 Thank you for coming to the Diversity Luncheon. How many of you are attending the Diversity Luncheon for the first time? Awesome. Welcome. How many of you have been here before? Welcome back. We have a wonderful event planned for you today. We're thrilled to be screening episode one of The Chasing Grace Project, produced by Jennifer Clover. This documentary series devotes each episode to a different topic within the women in tech narrative. And the project aims to give a voice to the everyday women working in tech, not just the ones who make headlines. Today's episode 80-20 tackles the gender pay gap, considers its financial and emotional tolls, and weighs the consequences of forcing women out of the field. Before we view today's episode, I want to say a few words about diversity. Diversity is a buzzword in the tech industry that frequently manifests as tokenism. It looks like a lone woman speaker on a panel of a dozen men or one black coder asked to speak for all coders of color during a company all hands meeting. It reinforces the binary of normal and other when someone is referred to as the female Southwest pilot who saved hundreds of lives, a woman CEO, or an Asian developer. Some organizations recoil from investing in or prioritizing diversity because they do not see it as critical to their own success. Others do not know how to approach the topic, and instead choose to ignore it. Since our last diversity luncheon in Basel this past October, there has been a sea change in the way we talk about relationships among genders in the workplace. So much of what women have been forced to bury, the microaggressions, the harassment, the coded language, the glass ceiling, is finally being uncovered, as though men are finally holding the paper up to the ultraviolet light and making the invisible ink visible. Telling the stories can be cathartic, but it can also be overwhelming, both for the women telling them and for the people hearing them for the first time. But it is so important that we keep having this conversation, that we don't tune out because we feel like it's too much. Nothing will change if we stop engaging. If admitting there's a problem is the first step and talking about it is the second step, then the third step is creating the change in your own life and for the people around you. I have seen so many incredible projects coming out of the Me Too conversations. There's the salary project started by the career contessa Lauren McGudwin, which allows women or anyone to enter their demographic data and see how their salary compares to peers in their field to make sure they're being compensated equally with male colleagues. There's the Sexism Field Guide, started by the foundation's own Melissa Logan, which serves as a manual for everyday people to identify and confront sexism. In the spirit of its open source founder, it's open to community contributions. And there's the Chasing Grace Project, the series developed and produced by Jennifer Clower, founder of Rethinkit PR in Portland and former VP of Communications at the Linux Foundation. In a Q and A with Abby Kearns following the episode, Jennifer will talk about her inspiration to create the Chasing Grace Project and tell us how her conversation turned into a documentary. As we feel simultaneously inundated and simulated by the Me Too movement, it can be hard to show up. So thank you for being here, for coming to hear the stories of your colleagues and for finding out how you can do better. Looking around at Summit this year, I see a more diverse audience than I have ever seen here and the data proves it. 12% of attendees identify as women according to our attendees survey. That's 1% improvement over last Summit and that's almost 200 women at Summit. Could we do better? Yes, we could. And we continue to work hard to attract women and non-traditional tech workers by making Summit an inclusive event. We are also an open source community and we welcome contributions and feedback. So if there is anything we can do to make this event more inclusive, please let us know. Email me, content at cloudfoundry.org. Tweet at me, let's get on the phone and talk about it. In the meantime, enjoy your lunch, watch the film and take it to heart that in the words of Jennifer Clover, you cannot be what you cannot see. So let's keep working together to highlight the technical and professional strengths of women and people of color to give the next generation the role models they need to fulfill their dreams. Thank you. Please welcome to the stage Jennifer Clover and Abby Kearns. Thank you so much, Caitlin, for the fantastic introduction and thank you all for joining us for our Summit luncheons that we do every time and we try to change it up. I will be honest, this is the second time I've got to see this. It does make me cry every time. So we'll start with that. But Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. Is it working? Can you hear me? Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, showing us this documentary, this thing that you've been working on for so long and your baby is now out in the open. I know. Crazy. But for, you know, I've known you for years but for everyone here, maybe tell a little bit about how you got to this point because you had an interesting journey. Sure. So I've been a woman in tech for about 17 years and I studied journalism and have done, that's right, I've done storytelling and PR all of my career and spent 12 years supporting the Linux Foundation six years on the agency side and then in-house built the communications team there over about six years. And when I decided to leave, I knew I still wanted to do PR. I have a PR consulting firm but the women in tech narrative was reaching kind of a fever pitch and it was very confused online. You can read stories online and you read the comments and it gets very confusing and nuances are lost. And so being a storyteller and a communicator, I thought maybe I could at least advance some constructive conversations by putting everyday women in tech on camera. Which I think you've picked no better representation for the Brett that is women in tech. All ages, all backgrounds. All entry points. I like, I really like, I liked every one of the stories but Farah's is really interesting because she came into tech later and really has found her own groove and it's really important, I think, reflecting on where we are right now and where we're going. We talk a lot about skills gap and digital transformation and I think it's really important to show the breadth of potential out there. Yeah. An untapped talent that's sitting out there. Yeah. And Farah's interesting, and I was sharing a story earlier just a little background on her story. She, I interviewed her in November on camera and we talked about the pay gap and it was interesting but she didn't have a specific pay gap story and then she called me really late one night, like two, three weeks before the premiere and said I haven't told you all the truth. I have a pay gap story but it's about my current employer and I don't know if I should tell it and I said, you need to think about this. I didn't want her to go on camera and get fired or become a target to get pushed out because we all know that that happens, right? We all know that's real and so we had a very candid conversation. I asked her to think about it and come back to me to acknowledge that that was a risk and if she was willing to take that risk, I was gonna support her. She actually went and talked to her boss, the gentleman who she told to fuck off, right? She went and talked to him and said I'm gonna do this and I want your support and he gave it to her which I think is a real testament to being assertive and owning what you know is yours. So I thought that was really inspiring. I love to tell that story because Farrah's obviously got a lot of personality but like Abby said, she's new to the industry and she's finding her way and I recently chatted with her and she's learning from this project and feeling empowered by it and that's part of the objective. Yeah, I love it. She inspires me. I got to meet her at the premiere and she just blew me away about how she thinks about the industry and one of the things that she said that I've heard a lot of other women say is I just wanna do great tech. Yeah, that's what I wanna do. I love technology. I don't want anyone to take that away from me and I do think that's an interesting point that I heard resonated through this is that we, particularly as women underrepresented minorities we don't want our job to be fighting for equality. We want our job to be technologists. We wanna be a technologist and there's a heavy burden and a cost and a labor. Megan also highlighted the hour she spent in extra work just so she could be seen as an equal. Right, right. When I first started exploring this project I interviewed over 100 women last year. I spent every Friday for like four months. I'm back to back calls with women and the common theme was I love it here. I love building and I love innovating and I wanna be a part of this and I wanna start a company and I wanna create a project. All of them had thought about leaving but none of them wanted to and so that's the major story arc to the entire series in every episode is that yes, I love it, I'm inspired, I wanna be here. I've faced adversity, here's the conflict, here's the obstacle, let's look at that, let's see women and understand their experiences and acknowledge those experiences but let's also look at how they're overcoming them and are a big, big part of our industry. And I kind of like, I get excited and I like wanna talk about all the things. So I kind of deviate from the script, sorry, Caitlin. I'm like, what all can we cover? And I wanna make sure I have time to actually wanna take questions from each of you so I have one question before we open it to the audience and chasing Grace and we all love Grace Hopper and really what she means to us but how did you come about that as a name for the project? Yeah, well this screening event I gave props to my partner, I have to because it was his idea, Gary Schillinger as my partner with Wicked Flicks, Long Time Linux Foundation employee and contractor and we battled around different names for a long time there were a lot of clever names but chasing Grace we felt like really embodied two things. One, there are fewer women in tech than there's ever been and so Grace Hopper is kind of this ideal that we're chasing, right? Grace and her grit and what she did and to get back to the numbers that we used to have, right? It's just really weird that in this day we're actually moving backwards and then the Grace that so many women embody as they fight frankly and pursue the careers that they deserve. Thank you. That's a powerful name, good, thank you. So I wanted to open up to anybody have any questions here? Any questions about how Jennifer got here, about the film, what's next, anything? Andrea? Do you have an idea or a theory why it is that things are going backwards for women? There's a lot of theories out there. I think one that resonates with me is the culture of tech has changed a lot in the last 10 to 15 years. If you talk to women from different age demographics they'll talk about how in the 80s and 90s it wasn't nearly as exclusive as it is now. Some people think that's because of the