My family’s from a farming community in Haiti. When my parents moved to Boston in their mid twenties, they had children pretty immediately. At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water. Our front lawn was a garden. My parents were not accustomed to refrigerators so they became a pneumonia scare in our household. In fact, to them everything caused pneumonia and everything could be cured with a cup of tea.

“At the time, me and my 3 siblings lived in mostly illegal communities. It’s interesting because you don’t know that you live in that sort of community until you start meeting Americans who live a bit differently. We were very “green.” We used buckets of water to bathe instead of running shower water.”

Growing up I was a very, very inquisitive child. I constantly asked questions, and context clues meant everything to me. It always confused me how people would do things without asking why? My parents had a lot of difficulty answering my questions due to the language and culture barriers. They encouraged me to read more, with the mindset that the bigger the book, the smarter I would be. The older and dustier the book, the smarter I would be. The harder the cover, the smarter I would be. Really interesting context when you really think about it. I eventually started reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, searching for answers.

When I was 11 years old, I noticed an advertisement on the back of a magazine with the words, “Do you have questions?” I took this as a sign to get tons of questions answered. I ran away from home in search for the magazine headquarter, which happened to be in Boston. Upon arrival, there was a massive exchange of questioning and they soon realized that I had no idea what my address, phone number or birthday was. They sat me in front of a computer and taught me how to play solitaire until my mother eventually found me. My question started to shift from day to day questions, to questions around machinery, interface and context. That began my path into the world of User Experience.

How were you were first introduced to Computer Science and/or UX?

Well my mom brought me back to the magazine HQ the following Monday and told me not to tell my father. In our household, the girls were very protected. I was supposed to go to school and get home as quickly as possible. I was not allowed to make friends. But my mom was a bit of a secret feminist and encouraged me to outsmart the boys and teach her all I had learned in school. Staff at the magazine were pretty impressed by me and encouraged me to continue learning about technology. They eventually were able to take me to a place called The Computer Clubhouse while my mom worked. The Computer Clubhouse was a free technical after school program designed by professors and students at the MIT Media Lab. They targeted inner city kids as young as 8 years old and taught us how to use industry level technical tools. They believed exposing underrepresented individuals to a number of technical skills early on, could help bridge the digital divide. The additional blessing was the frequent visits from people of color at MIT pursuing PhDs in Computer Science and Media. At age 12, I played with actuators and sensors. I also was introduced to coding and programed the very first driverless lego cars.

When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family. Despite all the personal struggle, I always found my way back to the computer clubhouse. I had all these cool tech skills and loved teaching. By the time I was 17 years old, I was teaching girls how to make their own web pages and remove the proof watermark off photos they had not yet purchased from school. I shortly became an assistant manager at the computer clubhouse, a Tech coordinator at the local YWCAs, the Museum of Science’s technology courses instructor and an IT risk auditor at Harvard University all while I attended undergrad.

“When I was 14 years old, I ended up in foster care due to a variety of reasons including domestic violence and cultural friction. I ran away a lot and was very depressed through those middle school and high school years without my family.”

Despite all of my technical ability, I was too scared to pursue a computer science degree. I believed it was a man’s job despite the fact that I was already doing it. So I went to school for Information Systems and sociology while teaching computer science on the side. When I was in my junior year at undergrad, I decided to take a java course and was pleasantly surprised. I already knew how to do a lot of this stuff. The wave of questions began again. “Does that mean I can code? What’s the point of the degree? Do you need a degree to be a coder? I’m confused. Can you just learn this stuff on your own? Are you not an engineer unless you learn to be engineer in school? Are Haitians who build bridges without degrees not engineers? Wait, what do I do with this sociology degree?” Sociology was the field that touched my heart and technology was the field that stimulated my mind.

I took several psychology classes and professors really felt that it might be my calling. But I could not imagine humanities paying back school loans. By the time I graduated I decided I wanted to do it all. I took to the Google search engine and typed in all my passions, “sociology, psychology, computer science, engineering, hands on, love, forgiveness…” And two fields popped up—human factors engineering and human computer interaction.

How did you make that transition?

I went to Michigan to pursue both degrees: a masters in human computer interaction and a PhD in Human Factors Engineering. It was EVERYTHING. I had somehow found fields that connected culture, engineering, empathy and compassion. And I got to doodle all day to top it off. The wonderful thing about the Computer Clubhouse is that it was funded by Intel. I was able to work my way through the network and worked as a human factors engineer while attending grad school.

At Intel, I met an amazing woman and Intel Fellow known as Genevieve Bell. Genevieve was an anthropologist and a human factors engineer who focused on cultural practices. That was the moment my entire life started to make sense. I had grown to a place where I truly appreciated cultural differences and empathized with day to day struggles of Keeping Up with the Silicon Valley Millennials. I knew I could help make life a little more easier. I wanted to help design products that showcased empathy. And I knew it was my destiny.

Walk me through your work and what you’re working on now.

I eventually went on to work on international projects as either a developer, engineer, or designer across many industries; from government to medical devices to worldwide leaders in IT. Today, I continue the great work at Google in the consumer operations space. I get to measure my work impact globally. I am also launching a personal global passion project called Tech Social Impact Conference in the first quarter of 2017. The conference sparks conversation about developing intentional awareness in product development. In Silicon Valley, we get to see how design and technology can provide social and ethical benefits (and sometimes consequences). I’d like us to share principles and approaches to contribute to a better tomorrow for the next billion users.

“Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.”

Another goal I am working on is changing the way we do research in the tech industry. I want to make that our research takes into account social and economic backgrounds. Are we designing towards the average income in the United States? Are our studies mix gendered? Have we paid attention to accessibility? I’m all about making a difference in this world, and I know I am in a very privileged position to influence that change.

It’s so cool to see all of the ties to your work from your childhood to now. What parts of your work as a researcher really activate you? What do you love the most?

I get super excited when I get in front of people, and I mean real people (no offense to Silicon Valley folks), I’m so passionate and empathetic towards the people I design for. When they’re in front of me, I want them to be comfortable. I want to hear their truths. I want them to tell us how we suck. I want them to know that I appreciate it, and I want to make a difference for them.

It’s one of those things, when I’m in front of somebody, when I’m in front of an actual human being, to know that, “okay, maybe you don’t have the same technical abilities as I, or maybe you feel a little scared, but I’m going to change this for you. I’m going to make this easier for you.” It empowers me. I just ran eight studies today with folks, and every last one of them said, “I’m not really good at tech. I feel like I’m messing up.” I say, “This is exactly what I need. And you’re perfect. I need you to tell us everything we could be doing wrong, so we can fix this for the lot of you that may feel the same. It’s not about looking for a tech genius. If that was the case, we’d make no money. And we need you to keep paying us, so I need to know everything that makes you cringe and what makes you happy.”

I’m curious to know, in your eyes, the potential of research in tech and what are the problems that we should be solving with research? What are we not doing to approach this correctly?

The reason research is so beautiful is because it’s data. When folks try to say “This is how I feel this should be designed,” I can say “Well, 80 percent of people we tested won’t go through it.” Or when I hear, “Can these users really speak for the rest of the country?” I’ll say, “Well, you know there’s this little thing called sample sizing. Pretty dope stuff.” It’s just really empowering to influence people with research.

“We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought.”

The problems we should be solving for is cross-culture design. We’re not building for just ourselves anymore. We’re a global society. Everyone is using our technology. There is a huge culture shift and focus on design for the next billion users and I think it’s a great direction. And guess what? Sometimes design requires contrast. That means we may need to have different people seated at the table to help us design. You might just have to hire that super poor person in the village you’re building for. It might just mean spending time living in the communities you are serving. It might mean better design for our products due to diversity of thought. I see nothing but wins when you consider research as a primary practice to help think more critically about the ethical and societal implications of the technologies we design in this world.

Let’s go back to your personal narrative. Tell me about some of the bigger roadblocks and struggles, in your career that you’ve had to overcome.

Being yourself in a world where being yourself seems wrong. In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person. There’s some parts of me I just cannot hold back, like when I disagree.

“In the last year mentors have been telling me that I can fully be myself and be accepted. I never believed that. It wasn’t because no one was telling me I couldn’t be myself. The culture just didn’t seem to want me. So I faked it. I fake laughed at jokes, I fake pretended to see movies I hadn’t seen. I faked drinking beer when I thought it was disgusting. I tried to be a bro when there’s not an ounce of bro in me. It’s pretty draining because I would spend 80 percent of my day pretending to be somebody else­­ or I’d sit in silence when I’m not a silent person.”

It’s still a work in progress but I’m trying to be unapologetically myself no matter where I go. I’m now about 70% myself which is pretty amazing. I would never have imagined that. And I have experienced so much good because of it. A mentor once told me that the Valley was a strange enough place where I could fit in and be appreciated for my differences because everyone is so different. Another mentor told me, “I don’t know if you know this, but when computer science first came out, it was considered a woman’s job. It was like secretarial work. But all of a sudden because somebody told us women we can’t do this­­ or that— that perceived ability has disabled some of our powers. It’s insane. And we as women are fully capable of doing any and everything in tech, if not better.” These words definitely helped.

When did your attention start turning towards educating minority communities?

I’m very passionate about that because someone took the time to show me that I wasn’t forgotten and look how far I’ve gone. And it’s important to know that it also took someone that looked like me. So I serve that truth right back.

I also truly believe this—if you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.

“If you want to hire somebody, look at their story. The story matters to me. That’s how you find out actionable potential. That’s how you know that you can take this kid off the street, show him a few lines of code, and all the sudden he’s the inventor of a killer startup. It’s about finding folks that are hungry. So I set up the environment, and the folks who are hungry, come to eat.”

How do you think the combination of your background and your life experiences impacts the way that you approach your work?

Everything I’ve done has been because of experiences I’ve had. At one point I wanted to prove my value because I felt tossed away by the world. Now, it’s about making people know they are valued and impacting the world that way.

Last question. What advice would you have for young women, young people of color who are really hoping to get into tech but just don’t know where to start?

Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.

The majority of the things I know came from tinkering, searching for free education online, and application of that education. Don’t believe the hype that you have to be in school to learn new things. Now I don’t mean drop out. College is awesome. Go to college if you can. What I mean is that you can teach yourself almost anything these days. if you allow for a little discipline. What kept me motivated was knowing that the short term sacrifice of taking the time to learn something on my own, was going to lead to longterm rewards.

“Look at several LinkedIn profiles for individuals who are in the career you want. Write down all the things that interest you and the common themes/skills. Teach yourself those skills. Put said skill into practice. Slap new skill on resume. Rinse. Repeat.”

And please, don’t be like me for the majority of my life and not ask for help. The world is so much better when you stay open and vulnerable about learning through others. Lastly, sounds cliche, but no such thing as a dumb question. Get your education on.

I come from Seattle, Washington. I was born and raised there. My parents were a typical blue collar, working class, immigrant family. They made tofu for a living, and so I grew up in a world where soybeans were everywhere. We sold the tofu to two kinds of customers: regular folks like teachers or gardeners, or to businesses like restaurants. And it was very hard work, working all the time, waking up early in the morning ­ two o’clock in the morning ­ working to six at night. It was pretty intense, but I learned how to work.

What did your parents expect of you in term of a career?

My mom’s the third generation and my dad’s first. They just wanted us to get to college somehow. That was just a dream, because both of them hadn’t gone to college. My dad didn’t go to high school.

When did you first feel any inclinations towards tech or design?

I was lucky to have been born in the era when the Commodore PET came out, which was a little computer. I was also lucky to receive the benefit of the civil rights work in the 60s. Seattle was de­segregated. The people on the poorer side of town were bussed to the richer side of town. I was in the poor side of town. I was bussed to the rich side of town and they had this computer in math class. That’s where I found my first computer in the 70s.

Then you ended up going into software engineering as a student, correct?

Yeah. It was really my parents’ dream for us to go to college and it was either Harvard or MIT. My older brother didn’t get into Harvard, so he was considered a failure [chuckles]. So I said, “Well, I’ve got to get into MIT,” and I got to MIT and studied computer science there.

“If you connect your understanding of technology with an understanding of the history of art, you can do something new. When you do something new, it hurts because nobody likes what you’re doing because it’s different. I think our inclination is to be afraid of that pain.”

When did you become interested in design and then the integration of the two?

Well I think as a child I was said to be good at math and art, but my parents would never tell anybody I was good at art because they felt that couldn’t get you a job. I was “good at math” is what they’d always say. I loved drawing. I loved thinking visually. When I got to MIT, I tried to defect. I discovered this department called “architecture.” My dad figured out what I was doing so, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re not going to be able to feed yourself, so computer science; go back there,” kind of thing. But I used to go to the library at MIT and I would find these books on design. At the time I was probably one of the best icon editors on campus at MIT. Computers were just becoming visual and I was the guy that could make good icons. I thought I was really good at it. Then I found this book by Paul Rand, the graphic designer, and I thought, “Man, he is so much better than I am at this stuff.” [chuckles] That’s how I found the field of design.

Such a huge part of your work is combining tech and art and exploring the integration of the two. When did this feel like a focal point for you more than just doing the work that’s assigned to you?

That’s a great question. I forget all the time that I cared about that, if that makes sense. I’ll be waking up and saying, “Oh yeah, I care about how those two connect.” Then I’m off forgetting everything. “Oh yeah, I care about that.”

I guess it’s because I was lucky in the 80s and 90s to see how, if you connect your understanding of technology with an understanding of the history of art, you can do something new. When you do something new, it hurts because nobody likes what you’re doing because it’s different. Each time you touch that third rail, you’re like, “Ouch! I don’t want to do that. I want to be a regular engineer. Or, I want to be a regular artist.” So I think our inclination is to be afraid of that pain. I’ll come close to it and I’ll go away from it [chuckles] and I’ll come close to it and then go away from it. I’ve always been having this problem. I’ll be in art school, I’ll be in engineering school, I’ll be in Silicon Valley. I’ve always been running from and towards the third rail.

“I’ve always experienced push­back. In art school, I remember in the early 90s my conservative design teachers told me, “Stop making things move on the screen. That’s not right.” Or being at MIT, and my engineering teachers telling me, “Why do you care how it feels, just make it run faster.” I think that anyone messing with the field they’re in, and how it’s “supposed to be” gets in trouble and it goes back to that key question: “How much pain can you take standing at the intersection of fields?” I guess I’ve always wanted to feel that pain. I guess I feel alive in it.”

I don’t think we have time to run through the entire course of your career but at a high level, what aspects of your work have you been proudest of, and what about your work activates you?

Wow. Well I think any creative person you talk to will tell you they’re not really proud of what they’ve done, because they’re still searching. So I don’t think I’m proud of anything I’ve ever done. I think that I’m always surprised when I see something I did in the past ­. What I’ve seen about getting older, is you’re like, “Did I do that? I don’t remember doing that. I guess that was kind of okay, but I could have done better” kind of thing [chuckles]. So nothing in particular, really. I’m glad that I’ve continued to learn, try new things. Being in venture capital is my most ambitious art project to date.

I definitely want to go into that with you, in a little bit. In terms of integrating the tech and art worlds, did people see it the way­ or as naturally as you see it? Like, from a political perspective, has there been push­back from either side, when you’ve for instance been pushing tech onto RISD, or pushing art into Silicon Valley?

Yeah. I think. I’m glad you asked that question. I’ve always experienced push­back. In art school, I remember in the early 90s my conservative design teachers told me, “Stop making things move on the screen. That’s not right.” Or being at MIT, and my engineering teachers telling me, “Why do you care how it feels, just make it run faster.” I think that anyone messing with the field they’re in, and how it’s “supposed to be” gets in trouble and it goes back to that key question: “How much pain can you take standing at the intersection of fields?” I guess I’ve always wanted to feel that pain. I guess I feel alive in it.

What are the problems that you seek to solve with your work?

Right now I want to address the fact that most of the power in the world is controlled by people who understand money, and in many cases have understood it for multiple generations.

Creative people are trained to not care for money. I think because of this, creative peope—when I say creative people, I mean like arts, design, or even engineers who love to make things—or “makers” tend to believe that money is evil, bad, corrupting, dangerous. My passion is to enable makers to understand that money is just a medium. And like all media, it can do good, it can do bad. In the same way we can’t say that all art does good—there are bad artists. There are Evil artists. and so money can be used in the same way: for good, for bad.

Similar but slightly different question: What are the biggest motivators in your work? What drives you?

To question what I know, because I’m supposed to know a lot of things. And each time I feel, “Maybe I understand this,” I’m like, “Oh, I don’t get it.” Being in Silicon Valley has been so humbling. To meet people like yourself who are really in a whole different way of thinking that I overlooked, and didn’t fully understand, and I wasn’t a part of. That’s why for me, living here­­ I’ve been living in like a Millennial, I have no possessions, and am living in Airbnbs and Uber­ing everywhere. To understand how your generation feels right now has been an exciting moment for me. I love this project you’re doing and I love how you imagined it and I love how after you have gone through most iterations of yourself, you came to see this as important and there’s nothing to stop you. You just said, “I’m going to do it. Suddenly, I have 500 people who want to be a part of it.” And I thought, “Thank goodness that people like you are saying, ‘Of course I can. Because technology is something I’m not afraid of, but I’m not just technologist. I’m a person of culture, and I’ll combine them together and show them.’”

“Being in venture capital is my most ambitious art project to date.”

Amen and thank you. This is a little bit of a side step, but you’re on the board of Wieden, and I’m curious to hear how you apply your perspectives and methodology to advertising.

Oh. Well, a lot of my passion is going back to the world of money, the world of control. I’d like to be a creative person who is in board roles who can argue for creative. So on Wieden’s board, I channel the guy who can talk money, but can talk creative too. The questions always have to be not about pure profitability, but creative integrity. And the reason why Dan Wieden brought me into his world is that he wanted to make sure that all the discussions come back to, “Are we a creative culture?” So I like those kinds of roles, where creativity matters at the very top. I recognize that such opportunities are precious, and are meant to be made into something, and to be taken to their fullest.

When was the moment when money became important to you as something integral in the design process?

It was in the year 2001. It was the dot­com crash. And some of my colleagues at MIT owned a lot of stocks. And we were at a meeting where they were facepalming and going, “Oh no, oh no,” because they were losing all kinds of money. I had no money, so I didn’t know what they were talking about [chuckles]. And oh my gosh. Shortly thereafter, MIT did some restructuring, and I remember there was a CFO type person who said to me, “John, you’re the creative person, so don’t worry about the money. We’ll figure it out. You just go and be creative.” And he was maybe the third person in my life who had said the same thing to me. And when someone tells you, “Don’t worry your pretty little head, John. It’s going to be okay,” I get worried. I wonder, “What are you hiding from me?” And I realized, I would read newspapers and not understand the financial terms ­­ and the legal terms too. Sure, I could read People Magazine, one of my favorite things. And it’s so vacuous, and easy to read. But I couldn’t read The Wall Street Journal. And so I did my MBA to begin to learn the language of the finance and business world to get to feeling, “Oh that’s what you’re saying. Oh that’s what I didn’t understand.” Here I was, limited to being told that I’ll do the creative part, and you someone else would do the money part. I wondered, “How much am I giving away? How do I take back my integrity?” That’s where this drive all came from.

Interesting. Did you ever expect to be in Silicon Valley Venture Capital?

Never. I actually had never heard of “venture capital” until I got to Silicon Valley. Well, I kind of heard of it; but I didn’t know what it was at all. In full disclosure, I just sort of bumble into things. With the attitude like, “Oh, I’ll try that,. I’ll try that.” I remember feeling, “Venture Capital? What is that?” Two months before I arrived I bought a book on venture capital. I read it, didn’t quite understand it. So since I’ve arrived, it’s just been a lot of learning. I marveled at how a little bit of money can become a large amount of money? I didn’t know it was possible.  I then wondered, “Wait, so what are the letters? What do they mean? Oh, they’re in sequence. Okay, I get it.” All these things that I had no idea about­­ and just to realize it now in my lifetime has felt like a blessing.

