 It's been a pleasure to have Laura Weidman-Powers, who is going to facilitate for us today as a New America, California fellow. For those of you who aren't familiar with her work, she's the founder of Code 2040. And I think, very rightly, has positioned diversity in tech as the civil rights issue of our era. So welcome, everyone. We're really looking forward to having this be as conversational and engaging as possible. So you have lots and lots of avenues to ask questions, but we encourage you to do that. You're also welcome to tweet. And so that we are part of the broader diversity in tech conversation online, the hashtag is diversity in tech. Great. I'll turn it over to Laura. Oh, you're mic'd. How about now? Oh, OK. Sweet. Awesome. I'm super excited to be here. Most of the time, I am sitting in one of these seats and answering the questions. And the folks to my left are sitting in the seat or behind their computer and on the phone answering the questions. And so this event, thank you, Megan, kind of flips the script a little bit, which I am very excited about. I feel like I sort of tricked them into letting me be the interviewer. Yeah, that's true. I don't think they're very happy about it, but we're thrilled that they're here. So I'm going to start off by just setting the stage a little bit for the diversity in tech movement, why we're here, and why we thought this would be such a powerful conversation to have. So before I start though, I would love to just get a quick sense of who is in the audience. So if you work at a tech company, could you raise your hands? Quasi, that's cool. As you'll hear, I believe all companies will be tech companies in the future. So if you work in a diversity and inclusion or talent function at the tech company that you're at, raise your hands. OK, cool. What are some other types of things that people do? Just shout them out. Oh, good question. Media. There's someone under here from TechRunge, actually. Good. OK, those people are hiding. Any other categories that you want to share? Yeah. We're from Paranat and Stratford. Awesome. Great. Yep. Oh, great. We're under government. Oh, awesome. Great. OK. Well, we're totally thrilled to have you all here. So I thought I would just start by giving a little bit of a sense of why I think this is important. And my guess is there's probably a lot of you who have your own kind of passions and reasons for thinking this is important. Or maybe you don't. And you're going to learn about why it's important today, which is also great. But I co-founded Code 2040, which is a nonprofit here in San Francisco that, broadly speaking, works on diversity in tech through a few different programs that are student-facing, entrepreneur-facing, and company facing. But I co-founded it with Tristan Walker, who has had a pretty awesome career in tech himself and now runs Walker and Company, which creates health and beauty products for people of color. We had a conversation where we looked at these two big trends that were happening in the country. And this was back in summer 2011. And the first was this idea that tech software is eating the world. Tech is an increasingly important function at existing companies. It's an increasingly important sector of the economy. And it's only going to become more so as time goes on. And at the same time, we're seeing this huge demographic shift happening in the country where Code 2040 gets its name from the year 2040, which is the start of the decade when people of color will be the majority in the US. And that means a shifting consumer base, a shifting workforce. And yet we saw a real disconnect between this growing and increasingly powerful segment of the economy and this growing and increasingly powerful segment of the country. And so we were really interested in how do you bridge those two trends. And we're interested in that, A, because there's some interesting possibilities around innovation and creation. How do we make sure that the products and platforms of the future are being created by the people that they're intended to serve and who will be using them? Also, there is a really interesting economic argument behind it, too, because it turns out that the average salary of a tech worker is more than the median household income of a Black family and a Latino family combined. So wealth distribution in this country is extremely inequitable based on race. And we have these jobs that are very well-paying, very stable in a growing portion of the economy and the opportunity for individuals from communities that have historically been left out of that segment of the economy, the opportunity for them to gain access to these jobs, which will influence and impact not only their own personal growth and trajectory, but their families and their communities. And we saw this firsthand. One of the things Code 2040 does is we run a fellows program. This summer, we have 86 Black and Latino computer science students from colleges and universities around the country who are interning at our partner tech companies. They're here for 10 weeks. We're actually about to spend all weekend with them at the Code 2040 summit. And early on, I witnessed a group of students who were Code 2040 fellows realizing that as summer interns during a college summer, they were making more than their parents were after decades in the workforce. And that realization for them was really transformative. The amount of power and opportunity that they saw in their future really shifted when they recognized the industry that they were in and the potential for them working there. So there is a lot of opportunity and a lot of, I think, I have a lot of optimism about kind of figuring this out and the impact that we can have on these communities on our country as a whole. And so Megan is spot on to say that when I think about it when Code 2040 thinks about the significance of diversity in tech, yes, we care about what the numbers look like at the various companies. But that's a means and not an end. We're really looking at how do we leverage the opportunity in the tech sector to create more economic equity in this country. So no pressure, no big deal. But I think when Megan and Leela, who's in the back, and I were talking about the idea for pulling together this conversation, what got me really excited was that I've been running Code 2040 for about four and a half years now. And I can remember pretty much the date when it felt like the tide turned in terms of the conversation around diversity in tech. At the beginning, when we were starting, the narrative was really about tech is this idyllic meritocracy, and anybody can make it. And if you're successful, you deserve to be successful. And if you're not, then you don't deserve to be successful. And that was really the core of the narrative around talent and diversity. And then in spring of 2014, Google released their diversity data. Google, who is often held up as the pinnacle of progressive thinking around talent and personnel, and they came out and said, our numbers are not good, and we want to do better. And not only did they throw this blog post up on their website, but the media covered it. And suddenly, the nature of the conversation was able to shift dramatically because there was some sort of real meaty data to hold onto. And more and more companies started releasing their numbers. And as more and more journalists started writing about this phenomenon of companies coming out and opening up around this, the conversations that I was then having as the leader of a non-profit organization shifted