Firstoff, there was a very detailed opening presentation and land acknowledgment by Kapor Capital and welcome by Alvaro Monge, visiting professor and Director of Khoury Programs at Northeastern University.
I was so impressed by their organizing, by all of the speakers all high quality folks really rockin' it in the industry and doing so much for the community. It was truly an honor and privilege to share space with everyone.
And ya, there was some of the best swag ever, a giant purse, banig (mat), makeup/pencil bag/case, some stickers, and my very first cape, yay I’m a woman of color in tech superhero). Thanks for this cool swag!
So many folks have asked me is it realistic to frame that women of color can achieve post-traumatic growth in light of the COVID19 dystopian pandemic apocalypse with the metaverse we just experienced over the course of the last almost 3 years. I chose to highlight a few points.
US Health Care Relies on Filipinxs While Ignoring Their Health Needs: Disguised Disparities and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Communities of color have disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 with higher mortality rates. See this chart (above) and more in detail written in this article “US Health Care Relies on Filipinxs While Ignoring Their Health Needs: Disguised Disparities and the COVID-19 Pandemic” in the JAMA medical journal here, that shows the mortality rate of Filipinx American communities being one of the most impacted among Asian American communities. While there have been reports in various medical journals about various health disparities, we still cannot highlight enough the impact that coronavirus the disease itself has had on Black/African American, LatinX, indigenous communities of color, and also note that this often is still massively undercounted as it also doesn’t include many undocumented immigrant communities.
Social unrest continues with hate crimes, police brutality, the crisis of Justice Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (the translation of whatever is left of Ethnic Studies and Critical Race Theory we can attempt to into companies). And yes, I’m aware that some ethnic studies communities call the DEI acronym “DIE” criticizing that this terminology is a watered down version of what we settle for in the context of corporations and hypercapitalistic systems in our society, and not necessarily “real” radical social change for socioeconomic justice. While that may be true to an extent, I personally haven’t seen sustainable movement building within the reality that we live in and support these initiatives, while not perfect, still make a difference in the world, though I would argue that the hyper performativity of companies to declare the support such values remains to be seen, with many people flexin’ transactional posts that they support BLM or Stop Asian Hate (one time only) as if that will make a long-term investment and impact. We need to do more.
As the ending keynote speaker, my friend, Bria Sullivan, mentioned, layoffs are still prominent and people of color contract workers fights for their healthcare, all the while other employees are being paid huge amounts unheard of in other parts of the country.
At the same time, many women have exited the working world during the pandemic, and though the win may be that some have started more small businesses (40%), it is unclear how many of these are venture capital backed businesses that scale, and how many women have started venture and angel investing funds (or become fund managers), and while that number might have increased, it may be still very tiny.
For the women of color who do manage to stay retained in the industry, I mentioned that the pay gap continues to persist and that women of color need to continue to negotiate for themselves (shout-out to my friend, Nadia de Ala for her amazing work on this).
These realities are not experienced at any level of degree to our cis straight white counterparts (all genders and sexual identities) and that privilege is a real issue when the inequalities are drastic, must needs to be changed from a systemic level.
Some of the solutions I mentioned
#ShowTheReceipts post by Laura Sullivan
The multi-bottom line
Support for real solidarity and investment the WHOLE YEAR round, not just a token monthly celebration for a particular ethnic or racial group
Continual support for Employee Resource Groups - ERGs (Twitter stopped its Business Resource Groups shortly after Elon Musk bought the company).
In 2020, shortly after the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement took off even more in response to the death of George Floyd, Laura Silva famously posted this on LinkedIn calling for company accountability in regards to authentic (and not performative) support for Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, with the hashtag #ShowTheReceipts.
