic, religion, trans, and there's other groups as well. But this also we want you to know is that a lot of policies that are basically created in workplaces is that they're based on research like that has been gathered and the data that is presented to them. The thing is, is that if you're not getting good practices in research and in data, this impacts the having better policies or having more reference on what is the situation because you're not asking the questions that need to be asked and for the research to showcase the issues that are missing in what they're trying to understand further. And because of this, when we don't have proper research at all or proper data research that has intersectionality involved, we then get bad policies or policies that don't reflect the general public or policies that are missing some extreme data points that are needed to be included within it. And it's a problem because usually it's leadership that sets those those policies into place and when those policies are put into place and they're not really reflective of society. And this is another issue that we have to also understand and recognize. And thing is, is that in research continues to show that if we want DI leadership must have representation of marginalized persons just like how we showed you in when collecting research and data, if you don't have that diversity, equity inclusion involved, you're going to have a hard time because you don't have representation that was in your data points and not on your research team, then you're going to have people in leadership positions making the wrong calls or saluting policies that are not going to work for everyone. And the thing is, is that even today, when researching how to do better, how to actually have diversity, equity inclusion in the workplace, it has to come from the representation at the top because they set the vision for the entire company and it does produce a trickle down effect for everyone. So if you want to have representation and voices being heard and feeling of belonging in a company in a safe space, you need to make sure that that's also represented at the top so that it can bring it down further because they're going to help with forming that vision and getting better policies. And so what happened was that Camille and I, we brainstormed on a way, how do we do this? How can we fix this situation? Because time is up, it's been way too long and I don't know about you, but I think Camille and I are tired of how broken how things are and we want things to change. We want a better future. We want a place where we feel like we belong and welcomed. And so the solution that we created is based on everything that you've been presented so far. And that is acknowledging leadership needs to take a bigger stance more than ever before. And that's when we decided to create Open Tech Pledge. Now at the beginning of this talk, I ask you to set your intention. If you haven't already, please write that down and hopefully we'll hit on something for you here in these next few slides. If you're feeling like this is an impossible move, I want to remind you we just went through a pandemic year and a lot of rules were broken. A lot of things that we said couldn't be done were done. And so just like that, our goal is to increase representation of marginalized identities from less than 20% to 50 plus percent for all levels in tech-related orgs by ensuring representation at the top. The first step is to acknowledge that DEI is not working. The way we've been doing it, the losses that we've seen, the return back to old ways, that obviously shows that what we're doing is not working and we need to do something different. So the second step is to ask, do I see representation on my board or C-level team? This is the question I asked myself when I joined the team. And next, you can sign the pledge. So by signing the Open Tech Pledge, it's basically that you are committing your organization that you will ensure that at least 20% of marginalized persons are on the board and have C-level positions within two years. And then at that five-year mark, after signing the pledge, that your organization will have a minimum of 50% of marginalized persons having C-level positions and standing on the board. Now, I just want to reiterate what Camille has said a few times already. We're not asking for removing people. We're asking to expand because that's what's needed is more of a round table for representation is being included and it belongs in that room. So back to our actions for diversity. We talked to you about listening. We talked about building consensus to the Open Tech Pledge. And the next thing is the long-term game plan, which is implementation. After you've gained the consensus, after you've done the actual listening, take the next logical step for your community. It's about understanding your community and its needs at all times. So we like to say we have given you the outline. Now it is your turn to create the blueprint. And we hope you take that to heart and find a solution that works for your community. So go ahead and check out OpenTechPledge.org and see how you can make a difference. Because the reality is, I know you hear this quite a bit, you can make a difference. The thing is, you actually can. I mean, Camille and I, we just came together and we're like, hey, we need to do something about this. And what we did, we were creating something. But the reality is that for it to even work and to actually get further buy-in, we need people like you to get involved too. Because this is not about, you know, Camille and I, this is about all of us changing how the system is right now. And it is broken. It's a very broken system. And so we need to acknowledge the brokenness and to be able to roll up our sleeves altogether and start voicing that this matters. Because not just for us, but also for our products that we're creating, for the industry that we're running, and for the betterment of society. Because the reality is that life is short as we have learned during the pandemic. And it's up to us to understand that our actions cause things to happen. And that's the thing we always need to recognize is that it starts within us. So you can go to opentechpledge.org. And we also have two places where you can get further resources. We have a playlist of videos that are really great that talk about the various different marginalized groups that are needing to have their voice being heard. And then we also have a reading list, because Camille and I are bookworms, but also because that this is a really handy dandy book list to read all the different literature and people's opinions and also the research that has gone into basically people voicing their concerns and wanting to rise up to make sure that everyone feels like they belong. So we just want to say thank you so much for existing. Thank you for having us. We know that accepting diversity talks can be challenging. And we also understand that you may be getting flooded with diversity talks here and there. But this talk means a lot to Camille and myself. I know that Camille and I, we've had moments where we literally have thought, I don't want to work in this industry anymore. I don't want to work. I don't, I, I feel like I'm not, feel like I belong. And I'm sure that you've at one point felt that way too. And so we hope that this talk helped you also empowered you to start taking a stance with us. And we're happy to answer any questions that anyone has at this time. But thank you again for being here and listening to our talk.