so I'm here to talk about creating space
creating a seat at the table and kind of
taking some things away that we can use
to build more inclusive tech ecosystems
as anyone in here ever felt isolated in
a room full of people
have you ever felt the distinct feeling
that you didn't belong in a space even
though you have similar experiences and
credentials as many of the people in the
room to hold those thoughts because I
want to tell you a story that kind of
shapes how I think about inclusion one
day long before diversity equity and
inclusion were ever even conversations
that we had in tech I learned what I
feel is the foundation of inclusion from
one of my best friends from college we
were at an event that she was hosting
and at one point I sat back and watched
her find ways to engage with everyone in
the room as a raging introvert myself I
was in all at the end of the night I
asked her why does she put so much
effort into engaging with everyone there
to my introvert eyes it just seemed
exhausting and she said I know what it's
like to feel alone in a crowd full of
people loneliness is the worst feeling
and I don't want anyone to feel that way
when I'm around that really stuck with
me but it would be years before I would
fully relate to that and could also do
something about it I've worked in tech
for over 20 years and while I've had
some amazing experiences I could only
have had in tech as a black woman it has
been at times isolating and also
honestly spirit draining and as long as
I'm here I don't want anyone else to
ever have to feel like that
so almost seven years ago I started this
journey of making room for people who
are underrepresented or as I like to
think underestimated in tech by creating
organizations and events meant to
empower and showcase marginalized people
so arlene hamilton bc extraordinaire
created these t-shirts for people
underrepresented people in tech with the
underrepresented part striked out and
replace what underestimated so i didn't
come up with that but but that's the
term that i like to use
so kind of at the
this journey I started the Atlanta
network of women who code in the summer
of 2013 and I'd love to tell you this
was an intentional part of my journey
but it wasn't a friend of mine was going
to start it and then found that she
would be moving to the Bay Area
shortly after so she was trying to
convince me to start it in her place but
I was doing my best to run from it I had
worked with nonprofits and user groups
and meetups and I knew how much work it
would be but I also didn't want Atlanta
to be excluded from the very important
progress we were making with women and
tech simply because I wouldn't step up
and organize women who coat their so she
brought down the big gun Elena who's
originally from Atlanta came down from
the Bay Area and together they convinced
me that I wouldn't be completely
terrible at it and then even after I
started it I plan to just start it and
not mess it up long enough for someone
else to take it and run with it
but six and a half years later I'm still
a director there
and something I started noticing soon
after women who code Atlanta started
really growing is that our presence in
the Atlanta tech community started
changing the conversations and
experiences people were having and now
the Atlanta network of women who code is
one of the most diverse and active
networks globally our local leaders have
worked really closely with the larger
Atlanta tech community for six and a
half years to make sure our members over
4,000 strong have a seat at the table we
are making our mark on one of the
fastest growing tech and startup
ecosystems in the country from women who
code we created this conference called
we rise which was a women in tech
conference in Atlanta and the goal there
was this actually came about strictly
from listening to our members we had had
a hackathon all-women hackathon that had
a day of workshops that I was telling
everyone like this is not a conference
this is not a conference but everyone
was like that that a lot like a
conference Erica and so after it people
started asking for like okay so when are
we really gonna do a conference if
that's not if that wasn't it and so
that's where we rise came from and we
had a great time doing we rise we really
wanted to make it an intersectional
event and I think we did that but there
were still some issues and some
conversations we weren't having and so
we created a completely different event
that started last year refactor tech and
we really wanted to make this make sure
that we went beyond the conversations
around women in tech something that we
find a lot is that when we have
conversations around women in tech
people don't dig into the intersections
and the different groups within women in
tech and when you stop at one say
identity the largest group and that
identity is going to have most of the
benefits so a lot of times when you hear
women in tech what really happens is
that you make games with white women in
tech but you don't make a lot of gains
with different ethnicities people with
disabilities people who are members of
the LGTB community so we really created
refactor to really dig deeper and go
beyond kind of just surface level
diversity and inclusion
and then from there I also started
getting involved with a lot of the
incubators and accelerators in the
community and really trying to find ways
to make founders and funding more
diverse and inclusive as well so what
this is is the story of my experiences
and how I have used them to create more