I’ve also found that people who find out I work in venture capital will say to me, “Oh, venture capitalists, they’re bad, bad”. I don’t know what they’re talking about. I know a lot of bad people in the academic world – and some good ones. And I can say I know a lot of good venture capitalists – they’re pretty amazing. I love how their goal is to see the impossible happen. And when we think in this start­up, Silicon Valley world, that’s a kind of a mantra—you know, “Make the world a better place” or whatever—I love that the people who have the funds to power these things, a significant percentage of them, do believe the impossible is possible. I think that’s magic.

Tell me more about your first impressions of Silicon Valley.

Well, you know that my first impression was – the lack of  diversity in tech, and how there aren’t enough women, people of color, and it’s not addressed sufficiently. I noticed it from the very beginning. But then I noticed that it was because I myself wasn’t making a conscious effort to change that in my own activities. Maybe in my first few months I met mainly young white men, because they would introduce me to more young white men. And so after a while I realized, “Oh, maybe I’m doing this wrong. It isn’t that the system is doing me wrong; what do I have to do differently?” So I began asking myself if I’m having ten people that I’m seeing, how can I now consciously edit my direction. I found that my conversations and gatherings became so much better than when they were less diverse.

So when people say that diversity is important, I like to say instead, “No, it isn’t important. It’s essential to increase the quality of discourse.” When I was leading RISD, I had the opposite problem because there were ~70% or more women in the student body. So I would always be like, “So where are the men?” So again, we have to recognize the situation we’re in and we have to take action. But I’m by no means perfect with regards to my diversity record, but I do strive to be conscious, aware, and take action on the matter.

“When people say that diversity is important, I like to say instead, ‘No, it isn’t important. It’s essential to increase the quality of discourse.’“

Tell me about how kind of the culmination of your previous work impacts how you’re approaching your work in VC.

Oh, absolutely. I became president of a college in 2008 because I read the “Audacity of Hope,” and I listened to the audio book and it was so inspiring as an American to hear that anyone, any American, no matter what age, race, or creed can make a difference. “Yes, we can.” So, when the headhunting firm, Spencer Stuart, called me up and said, “Hey, you want to be president of a college?” And I said, “I can’t do that.” But yeah, I finished my MBA, but I don’t have any experience, and I was never a dean or a provost or all these special titles along the way. I can’t do that. And in my voice I could hear, “Yes we can. Yes we can!”

And so Obama became president that year—the same year the financial crisis happened. Me too, I was brought in as a person who was going to bring in new ideas, and then shortly after I arrive I’m overseeing the worst layoff in the history of the place. And I’m no longer a person with ideas, and immediately assume the role of the pragmatist and operator working to navigate a financial crisis. And it was kind of like a sock in the gut and in the face. And so I had to become a different person. And I’m grateful because otherwise I wouldn’t have learned how to operate at scale as a leader.  I wouldn’t have had to reform the business model, or really understand the business of a university, and to understand where every dime goes. That was a great outcome, but a hard process along the way. And so I come to Silicon Valley to learn that this knowledge of how to run an organization at scale through difficult times is valuable here, which I find very promising and positive. It isn’t that people here are all about fail fast. It’s, “Can you recover fast?” And I’ know how to recover – it just takes hard, and smart, work.

Let’s go really macro for a second. How do you feel about the state of Silicon Valley Tech in 2016? What excites you, what frustrates you?

I think what excites me is that there’s a kind of awareness that maybe we need to make things for more kinds of people than those who live in Silicon Valley. You can call it diversity, inclusion, all kinds of things ­­ it doesn’t matter. We recognize there’s a strong business case for matters that impact people who live outside this region, and by knowing what they care about, we can  actually have a bigger impact. That excites me: not the technology. There’s a realization occurring here in this region.

What turns me off? ­­ I don’t know. I mean, so many things get me grumpy in general, I guess [laughter] if there were one thing that ticks me off, it is that certain voices still cannot be heard, and I believe that with the fortune and responsibility in the voice that I have, I want to do everything I can to amplify those voices. But more work has to be done.

I saw that you started a newsletter recently, for Asian­ Americans in tech.

You noticed that. I guess that I woke up one weekend realizing that, “Hey, I’m Asian.” It was this weird moment that came to me. I mean, as an Asian American, I try to hide. I try to fit in, and that’s been my whole life. I’ve always fought for everyone’s cause whether it’s African Americans, Latin Americans, LGBTQ, and any group feeling social injustice at unfair scales. Anyone. Because I know what it’s like to feel different, but I realized recently that I don’t do anything for Asian people, and it was just this, “Why don’t I?” It’s because I don’t want to people to pay attention to the fact that I am not like them. I realized what a disservice I was doing. When I saw Tracy Chou, ­she’s amazing – I felt I had to do something.

She’s in my project!

She’s like Legolas. She’s  like Legolas with the arrows in how deeply she is engaged in these matters. She made me think, “Wow, I’ve got to get off my butt and say something.” That’s why I wrote the essay, “Did I grow up and become the yellow hand?” Am I the type­-O hand on the emoji keyboard that doesn’t stand for any particular skin color or culture? I felt that maybe I should stand for something. That’s why that began. Thanks for noticing that.

I keep an eye on things [chuckles]. I’m on Twitter a lot when I’m not shooting. Let’s see, I’m curious to know your thoughts on how Silicon Valley seems to approach design.

Oh, it’s very exciting. What’s so exciting about how Silicon Valley works is that it lives in the true era that no one could have imagined, where the product is no longer five zones removed from the consumer. There is no need for the intermediary to sell the water bottle that you drink; it’s right there on the other side of the phone’s glass. You’re using the product, and not only that but it’s being used not by a few people but millions of people. So Silicon Valley designers deal with a significantly different kind of design, the design where the product is the brand, is the expression, is delivered in real time, and it can be changed every day if the budget existed. Whereas the old design is, “I’ll make these glasses, I hope they’re awesome. We shipped them; they didn’t sell. Well that’s because I was a genius and people didn’t get it.” Or, “I shipped my glasses and some sold. Hmm, okay well let’s get lucky next time.” Silicon Valley designers live in a world where the thing they’re selling is never going to be done being made, and is being shipped live. That is an amazing thing, and these design outcomes are fundamentally different than how design was done in the past. And the designers suffer at the same time too, because people who made things like in the old world got to finish it. “It’s done. It’s been finalized. It will never change now that it’s done. Isn’t it amazing? It so amazing. It’s done.” Whereas people who design in tech never get to be done. So when I saw that you were a photographer and you were taking photographs, you were able to go back to the world of “done,” because done is the best place to be. But you have both in you. You know exactly what that’s like, you know what this it is like for designers in tech. And you’re still so young, so you’ll find all these new things in your life. It’s being in this imbalanced place, that makes you a unique person in the future, I believe. That new person is part of your project. I think you’ve just started.

Thank you.

You’re like, “Oh, this is something. What is this?” Scratch head, scratch head. This is a good beginning.

This is the kind of work I’ve been wanting to do my whole life, and this is the first month that I feel like I’ve had the time and the resources to do it.

That’s good. You’ve earned it.

I do feel like I’m just at the beginning. So I appreciate the encouragement.

Absolutely.

What are your thoughts on the relationship between tech and art here?

It’s tough. In New York, it’s easy to be an artist, because there’s a lot of artists there. There’s a history of art galleries there. For example, if you’re in Paris, it’s easy to be an artist – it’s also easy to be a mathematician, I hear. Here the spirit of art is not a strong spirit, which I think signals great opportunity. And I think people, like yourself, who can seize the moment and think, “Well, maybe there isn’t a strong art community of a certain art, but maybe there’s a strong community for a different kind of art.” I think that work will be done, and that work has to be done.

Even the fact that you’re reaching out to the world and pulling people into this world that you have ­­ that’s a different kind of art. It’s like Jenny Holzer taking portraits, 80 portraits, live around the world. That feels like a kind of art that’s natural here and can be celebrated, versus old school, like “Let’s take a motor and let’s attach it to a paint can and let’s make art.” And hearing a gallery crowd cheer you on and say, “Oh, my gosh. That was amazing art. It’s right in front of me. It’s finished. It’s done.” That’s not art anymore – at least for people in the future. The new art lives with people. And I think this region would be more likely to understand that. So I’m hoping that the gallery system can evolve to accept that future. I’m sure it’s going to happen, but it’s going to be a problem for a while. If you have more of that kind of art, then the new kind of galleries will emerge, and the market will emerge from that. And I hope that you, Helena, will sell different aspects of your process as products to find that different audience and to help this region talk about art in the new language your generation will create.

One thing I’ve noticed interviewing designers, particularly designers who have worked on the East Coast and in New York city, is the frustration at a lack of philosophy in start­up design. In my experience, I remember at least, when I worked in Tech, how much technical specialization is valued versus philosophy, and I’m curious to see I you have felt any of that yourself.

Yeah. This may be a kind of blasphemy, but I used to be a member of those cults of the old world’s philosophy. I was long a part of the Swiss Typography mafia in Shinjuku. At the time, I loved the perfect movements of type by 0.001 points – where the average human being couldn’t really tell anything had changed. Invisible details, you know? I used to love that. And then I realized it was a cult, and a form of brainwashing. It was a constraining thing. It was a safe place to be, and great to have learned.

So both skills are important – the place of safety that the past provides, and the new things that can be made in the medium of technology. It’s the people who can go across the two, fluidly, that I think this region needs more of. But if you take a viewpoint of, “I know philosophy; you don’t. So you suck.” Or, “I can code; you don’t. So you suck.”

“If there were one thing that ticks me off, it is that certain voices still cannot be heard, and I believe that with the fortune and responsibility in the voice that I have, I want to do everything I can to amplify those voices. But more work has to be done.”