Reframing the locus of control, as folks know AzN racers and the drift are risktakers and more properly aligned in the mentality of high risk entrepreneurs and investors, not 'chillin' vacationers'
No one should be in one quadrant all the time (we need vacations, rest, and recovery as resistance and honestly it is hella tiring to be a woman of color in tech and burnout is very real and prominent among community organizers, many of whom are underappreciated and undercompensated for their work promoting Justice Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging (whether they work in talent/HR/operations or not).
For all the Asian American folx in the room, anyone familiar with AzN RaCeRs growing up, the definition of the “drift” is more like a racer (like any boat or ship), and that this indicates more of a risk-taking activity, much more aligned with a founder or investor willing to take big bets on startups.
In the Philippines, historically, boat building was a practice by my ancestors and that this gift was made for trade and innovation, but speed itself as a result of conquest would compromise the rhythms (tagimata) originally conceptualized to be in tune with the season of the earth (much like that of a womxn’s body) and that most of the toxic work culture (because of a focus on hyperproductivity and capitalism) focuses on overproducing and is not in tune with these cycles, but instead is framed with a focus on the way a white man would operate in the workplace. On this subject matter, I reference my friend Eva Marie Wang, who has written extensively about this work “Paglalayang sa Balangay as Methodology: A Decolonial Journey of Re-Imagining Our Research (presentation at 3:34:40 to 4:03:27).
Paglalayag sa Balangay as Methodology: A Decolonial Journey of Re-Imagining Our Research, International Extramural Conference, University of the Philippines, Cebu. 2021 October. Photo Credit: Eva Marie Wang - https://www.facebook.com/UPCebuSocSci/videos/329426628986894
Early employees working like crazy at a startup trying to become a rocketship would not be passive folks floating around trying to find direction, but are a much stronger driving force, more comparable to a founder or captain of their ship.
I also mentioned that coming from the Filipinx American community, while many Asian Americans seem overrepresented in the broader employee population, that our community is often underrepresented and that it is very common that Filipina American women as girls are encouraged to become nurses much more often, not engineers (no offense to all the up and coming nursing informatics majors that do study a mix of nursing and information studies, but that is a newer thing).
I described my non-traditional career trajectory as a privileged person growing up in Silicon Valley in the 1990s as a 2nd generation Asian American, with parents and family who encouraged science and technology as a value (not just a job or profession to make more money), but something that embodied saving humanity from disease (thanks Mom for encouraging me to write articles in Philippine News and mailing them to semiconductor innovation pioneer, Dado Banatao) to talk about funding the importance of research and development on SARs and avian flu in the early 2000s (something I thought was a boring topic as a young one, that I find is one of the most key values in my family I have come to appreciate, and that is of fact-based research, community public health and support from private-public sector partnerships all in the benefit of humanity as a whole - something that was so glaringly undervalued for years that led to the COVID-19 pandemic. While I come from a place of privilege (as a light-skinned Pinay from the South Bay, raised in the heart of Silicon Valley, with great exposure to technology, and with other family members who have founded and sold their companies (my cousin who was working in cloud platforms after 5 year at Salesforce), and our other relatives worked on the semiconductor manufacturing assemblyline, my parents who are immigrants from the Philippines and while they spent years climbing corporate ladders in the biotech industry for 30 years, their degrees were from the Philippines so they were never treated as equal to their white colleagues in the industry.
I discussed the power that technologists have to shape history, and quite literally, we manage (and create) memory.
Technology enables us as technologists to shape and create history, and manage memory. In the metaverse, we are attempting to create an embodied reality, where technology can simulate humanity, AI's attempt human activity, and blockchain literally writes into history each transaction or each action you take on-chain.
I talked about my career in civic engagement, wearing many different hats (choosing your adventure or character in the metaverse so to speak), picking your JAM and our STACK, what sparks joy in your daily personal and professional lives with work, your methods and philosophies on how to tackle a problem with concrete solutions, whether directly culturally relevant in its content or not, its value is one that aligns with your own personal philosophy that can affirm your many intersectional identities whether it be your race, ethnicity, gender or other professional roles.
