(offbeat music)
- [Narrator] With just one blog post,
a young engineer would go on to completely
shift diversity hiring in tech.
Tracy Chou is not your average woman in STEM.
(offbeat music)
Tracy is a sophomore engineer who has
been employed at some of the top
tech companies in the world.
- I grew up in Silicon Valley, the daughter
of two software engineers and computer scientists.
So, you could say in some ways
that it was always in my blood.
- [Narrator] But as she entered
into the offices of silicon valley,
she experienced the unsettling feeling
that can come from being the lone woman.
I had a lot of people flirting with me
or hitting on me or giving me gifts.
It was more than a year into working full-time
that I first had the realization
that I might be treated differently because
I was a woman.
When I was treated differently,
I thought that it was more due
to something wrong with me.
As more people started talking
about these issues, I started to see
that my experience was not unique
and that I wasn't crazy.
- [Narrator] There was no question
in Tracy's mind that there was a pervasive,
sexist culture throughout her industry.
But she needed the numbers to prove it.
- There were no numbers across industry overall,
and so in the back of my head, I
would actually keep a running count
of who the other female engineers were
and who the other minorities were.
I realized also that people weren't tracking that data.
I think in some ways it was because it's easier
to ignore the problem if you're not
looking at any data on it.
That made me think, we really do need
to put these numbers down.
- [Narrator] So she took matters into her own hands.
She published her company's gender
diversity stats on Medium.
- More and more people started sharing it.
The first big company that released
their data was Google.
And then all the other companies really
wanted to follow suit.
Later, seeing Apple and Amazon,
I realized that there was actually
a connection, and that me on my side,
writing a little Medium post and tweeting
about it in my little world actually could have
an impact on the larger industry.
(offbeat music)
- [Narrator] Tracy no longer refers
to herself as just an engineer.
She's also become one of tech's most impassioned
diversity advocates, co-founding Project Include,
a nonprofit that uses data to help
tech companies diversify their staff.
- Now that we're having much more discussion
around diversity, people who are having
less great experiences and understand
that it's not necessarily them,
and that there are bigger structural problems
that need to be addressed.
Sometimes when I feel down, I'll actually
be lucky to get someone reaching out,
and sometimes it's a younger woman
in industry, or maybe someone still
in school who will say, thank you for doing this work.
I'm doing my little part to make the industry better
for the people who are coming after me.
(inspiring offbeat music)