unicorn culture in the valley and the hoodie generation and all of those things where it did not feel at all inclusive to women. So one of the episodes will be focused on the culture of tech to explore that and look at how is culture influenced, how is it defined, how is it influenced and how do we start to change it. And I'm optimistic, because I actually think the culture is starting to shift. I think we're pivoting and I think that's so important and so good. But it's driven by people who are in power and the folks that dominate the culture, which are men. So another episode is on the role of male allies because it's a really important role, right? There were no men in front of the camera on this but I interviewed many men to inform it and they will be in front of the camera here on out. But I think the culture has been a real issue in the last decade in particular. But there's a lot of theories about why women are leaving and not joining. There's a really great NPR piece that explores a few reasons why. It's a tough question. I'll go first and this will be more of my opinion than anything but I'd like to see us all created our thought of equally. As someone that's really overachieved most of her career. I don't know if that's more of my personality or if because I felt I had to but I do feel like I've worked twice as hard as a lot of my male peers in this industry. But I would like to see, I agree, I think it would like to see it more sustainable and have it be as meritocrat as we like to think that it is. What do you think? I interpreted the question to mean like how long will it take? Okay, so yeah, I'll be interpreted your question, right? Man, I think that's an individual thing. Finding a balance and a pace that works for you is different for everybody first of all but that's all about balance and that's been a personal journey of my own. I think we have to find that for each of us. Yes, Caitlin. In this age of data and big data why aren't we coming at this from the angle of why isn't there more of a publication of more thorough information about jobs and salaries and attributes associated with that? It doesn't have to be named people and named companies or perhaps it could name the companies but just where's the big database that we can all refer to to say how much should I be making? Because if you think about it, 30% is huge. You should know that you should be earning at least a certain amount, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean there are more databases online than ever before to check your salary and there's a major salary transparency movement underway and I talked to Claire Wasserman, the ladies get paid founder about that. So I think there's a lot of stuff coming in that area. I think it's much better than it used to be but it does seem like we should have more information. Megan made the point to me off camera that she didn't have those tools back then. Now there are more tools. This happened to her earlier in her career so I think there's improvements there. But I agree, I think the technology and where we are today, as much access to information as we have, seems like an average salary for a role would be one of those. And I've seen some of the data spreadsheets and stuff because when I think about pay for me or my team, I'm like, okay, what does this role get based on the, not just the role generically but you should also take into consideration the region you live in and the role and the level and I'd like to see more of that. I think it's out there now but I'd love to see it where even people that are coming into the industry know where to look and know where to find that and it's easily digestible. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of research out there too on it's in corporate best interests not to have that information public because it will cost a lot of money to close the gap for companies. But some companies are taking great steps to do that. I'll give Salesforce credit there, right? They've done some really great stuff. In fact, I requested an interview with Mr. Banioff and they did consider it but it wasn't gonna work. I think he had to go to Davos next time, be next time. Yeah. Any other questions? Yes, Susanna. All girls, they're pursuing STEM but they are doing so in biology and following nursing degrees versus IT or being doctors and following medicine. So it's almost like there's self-doubt or a lack of confidence that, and that's something that needs to be addressed at younger ages. I don't think that that is so much the culture piece that you were talking about which is much more once you're in the professional ranks. It starts very young, very young. And that's something that fathers need to address with their daughters and help them grow. I love the story about the Legos and I love the, I forget what the games are that the lady out in California that started all the new toys, yes, love that. So it's really starting young and I think fathers have a huge role to play with their daughters in helping them realize their capabilities and their ability to grow. You live in Palo Alto and they went to an elite public high school and one of my daughters who's the engineering major at Hopkins was in a CS class at this advanced program at her high school and she ran up against all kinds of negative stuff against boys in the class. And I think she was the only girl by her junior year. And I don't know how to address that or what to say or what to do. All I could do was encourage her and then she went on to do what she wanted to do which, you know, God bless her. But it's pretty profound. I mean, it really is a cultural thing. Even there, right at ground zero in Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, it's very progressive school. Right, but I think that I think it's in all relationships. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. How do you explain that? That, I don't, yeah. Well, yeah, we have a, and in Caitlyn, there's some more over there. We have, we have a, it's, this isn't one of those things where we can just fix one thing and all of a sudden everything else is gonna work itself out. There is a, there's systemic cultural issues. Susanna, to your point, that exist and are propagated everywhere. We talk a lot about unconscious bias and those are things that have really seeped into our everyday and the way we perceive things and the role in it. I, I went to, I had a, I majored in compsai in college. I was the only woman in my entire major and I've spent most of my career being the only woman in the room. And, you know, that's also made me adopt some behaviors that I'm now unlearning. I'm unlearning a lot of behaviors. You know, I learn a lot from, from the younger women that are coming up in tech now and are part of our company that are constantly pointing out, why do you do that? Why do you think that? Why, why do you think that's okay to let that happen? Just stuff that I stopped noticing 15 years ago. And so I think it's, it's, it isn't just a, a male versus female thing at this point. It's just a, it's just cultural aspects have seeped into everything that we do that, you know, I am just as guilty about as anyone. It's a big, it's a big reason for the pay gap actually. And we didn't get to export in 22 minutes, but how girls are socialized versus how boys are socialized when they're young, girls aren't taught to negotiate or to be assertive or to expect more. And I've been a manager, I know from firsthand that men ask for a lot more, a lot more often. And so, you know, one of the solutions is, is ladies gets paid, hosts, you know, negotiation workshops and stuff. And that doesn't mean that the burden falls on women, by the way, the burden falls on all of us, employers included, but, but it is a socialization, a socialization of, of, of the world we live in. Caitlin. We have, I'm sorry. I guess it's me, sorry. You mentioned that these women in the, in the current clip were all still in tech. I was just wondering if you were able to explore the attrition, like the people who actually left and why they did and, and, and part of it. Yeah, so I have talked to women who have left and every woman I interview I ask if they've ever thought of leaving and they all have multiple times. The, you know, we have a couple objectives for our series. One is to recruit and retain female talent for the industry because I feel very passionate that the way that we're building the future with artificial intelligence and machine learning, if we don't have everyone at the table to inform that technology that the world we live in won't be even as inclusive as it is today. So that's one of our objectives. The other is to give women a platform to be seen and heard. So I'm toying with the idea of dedicating an episode to women who have left so we can learn from them. But I'm trying to understand how that fits into our overall mission. But I've talked to many of them. I don't have numbers at, at my fingertips, but it's a topic that I think's an important one. Yeah. Actually just a quick poll of, of the women here in this room, how many of you have considered leaving tech at one time or another? Most women in the room, most women in the room. It's, it is, it's a, you've hit on a powerful point that I think we don't often talk about. It's, it's really kind of addressing the elephant in the room sometimes, isn't it? So Carol Hul, so I work for Cognizant Technology Solutions and my boss is the head of consulting services globally. I'm the head of consulting for, for one of our divisions for digital engineering and she's made it her mission to fix the pay gap, at least within consulting. So we are going through and proactively looking at the difference, we're using data, right? To, to figure out like where should people really be and, and fixing the pay gap. The challenge then becomes more a problem of, so the people are at the right pay level, but maybe they're not at the right level within the organization, right? So you fix the pay gap, but you haven't fixed the opportunities that they are able to work on to advance further, right? So it's, it's part of the solution, but it's not the total solution. So two-part question, do you see other companies doing the same thing? And the second question is, you know, what are your thoughts or suggestions on fixing, you know, more of the opportunity problem when she fixed the pay gap? The opportunity problem. I mean, I've talked to a lot of folks about the role of female mentors and, and male mentors in advocating for women to be promoted and to be, you know, given opportunities. I think that mentorship is really important. People tend to promote and advocate for people who are like them. So the role of female mentors in that situation is really, really important. Your first question in terms of other companies looking to close the pay gap, I do think there's a trend right now. Thank you to Salesforce last year on Equal Payday, making a big deal about how they invested $3 million to do that. I think other companies are following suit, so that's a really great trend to see. Since women in unionized workforces have half the pay gap that they do in the general workforce, is it time to advocate for unionization of technology workers or do we just wait for the companies to, of their own volition, to make up the difference? I guess that's a leading