dramatically. And it moved from me having to either counter or kind of sidestep this meritocracy notion to being able to challenge that head-on. And I really felt like the media coverage in that time frame turned the tide and allowed Code 2040 to grow and thrive. So I've been interested since then in this idea that there's this sort of two hats, maybe a kind of purposeful job hat and then the kind of secret in their hearts hat that journalists are wearing when covering an issue like diversity in tech, which could be news and could be fact-based, but is, in many cases, I'd argue, about winning over hearts and minds. And the choices that journalists make about what to talk about, who to cover, how to tell the story, which pieces of it to highlight and lift up for the audience actually have profound ramifications for those of us who are doing the work and our ability to get things done. So that is how we got to be sitting here today. And I will tee up each of our esteemed panelists. I'm very excited to be sitting here with. And we'll also let them say a few words themselves about, I would say, why you agreed to do this, although it sounds like that's maybe a bad question. But I will ask you to talk a little bit about maybe the first time that you wrote about this and what drew you to the subject matter and what keeps you coming back to it. So that's a preview. You get a moment to think about it while I introduce you. So I am really excited to be here with Jessica, Megan, and Ellen, who represent USA Today, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg now, respectively. So Jessica is a senior technology writer with USA Today covering diversity, inclusion, equity issues, and Silicon Valley, previously at the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. And these are very bare bones bios, so we're going to get to know them much better in person. And Megan is a reporter at TechCrunch, focused on diversity, inclusion, social impacts, and the gig economy. And Ellen covers startups, technology, and Silicon Valley for Bloomberg News. Before that, she was a staff writer at Forbes, writing about the on-demand economy, the nature of social media, and social media fame, and the push for more diversity in tech. And was also a crime and breaking news reporter at the Chronicle, which sounds very different. Yeah, so thank you all for doing this and being willing to answer the questions instead of ask the questions. Although I also would say if you have questions for one another or for the audience, please feel free. This is obviously what you do best. I'll ask you each to score me on how I do on my question asking afterwards. But I would love to start out by just going down the line and hearing what drew you to this subject. What was the first thing you wrote about and why? Well, my story is a little bit different. I've been covering tech for a very long time. I was working at the Los Angeles Times. I was ready to make a move. And I approached a number of publishers that I would be interested in writing for. And told them I wanted to focus on issues of equity, inclusion, and diversity in Silicon Valley. And this was probably end of 2013. And I spoke with Dave Callaway, who was then the editor-in-chief of USA Today. And he said, well, then just do it. And he was the only one who said that. So that made my decision really easy. It took a while for it to come together. And my first two days on the job, I was sitting at the code conference in LA. And on that second day, Google released its diversity data. And I thought, time is now. So I wasn't there for the first wave of coverage, which I was a little disappointed to see, mostly focused on, oh no, white women are not well represented. And I came back to the office and met with the team and said, we're going to write about the under-representation of minorities in Silicon Valley. And we are going to create a national conversation about that. And we're going to make sure that the people who are underrepresented stand up and are heard and seen. Someone I grew up with in Berkeley, who was an investor and entrepreneur and executive at Silicon Valley companies, told me that he felt like he lived in a Ralph Ellison novel. And that was not acceptable to me. So that's what we've done. We've done a series of data investigations to show just how bad the numbers are, digging very deep into them. We have created a landing page on inequity in Silicon Valley. And we've showcased the voices and images of people who are underrepresented in tech across the board. And we view inclusion very broadly. It includes race. It includes gender. It includes disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, age. And we plan to get to all of it. But we wanted to start where the numbers were so bad. In some of the early pieces that I did, the one that really sticks out to me is that when I was looking at these companies, the only place where you saw a high concentration of people of color was service workers who did not work directly for these companies, worked for third-party contractors who received very low wages, terrible benefits, worked very long and demanding hours. And so I wrote a piece about that, which sent a few shockwaves through Silicon Valley. So I guess that's a little bit of a preamble of what got me into it, what keeps me going, even though I cover a lot of big tech companies and I have to put in a lot of my own time to do stories on inclusion is that I wake up every morning and I look at my son's eyes and my son is African-American. Oh, hey, everyone, I'm Megan. Yeah, so I think, so before TechCrunch, I spent a couple of years at Business Insider and I think that was maybe like a year or so after that CNN documentary like Black in America came out and everyone was like flipping out about it. And but also at Business Insider, they really like to do slide shows there and I was feeling like I wanted to do a slideshow on the most influential African-Americans in technology. And when I pitched that idea, I just did not really go over well. There's like, oh, but who's Black in Silicon Valley or in tech? But I found a lot of them and I think that's when I realized that it's not that there's a lack of talent. There's a lack of exposure and willingness to talk about the successes of African-American people and other people of color in tech. But yeah, and then I also just wanted to tip my hat off to you and Jessica because as I mentioned, I didn't really have a lot of support at Business Insider to cover diversity and inclusion. So my coverage there was like, there was that one slideshow and then there was, I think there was something with Shelly Archimbeau of, where was she? Was she with Intel at the time or anyway? Right, I always forget the name of her company. Oh, Metric Stream. Metric Stream, okay, yeah. But yeah, and then, so then I ended up leaving BI and actually got out of journalism because I was feeling, I was actually feeling kind of burnt out and just sad about the state of the industry and but then as I decided that I wanted to get back into journalism, I was reading a lot of your coverage and seeing that like, okay, like there's definitely, there's definitely a place for me to write about things that I actually care about. So yeah, so then a former colleague of mine from Business Insider was working at TechCrunch. She said, hey, like we're hiring. So I ended up meeting with TechCrunch's EIC and yeah, he just asked me like, oh, so like what do you want to write about? And I just had so much anxiety about like telling him what I actually wanted to cover