Kristen Titus: The four of us here today really want to zero in from a number of different
perspectives on how we seize this opportunity for diverse populations.
It is estimated that one-third of jobs will be replaced by software, robots or smart machines
by 2025.
40% of Fortune 500 companies will not exist in 10 years.
Hopefully that's not you.
And 65% of children in grade school today will be in jobs that have yet to be invented.
And finally, 50 million - 50 million people will be needed to fill open tech roles by
2030.
That's 10 years away.
50 million people globally.
Let’s talk a little bit how you in your day-to-day roles are working to build a pipeline
that is inclusive.
Allegra Driscoll: You know I think there is not a silver bullet.
[Kristen - Is not] on this, right.
So I do agree that alternate pipelines are really important.
It can be as simple as recruiting from your, kind of, non-core schools.
Even, I guess, really simpler things, structural things, like makes sure that your job reqs
are non-gendered.
So, it's really amazing what you can see in, in a job description stuff that can turn off
either men or women depending on the function.
And that actually has for my own team that's been a pretty dramatic, that’s given us
pretty dramatic improvement.
Yolanda Townsend: What I want to step back and remind us, is that when we talk about
diversity and inclusion, if every job description that you put out there has a BA requirement,
then you should not be surprised that you have no diverse pool because of the folks
in America who have a bachelor's degree 76% of African Americans do not.
81% of people who come from rural areas to do not.
I think 86% of Latinos do you.
We’re not a big employer, but at Opportunity@Work - we’re only three years old - we have hired
about 50 people and we have never had a job description with a BA requirement.
We talk about what are the skills, what are the competencies.
We give people a chance to demonstrate what they can do through experience.
But really we're looking for people who, in addition to being mission aligned, have the
core skills that we want in folks.
There are ways to demonstrate confidence.
There are ways to demonstrate teamwork.
And quite frankly, in order to have a better pipeline, you have to build it yourself sometimes.
Kristen: Right.
Lisa can you tell us a little about – you alluded to this -- how you created a diverse
team on this project, an integral project to the company.
We took a step back and we said ‘wait a minute here.
We have people from all over the world in this in this you know this area working on
this very critical project.
And we got a map and we had everyone go up to the map and put a pin in where they were
from across the United States and Europe and all over.
I mean it was amazing.
It was an eye-opener to everyone.
And then we did a we did a – we brought someone in to do a team-building exercise
and then all the sudden the room went from silent to like I can't believe we're sitting
in this room doing this exercise to, you know, wow I didn't know you were from India, and
wow I didn't know, you know, you like to sleep in and stay late, and all those things that
honestly we needed to understand each other better.
That was a game-changer for us because it wasn't the technology in the room, it wasn't
the expertise.
It was really us as people and how we relate to each other.
You have to connect with your colleagues.
If you don't you're not going to get anywhere and uh, with that we met all our deadlines,
seamless implementation and my answer was we all just needed to understand why we do
what we do and support each other.
Yolanda: Recognize that workers are struggling everywhere.
Uh, that it’s not just about cross training it's not just about mentorship.
There are folks in organizations from top to bottom who have real life issues and the
more you embed lifelong learning at your organizations, the better you'll be in the long run.