inclusive spaces in Atlanta and in a lot
of the organizations I'm a part of
so the first thing is you have to find
and listen to your audience
this is deceptively crucial point so I'm
going to spend probably the most time
here and you're probably wondering like
Erica you did you submit this talk come
all the way to Hawaii walk on this stage
and just tell all these beautiful people
to listen like we don't know how to do
that the thing is that this is low key
high key the most important part about
getting involved with diversity equity
and inclusion finding your audience
means that you individually may not
represent the audience that you're
trying to be more inclusive of if for
instance you are a white sis header or
sexual men or woman in tech you may not
be representative of the audience you
need to listen to to make a space more
inclusive for marginalized people in
tech I do a lot of work with career
changers boot camp grads and people who
are new to tech but I've been in tech
for 20 years and I came through what
many would consider a traditional path
in tech so in the case of working with
career changers and folks who are coming
through Tech and non-traditional ways
I'm not representative of the audience
I'm seeking to include so I have to
listen really well there and then you
have to actively listen to that audience
not just hear not just make them feel
heard but take in and process what
they're saying I don't know how many
times this happened to me personally or
I've heard it happen to someone else
from a marginalized background where
they will share a uniquely hurtful or
maybe discriminatory experience that
they've had and the people they're
talking to will immediately respond but
I've never seen that now let's dig into
that a little bit just because this
person trusted you enough to share their
lived experience a piece of their trauma
with you doesn't instantly make you the
expert on their lived experience so how
does immediately asserting your live
experience help them well you may have
inadvertently helped them understand
that they can't trust you to respect
their story what you may have
unintentionally done is invalidate their
experience because it's not one shared
by you or by the larger group and
listening includes taking it all in
ideas suggestions feedback and
I follow franklin leonard on twitter and
he recently tweeted if you aren't ready
for criticism from a community you make
art about maybe you're not ready to make
art about that community and that really
made me think on my experience as a
community organizer and also just some
of the recent events that have been
happening in the local Atlanta community
and I responded with this this is also
true of organizations and events taking
and processing feedback is a
prerequisite to a lie ship if you can't
take him and process feedback from a
marginalized community and work with
that community to come up with solutions
that address their feedback
you are not allied to that community
thing is you want to build for your
audience you want to Center the people
that you are making space for don't make
it about you or your sponsors or local
tech companies unless that's your
audience focus on the people you are
making space for and I have found that
you can't go wrong if you optimize for
the most marginalized among those
communities you also want to make sure
that you build for intersectionality you
may have portions of your audience whose
identities are at the intersection of
various marginalized communities there
may be women who are also part of an
ethnic minority for example my
experiences as a black woman would not
would likely be very different than the
experience of a white woman or a black
men you might have someone who is
non-binary but also has a disability and
their experience at the intersection of
both non-binary and disabled is
different from identifying as either
non-binary or disabled and again this
was a big reason for kind of moving from
and event like we rise to an event like
refactor where we could really dig into
some of those intersectionalities
you want to build for impact you don't
want to allow the status quo to limit
your impact you don't want to not do
something because this it hasn't been
done before maybe you're the person that
has to do it maybe you're the one that
has to push those boundaries
in listening and building for
marginalized communities I have found
this to be true intent is much more
important than your ego you will mess
this up I have definitely messed it up
you will mess it up with the best of
intentions but if your good intentions
are stronger than your ego this will
allow you to listen to your audience and
apologize sincerely with the focus on
the community instead of centering
yourself rather than the ill-fated
self-centered DoubleDown we so often see
today and far more important than even
intent is impact and you can only
understand your impact by listening and
working with that community
so this is a tweet from a good friend of
mine Mecca who's talking about how
companies have been working to bring
more black people to their organization
without talking to black communities and
he's talking about another organization
deaf color being different and so I'm
also commenting on this by saying you
have to listen to the groups that you
are trying to make an impact with you
can't claim to do great things for our
community just because you do a thing
you have to understand from the
community's perspective the impact you
make the things actually get better