because I didn't think that it would be okay or like compelling enough. But yeah, to my surprise, he was just like, okay, great. Like, yeah, do that. And I was like, okay, I will do that then. And yeah, and then within like two days of being at TechCrunch. Oh yeah, well this was, yeah, this was a bit later after I had built up some confidence, but. Yeah, and then it was kind of like, so the genesis for this piece just came from how everyone, so many people are talking about like, oh, like lack of diversity. Okay, let's get more white women in tech and it's just, I think I was just, I was just like at a tipping point there and the first draft of this post was just like, a rant against one of my coworkers. Wait, a white woman, not that one right there, but different white lady I work with. But yeah, and just writing this was really, it was kind of cathartic for me just to really like put my thoughts and feelings out there. And of course, a lot of people had a lot of really terrible things to say. Or so I heard because I didn't read the comments. There were like over a thousand comments. And yeah, it ended up on like some Reddit and then some Reddit and then some white supremacists. It was an interesting time. So then I kind of went into hiding for like a couple of weeks and just like off social media. Anyway, I'm going all over the place right now, but yeah, I guess I, is my microphone like freaking out? All right. Yeah, I guess that's kind of the story of how I got into this and yeah. I have to flicker. I thought I did, but to be honest, it's very possible that I didn't, I'll just speak up. Hi, I'm Ellen. I used, I guess, yeah, I used to work at the Chronicle and then also at Forbes and started working at Bloomberg only somewhat recently, maybe six months ago, about two, near the water. If I had to think back to, I guess, the first time that I wrote about diversity in tech. So I wasn't really a tech reporter until maybe early 2014, before that I was covering other stuff. And so a lot of it all was really new to me and when I joined Forbes, I was technically assigned to be a Google reporter, which by the way, it was way out of my league because that company is huge and very complicated as Jessica knows, it takes years to understand even how it works. But again, I had been new to the Google beat and I think it had been maybe a month since I was on the job and Google numbers came out. I was like, oh, great, great, I have a Google story to do today. And at the time, Forbes has switched sort of its editorial style in different directions, but at the time I was being encouraged to do, I think what we would lovingly call the hot take, which is kind of an analytical and somewhat evidence backed, opinionated take on the news. So I remember at the time this was something that really stressed me out because I was used to writing very straightforward news items and the idea of coming up with a hot take about the Google diversity numbers like really overwhelmed me even though I think I knew, I was like, well, it doesn't look good, but I tried to come up with something new and I remember I wrote, the headline is something like, oh, Google needs to, oh, that came later, Google needs to put out its numbers a second time, like, oh, it's great that they did it once, but I can't wait for next year to see when we get to compare this. And at the time I was like, well, I had no idea if they were gonna release it again and thinking back on it, it's kind of heartening to see how much it became a pattern in other companies all the way down to startups. Now I see like diversity reports for companies that have like 40 people and like, well, great, but then we're still missing, for example, some bigger startups like Uber and things like that. So it's interesting to look at where it has spread and where it has not. So that was kind of my first taste and unlike Jessica and Megan who, by the way, and Jessica has done an amazing job convincing, I think, editors across all outlets that diversity is a full-time beat that you can write interesting and various stories on it, constantly be like breaking news on it. I mean, I'm so impressed and Megan's worked too, it's like, I feel like I always have these ideas of, I feel like the underperform on this panel because I have all these ideas about diversity stories I wanna write and then I end up, like they stay undone for a long time just because I'm trying to manage a lot of other things at the same time. But anyway, I think after that first taste that I, I tried to kind of touch on the topic when I could, I covered the Ellen Powell trial, which I think was like a really interesting time for people to speak about women in VC. I've tried to think about other kinds of populations in Silicon Valley that might have a hard time, oh, this one, about immigrant co-founders or immigrant startup founders and sort of their visa problems. But it has been, I think, a challenge for me to have an ongoing beat of diversity. It comes in when it can and I'm constantly looking for stories on it, but I'm also doing, my editors want me to break news on startups and that honestly takes a lot of time and so I try to make it happen when I can. I think the things that have brought me back to wanting to cover it more is both, I think being inspired by what other people are writing and then also having conversations with friends of mine who I feel like don't get it and I feel like I am in an opportunity, yeah, having the opportunity to speak with a voice of authority on something that I believe to be worth talking about and to give it real, imbue it, if I'm very careful about using really strong statistics and really strong logical argument and construction, I think I have the chance to produce something that people can cite in online arguments when they're trying to convince someone to think about a topic differently and that's I think what makes me want to continue to come back and think about how to do something really rigorous and really complete and really responsibly so that the conversation gets moved forward in a way that can't be undercut because it continues to be something that, this is a very, I think, bought in crowd right now but there are a lot of people who continue to dismiss the basic premise and I think that's kind of what makes me want to keep just trying to bolster I think what I want to see out there. I just wanted to jump in and say that I think that after the first wave of diversity data was released there was a real danger that this was one or two news cycles and then everybody just went back to not thinking about it. That was sort of our guiding mission so when we did a data investigation that looked at using census data the number of non-tech people because the reason you get for we don't have enough computer scientists who are minorities or women is because they don't exist. So we went and proved that they did. We did a data investigation looking at graduates from prestigious computer science programs and comparing the graduation rates to how many were being hired into these companies. Then we decided that's not a good excuse for why you don't have more Latina marketers or black women working in sales. And so we went through and looked at the more than half of all of these companies that are not technically trained in any way and we compared that to census data and showed the huge gaps. And I think by doing that we kept the conversation alive and we just refused to let it go. And we have many, many, many stories planned in the future. I think Alberto would tell you that we want to and have