It’s almost like both sides are the same in that way, which is funny to think about.

That’s how sides are made. There are those who say, “I know this; you don’t know that.” Then another person nods in disbelief, “What? You don’t know that? Really? You didn’t know that?” Hmm. I’m so over that kind of thinking. I’m not into that at all. We can all learn from each other.

What are your photographs behind you? What are they?

Some are mine, some are from friends. I try not to have my own photos up there, because it feels like I’m looking at my own iMac screensaver or something.

I understand.

Or having like a portrait of yourself in your bedroom.

It’s a bit awkward, I understand.

Okay, where do I want to go now? What are you working on right now, in 2016, either for work or for yourself?

I’m working on the 2016 #DesignInTech Report ­ ­the second edition. Last year it came out at SXSW. I thought it would get 50,000 views—it had 850,000 views. So, surprise! Sheer luck. I’m like, “Woah.” I’m making the new version—that’s coming out in three weeks, so I’m sitting in front of Keynote, moving things around, and tossing things out. I hope it’s able to communicate this relationship between business, design, and tech that I care about.  I want to keep showing how it’s valuable, and that you can assign dollar signs to it: DESIGN is DE$IGN. Some people consider the dollar signs as being dirty, or just outright wrong. But I consider it work that I get to do right now. So I’m going to do it.

How is life without possessions right now? Do you feel like you’re going to stick to that for a while?

It’s been really great. I was observing how younger people live lighter lives, so I’ve been getting to live that right now. When I was at RISD, I had an 18 room mansion with six bathrooms or whatever, and I didn’t have that much stuff anyways. Now I just kind of have a suitcase and travel light, and after I broke my right arm over the winter holidays by tripping while on a run, I can’t carry as much now. So I’m even lighter now.

That’s interesting because I’ve historically been a person who gets rid of everything she owns every time she moves­­.

Interesting.

And I’ve moved a lot. And this is the first time I’ve ever put things on the wall in my apartment. It’s the first time I’ve ever had more than a Craigslist couch or a Craigslist bed. It’s really new and interesting for me and I think it’s been good for me in a way because I think I would have moved from San Francisco for reasons that don’t even make sense, like, “Things are great. Let me just completely like throw it all at the air and move somewhere else. But this have forced me to be stable for the first time in my life. So I think it might be good for me for now.

That’s the thing; you live different lives. So this part of your life is this.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

Wow. I hope that I’m still involved in the start­up world. I hope I’m making a start­up, or I hope I’m at a start­up. I’ve just learned so much from the start­up generation. I figure I have to learn more by being in that world. That’s what I hope.

My last question for you would be, based on the lessons you’ve learned through your own experience or the experience of those you’ve taught, what advice would you give to young designers just getting their start in tech?

I would strongly suggest that they be curious about business because business is only scary when it’s not understood. People who are creative especially in the tech world will be looked down upon unless they are curious about business. Everyone’s got a different language. The more languages you speak, the more positive damage you can do on the world [chuckles]. So that’s my take.

“I would strongly suggest that they be curious about business because business is only scary when it’s not understood. People who are creative especially in the tech world will be looked down upon unless they are curious about business. Everyone’s got a different language. The more languages you speak, the more positive damage you can do on the world.”

I was born in Brooklyn, New York to a pretty warm family. They’re predominately blue collar on both sides. My dad was born in Nigeria and lived in Sweden. My mom was born in Trinidad, an island seven miles north of Venezuela. She moved to the States when she was a teenager to continue her education. After college, she settled in Brooklyn, New York where a lot of her family lived. My father-to-be was still a continent away in Scandinavia.

My mom had a good friend who, just like her, loved to travel the world. This friend was doing her master’s in Sweden and invited my mom to visit. On her trip over, she caught a cold but mustered the strength to still go out and do things. Then one day she went to a local church and found herself sneezing a lot. A gentleman sitting behind her kept saying “bless you.” Later that day, the church had choir practice. My mom, an amazing singer, ended up practicing with them. Further into practice, she started singing a song that the “bless you” man started playing the piano along to. She turned around to who would become my dad. Obviously he got her number.

They started dating and, after some time, got married in Sweden. This was 1993. I was born September 14th the following year in Brooklyn, New York. But my dad, in need of a sponsor, wasn’t able to make it to the US in time for my birth. He was distraught. I was cool with it because I was five minutes old. My dad was still finishing up his Master’s/MD program, so the distance from his family definitely affected him. He was finally able to move to the US in 1998. In the four-year period before this, I briefly lived in Trinidad to learn about culture and be near my mother’s family. Then we lived in Sweden to be with my father. “We” was my mom, myself, and my half-brother. We have the same mother and different fathers, but my father was definitely a father to him too. I’m close to my brother. We’re 12 years apart, so growing up wasn’t your typical sibling-relationship, but it worked and still works for us.

“Maybe that’s why computers were so interesting to me. A way to “escape” into a new world, full of possibilities. Where the cure to loneliness was a Cmd+T away.”

Growing up in New York, I was surrounded by South Caribbean culture. Most of my father’s family lived in Maryland, so although I knew and occasionally visited them, I didn’t know their culture too much. However, when it was time for my brother to go to college, my father suggested we move to Baltimore, Maryland. We did, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by African culture. Stark difference.

Baltimore was a major change from Brooklyn. New York is fast-paced. Maryland is not. New York is dense. Maryland isn’t sparse, but it’s not New York level either. And we lived in Baltimore County, not the city. So it was even more laid back than my previous home. People drove more and rode the bus less. The transportation system was complete crap. I got used to all of it though. I also got used to my dad’s family’s culture. My mother has two siblings. My father has six. Four of whom also lived in Baltimore at the time. His family is very close, so I’d see my cousins more than some people saw their siblings. They all felt like brothers and sisters to me, but then I’d have to go home to no kids whereas they had their own siblings. Looking back now, I realize that I often felt alone as a child, yearning for my brother. I’d see him like twice a year when he was doing his Bachelor’s and Master’s, but I got used to it. Maybe that’s why computers were so interesting to me. A way to “escape” into a new world, full of possibilities. Where the cure to loneliness was a Cmd+T away. Still, my family’s culture taught me the value of family. I finished up elementary school in Baltimore, then attended middle and high school. Childhood was fine though. No sleepovers, culture thing. First job was cleaning our church. Oh, and I got a ton of migraines. They’re gone now. Thank God.

I remember in elementary and middle school, I used to talk a lot. I also asked “too many” questions. My parents said it was because I didn’t have a sibling around to play with, so I’d get bored. When I’d finally see another child, it was like a seeing a new species and I’d feel the sudden urge to tell them all the things. Of course this was much to the dismay of teachers, so I’d often find myself in trouble. However, one of my teachers in elementary school didn’t see my talkative nature as being a “disruptive child.” She saw boredom and sought to challenge me. She put me in a program called GT, or Gifted and Talented. It was a track for students who should probably be a grade or two above, but didn’t skip. One year into it, I was still talkative, but it was much more bearable. I also felt challenged. Looking back, I really appreciate what she did for me. Most of my teachers told my parents that I had a learning disability, or that I exhibited traits that often lead to dysfunctional people in society. This teacher just saw me for who I was. A bored child. Thanks, Ms. Gaston.

This was probably the first identification that maybe my skills and interests were not aligned with those of my classmates. I was the “draws all over his homework” kid. Of course, I learned to conform. Just like I had to conform to desks designed for right-handers when I was part of the left-handed club. Then in middle school, my attraction to web went through the roof when I stumbled upon code. I found it so intriguing to be able to do whatever you want and put up whatever you want with no teachers around to strike you seven points. It was ultimate freedom and I wanted it. So I taught myself HTML and CSS, then starting hacking around.

I started doing websites for family, then family friends, and finally strangers. I remember setting up a Paypal account to collect payments. I connected it to my checking account that my mom let me sign up for. It was a branch of Wachovia built for children. I remember taking on some projects that required Flash or some heavy JS. Instead of turning those projects down, I’d say “oh, I can do that!” Then I’ll read up tutorials or would find things around the web I could build off of, like Wix. Ugh, I used to use Wix. I would figure out what the yearly cost was for services like Wix, then would add on a premium to the project total so that I’d collect a profit at the end. It was cool getting those monthly or yearly charges from services I would use for the projects. Sometimes I’d mis-plan and go in the negative, but I was learning. Design and business. After two years of this grind, I was able to save up for my first Macbook. Third-hand off eBay.

Daytime, I was in school. I started identifying the classes that interested me the most. Math, psychology, and English. Math had systems and frameworks. Psychology broke down the way people think. English, had creative writing – freedom of expression. I found it very interesting because it was the one type of assignment where your teacher could only grade you on grammar and spelling. There was no such thing as a bad idea. These things stuck with me, and ultimately influenced my design career.

English class ended up leading to another passion – blogging. I started my first blog over a school summer. It was called mediainfive.com. The goal was to capture the top news of the day and synthesize them into a five minute digest. The site probably got 100 views per month. I’m pretty sure they were my mom and her friends showing me support. I ended up pausing the blog when I returned to school. My second blog was called trendingweb.com. It consisted of interviews I’d conduct with entrepreneurs from around the web who were building cool stuff. Their products often had little-to-no users at the time. Some of these companies turned out to be Zerply and 6Wunderkinder, makers of the todo list app, Wunderlist. These blogs also led to writing opportunities at bigger sites. I did an internship at AppAdvice, a blog that focused on Apple’s iOS store. At the time, it averaged a million views per month, so that was a big change for me.

