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Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech IndustryFrom the course: Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry# Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech IndustryTranscripts View Offline## Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry“(upbeat pulsing music) – [Narrator] The technology industry has led our worldinto the 21st century with incredible innovations and breakthroughs, but ithasn’t been able to make nearly as much progress towards increasing diversityand inclusion. As an industry, we aim to create opportunities for everyone nomatter their ethnicity, creed, ability, color, religion, socioeconomic status,origin, gender, or sexual orientation. But looking forward, we still have along way to go. The data, or lack of data, tells us we’re not doing enough andclearly missing the mark in ensuring that everyone has the opportunity tosucceed and feel a sense of belonging. It’s as much a human issue as it is abusiness issue, with diversity of thought and experience being crucial tocreativity, ingenuity, and innovation. – The first thing I usually recommendto people who want to get involved with diversity and inclusion is to developa deeper understanding of the issues. – Thinking about diversity as theoutcome of your culture and asking questions about the way that people areinteracting everyday. So questions like who is listened to, who speaks inmeetings, who’s interrupted. – I feel that the people at the top of thehierarchy should give some real power to the people at the bottom to do whatneeds to be done. And in that case then, to allow people at the grass roots ofa company to take a look at existing problems, to talk to each other, and thento do what needs to be done. – The biggest reasons diversity and inclusion isimportant is because you can’t have one subset of folks creating all the toolsas the tech field continues to grow. The diversity of ideas and the thingsthat these girls will create and work on is vitally important. – I think it’seasy to focus on recruitment because it feels so actionable and you can seeprogress very quickly. So if you make hires in the next few months that aremore diverse, you can see that reflected immediately in your goals. For thingslike retention and promotion, those happen over longer time periods and soit’s harder to see immediate progress. – The idea would be open discussion ofmeasures to allow people to get ahead who might never get a break. To raisethe issues of people who might feel threatened by this kind of thing. – Theissues around getting by and don’t actually come from other people are pro oranti diversity, but they need to understand why because any diversityinclusion program that’s just driven from HR instead of inspiring the best outof your employees is eventually going to fail, and that’s because your head ofdiversity and inclusion should be an enabler, not a doer. – I think one of theways that companies can transition from just a conversation of diversity,really implementing inclusion in their companies is really addressing culture.So I think culture is at the heart of it. – Without metrics, there’s nobaseline of understanding where we are, there’s also no way of understandingif we’re improving and so we think it’s very important that companies andteams, organizations, are setting out these metrics and targets and measuringthemselves against those. – Sometimes you got to focus in on an area likewomen in tech because I’m in the tech industry, so I should stand up forpeople in my industry. – Have a really great understanding of your ownadvantages. What parts of your life help you belong or feel included? Thenthink about how you can deploy those advantages for others. – I think peoplelook at being an activist as something that others do and they end up well, Ithink everyone can be an activist, right? It’s not about stepping outside ofyour comfort zone as much as like seeing a problem and deciding that you’regoing to do something, you’re going to take the first step to be the changethat you want to create. (upbeat, pulsing music)## Download courses and learn on the goWatch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Downloadcourses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app. * * Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry Creating Change: Diversity and Inclusion in the Tech Industry