for a very long time want to write about Hispanics and Latinos in tech because they think they often get left out of the conversation especially here in California. That's not okay. That's something that we want to do. There are so many stories to tell. Over time we saw other media outlets realizing that they needed to devote some resources to this but I'm still not a full-time diversity writer. No one on this panel is. We all have other responsibilities and there's still very few of us. And so what I would say to people who care about these issues is support the work of the journalists doing it so that there's demand for it. I think that's so important in terms of keeping this coverage going especially in a time when newspaper and other news publications budgets are contracting and we have a harder time covering everything we need to cover with fewer bodies. So talk a little bit about how the evolution over the past that sounds like probably about two years of writing about these issues. I'm curious about two pieces of it. One is how has the story that you yourself have told evolved and then how has the support for that internally at your outlet or if you've switched outlets how has that evolved as well. Jump in when you're at the start. Okay yeah. I'll be quick. I think like probably Megan and Jessica will probably agree I think starting to hear there was definitely the shift in conversation and starting to hear more people talking about their numbers just allowed you to have all these new angles of approaching it that wouldn't have been available before. And frankly like new business angles as well. Like one of the stories I wrote was about both. I think paradigm or at least Joel was mentioned in it. It's like both the growth of consultants that were all of a sudden hugely in demand for companies that wanted to have unconscious bias trainings going on in their companies. As well as new software startups and hiring software that was supposed to eliminate bias in the hiring process. I think what you can talk a lot about like whether they are good and bad or like how many people were using them and it was a hugely interesting topic but that I think that entire sector would not have existed if it didn't have this demand for it which was companies all of a sudden saying like okay we need to like have some concrete things that we're showing the outside world that we're gonna do and that like created an entire new sector. So for me who's often approaching any of these any of these stories from a business perspective. I mean I write for a business and financial publication it's like there needs to be a business angle. So stories about the new sector and the new efforts like if there's money moving like we can write about it and so for me that was a really interesting way into the evolution of that story. And then as for the support from my editors it varies frankly depending on where I'm working. No one is you know whatever say like don't do it but it is often just one of these questions of like where am I expected to be spending my time. And it's hard because I think there's not often like breaking diversity news. It's a story that you come at with a unique angle trying to think about like how can I really tell something compelling and provocative. And it's often what you'd call more of an evergreen story. So not something that has a hard deadline which can which means it's more likely to be the one that's put aside for next week when there's some sort of you know some CEO steps down you need to like focus on that for the next couple of days. So that's always a challenge I think it's I think a lot of editors if I were to be upfront and say like I really need this time to do it I get the sense that it would be supportive it's just hard from you know personally for me to manage my time and it's one of these things where I think you just have to advocate for it and figure out how to spend your time wisely. Yeah so I think I've been in this role for like a year and two days or something. And just even in that time I mean there's been a shift from you know just talking about the numbers like okay like how many like what percentage of underrepresented minorities do you employ how many women do you employ how many are on the board etc and then and then it's kind of evolved into talking about like actual inclusion and there's talk about like the leaky bucket and while like your you know efforts around increasing the pipeline even though the pipeline is bullshit won't work if when these people get to your company they're just going to be met with all of these microaggressions or just outright racism and so then companies were talking about like okay like let's look at like unconscious bias and you know Paradigm does a lot of great work around that Facebook came out with their like managing bias website and they were like where are the experts and here's all these videos about it meanwhile people are crossing out black lives matter on the wall so yeah and then but then so then there's that and then and then people are also talking about like intersectionality and like okay like we can't just look at women and then black people and then gay people and then disabled people like there are a lot of people with these intersecting identities and in order to in order to really fix this problem we have to tackle everything we can't just say like okay like well first we're gonna focus on white women and then we'll get to everyone else like that's just not it's not going to work that way. Yeah and so I guess that said I mean it's funny because Laura I think at the beginning you were saying that you were optimistic and in my mind I was just like I'm not optimistic at all but I guess just reflecting on the last year I mean I guess there have been like there has been like movement in the right direction it's definitely going to take a lot of time like I mean if I were a CEO of like Facebook or Twitter and this is why I'm not but I would just fire everyone and just start over and you know like it's so it's so simple to start over but yeah and then I guess just in terms of support yeah I'm grateful to have a lot of support at TechCrunch like I said my boss was very open and supportive of me pursuing diversity and inclusion I mean I would say that I spend like 85 to 90% of my time on topics of diversity and inclusion but then like but then sometimes I'm like oh maybe I should cover the gig economy so I'm like talking about tech but yeah and I yeah this weekend feature that I've been working on should be coming out that I'm really excited about it's like yeah I started thinking about it like way back in September but then like again like as you were saying like things come up like news news comes up and like this is just there's no there's no news about it but I think it's an important topic you should never feel ashamed about how long you've been waiting for as long as it happens because there's three others that I've like thought about for probably like a year and a half and then like it just never you know so congratulations thank you yeah hopefully it'll actually go out I'll send it to you but yeah so overall good support and you know sometimes I'll get emails from people saying like thank you for writing this other times like emails will come in saying like you should be fired you're a racist you're a sexist I'm just like oh okay so that can be tough but but yeah I think and I've said this before but I kind of enjoy that I like at least at TechCrunch I'm able to reach a lot of people who would rather not hear about