Writing 5–8 articles a day for them taught me discipline and polish. A lot of the practices I learned there would stick with me down-the-line. Afterwards, I wrote for a blog called Macgasm, also focused on Apple. This site was incredible. It was the first time I “hit” Hacker News, Google News, and broke a site from web traffic. It also led to me visiting San Jose to attend a tech conference, where I got to meet really inspiring people who would become friends in the future. Chris Anderson, the founder of TED, and Mark Johnson, then CEO of Zite, were a couple of them. On my way back from that trip, I remember reaching out to Mark for an interview. I wanted to play around with a new format of recording an interview, transcribing it, then summarizing it into a sort of story with pull-quotes. If you saw my recording setup, you’d laugh. But it was different, and he was down for it. It spawned a series of interviews of a similar fashion that I did for Macgasm, and led to me getting my own column. I met other friends through this column like the Sparrow, Flud, and Instacast founders. Looking back, it was an evolution of TrendingWeb. I’m grateful for having had that experience. And I’m grateful to my parents for letting me pretend to be sick, so I could skip school for a few days for the San Jose trip.

By now I was in high school. I attended Overlea High. It was a big change from my middle school. Parkville Middle was in the top 10 in Maryland. Overlea High was in the bottom 10. Why did I go there? In our school system, each student had zone schools, or schools they’d attend by default based off location. Golden Ring Middle and Overlea High were my zone schools. After elementary school, I applied to Parkville for their magnet program. In it, I got to take interesting courses like Mass Communication, Visual Arts, Environmental Sciences, and Applied Engineering. When high school time came around, I applied and didn’t get into my school of choice, Eastern Technical High. The number one in the state and top 5% in the country. In the future, I learned that some parts of my application were mixed up with another student, costing my acceptance. No one thought to correct it and I ended up at Overlea. Most of my friends went to Eastern, so day one of Overlea was definitely an adjustment. It was pretty bad. First day, there were at least five fights and three suspensions. We even had metal detectors at the school’s front entrance.

“I remember students joking during my first few months that I probably got into numerous fights, or that I was a thug, etc. The theme was that I was lucky for even getting into Eastern, and that I wasn’t going to succeed at the school. I mean, during week one people would literally move out of my way in the hallways.”

But I found the good. Our school had a program called DECA – Distributive Education Clubs of America. It’s very similar to FBLA – Future Business Leaders of America. It was a business club for high school students that had competitions at the county, state, national, and international level. My club-mates and I competed our way to internationals which took place in California. We traveled for the contest, and although we didn’t place at that level, it was an amazing experience. It was a big deal for our school. It was also my first dose of California weather. I knew I’d be back one day.

Halfway through my first year of high school, Eastern Tech announced that they would do something they had never done before – allow students to apply to enroll in 10th grade. My parents were all over this. I applied and got accepted. I later learned that only two students were accepted state-wide. My mom was excited, but I didn’t care anymore. I had gotten used to Overlea, built some friendships, was top of my class, and didn’t mind the fights anymore. My mom wasn’t having it and, come the following August, I was an Eastern Tech student.

Tenth grade. I remember showing up to school on day one. People looked at my funny. Was it because I came from Overlea? Was it because I didn’t look like anyone there? Maybe both. I was coming from a school that had a very negative stereotype. I was entering a school that was probably 75% Caucasian and 2% African-American. I remember students joking during my first few months that I probably got into numerous fights, or that I was a thug, etc. The theme was that I was lucky for even getting into Eastern, and that I wasn’t going to succeed at the school. I mean, during week one people would literally move out of my way in the hallways. Like, did they think I’d shove them or something?

It took about half a year for me to settle in and for the negative sentiment to “settle down.” Like Parkville, Eastern provided magnet courses that students could major in. The options were Health, Automotive Technology, Business Management and Finance, Interactive Media Production, Construction, Culinary, Engineering, IT, Law, and Teaching. I chose IT, the closest I could find to my evening passion of coding. I later learned there was little overlap, but I still learned a lot. By graduation, I was CCNA-certified and could work entry-level for Cisco or the NSA. I didn’t do anything with that certification, but the knowledge was valuable. I remember learning how to make ethernet cables from scratch, and at least retained the knowledge for fixing my wifi when it acts up. However, I realized in 11th grade that although it was interesting, IT was too technical for me. I didn’t want to fix the Internet, I wanted to build awesome things on it.

“Online, I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time.”

This realization led to me noticing that my true passion lied with websites. How they looked and how they worked. Up until then, I had messed around in Photoshop and tried to design, but I didn’t consider it a skill. So I decided to change that. I started reading blogs like A List Apart and Think Vitamin. Then I’d find designs from around the web that I liked and would try to reverse engineer them in Photoshop. I did 2–3 a night. It didn’t take long for the practices to commit to memory. However, I couldn’t find much content on what it meant to a designer. Or a content that covered the developments of the design industry. Like, what tools were people using nowadays? Or what we could learn from the most recent hot app? I don’t know why I felt like I was the one to do it, but I told myself I’d create a blog for this. I met my blog co-founder, Drew Wilson, on Twitter. A couple months later we started The Industry.

This was November 2011. Our tagline was “covering design-focused startups and people.” In our first month, we had a couple thousand visits. 6 months in, we were averaging one hundred thousand. Drew handled the design, development, and promotion. I handled editorial, and sponsorships. We ended up building an editorial team of 12 people. Our first, and most loyal sponsor, was Squarespace. We started a podcast with Adam Stacoviak, and within months, it had surpassed the blog in popularity. It also represented a majority of our revenue, which I used to pay our editorial team. The team was distributed. None of us met in person until years later, but it was a true passion project. I remember writing, editing, and coordinating with the team in the evenings and weekends, then reviewing articles to publish at school during lunch time. The team is all in great places now. One’s a designer at Microsoft by way of Sunrise, another is just crushing it in New York, another is a writer at Invision, one’s VP of Design at Acorns, etc.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the podcast which we called The Industry Radio Show, would play a huge role for me. Each week, we’d have guests on to chat about design. I’d notice patterns in their background stories, what they did day-to-day, and what they were most passionate about. They were describing my job description. A lightbulb went off in my head. I told myself, “okay, this is the kind of work I want to do. The best of all worlds. Write, design, code.”

“My dad’s an optimist, but it hit him in that moment. Because he knew that something as small as someone just slightly discriminating against you could destroy your life. For him, it was something that could have kept him from his family indefinitely. For me, it was something that could have ended my chance of going to college and put in jail.”

High school was wrapping up soon. I applied to one university in Maryland, and two in Pennsylvania. UMBC, Drexel, and UPenn. I got into them and was now faced with a decision, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I didn’t need any of them to pursue my newfound job description. I had become jaded to the whole college thing, but didn’t throw it out altogether. I knew it was important to my family, and that I would be judged by my peers if I didn’t go. After all, there was a stereotype. I opted for Drexel with a major in something design-y, and a minor in psychology.

That was the plan. Graduation came. I remember sitting down with my class and facing all the parents, thinking to myself “I wonder how many of them are doing what they love as a career?” Then I looked around to members of my class. Some had huge smiles on their faces, knowing that they got into the school of their choice, their boyfriend was coming with them, and that “everything was going to be awesome.” Some had partial smiles on their face, knowing that they were going to get the education they wanted, but at the cost of their parents savings or theirs. Some, like me, were expressionless. Were we all thinking the same thing? Were we all thinking “is the future really as simple as getting a degree and getting a job? Or must we find our own path?” I don’t know, but I know that’s what I was thinking. In that moment, while our valedictorian spoke, I decided to choose my own path. Step one was finding an alternative to college.

I started thinking about the guests from the podcast again. How did they find their path? I also started weighing the education system against this “choose your own path” model. It leaned heavily to “choose path.” I recalled the feels I’d get when I’d ship a website for someone, or publish an article on the blog. Or the fact that Drew, although years older than me, didn’t care about my age or race. He just appreciated my work. I then thought about school, and some of my teachers dating back to elementary school. My quarrels with how tests were set up for memorization and not comprehension. The racism and stereotype I felt coming from Overlea. And finally, how I nearly lost it all by an ungrounded accusation.

“I know that’s what I was thinking. In that moment, while our valedictorian spoke, I decided to choose my own path. Step one was finding an alternative to college.”

About that accusation. About 1–2 months before graduation, I woke up late for school. The night before was a long one for The Industry. My dad drove me to school. I exited the car, walked into the front office, signed the late slip, then proceeded to my homeroom. In my second class of the day, the assistant principal and another faculty member came into my class and stopped it. They asked me to come to the front office with them. The tone was anger. I was completely puzzled and remember hearing mumbles from students that I was probably in big trouble. But for what? We finally got to the assistant principal’s office and the other faculty member said in a demoralizing and assertive voice, “We were informed this morning that you have been dealing marijuana around school and that you came in this morning smelling like it.” I was shocked. I asked where they got that information from and they said they couldn’t reveal that information. I then told them to check their cameras outside and at the front-desk. “My dad drove me to school. You have a camera outside looking at everyone who walks in. If you check that camera and check the timestamp, you’ll realize that 15 seconds later I was in the front office, which also has a camera. You’ll see that I signed in and left for my homeroom. You can then talk to my substitute homeroom teacher and ask when I got in. And then you’ll know that there was no way I could possibly have done anything in between that time.”

As I was saying this, it hit me who made the accusation. My substitute homeroom teacher. When you get to school late, they’re the first person you go to before heading to your class. That day, I went from my homeroom teacher to the class I was pulled out from. It had to be her, so I asked. They froze. Without speaking, they had answered. At this point I was just trying to keep my cool. I started smelling myself out of curiosity. I wasn’t sweating or anything, and I showered that morning. I smelled normal. So I asked them to smell me. One of them asked, “what?” “Well you said that a teacher said I smelled like weed. You just pulled me out of a class. I’ve only been in school for 30 minutes. I haven’t changed my clothes. Smell me and tell me if I smell like weed.” The assistant principal did. So they leaned in and said, “Yeah, I don’t smell anything.” By this point, logic had won. I had also proven a point. Before doing the simple act of following up with the teacher, or checking the cameras, they were convinced. That was wrong. Not to mention, they threatened that I could lose my college acceptances, scholarships, and that I could be arrested right then and there by the police officer standing outside.