I reference both Pinay and Black musicians, Saweetie and H.E.R. to demonstrate how we should all pick our own avatars and find our voices in tech.
Grammy and Oscar award winning artist, H.E.R. (also Pinay and Black) jams out at BET Music Awards. Find your JAM. And for your front-end engineering nerds, I mean beyond Javascript Apache Markup.
I challenge us to identify our values, our philosophies, and methodologies of how we choose to practice our technology craft.
You can select your layer that you specialize in or traverse all three. I was told often while working on one or questioned rather, why I was in one (theirs), but why wouldn't I stay in my lane and join theirs? Seriously? Many people traverse the whole stack in order to create a single experience. 🙄
Shout-out to my professor, Rachel Thomas, co-founder of fast.ai who taught the Data Ethics course I took in early 2020 before the pandemic and for showing this slide, which shows how we might view our work framed by various Marvel superhero philosophies.
This graphic was shown in Data Ethics course at USF. "What Would An Avenger Do?" By Mark D. White - https://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/72/11180745/1118074572-234.pdf
Here is a Drake describing many of the common challenges and solutions when discussing the technologies of the metaverse, AI, and web3 I have come across:
Many people criticize the concept of AR VR MR XR / Spatial Computing / Metaverse for a number of problems. Creators of the metaverse have a number of challenges to address with human centered solutions in their engineering, design, and business principles.
I encourage folks to find what makes the most sense for them in choosing their tech career path, whether that be role, the kind of company they want to work for that aligns with their values, or founding their own.
I’m also a big proponent of education (having published a whole O’Reilly book on AR VR MR XR / spatial computing / metaverse in 2019).
I'm proud have taught classes and workshops over the years focused on the metaverse
I listed some reference links (and will be adding more to my blog) for women who are getting started and finding support groups in the various subsectors of tech, in AI, metaverse and web3. Here is a brief one for web3 below.
Find your mission (and this will guide you in your job), create your solution or compose your expression. I paraphrase Pinay founder of Care.com, Sheila Marcelo.
Post Traumatic Growth is challenging for women of color who face so many structural and systemic barriers and being retained in the industry, we possess unique challenges (not only work-life balance, double caregiving for those in the sandwich generation taking care of elderly parents or being young parents), the pay gap, social unrest, questioning if the companies we work for have the foundations we agree with or can tolerate. In defining what makes the most sense for our identities, finding and exercising our voice, making technology more human or humane, I believe we have some hope, even if we are unable to reach some sort of unrealistic expectation of “Post Traumatic Growth” or “Thriving” when honestly for many of us, it is difficult to get through the day, put food on the table, and survive as women of color in tech.
Many people romanticize 2008 recession with multi-billion dollar unicorn tech companies surviving during this time period and are often used as an example that we all can realistically achieve PTSG like these companies and survive. The pandemic of 2020-2023 is the not the same and cannot be compared, they were not facing a worldwide disease killing a million people and having people locked down for long periods of time, while we have a recession, this is not the same. Often this is an argument used by cis straight white women and men with privilege at the highest levels that all expect us to 'thrive' and WAGMI - We Are All Gonna Make It.
I ended with encouraging womxn of color to see themselves as the center, that are indeed the “new “ (we have been around here for a while) electricity, we can try and make it (realistic version of We Are All Gonna Make It - WAGMI), and that as we enter the oasis, we can lead and build the metaverse (or any technology really) grounded in reality. Society today has a lot of problems, some of these things can be solved with technology and humans like us.
I also encourage more womxn and womxn of color to res during this time. While some think that the pandemic is over, there are some lingering side effects from the disease on our communities and structural inequalities that continued to be exacerbated this time that will take many years to recover from (which I don’t believe will ever fully come to fruition).
It was also really cool to meet some of the other speakers and more folks I can count on my hand I didn't get to meet in-person who I know did a wonderful job, including Jully Kim of ZenDesk, Dr. Abigail Joseph and many more.