issues of diversity and inclusion they're like this is a startup blog like just tell us about the technology and I'm like no like you're gonna read about this now and yeah so I don't know kind of like get high off of it or something I'm like yeah it's like but anyway well I mean I feel a similar way about USA Today it was a little bit of a surprise to people to start reading so many of these stories in USA Today and to have USA Today be the national leader in terms of airing these issues and continuing to do so and we reach a lot of America and they oftentimes don't like it and they let me know and on the web I've ended up on a lot of white supremacist sites they've taken my Twitter profile picture with my son and said things that I won't repeat and that's fine that's totally fine the one great thing about our San Francisco bureau here is that to a person everybody is involved there is not a single person who hasn't written a story about diversity, equity and inclusion and I think there was a question from the audience about white men feeling left out none of the white men in our office are left out in fact they're at the front of the line and I've gotten John Swartz to moderate panels for me because this is the thing that I hate to do more than anything I get very nervous about public speaking but he's done it and he got called out a few times on Twitter and he immediately said you know what I shouldn't be saying you guys to this room and he's been great about it and we've done some incredibly thoughtful groundbreaking analysis and coverage and elevated the stories of people of color and of women and other underrepresented groups in our pages so I think that we've to answer your question about how it's changed I don't know that it's changed so much I think we've become more enlightened in our coverage as time goes on as we learn more but we have been doing just more of the same and we hope to continue to do that and fortunately we have so many competing demands for our time we can't get to the stories as quickly as we want to I have story lists that go on dozens of pages of things that I want to do but my goal is to get to every single one so. I'm gonna ask a couple more questions and then I'm gonna open it up so think about if you have questions for the panel giving you a heads up so that people actually will stand up and ask questions so this is now come up I think each of you has mentioned this and it's something that we think about at code 2040 is this idea of safety in writing about this and so we talk about the difference between safety and comfort a lot of times talking about writing about working on issues of race of equity and inclusion is deeply uncomfortable and that's okay feeling unsafe though is a whole different issue and so you mentioned kind of the subreddit and reading the comments and the white supremacist supremacist blog the first rule of the internet is never read the comments which I very much take into heart I never read the comments when I write something or code 2040 put something out but I'm curious how each of you has thought about and dealt with this idea that there's what you're doing that maybe challenges people makes them uncomfortable in a good way but there's also a safety issue and it could be psychological safety in terms of online harassment and I think there's a question as to whether there's physical safety issues as well thinking and talking and writing about this. Yeah, I thankfully have not been like physically threatened but I guess just in terms of emotional and mental well-being like even like that like dear white people article like that was after that went up, yeah I had a really hard time and he now spent some time crying about it and just thinking about like or just wondering like why people are so terrible and like yes it was a provocative headline and but I know I felt like everything that I was saying was true but yeah so you know I'm in therapy I'm very open about that on anti-anxiety medication so I definitely, you know and I talk to a lot of people like one of my editors was or actually the whole team was like really supportive during that time and but yeah then I guess just also what I've done is like I think I mentioned this but you know people like to blow up your mentions so I was just off Twitter for like a couple of weeks and just kind of like took space and some time but yeah ultimately you know I'm glad I wrote that I'm glad that I'm writing about the things that I do but yeah sometimes it's tough. I think it's occurred to me that it's not a particularly safe thing to do. I worry because I'm a mom and my son is black but not enough not to do it and definitely it's uncomfortable and it makes people very very uncomfortable as they communicate. One thing that occurs to me is that we should have some kind of posse on Twitter and when we're going to write about things we should just be louder and people should join us and protect our right to publish these stories and talk about these issues and just tell me next time I get you. So. And like Defender on Twitter I have always appreciated that. I've also I think I feel like I've escaped relatively unscathed knock on wood. I think I was thinking about what some of the worst reactions I've had to stories that I've had and it tends to be about like I used to get so many nasty emails when I would write about Ellen Powell. People would just write in and say like I won't even say that and they're just horrible things about her that were blatantly untrue and I would usually respond being like thanks for reading. Because I like to remind people that like there's someone reading this note. Like I'm you know what I'm a human like she's a human just you know sometimes they think they're shouting into the void and you know if I feel up to it I'm like hello human here. But luckily a lot of it has not been about me. I think maybe it's just the nature of some of the you know the stories depending on how personal they are. I mean it I think people sometimes react more to like who's who's the figure in the story is it the author or the people I'm writing about. So I do think a lot about if someone features prominently in a story I'm writing and you know this applies to stories about any topic you know if it's someone who anything like I you know my services both to the reader as well to the people who are willing to share their stories with me. So I'm always trying to think of the best way to tell their story without jeopardizing anyone unnecessarily. But luckily luckily a lot of it has been more about the subjects that I've written about them than myself. I'm curious if people in the audience who've tweeted or written about this stuff have gotten harassed in response or raise your hand if you've had the experience. A few people not many. So I think coming back to kind of what prompted this whole conversation in the first place. I'm curious to hear how you think about when you're picking what story to write or when to write it perhaps or how to cover it. How do you think about the influence and impact that you want to have and how does that feedback into choices that you make about what to cover, what not to cover and how to tell those stories. One of the things I'm very grateful for with USA Today is that it has a commitment to public service and that's how I view the coverage. So I sort of look at it where, how will this story serve the public? And that, I don't know if that it's more complicated than that. I mean I said at the beginning, I was worried when I saw the initial wave of coverage and reaction to