Even though logic had won, there was something painful in the back of my mind that I learned growing up. By being black, I was at a disadvantage by default. So when faced with such situations, I had to keep my composure and let nothing else show but my logic and reasoning. Somehow it worked. The faculty guy said I could go back to class and that they’ll talk to whomever to get to the bottom of the situation. I nodded, but before getting up I noticed something outside the front office. It was a wall of the names of students who got higher than a 2,000 on the SAT. For the mic drop, I turned and said “by the way, I notice that my name is missing from that wall. So after you get to the bottom of this, do you think I can be added?” Then left. The rest of that day was draining. I couldn’t think, eat, or talk. I went home looking like a zombie. It didn’t really hit me until I got home. I started breaking down. Why the hell was this happening to me? And so close to graduation? Could I really have lost everything in that moment? What would have happened it I didn’t react the way I did? I was afraid to tell my parents, but finally mustered it right before going to bed. They were in pain after hearing it. It reminded my parents of something that happened to my dad in Sweden that nearly put him away for a long time. Something he didn’t do, but was accused of doing because he “looked like someone who would do it.” Sad part? The thing he was accused never even occurred. By anyone. Now his son was experiencing something similar.

Holy shit.

My dad’s an optimist, but it hit him in that moment. Because he knew that something as small as someone just discriminating against you could destroy your life. For him, it was something that could have kept him from his family indefinitely. For me, it was something that could have ended my chance of going to college and put in jail.

Wow.

Needless to say, that dampened things for me. After he was told, my brother took a train from DC to Baltimore with the intention of going into my school. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I didn’t want to be “that kid.” The one who doesn’t let things die, but drags them out after a resolution had been reached. But my brother made a valid point. “It’s not a matter of settling things. They need to understand; one, what they did; two, why it’s wrong; and three, to never do it again to any student, right.” I felt confident that he’d handle the situation well. If you think I’m articulate, just meet my brother. He doesn’t lose. He didn’t. I don’t know what he said to them, but the same teachers who pulled me out of class showed up to every one of my classes that day to deliver the same message. As if from a script, “Hi. We just want to come by and let all of you know that yesterday we pulled Jared out of the classroom because he was suspected of an act. We know some rumors have spread around the class. Rumors are detrimental to students. They can hurt your reputation. We want to clarify that Jared did not do anything. He’s fine. He has not done anything wrong. We will not tolerate rumor and gossip.” I felt so warm inside. My family had my back. My brother had my front. Being his younger sibling, he felt the need to protect me at all costs. Especially from something he knew was real and out there. Obviously, students still gossiped, and to some I remained “guilty” through to graduation.

So that evening, the evening after graduation, I pondered on the podcast. I knew what I wanted. I remembered an episode with a designer who was also an advisor to a company called Treehouse. I loved Treehouse. I remembered Carsonified, the company it came out from. I use to read a blog they published called Think Vitamin. I was intrigued by Treehouse’s mission, so I reached out to its founder, Ryan Carson. I told him what got me excited every morning, what got me excited about Treehouse, and how I felt I could contribute. After a series of interviews, I got the job! I came on as editor of Treehouse Blog, a spinoff of Think Vitamin. It was a dream come true. To help shape the presence of a blog that came from something that inspired me just a couple years prior. Of course I still did The Industry nights and weekends, but we discussed and agreed on a way that the sites would not compete with each other. Our tone, content, and audiences were different.

My job involved helping on building an architecture for what would become their blog, newsletter, and marketing. It was my first time working with product designers. They were my favorite. A month or so into the job, the remote Treehouse employees were flown into Orlando for our team get-together. It was an amazing feeling seeing other people who were all part of the team, building towards the same vision. However, by the end of it reality started settling in that maybe I might still have to go to college. Although I wasn’t the most passionate about it, my parents still expected it. I remember having a conversation with Ryan telling him the possibility. At first, he was caught of guard. And of course he was. After all, part of the mission of Treehouse was to provide the education I was passionate about, so that people of all ages didn’t have to spend tens of thousands acquiring the skills. Especially if the curriculums had a high chance of being out of date. But he understood where I was coming from. Ultimately I left Treehouse after about four months, but it was an incredible summer full of lessons and confidence boosters that I wouldn’t be aware of until months later.

I met up with two guys on the Internet. Both were from Kansas, but none of us had ever met in person. We all shared a passion for emails. I became fascinated by it when I interviewed the Sparrow founders a year earlier for the Macgasm column. We also shared a passion for the potential use of iPads in the workplace. We were like, “let’s start a company.” We called it Evomail. Evolved email. In hindsight, bad name. Sounds like evil mail. We really had to enunciate the “vo” or people would look at us awkwardly. I’d like to say that we were on to something. Some of the things we built are now in products like Inbox, Outlook, and other apps. Didn’t come directly from us, but patterns make their way around eventually. Some of the things I’ve yet to see in a product. One of the things we wanted to do, was to recognize if an email came from a person, or a service. If it came from a service, was it informative or a subscription? If it was informative, could we treat it like a notification? Imagine if you got an email from UPS, that should not take up the same cognitive space as an email from a close friend.

Evomail was going well. We knew what we wanted to build and we were building it. It was an amazing experience cutting new builds everyday, and putting them in my parents hands. Although they didn’t exactly know what was going on, the builds were enough to show them that I had found my passion. Communication. Communication by words, process, and pixels. It also bought me some time off of college. I negotiated my parents into letting me take my first year off of college to work on Evomail and The Industry. On my 18th birthday, I decided to write a blog post on the blog. The target was other creatives in my age group. Those who had a burning flame of passion inside them that they were constantly afraid would be blown out. Blown out for age, race, gender, and what have you. I wanted to address the age piece, so I spent my entire birthday drafting a 6,000 word biography of my journey to finding my passion. With an undertone of “keep at it, friend.” Somehow it blew up! I woke up to it being #2 on Hacker News and the most read article on our blog! I started getting comments from others saying “I’m 17 and I love blank!” “I’m 19 and I do blank!” It was an age-coming out party, and everyone was loving it, or so I thought.

Although he never said it directly, I sensed a perspective change from one of my co-founders. It’s as if I went from being an equal to being an intern. It was ironic. I “revealed” my age for the first time because I was finally confident. And apparently lots of people were hiding it for the same reason. But who knew that my decision would hurt me in my own company?

The following January, Mailbox announced their app with an awesome product video. In one of their initial press articles, a reviewer mentioned that a big problem for the app might be their lack of labels. I felt otherwise. So I wrote an article on my blog expressing that although they were competition, I felt that they were approaching the inbox from an interesting perspective. And that I looked forward to the hustle. Without intention, the article made its way around and ended up as something Mailbox would reference on Twitter when asked by people why they didn’t support typical labels. Felt like good karma. The CEO then reached out a few weeks or so later. He mentioned the article and Evomail, having seen some of the design on Dribbble. Although nothing was said directly, he seemed interested in what we were building. Especially why we started with the iPad. I remember telling my co-founders this–expecting a positive response. Instead, the CEO reacted a bit displeased. As if I had done something wrong by it being me who interacted with Mailbox and not him. A month or so later, Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox.

“Although he never said it directly, I sensed a perspective change from one of my co-founders. It’s as if I went from being an equal to being an intern. It was ironic. I “revealed” my age for the first time because I was finally confident. And apparently lots of people were hiding it for the same reason. But who knew that my decision would hurt me in my own company?”

Around this time, I learned about a program in San Francisco called Bridge. It was a 3-month program targeted at Product Designers who wanted a dose of Silicon Valley. I was intrigued. After weeks of negotiation, I convinced my parents. The deal was “3 months in California, then you come back to start college.” Come April 2013, I moved out to San Francisco. By this point, the collaboration at Evomail had significantly broken down. We were all working hard, but not as a team. I still felt the same vibes from the “birthday article,” and other events occurred that just amplified the feels. Around three weeks into San Francisco, I got a phone call. It was my co-founder. We talked about ways for me to push the Evomail brand now that I was in San Francisco, but then the conversation started to changing to “so what if you move into more of an ambassador role?” Of course this seemed completely weird to me. Every founder is an ambassador of his or her product. We agreed that there was no need for a “role change.” A month later, I got another call. I was getting kicked out of my own company. My stake was depleted, and I was left with nothing. The product launched a few weeks later with mixed-to-positive tech press. I received no credit for my work, but I didn’t care. What pained me the most was that the product I had invested the last 10 months of my life into, deferred college for, didn’t take a paying job for, was gone. Just like that. I felt like I had lost a child. I felt so sick for the next three months. I won’t go into details, but trust me. It was not fair, it was cold, and it came back to bite the company. I learned so much from Evomail. It was the first digital product I designed from scratch. It was my first startup. It was my first termination. It was my first sense of purpose. It was my biggest sense of defeat. God, it hurt, but looking back I loved that I went through all of that. Of course, that’s how I felt in the moment. It made me feel my age and race again. How many other people would do this to me in the future? I started dressing older, forcing myself to talk deeper, and prioritizing phone calls over in-person meets.

A few weeks later, I got a call from a big tech company, public, voicing interest in Evomail. This company would have made me a millionaire… before taxes [laughs]. Although I told them that I was no longer financially invested in the company, they pushed for a conversation. They were kind of like, we still actually want this thing, so we can either hire you for our mail team, or you can reach out to your ex-founders and push for a deal… getting your stock back in the deal. I remember having to deal with that. I sought advice from close friends and my parents. The feedback I heard was either, “I don’t know what to do. It sucks to be in that position.” Or, “don’t take it.” I didn’t take it. I told the person I was in contact with that I would be passing altogether. And that if they still wanted the product, to reach out to the remaining team. I didn’t tell the team because communication had ended between us. However, I did end up making peace with the other founder, not the CEO, a year later when he visited San Francisco. I never really had issues with him. He was just too on the fence. There are certain things you’re just not on the fence about. I feel like he – and he kind of admitted this a little – just didn’t speak up. Apparently, after I was kicked out, a few months later, the CEO tried to remove him too.

“I started dressing older, forcing myself to talk deeper, and prioritizing phone calls over in-person meets.”

