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CASEY WHITELAW: So good evening.
And I wanted to say first, thank you all for being here.
I know that all of you have somewhere else
that you could be tonight.
So thank you for making the choice to come here
and the effort to come here and be part of this community.
And that's what tonight is all about, right?
It's a community.
It's for all of you to be part of Women Techmakers,
and more broadly the community of women in tech.
So why am I standing up here?
It's certainly not for me to tell you
my story of being a woman in tech.
But that's also part of the point.
It's because it's a problem.
It's something that I care about very
deeply that I'd like to see better representation of women
in technology.
And I think that it's important that it's not just
women's voices that we hear, and it's not just a women's problem
to increase the representation of women in technology.
And so I thought I would share some of my thoughts
on diversity, and specifically, on inclusion.
So last year, I went to Grace Hopper.
Who knows about Grace Hopper?
Great.
This is the Grace Hopper Celebration
of Women in Computing.
It's a conference that they call a celebration.
And I love it.
It changes the mood immediately when it's a celebration.
People who've been there, you know
there's a lot more smiles than you
would expect to see at something that
would be called a conference.
And for me, as a manager-- so as Marilyn mentioned,
I'm a manager here at Google-- it
was filled with really interesting information
essentially about supporting women
in their careers in technology.
And at a really high level, it was
about thinking outside of the box
rather than there being one kind of engineer.
You might break that box down and think
there's male engineers and female engineers.
And surprise, surprise, there might
be some differences between these groups
that you might want to take into account.
And it was about all the different aspects of a career,
from hiring, recruiting, interviewing, things like that,
supporting women in their careers,
looking for leadership opportunities
and how to promote women leaders in tech companies.
But when I actually got down to thinking about the content that
was being presented, the advice that was being given,
almost none of it was actually specific to women.
All of it really, or almost all of it,
was about treating people as individuals.
Like I said, instead of there being one box for engineers,
for example, and splitting into two boxes,
it was really about treating people as the individuals
that they are and realizing that everybody
has a different set of needs that you need to support.
A good example of that might be recruiting.
So Google, famously, and many tech companies
do technical interviews, right, where you get up in a room
and you're asked some technical questions.
And usually, traditionally, these
have been done on a white board.
Right?
So at some point during the interview,
you'll end up writing on a white board.
You'll write some code on a white board, which, by the way,
is not what we spend our time doing at Google.
Right?
This is not the job that you're being hired to do.
We don't stand around all day writing code on a white board.
We write code on computers sitting down or standing up
if you have a standing desk, writing at a computer.
And it turns out that many people--
this may come as a huge shock to you-- many people perform
better if you ask them to write code on a computer the way
that they're used to doing all the time rather than saying,
hey, guess what?
Stand up here and write code on a white board.
And it turns out the reason that we
were talking about this at Grace Hopper is that that's
particularly true for women.
So it was something that they were all pointing out
in terms of making sure that your hiring processes work well
for women.
But actually, more generally than that,
it doesn't mean that all of a sudden
you ask men to stand up and write at a white board
and you ask women to sit down and write
at a desk with a computer.
It's about having the option so that everybody can demonstrate
their skills in the right way.
And that goes for everybody.
And I've talked to plenty of men as well
who would much prefer to be writing
their code on a computer rather than writing at a white board.
And so this is getting to this point of inclusion.
Right?
So essentially, for me, inclusion
is about creating an environment where people
can be themselves, express themselves as an individual,
and be the best that they can be.
And that's something that I wanted
to talk to you a little bit about tonight.
So again, you might be thinking, why am I here.
I'm a white man in tech.
What could I possibly have to say about inclusion?
What story do I have?
And so, actually, I've spent a fair bit of my life
in places where I haven't been in the majority.
And the story I want to tell you tonight is from 20 years ago
when I was living in Japan.
So I was just out of school.
I was on an exchange student program in Japan.
And so I was living with a Japanese family.
And I spoke a little bit of Japanese when I first
got there, but almost nothing.
And the family that I was living with was not in a big city.
They were in a tiny village literally surrounded
by rice fields in quite a remote part of Japan.
And this meant that I was not only
the only foreigner in my village.
