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MELINDA BRIANA EPLER: My purpose is and always has
been to change the world.
I started with cultural anthropology,
looking at how change happens in societies
and how individuals create change in societies.
And from there I found the power of storytelling.
I became a documentary filmmaker.
I moved to LA, and for 10 years I
was a documentary filmmaker looking
at HIV/AIDS in South Africa, women's rights in Turkey,
environmental issues and social and climate change-related
issues.
That brought me to learn the power of storytelling
through business, so I became a consultant.
I worked with entrepreneurs all the way through Fortune 500
companies launching mission-driven brands
to really change the world.
And that led me to my dream job.
I moved to San Francisco, I became a C-Suite executive
in an engineering firm, an international engineering firm,
I built my own team, I had no budget.
I was changing the world.
But it didn't quite work out that way.
It was actually one of the worst experiences of my life.
I hit rock bottom.
It was so bad that I can't even talk about it legally.
I learned there the power of diversity and inclusion
and the need for both.
Diversity is bringing people to the table.
Key to this, inclusion is actually
inviting them to speak and to lead, and we need both of them.
When you're not included, it sucks.
It really sucks.
I'm sure a lot of you have been in the situation before.
Unconscious biases, microaggressions,
macroaggressions, when they come at you every single day,
you lose your power.
Exclusion is where good ideas die.
It's a culture.
It's a culture thing.
When we're not welcome, we're not able to thrive.
That's what's happening in the STEM fields.
In computer science degrees, in tech fields,
we're having a revolving door where people are leaving.
So I crawled myself out of the hole that I was in,
and I started putting things into place
and I started hiring people that really cared about making
a change in that company.
But I kept thinking more.
I kept thinking bigger.
What is the societal change that needs to happen?
And I realized that most of the world's problems
boil down to exclusion in one way or another-- poverty,
environment, education, health.
Bringing diverse and inclusive leadership,
and having inclusive innovation, can drive change
in these areas.
Here we are at the center of innovation in Silicon Valley,
and we have to change it here and now.
So I started a company.
I started Change Catalyst.
Our mission is to drive inclusive innovation.
So what is inclusive innovation?
It starts with education, K through 12, higher ed, coding
schools, boot camps.
Then the workplace-- recruiting, retention,
promotion, and creating that culture of inclusion.
And then entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurs
are driving the next wave of our economy, right?
We need to look at access to capital, access
to other early-stage resources.
All of these things together, along with policy-- policy
is often forgotten in this equation.
Both local policy and national policy
can really create change in this space.
And then lastly, ecosystem development.
So looking at emerging markets, looking at the digital divide,
really creating these inclusive tech ecosystems.
So we brought all of these-- people
across all of these areas together
for a conference in September of 2015 called Tech Inclusion.
We explored comprehensive solutions
to diversity inclusion in tech.
It ended up selling out.
We had a two-day two-track conference and career fair.
The career fair also sold out.
We had a thousand people.
We had 137 speakers, 27 companies represented
at the career fair, and it was so successful we
decided to keep going.
So we are now a team of five people.
We have five conferences across the US this year,
three career fairs, two startup showcases,
we're also doing consulting and training
for companies that want to do more.
And we're starting to look across the world.
We're starting to look at those emerging markets.
How do we develop inclusive tech ecosystems from the beginning?
So we can learn what we did right
and what we've done wrong in Silicon Valley.
So I want to invite you to join us in developing inclusive tech
ecosystems across the US.
We all have a role to play, and we can all make a difference.
Think of something that you can do differently tomorrow,
and make that change.
And focus on solutions.
Come meet us.
We have a table out here, and look for us
online at TechInclusion.co.
Thanks.
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