question. That's a good question. You've done a lot of the research. What is your... Is the question, should we consider unionization? Yes. To close the pay gap? Or rely on employers to close the pay gap? Force the issue, so to speak. Yeah. I haven't actually given it a whole lot of thought. It hasn't come up in any of the conversations I've had interestingly, because it is a good question. I don't have a strong opinion either way. I think there's a lot of ways we can close the gap. In fact, I wrote a blog on Equal Payday this year. We know how to close the gap. There's like three or four different ways to do it. So it's just a matter of people taking the steps to do it, which again, employers stand to lose some money in order to do it, but I think with the movement that's underway, they feel that pressure. I think we're headed in the right direction. I think to your point, I think at this point as a company, with more and more things coming out in the open, and they're becoming more and more transparency whether you like it or not, no company wants to be the next one on the front page of the news, saying that, wow, you've systemically underpaid women and minorities for most of their career. So I think a lot of companies are considering it because worst case, they don't want the bad PR. Right. Right, it's powerful. Yeah. So PR and consistently saying this publicly, I think is also a good advocation right now. All right, I just actually wanted to make two comments and one is a kind of a follow-up and I didn't get my hand up fast enough, but it isn't just fathers, it's also mothers. The unconscious bias is absolutely horrendous and women can actually be more tough on women than men. So we all as women have to be careful of that. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice. So be really super conscious of the unconscious bias and Abby, I applaud you for admitting that. That's good because that's something that I've noticed. The other thing I really, really wanted to highlight was the need for mentors. In my career, I have lacked mentors and good mentors to help me grow and as a result had a very difficult time growing. So mentors and try and find good mentors for the folks on your teams. That's a good point, mentors and I would say and sponsors because that's how you get your next job and your next role is someone that's talking about you when you're not in the room. Because that's when those conversations really happen. So in the last few questions, you've talked about a few different strategies for addressing the pay gap, the transparency, negotiation, mentorship. So first question is have you run into any other strategies that people you've talked to have tried and either succeeded or failed for closing the gap? And then my second question is what other topics is your series gonna cover? Oh sure, so pay audits. So that's essentially how Salesforce did their close their pay gap. And there's a lot of new companies sprouting up that do this as a service, do pay audits. It was going to be regulated and required by the government under Obama and Trump shut it down. But companies can elect to do pay audits and there's software out there that do it and it takes money to close it. But in the big scheme of things, it's not that much money. So I hope that we'll see more people doing pay audits. And then the other topic, so we're doing six episodes. We have four to find, we're leaving the last two open so that this journey that we're on can inform what those last two will be. The next one is female founders and the VC community. The one following that is the role of male allies both in our personal and professional lives. And the fourth is on the culture of tech and exploring that. And do you are currently asking for ideas for the last two? I am, yeah, I'm asking for ideas for the last two. If you have ideas for topics and I'm also looking for sources for all of the topics I just mentioned. I'm interviewing now for female founders and I'm always looking for sponsors. This is fully underwritten by generous sponsors. We raise just enough money to cover the production costs. It is a labor of love. So if you have a company or organization who would like to support the work, let me know. And by the way, if you have ideas and you'd like to get in touch with Jennifer and don't know how to, feel free to email me or my staff and we will put you in contact. We're gonna make you show. Quick question. We keep saying tech. Do you see a difference between engineering and IT? Because I started out in thermodynamics and I never felt really threatened or challenged because not easy to replace someone doing something that specific. Whereas in IT, it seems like people come from many backgrounds, some non-technical, some technical. Therefore, there's more challenges because there's a larger pool that can replace you. So do you see a delineation there? For the purposes of our project, I mean, I've talked to a lot of people who actually advised me early on to choose an area of tech to focus on or to choose to focus on non-technical women or technical women and I made a very intentional decision not to delineate between any of those things because I think that there are valid and important experiences across all of that. So I haven't spent a lot of time looking at that but I absolutely understand there's differences. Yeah, question about the media and perception and how the media can actually play a role in this and participate in this conversation. A lot of the media right now is addressing, is built on breaking news, right? Any thoughts on that? On changing the perception and changing the perception of media and helping them get the story out