the Google diversity numbers. I saw the tech industry and we've seen this in the years since with Mark Benioff saying well we're gonna figure out white women first. I worried about that because I think white male CEOs and employees of these companies feel far more comfortable talking about those issues and yet that was not the worst thing about those numbers and so I think it made very conscious decision to focus on race and intersectionality and that has continued to be the case although we've done other stories and we try to do them when there's a news hook for them. We wrote about disability which is a huge issue. We wanna do a whole lot more but Facebook approached me about writing about their efforts and so I was able to use that to write more broadly about the lack of access that the disabled have and I also wanna write about the dearth of disabled people who work in tech. I mean it's shocking to me and I want companies to release those numbers. So sometimes it's news and oftentimes it's just making sure that the issue that might not have otherwise been covered as part of the public service. Yeah I mean I can relate a lot to that and I think for me it's a combination of okay what do I feel like people need to know about as well as just what do I personally think people should have conversations about and I think a lot of conversations do need to be had around diversity and inclusion within companies and I guess I'm just thinking about yeah the feature that I have coming out this weekend it's about the intersection of the criminal justice system and the tech industry and I'll probably leave it at that for now I'll tease it a little bit but yeah it's just something that I've been thinking about so I just want other people to think about it and chime in not in the comments they can talk amongst themselves leave me out of it but yeah it's yeah and then I think also just shining a light on people like people of color or disabled people or queer people or all of the above just doing really awesome things in the tech industry and just doing awesome things that people aren't aware of so just even founder profiles or my alley as well so. Yeah I think maybe with this topic more than other ones I cover there's really a chance to choose what you write about and a lot of it is the result of personal interest in a particular angle or a topic and then choosing to spend time to highlight it and I think I think a lot about in my own coverage whether I've been doing more like what Megan does I actually see you do this a lot it's like shining the light on interesting people doing cool things and I think that's one of the great services that journalism can provide. I feel unfortunately that at Bloomberg there may be less room for me to do that and it's no knock on any of my editors it's just the nature of the publication but I find that when thinking back on some of the other stuff I've done has been more also like holding sort of more like of a holding accountable both to the companies as well as like to trends or to ideas and trying to assess them which is I think also a great thing that journalism can do both with sort of shine a light as well as like evaluate and look at with rigor to which I think is like a promise to the reader that you are doing something thoughtfully and comprehensively so if like if you do a story about unconscious bias like that you your promise to the reader and your service to the reader is that you know we're not just writing about something because it's happening but we're doing our best to assess like is it helpful where you know what are the effects like who's using it and who's not and how can you think more you know have a more educated opinion on something that's might be affecting your life or your company. Yeah. I'm gonna reserve time to ask a couple final questions but I wanna open it up to the audience for questions for a few minutes. Yeah. How could you start doing it like that's a good question. I ask almost anyone that I meet with likes sit down because I'm and actually I was gonna say that's often when I'm meeting with people just to have conversations about you know get their views on sort of what trends are happening in Silicon Valley and inclusion. I think because we have the chance to cover kind of whatever we are interested in covering I'm often asking people like what should we be doing which is I think we brought it up on a plan and calls like I feel uncomfortable because like really I would love to know what all of you think all you know what all of you think is a company that's doing it right or yeah. But also I mean it's also a matter of like what does right even look like and that's something that I mean I don't know if it will ever look right or I mean there's you know like yeah I think Slack is doing a great job but I mean it could be a lot they could be doing a better job everyone could always be doing a better job. Right yeah and I mean does is it a matter of like okay like how many programs do you have that you're implementing at the company? Is it like how many underrepresented people you employ or budget does your diversity officer? Right like there's yeah I don't know so yeah just it's hard to say but I don't think anyone's doing it like right I guess. Yeah I mean I don't think there's there's any question. Right that is true and I agree that you know nobody is doing it right and in terms of Slack I think the things that have been most compelling to me I think when Erica wrote on Medium about hiding in the library and feeling uncomfortable and not being able to call in black to work and Stuart Butterfield telling black employees that they can call in black to work anytime that made an impression on me. So there are a lot of shared assumptions a lot of people don't forget to care about this issue. Can you talk a little bit about you know why this is important and why this matters and how you explain it to people that don't like share that the next time something happens. The first time I think are the first step and then again just trying to make sure you're you know if you're making an assertion that it's argument proof I think is something I think about a lot so I remember reading well I don't want to like pick on anybody but like reading a story about retention rates in tech and like women leaving the tech industry and it had some really compelling anecdotes at the top and like one or two citations and I know it's hard because I've looked for this data and it's not there and it was like great that the story wanted to make this assertion about retention rates and unfortunately I remember sharing it with some people I know and they were like well I don't know the number's not there like they had a couple people leaving and it's probably true but I'm not convinced right and so I think that's a challenge for like speaking to the wider audiences like you really need to go the extra mile to make sure they can't rebut the essential premise. Maybe I'm tearing up, I don't know what you guys think. We try to be really careful in every story not to assume that the reader has read anything else we've written on this subject. So we walk through what Laura walked through in the beginning, why it matters, why it matters to these companies, to this industry, to the next generation that hopefully will work in this industry, what the benefits to corporations are, what the benefits to communities are and we try to drop those into every story to make it clear why we think it's important and we also try to throw in the research that we've done and that the EEOC then