how are your results reproducible if so
how do how do we scale to understand
those answers to the questions you have
to listen and work with that community
that you're trying to include
and another point on impact if you cause
harm it doesn't matter that it wasn't
your intention to cause harm your impact
was harm telling me about your good
intentions does not remove that harm you
can only repair the harm caused by
listening and then building with
positive impact not just positive intent
then the next thing is you want to get
aligned with your team you want to
determine your mission and values
together and make tough decisions with
your mission in mind so for most of the
events that I do in the Atlanta tech
community these are the members of my
team I'm wise and fearless team and by
saying my team I don't mean like they
are under me I am I am one their team
they are amazing
and for about 90 percent of the
decisions we make we almost always agree
we can almost read each other's minds
but it's that 10% that we're not quite
aligned on all the time that really
makes like coming up with your core
values and really writing it down it
helps when you're trying to make some
decisions decisions like if you want a
certain sponsor to be involved with an
event this has come up a few times with
us we have a sponsor in Atlanta that has
reached out reached out to us as almost
the beginning of women who call it
Atlanta and they are a company that is
that works in opposition to the LGBTQ
community community and we have not had
them sponsor any of our events because
we want our members to feel safe no
matter what their background is to feel
safe at our events and so those are the
kinds of things that having a core
values having your core values written
out and having something you can refer
to whenever it's a tough decision
because nonprofits need money and so
saying that you're going to turn down a
sponsor and you're going to turn down
this bouncer every time they come to you
that's a that's a big decision to make
and saying that you have a mission and
core values that support making that
decision is really important
you want to be consistent you want to do
things like if you're a meet-up or a
user group you want to meet in roughly
the same place roughly the same time you
want people to understand what you stand
for
so you want to have the same kind of
messaging so you need to be consistent
but you also going back to building for
impact you you need to be consistent but
not afraid to push the envelope
and the next you want to empower a new
leaders to help you scale your
collective efforts
so this this graphic here is the current
leadership of women who code Atlanta it
started with just me in 2013 and you
know we were doing pretty well for a
couple of years there we could have just
let it be one of those meetups that just
has one organizers it just has one
leader but we would not have been able
to do all of the amazing things that
we've done if we had not brought on new
leaders and they have gone on to do even
more amazing things than I could imagine
because they have their own you know
goals and dreams that they wanted to
aspire to more than half of these people
are conference organizers themselves
conference organizers conference
speakers they've started their own
meetup groups they've they've made their
impact on the community as well and so
if you're trying to do more sometimes
you you if you're like me you will try
to do all the things and you will try to
do all the things at the same time but
we are human and so it's impossible to
clone yourself and try to do everything
at one time one of the best ways to do
that is to train other people to lead so
that is what we have done with women who
code Atlanta
and then you want to scale selectively
whether you're working with your team
new leaders sponsors or partners you
want to be selective and who you expose
to your audience so again I told you the
story of the sponsor that we have not
worked with and probably will never work
with unless they change their policies
around the LGTBQ community community
there are other sponsors that would help
us do amazing things but they don't
align with our mission our event
typically stays around 500 to 600 people
and there have been questions of if
we're going to scale it larger but one
of the other questions we have to answer
is can we scale the tone along with
scaling it up to being a much larger
event and so I would just say that if
those are questions make sure you can
answer the questions around supporting
your marginalized communities first and
if you can scale and still keep your
your communities that you are supporting
at the at the center of what you're
doing they're not then it might be a
good decision to scale up but that
should always be what you think of who
are you exposing to your communities and
how are you scaling in light of those
communities
so those are just a few ways that I
found to make room for the
underrepresented and marginal
marginalized folks in tech and anytime
you're involved in an event community or
an organization these are things that we
can all do to make our spaces more
inclusive I feel like so many of us have
been waiting for a tech to become this
inclusive industry that changes the
world for the better but we are the tech
industry that we've been waiting for it
won't happen by accident
we have to intentionally do the work to
make it more inclusive
thank you and if you have any questions
you can find me on Twitter I'm just
Erika Stanley thank you
[Applause]