Speaking Events

Navigating workplace culture: You need a map

I hear it everywhere: “to improve the recruitment, and advancement of women in male-dominated fields we need to change workplace culture.” But I’m not hearing people talk about what workplace culture actually is. How can we navigate a thing we don’t know? In this talk I share a simple model for mapping the elements of workplace culture and charting a path through our workplaces.

 

What do tech entrepreneurs and hatmakers have in common?

In the 1920’s women hatmakers faced a conundrum. They were 'businessmen' who needed to be ladylike to succeed. To balance being a lady and owning a business they took exceptional care with their wardrobe, demeanor, comportment, and community position. A recent study of young women tech entrepreneurs revealed them to be walking the same tightrope, dealing with the same challenges, and employing the same strategies for balancing their gender and business roles as their hat-making foremothers. This talk explores the lessons we can learn from our grandmother’s grandmothers.

 

Change the world, not the women

Some of the most common strategies for improving the representation of women in STEM fail. Why? Because they focus on trying to make women more like men, which doesn’t work for most women and only picks out a tiny population of women to set up for success. This strategy also blocks organizations from benefiting from the rich diversity that exists among women—a diversity that can foster innovation and lead to excellent problem solving strategies. Rather than shoehorning women into workplaces where they don’t fit, a better strategy is to open workplaces to support and value a more diverse workforce.

 

Who the computer sees: Fairness and diversity in computing

Even though the number of lucrative computing jobs is growing, women remain significantly underrepresented in this field. I explain how this lack of diversity contributes to the technical and ethical failure of commonly used AI systems and explore strategies for and benefits of diversifying our technology workforce.

 

Rethinking the business case for diversity

“Diversity promotes excellence,” is a catchy phrase. There is lots of research showing that diverse groups can be more innovative, more objective, and better problem solvers. But it turns out that using diversity to achieve these benefits is a different and more complicated story. Doing diversity poorly can do a lot of harm. In this talk I show you how to do it well.