did in a recent report that backed up a lot of the work that we've done. To remind people why this matters. I think it's helpful that it comes against the backdrop of what's going on in this country right now. We are talking about issues that touch on criminal justice, reform on many issues that people care about. So we try to draw those connections too. There don't appear to be. There are some indications that EEOC might be investigating. I think what typically happens is that people who do, it's very expensive to bring an action. There are very few people willing to do it because that also means they can never work in the industry again. So there's less legal activity than you might see in other industries, which I think makes it all the more important that there are groups raising these issues and the media covering these issues. Farbertration clauses in employment agreements are more common and I wonder, so I mean because I remember during the POW trial there was a woman who sued Twitter about their employment and promotion practices and lawsuits take years, right? So, but I wonder if, I don't know, I guess I just wonder if arbitration has anything to do with it, but I don't know if anyone knows, let me know. I mean, I do think that those agreements are common. I think there was a recent Google thing where the person opted out of that to be able to speak freely. It's unusual. People also have to sign NDAs in order to get any kind of financial settlement when leaving. So, it's an industry that talks a lot about transparency and then doesn't offer it. I actually have tried to write this story a number of times because I know that there are people working in diversity at tech companies that it's a side role. As a result of devoting time to that that's not valued by the company, they're passed over for promotions, they are not as highly considered within the company and they have no budget. So, it's appalling to me because these are the same companies making very grandiose statements about what they're doing and so anyone wants to come forward and talk with me about that, I will write that story tomorrow. Yeah, I'll write it today. I'll write it today. Say hi, yeah. All of a sudden your light is blacked out. I think it's a very, very real risk and if people don't know it already for themselves which they typically do, I talk about it with them. I don't wanna publish anything that has a detrimental effect on the lives of the people who speak with me part of the reason that that story is hard to tell. So that's a conversation I always have up front. I also tend to, if I publish something, then spend a lot of time on Twitter afterwards around those people. I think you're not required to do any of this but as a person to a person, I wanna make sure whoever's talking to me understands there's a risk. It's hard sometimes to predict the reaction and you can do it a million times and still be surprised. And I think the best you can offer them is honest, be honest with them about what might happen, talk to them about some of their options. You can be flexible with how you frame something, what you do and don't include and then like Jessica said, try to support them afterwards. I wonder if there's a way that you can cover that post-experience and share that with people who are being changed in terms of diversity and inclusion because that in itself is excluding that person that is sharing and speaking up. So I wonder how do you surface that insight back to these CEOs? I see, yeah. And that's just a story that I wanted to see because I know people who've been attacked by that. Yeah, you mean covering the experience afterward? Yeah, I mean I remember Lauren Smiley at, she writes for, oh God, it's like matter on medium now or back channel on medium and she wrote about kind of the after effects of Talia Jane who was that E24 service employee who spoke up about her salary and it was an interesting experience for her too. I mean I think, I mean Lauren tells these great human stories. I highly recommend her stories anytime but she's great for going after kind of the, the what happens after you speak up and it's not pretty and I think it's worth discussing more, definitely. So you wanna say or should your writing process or even the stories of the next couple of months or the relationships you get like, I don't want to understand that. I mean I think a lot of it is restricted by what you can report, right? Like we have, you know, I mean, Jessica and I mean I've also thought about this story which is like wouldn't it be great if we had the budgets of every, you know, budgets and reporting structure of every head of diversity at every company that has spoken publicly about what they wanna achieve, that is a hard thing to get. What makes me heartened is it used to be really hard to get demographic data and now it's out there everywhere so it's like maybe if just one company does it we'll see a landslide but there, you know, there are a lot of stories I think would be everyone, all of us would wanna write first and in front of the other and just, all of us would wanna write that you're limited by maybe it's just a harder story to tell which doesn't mean it's impossible but. When we talk about diversity in tech and being that like white dudes are basically the ones that are good at tech they're the ones that can take grants or the one that can build and can code and make things. Somehow like the conversation becomes about like these people that have power like kind of have to help people that are like powerless in order to like learn those skills and that's been super frustrating because like yeah, the statistics aren't great but there are people who are not white dudes who can like build things and make things and it's just that society doesn't reward them in the same way and it's just, yeah, I guess for me it's been just like really frustrating like sophisticated engineering like having it seen as like a male thing and like how do you approach that and your stories about not just like breaking the diversity in tech but like actually like what the work is and how it's not just like. Absolutely. I think the most egregious thing that ever gets said. I don't know. There are a lot of competitors but this talk which came out of the mouth of Mark Zuckerberg that we were not lowering the bar. I mean, I don't know how you're a human being and not deeply offended by a remark like that and yet that goes on in these companies all the time and they're starting to get it but it starts with that premise that of bro-coders and they're the only ones who really know how to do it. Like more it says, Koya said this six months ago, like are you kidding and frankly like thankfully he was, I think people chastised him for it but I don't think it is heartening to know that people say what they think and people also don't say things that, so like just the fact that it was said so just like so many people still believe this, I would say. Right, well it said so publicly. It's getting a lot less safe to say those things publicly. I think he found that out. I think that poor Google shareholder figured out that it's not okay to call Ruth Porat, a lady CFO. My editor said when that's how I wrote about the Google shareholder meeting, well you are the first person to call him out. You're kind of part of the story and I said well that comes with the territory but a woman shareholder did get up and call him out and I interviewed her and so we wrote about it but I think it's about challenging these assumptions every single day and then wonderful thing