But the “fear your age and race” thing started to creep back up again. Was this graduation all over again? Thankfully, I didn’t experience it much at my first job in the city, Omada Health. I was hired as their first full-time product designer. I remember having a good experience there, but I did feel treated like a child at times. Especially by co-workers who had children. Some with children around my age. To some of them, I could be their child, which is true. But, I’m not. I’m your co-worker at a company that we both work for. Don’t treat me like I’m your child. People asked why I left after six months. Part of it was that I worked on an interesting project, finished it, and felt good about it.

I was only really supposed to be there for three months anyway. My parents wanted me back for college. I stayed on longer because the project was fascinating. Building a product that allowed pre-Type II Diabetic people take back control of their health. My project was over, and I felt like I had gotten a good dose of the medical field. Most of my father’s family is in it, so my tolerance was only so high [laughter]. But part of it was that I didn’t like feeling like a child amongst adults. It wasn’t that I wanted to be treated like a boss. I just wanted to do good work and be respected by my peers. I felt like I was doing one, but only getting half of the other. I still appreciated my time there and the people I had an opportunity of working with. They gave me a beautiful send off. I left the day before my 19th birthday.

My plan was to take a break, but that lasted all of one week. I joined Obvious Corp, the organization behind Branch, Medium, and Lift. Lift, the habit tracking app. I worked on that. It was great. I worked on the 2.0. I was only there for less than a year though. My parents, coming from a different generation, felt that four jobs in two years seemed weird. They wanted to know if I had a plan, or if I should just move back east and go to school. “I promise you. I’m not fickle. I have a vision, and I’m making mistakes along the way. But these mistakes are lessons and I’ll figure it out in the end. I learned, four times.” I told them that my plan was to contract, build work and social credibility, and when I’m ready, to find a role where I will be respected and do good work. They agreed.

I did some contracts. One was Nuzzel, a news app. Another was Bloomthat, an on-demand flowers product. I did some other niche products too. It was really fun! I got to work on Bulan Project, something by my friend Elle Luna, with other friends of mine. Those were creatively liberating and fun. Then a really close friend of mine reached out and was like, “Hey man, if I told you there was a company that I would join, would you join?” And I’m like, “Yeah, if such a company existed.” Background on this dude. He does not full time. Period. So I asked him why he wasn’t there already. “Well, I just finished YC, I have a company, I’m about to have a child, and we’re thinking of moving to Hawaii.” Fair. So I said intro away. He introduced me to a company called Teespring. I met their co-founder, Walker. Within minutes of talking to him, I knew he hired talent and only talent. He didn’t care who you were, what your background was, your race, age, or gender. He just cared if you could do good, passionate work. I never left a meeting so passionate about a company or so trusting of its leadership. I joined a month later as Creative Director. 

The first thing I did was redesign the logo. Second was build the team to five product designers and one brand designer. By the end of 2014, I was designing and managing a team at the same time. I had to learn fast. With time I found myself less and less in Photoshop or Sketch, but in meetings working to figure out the direction of a business that, between joining and leaving, had 20x. The growth was fun to watch. We went from 30 people to 300+. But with the growth of the team and product, I had to juggle managing a team and still designing. It wasn’t easy, but I developed invaluable muscles from the grind. The lessons were numerous. From what it means to grow a team, to growing yourself, which is just as important. If not more. My time at Teespring was similar to Omada Health. Great product, culture, and growth. But people are people, and everywhere you go, you’ll meet some who are partially blinded by attributes that don’t pertain to your output. After a year and a half, I left to take a break and detox from the grind. I intentionally didn’t have a plan.

“But people are people, and everywhere you go, you’ll meet some who are partially blinded by attributes that don’t pertain to your output.”

I took about two weeks to do nothing. I read, called my parents more, caught up on some shows, and took more walks. Greylock and Fuel Capital became my home. I started working out of one, and contracting for the other’s portfolio companies. It was fun getting to work with founders again on very early product. I took up one more advisory position. One of my contracts, Copper, really intrigued me. I was introduced to its founder, Doug, by Fuel Capital months before. He was on an ambitious agenda to “kill passwords for people.” We built a close working relationship over the next few months, and he finally asked me to come on board full-time. I pondered over it for a while. I wasn’t planning to go all in that soon. I sought advice from some mentors of mine. I was torn between ramping up my contracting and possibly starting an agency, going in-house at a VC firm, or going all in with Copper. A friend of mine, Daniel Burka, made it all so clear. He asked me what I longed for the most. I said I wanted to make real impact again. I wanted to ship an idea to the world. I wanted to take a huge bet on something so ambitious, it was “destined” to fail. I realized I was describing Copper. Agency and VC life could wait a few years. So I joined. Now it’s three of us. We are trying to replace passwords. I think we have a fair shot. Keep an eye out in the coming months.

And that’s 1994 to 2016. Online I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time. On Twitter, my last name is Nigerian, but you can’t tell. And when I say, “hid my face,” I mean it. My avatar has evolved over the years. It stared as a silhouette, then evolved to a half-shot of the side of my face, to the entire side of my face, to my face. I’d like to think that it mirrored my evolution of my self-identity. I’ve always been self-aware, but now I know myself too. I know my strengths, my weaknesses, and my faults. I know where I’ve come from, and I have a plan for where I’m going. I’ll be dammed if I let people kill my vibe because I look a little different to them. I could care less.

“Online I experienced more ageism than racism, primarily because I hid my face for a long time. On Twitter, my last name is Nigerian, but you can’t tell. And when I say, “hid my face,” I mean it. My avatar has evolved over the years. It stared as a silhouette, then evolved to a half-shot of the side of my face, to the entire side of my face, to my face. I’d like to think that it mirrored my evolution of my self-identity.”

I still experience the “symptoms” of being black in a predominantly white city. Walking down a street, it’s not uncommon to see a woman pull her purse a little closer in, or cross the street before we cross paths. It’s not strange to notice an Uber driver eyeing me through the rear-view mirror. On buses, it’s not weird to see someone stand instead of sitting in the only empty seat that’s next to me. I’ve sadly desensitized myself to these micro-interactions over the years. So that’s why when people ask if I experience racism, I don’t immediately recall these interactions to memory. For me, racism and ageism had to smack me in my face to get a reaction, and everything else was just “how life is.”

But I don’t want the people I work with to ever feel this way. Copper understands this. Yes, it’s only three of us right now, but it’s already part of our identity. We want diversity of people, backgrounds, and thinking. Not to meet quotas, or to look good in Medium articles, but because it’s critical to a company. And because we care. Why would you only want one point of view?

All right. Okay, four main questions I want to dig into. You’ve touched on this, but what do you look for in a job now? What is important to you in your job now vs in the beginning?

One – companies that understand the roles they’re hiring for and how those roles may bleed into others. When you start a company, especially in Silicon Valley, there are things you just do—like setup Heroku, use Stripe for payments, and AWS for file storage. Then when it gets to people, you’re like, “Okay. I need a technical co-founder. I need two engineers. I’m going to contract some designer. At some point, I’m gonna need someone in customer service.” Instead of asking yourself, “What in particular, do I need for my business?” It may not be the same as the company across the street from you. Maybe your co-founder should have a background in customer experience because of the type of product you’re building. Such people don’t hire because a blog told them to. I think there’s a strong correlation between people who hire without understanding the roles they’re filling, and the people they hired leaving. If you don’t know, find out. Your hire will appreciate it. It sets up accurate and attainable exceptions. Alignment is good.

Two – empathy. People who understand that people are people. When you hire someone, you are entering a relationship. There’s this understanding when it comes to co-founders that you’re finding your partner. You’re marrying this person for the next 5+ years. I think the same applies to employees. They’re not just headcount, they’re people, family. The marriage and family correlation is interesting because it also implies that you’re no longer just thinking about yourself. You think about them and their needs. You try to uncover their problems, blockers, and fears. Then you try, to the best of your ability, to mitigate them. This is empathy. Companies that understand this are in a much better position than those that don’t. Their employees feel valued and empowered to do good and to do more.

Three – a plan, or at least a shadow of one. Yes, the future is the future, but if you’re just shooting in the dark believing you’ll eventually hit something, I’ll pass. I’m also curious to see how much of a plan a company is willing to reveal to me. Little reveal is a red flag. This also includes mission. I’ve got to be excited about what we’re working towards, or else what’s the point?

Four – the people. Are we compatible? Sometimes we’re not, and that’s okay. Just so the non-compatibility isn’t a result of you being assholes. That’s not okay.

How do you feel like your background: where you’re from, the places that you’ve lived, your family, the culmination of that and your life experiences, how do you think that that has made you a better designer and even manager?

My dad’s culture is proud, but they are very hard-working people. Recently, a colleague of mine traveled to Nigeria for a project. She came back enlightened. Going, she knew about 419, something that’s synonymous with Nigerians. But she was surprised to learn that 419 represented probably half a percent of the Nigerian population. Yet somehow, it’s something the entire nation is stigmatized for. Being half Nigerian and working in tech, I remember sometimes being wary about revealing that detail. It was the fear of “he got in?” Or “you’re contracting him? He’s 419, man! You can’t trust those people!” Interesting, that never even crossed my mind, until this moment.

They are so proud and so hard-working because they have to fight that stigma every day. That they’re not corrupt people, but that they are people just like anyone else. But also people who have to work a lot harder than their peer to fight a stigma that pertains to such a small percentage of their people. This impacted me in two ways. It taught me to work hard and be proud of my work. Looking at my family, it always impresses me how much harder they had to fight to get to where they were. And as for pride, it was less ego and more knowing when you did good work, then defending it. I’m not the person to defend disproved work, but I am the person to defend good work. My work, my team’s work, etc. Especially when “good” could be backed up with data. Quantitative or qualitative. I’m the person who says “I will go to war with you. It’s not that I’m right, but that this is right. So if you want to fight me, that’s completely fine. But don’t fight something that is actually going to benefit the company or product.” That’s my family’s type of “proud.”

“Being half Nigerian and working in tech, I remember sometimes being wary about revealing that detail. It was the fear of he got in?’ Or ‘you’re contracting him He’s 419, man! You can’t trust those people!”