better. But in terms of different stories, in terms of not just the breaking news but the different types of stories that can be covered. You're running the PR, I'd say. Yeah, I think you have really good thoughts on this. Well, I think, hmm, that's such a big question, Alex. It's just such a big question. I think that the media is helping right now. I think that the topic is one that's being explored in a lot of depth. I haven't seen a lot of misreporting. I think that the media is doing a really good job at surfacing whistleblowers and giving them a platform to share their stories. So I'm encouraged by what I see in the media and I started in producing this project in part so that more of the everyday women can share their stories and be seen for those stories and we can learn from those experiences because like I said, I think Ellen Powell did a powerful thing with what she did because I think she basically broke the code of silence that I talked about at the Portland premiere and women now feel like they can talk about their experiences. So bringing that everyday, I hope that this project can bring that everyday perspective that maybe informs more media. I don't know, we'll see. So I had this radical idea a couple of weeks ago that occurred to me when I was talking about this as well. And maybe this is a challenge we should put out there for all the marketers. I feel like tech needs a rebrand. I feel like we can do like this mass marketing campaign and just rebrand tech. Give it a new face, maybe even a new name, tell a new story. We could just rebrand tech so that, and I've seen this covered in other places where tech, particularly software development used to be primarily driven by women. It was mainly women that did that and then there was a brand change in the late 80s and it started like all of a sudden it got a young white male face. And I'm wondering if now's the time we rebrand it and give it another face. I think it's a notion. I do, I think it's happening. That's what I mean by my response to the media question. I think that, I think it's happening but it takes a long time. We gotta be patient but persistent. I am not patient, I know either am I. So my question is in the pay gap conversation it's be more like men, be aggressive, be whatever, which is great and needed. How have you seen in your conversations that the different style of leadership of women and other cultures, not just women but is celebrated, how you cover that in your culture episode or I'd love to hear about that. I feel pretty strongly about this one and we had this conversation earlier today. Women do mimic men a lot in tech or at least traditionally they have to fit in and to be aggressive and to be a ball buster and fuck this, fuck that, all that stuff. But right, right, right. And that's okay, that's okay. But I think that what we're starting to learn at least collectively through the women I've talked to what I'm hearing is that we want to embrace our feminine side. There's so much power in that and there's so much that we have to bring to the table that is defined by that, right? Like when I talk about everybody needing to be at the table to build the future it's all of us men and women. I mean we both bring such amazing, unique different qualities to problem solving. And I think one of the major issues is women in leadership positions. By the way that's a whole other topic and I'm actually thinking about that for either episode five or six. Because it's actually one of the reasons for the gap is not enough women make it to leadership roles where they're making that kind of money. But I think Nithya Ruff who most of you probably know she's a big open source community member in the trailer says that when I ask her how are you chasing grace and how do we get to that and she says by embracing the true power of what it means to be a woman. It's beautiful. Yeah and I think that's actually spot on is a lot of what we're talking about is mimicking male behaviors but that's something that I've learned I've been practicing in the last year is really embracing more of what it means to be a woman and bringing that to my job as opposed to trying to fit into this other predefined mold. I think that's actually an excellent question. Yeah. And I know we're getting close to the top of the hour for other sessions. Maybe we have one more question. Yeah hi. Something in the video talked about a woman when she retired she has like half a million less than men and then women of color have like maybe a million less than men and so that reminded me of an article where there's a pay inequity even within women for women of color they're actually making less. Are there any policies that you've seen that are trying to address this so that when we close the pay gap between men and women we do it for all women. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not seeing any. Unfortunately I did not come across any policies in my research but the person to ask would be Claire. LadiesGetPaid.org check that out and they should have that information but in my interview with her and in my research unfortunately I didn't see any that would address that. But yes you are right. Yeah absolutely. Intersectionality is another topic on the list for consideration. Yes it's a big one. Well awesome well thank you Jennifer for coming and sharing this amazing movie with us and thank you all for coming and attending and bringing your thoughts. This is an important part of Cloud Foundry Summit really talking about how we can as a community but to be much more diverse and inclusive and your voice is important to that so thank each and every one of you for coming. Yeah. Thank you Jennifer.