about having a landing page is that we run guest columns routinely. They have to be smart and have a point of view and be well written but it elevates the voices of people who aren't typically heard. So if you'd like to write one of those for us about what it's like to have people decide that programmers look like white men, we'd love to run it. Since the 70s in the scientific civil rights movement so they could work hand in hand these things especially the importance of faculty diversity they certainly haven't solved it but there's a lot of practices they're in the tech industry you can learn from especially point out managed national association, Perseus or some higher ed is especially the first in people who are advocates of new different companies looks them for the practices that they're doing. The challenges that they're powers and trenches just like men are 10 years and so it's really hard to turn that over but I think it's possible the tech industry can do it because they're the powers who do just money and money changes hands and leadership changes what's happened to both Mozilla and GitHub those men who were causing problems defined by these long practices of equity inclusion university were pushed out so I think the tech industry can change faster but the challenge is smaller startups that can grow so quickly because of money fall under the radar of the EEOC and other structures that are set in place. The related comment is I see a lot of the people saying that they need to be supported. I noticed that there's a limited lack of a professional society for tech writers and so I encourage you to look at the national association of science writers. Their advocacy in this issue is really huge because they've really seen the tipping point that it's now over 50% women not only in the industry but also in the initial positions they had a science women in science writing summit where they're really talking about these issues so look at that as a support group but then maybe also a model because they haven't been able to find a similar group for people who write about consumer tech that's sort of your particular branch. I just interject there that I did start a group for women tech journalists and we have regular get-togethers we have speakers, we support one another promote one another where we what was the last one was on covering cybersecurity and we had the two top women tech writers on that so point well taken. I think we have had representation we haven't done as many stories just focused on that we have a project in mind and again it's the lack of time and resources but expect to see that from us. Great to hear what people are looking to us to help highlight like that is the most valuable feedback I get and like lack of time is the thing that gets distributed depending on what you choose to prioritize and like hearing feedback on what readers wanna hear is the thing that guides me most. Yeah and I mean to be totally honest I need to do a better job of just checking myself and what I decide to cover I am biased in the fact that I'm a black queer woman so those things are kind of like top of mind for me but yeah I wanna do a better job of covering the experience of Latinos and Latinas and tech and disabled people and trans people and just everything so that's definitely something that I know I can do a better job of and I intend to. I know there are more questions but we only have three minutes left and so I get to ask the last one because I'm sitting here and have a microphone so I'm sorry but it occurs to me listening to all of you talk about particularly this idea of how you are able to select and tell stories how important your sources are and that they come from your audience often and on the flip side that we may not all be journalists but with social media we all have the ability to be storytellers so I think feel free to also include any parting thoughts you like but as a final kind of question how would you encourage the people in this room to use the tools that they have to tell the stories that they have in a way that can influence and advance the narrative even if they don't have the formal platform that each of you can use? I mean a lot of really great stuff surfaces on medium I think that's a really great platform for just sharing experiences that you're having in tech and that's actually how I probably first found out about Erica Baker who's just become this total champion in around diversity in tech. Yeah so I guess medium is a great way to do things. And I would give another shout out to getting in touch with me and learning about our guest columns. It's something I did very quietly because I don't want USA Today to stop letting us do it but I remember one column was so profoundly moving to me that Laura wrote about Ferguson and the connection to what was going on in the tech industry and if you haven't read it I would go back and find it you can find it on that page but it was one of the best reads ever and I would love to have more contributions from people whose voices don't get heard. I want to offer this massive national and international platform to you. Also this experience I think it is an inherently sort of personal platform and there are things that Erica Baker's written on there that I forward to friends like Candy, I'm like read this, like you'll understand a little bit better what it feels like to be in her shoes, to be in the shoes of anyone else and I've seen those stories translate into either they catch the attention of reporters and they take on a different form in the form of a different reported story or frankly there are a lot of media outlets out there that are starved for content that will rerun things that they see on courts will rerun things that run on Quora particularly well-written things on Quora and Medium they'll contact the writer and choose to republish it which I think you can have a lot of questions about like should they be paying you for this I think so but and I don't know if they do maybe they do I'm not here to rag on courts the point is I think if you put your voice and experience out there people are so interested in hearing it they want to look for ways to bring it to a larger audience. Again I would encourage anyone to hear like I live and die for story tips and story ideas like this is the only way that I can do my job is to get suggestions from people who are in it and hopefully there's a way I'm very easily found on Twitter my last name is spelled H-E-U-E-T and I'm one of the only Ellen who's out there and my email's in my bio like email me anytime like I often will just meet with people to ask them like what's going on any responsible reporter would do that too and I know so all of us are really curious to hear what you think should be highlighted what you feel and that's the way we do our job the best. So a giant thank you for answering instead of asking the questions today if we can give our panelists a round of applause. Hey everybody, again thank you you guys this was fantastic also thank you for the really rich Twitter discussion if you want to check it out hashtag diversity and tech really appreciate everybody being so engaged two things as you leave if you can hand your little card that you filled out to the folks at the door that'd be great we also have lunch for everybody care of Bloomberg so again thank you for hosting us if you'd like to stay for the next half an hour so please grab lunch right outside the room you're welcome to just sit and mingle chat with the panelists whatever sounds good to you so thanks again.