I was the only non-ethnically Japanese person in probably
at least 10 kilometers around where I was living.
And it meant that everybody that I met, everybody that saw me,
knew immediately who I was.
And actually, they didn't know who I was.
Right?
They knew what I. I was the foreigner.
I was the gaijin.
Who's heard the word "gaijin" before?
Yeah, so gaijin, it just means foreigner.
It's an abbreviation.
The real word is a gaikokujin.
And it's not necessarily a bad word in itself.
But it depends how it's being used,
and certainly depends on how you're hearing it.
All I knew is that all of a sudden,
that was a word that I heard a lot,
like I literally couldn't walk down
the street without hearing this word at least
a couple of times.
Not every single time, but every time I would go out,
somebody who maybe had never walked past a gaijin before,
would see me and then would start
talking to their friend about the fact
that they just saw a gaijin.
And I knew for sure that every time I
heard that word that it was me that they were talking about.
It was not a random coincidence that they were using this word.
It was definitely 100% me.
And the thing that this made me feel--
I mean, it might be something that many of you
have felt too-- is just different, like immediately,
obviously, completely different.
And it was a difference that was pointed out to me every time
I heard a word like that.
And at first, I thought it was my problem,
like there was something wrong with me because of this,
something wrong that I was doing that was
making me feel this way.
And there were definitely things that I could do to improve.
And so I thought I'm going to really learn Japanese
as well as I can and really understand Japanese culture
and try to get past this.
This is a problem that I can solve.
And I worked really hard at those things.
And so I worked really hard at learning Japanese.
And it's something that I'm really grateful for,
like having something that really
drove me to learn Japanese really well while I was there.
But despite that, I had this experience multiple times
while I was living in Japan where--
and my Japanese was getting better while I was there.
I'd start a conversation with somebody.
And I'd talk to them in Japanese.
And they'd listen.
And they'd look at me.
And then when I stopped talking, they'd then immediately
turn to the Japanese person standing next to me,
and they'd go like this and say, look, he can speak Japanese.
[LAUGHTER]
And this happened a few times.
So I'd get used to trying to ignore it.
And I'd turn back, and I'd speak to them
some more, like come on, let's have a conversation.
We can do this.
And they'd listen.
And they'd look.
And they'd turn back and say, he's really quite good.
It's amazing.
And I felt like just saying, I'm here, like hello.
I'm a person.
You can talk to me.
And for some people, there was just like this basic--
I don't know if this resonates with any of you,
if you feel like you've been in a situation like this.
But for some people, it was just impossible to get over
that barrier where they stopped treating me just
as a stereotype, stopped treating me just
as the gaijin, the foreigner, and started actually
connecting with me as a person.
And this was by no means universal.
And I had a fabulous time in Japan.
And the reason that I had a fabulous time
is because of those people who looked
past the stereotypes, who looked past me just being a foreigner,
and talked to me as a person realized that I came
from a different background, I had a different set of skills,
and I had a different set of experiences.
And that was actually part of the wonderful thing in terms
of friendships and so forth.
We could have conversations and exchange ideas
that two Japanese people speaking together
might not be able to have because we've
got a different mix of information and background
and so on.
And so that's why I think it's so important for us,
it's so valuable for us, to be treated as individuals.
And that goes for everybody.
Right?
I think that all that everybody in this room
wants is for us to be valued for who we are.
Like I said, we all have different backgrounds,
different experiences.
We all have different skills and abilities.
We all have goals and ambitions.
We're all working in tech.
And we all want to do something amazing like change the world
through working in tech.
And the right way for us to do that
is by building an inclusive environment.
And it's something that's equally applicable, I think,
to men and women.
If we can understand people as individuals and the things
that they need, the right way to understand
who they are and then help them through their careers, that's
what I think will really build a truly diverse workforce,
a place where we can all be happy being ourselves.
So with that, I wanted to hand the rest of this evening
back over to all of you.
You're all individuals.
And you're all here as part of a community.
I hope that you've enjoyed yourself tonight.
I hope you've learned something.
I hope you've had some fun.
And I hope that you meet somebody new.
I hope you take a chance to meet somebody new here tonight.
Thank you so much for coming out.
And it's been a real pleasure having you here at Google.
Thank you.
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