On my mother’s side, I learned empathy and the power of giving. If you needed $700 and my mom had $699, she would transfer a dollar from her savings and wire you the $700. I’ve done that before. I remember in my first months in San Francisco, a friend was in need of $500 and I had $510. I just sent it. I stretched that $10 a week until payday that Friday. To stretch $10 for a week in San Francisco is hard [chuckles]. Not easy, we’re talking buying a pack of Top Ramen, and breaking the squares into halves to double it. Then trying to get the water to ramen ration just right so it doesn’t taste like flavored hot water, but “soup.” Nowadays I mentor when I can. Andreessen Horowitz does this program where they pair professionals with college students interested in the same line of work. Its a great way to give back. To impart some of the things I’ve learned over the years, in hopes of having that student replicate my successes and avoid my failures. I try to respond to every email I get. If that person took the time to message me directly, it’s only fair I take the time to respond. We’ll see how far that scales though [chuckles]. Inboxes are dangerous. And I still relearn these traits, empathy and giving, everyday from my girlfriend. She’s the most caring person I know outside of my parents. I love her for this. It’s funny, she’s probably the true designer in our relationship.

Empathy is the number one thing for a designer. By definition our job is to remove friction for our customers so the best way to do that is to, in a sense, become the customer and go through your own product. I remember when there was this big renaissance of design thinking a some years back where everyone started saying, “designers, talk to customers!” It’s funny to me, because that sort of thinking should have never been forgotten. If you’re not talking to your customers, what kind of empathy are you employing?

Being exposed to different cultures at a young age also impacted me. Seeing different cultures quickly taught me the power of diversity. The thing about being a minority is, if you grow up in an area where you are the majority, your tendency is to stay there because it’s the one place you feel at home. If you look at areas in the US where African-Americans are dominant, you’ll notice that most don’t leave. And why would they? Most of them are taught from young that the world sees them as second-class citizens. That they are at a disadvantage by default. So that it would in their best interest to “settle in and call this home.” The Brooklyn neighborhood I was born in was such a neighborhood. My neighbors are all still there. Same street, same home, same floor. But I was forced out of that reality from a young age. Now, as a designer, I seek diversity to supercharge my solutions.

Okay, macro now. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016, like what excites you, what frustrates you?

I’m excited about the evolution of interfaces. Messaging is becoming a new interface, but I doubt it’s going to be the only one. And it’s not going to be that simple. That tends to be the case in tech anyway. We jump into new territory, explore, identify the patterns that emerge, and then turn them into new platforms. For example, I don’t think Slack is the future; I think the essence of Slack is part of the future. I’m excited for these new platforms. They reduce the cost to start something new, and they expand your reach.

Copper, I hope, will one day be such a platform. Every company is trying to build their identification layer. It’s time consuming. We want to eliminate that overhead for them. Then you have companies like Uber and Airbnb where there’s so much contingent upon you knowing that the people on your services are real and trustworthy that they have to invest millions into their systems. Why couldn’t we solve that for them and their customers? Imagine if you just walk up to any service or any door; there’s one simple protocol by which to identify yourself and it’s free to you, convenient, and secure. More businesses are coming up like that. We’re doing it for passwords and identification but there are people doing it for all sorts of stuff. I’m really excited about that.

“I’d like to believe that the companies that rise up from this correction will be stronger in the longterm because they had to work a little harder to raise, make a profit, make an impact, and make a return. It kind of parallels my life.”

I’m also excited for the correction that’s going on in the tech sector right now. People are calling it a bubble; I don’t think it’s a bubble. Let’s use balloon as a metaphor. What happened in the Dot Com era was like someone who blew a balloon too big and it just popped. Then a few years ago when we had another correction, that was like someone who blew a balloon kinda big and someone else poked it with a needle before it popped on its own. I think what’s going on now is like someone blowing a balloon and someone else saying, “ah, I’ve seen this shit before,” then just squeezing the air right out of it; so there’s no pop. Just deflation. That’s our current correction. I’d like to believe that the companies that rise up from this correction will be stronger in the longterm because they had to work a little harder to raise, make a profit, make an impact, and make a return. It kind of parallels my life.

True.

One thing I’d like to see change is our transparency as an industry. When I started out, we were very open with each other. Especially the design community. I attribute that openness to us being able to “level up” in the eyes of businesses so quickly. Or what others call our “seat at the table.” However, in the past year or two, we’ve become more secretive. We’ve switched out that open collaborative-ness for bickering and petty bantering. We talk just as much, if not more via mediums like Medium. But I fear we’re moving forward, slower. Nowadays, the people who are the most transparent with me are my closest friends, and even with them there’s still a filter.

I understand confidentiality and competitiveness, but the opaqueness leads to slower progression as a community due to a lack of knowledge sharing. We’re more on the sharing of Sketch tips than topics we’re all thinking about, but avoiding. Things like diversity at work, women in tech, and processes to advance the sector as a whole, not just our immediate companies. I don’t know how we get back to the good ol’ days. I don’t know, maybe it’s just nostalgia. Maybe it’s just me. But we’ve been thinking about this a lot at The Industry. We’re building a resource for the design community to help. It’s called Playbook and I hope to put it live in the next few months.

One of the biggest things that hurts a business or people is miscommunication. What causes miscommunication is people not being transparent or clear. And I think that good communication unearths topics that need to be discussed. I’m rooting for Techies Project, Helena.

My last question would be, based on the lessons that you’ve learned over time, what advice would you have for other young designers who are hoping to get in tech or are in tech, and are feeling some of the same challenges that you faced?

Let me break the fourth wall here. If you have impostor syndrome, don’t feel like you’re all alone. Everyone has imposter syndrome about something. Anyone who says otherwise is either a narcissist or just lying. Impostor syndrome is different for everyone. For some, it’s weight. For some, it’s height. For some, it’s accent. For some, it’s hairiness. For some, it’s not having a college degree. For others, it’s having a college degree. For me, it’s age and race. I don’t think that will ever change. But the point is to know this. It introduces you to empathy. Just as how you want people to be empathetic to your insecurities, be empathetic to theirs.

Another thing – if you work somewhere that’s eating you from the inside-out, leave. It’s not worth it. I know other industries say to stay for ten years, but you’re in an industry that’s barely 30 years old. We’re blessed in the sense that we can leave a company after a year, and get a job the next day. Most people leave, because they got a new job. We’re one of the few communities where, when you hear someone say, “I quit,” you say, “Congratulations.” In any other industry, it’s like, “Oh, shit, what are you going to do now? That sucks. Do you need a place to stay?” Of course, if you think you can change your situation, persevere and sort it out. Don’t just bounce. But when you can’t deal with it anymore, kill it, before it kills you. If you’re in an industry that you love, don’t let anyone drive you away from it. You’re a techie, stand tall.

“If you’re in an industry that you love, don’t let anyone drive you away from it. You’re a techie, stand tall.”

Okay, I think I have a very interesting story, and I think what it all comes down to is that there is no single road into Silicon Valley. I graduated college with a degree in French Literature, and growing up I had always wanted to be an architect…

Me, too!

Really?

Yeah.

Okay, awesome. My senior year of college, I got into a Master’s of Architecture program at the Art Institute of Chicago. This little, little, tiny thing inside me was like, “Don’t go straight into that program, defer a year.” I deferred a year with the intention of moving to San Francisco to save money. This is in 2006, and I don’t know why I thought the word “San Francisco” and “save money” went hand in hand, but it did for me, I guess, at the time. I had family out here, and within like the first month I realized I didn’t want to be an architect. I realized what I loved about it was theory and history as opposed to actual drafting and designing, and so I started working in PR, doing communications. Web 2.0 was a thing at that time, but it just exposed me to the whole world of communications and editorial, and so I was just like, “Well, this feels right to me.”

Fast forward, and I thought, “I want to use these skills for something good.” I was working in policy, doing criminal justice reform, accountable development, working with non-profits and public agencies as a consultant. I was doing that for a couple years, and I got really bored at my job, just because I had this background. I was a French major, I wanted architecture, so I had this creative vein in everything that I do, but my work in policy wasn’t fulfilling that.

At that same time, I was kind of deciding to go natural. I had relaxed my hair using chemical straighteners for 15 years, and I decided that I didn’t want to do that anymore. I decided that it was such a big, monumental transformation that I wanted to document it and really do a lot of education about it and share it with the world. I started a website called Natural Selection and…

Such a good name, by the way.

Thank you, I’m such an evolutionary nerd. I was really into that in college.

I was like, yeah, so I’m going to double entendre that, started Natural Selection. It just continued to grow and grow and grow, and within a few, couple years, I ended up quitting policy and pursuing my blog full time, and I was an editor for a big curly hair website. I worked with a lot of brands and traveled around the world, to the Caribbean, to Europe, all over Atlanta just building this community of women going through the same thing that I was, and it was all just about our hair and going natural. It was really cool because I made all of these “hair friends”, and “curl friends.” The more that we grew our communities, the bigger the movement became, and it was a really cool moment in beauty industry history.

I had no intention of being in the beauty industry whatsoever, but I was. Then I ended up going to work at a different startup, because I was in San Francisco at the same time, and worked in a fashion startup, but then I got the itch to go back into beauty. Ended up getting connected with Tristan, and that was when everything really clicked. It was like, “Oh my gosh, here we are in San Francisco in tech, doing what I love the most, which is helping people of color feel comfortable and empowered with who they actually are.” A lot of it is through that surface of beauty, like the hair, the skin, et cetera. There was just this immediate synergy and shared sense of values from that perspective, and that is how I got to where I am today.

“I mean, I think we have the hardest job in the world. It’s not even VCs not getting it, it’s that our target consumer is still very traumatized by a razor, because they have historically been served tools that are not designed for them.”

As you know, I have such a brand crush on your company, and I think you guys are doing the best consumer facing brand work in Silicon Valley. I would love to know more about the philosophy behind your work and how you approach it.

Yeah, for me it really resonates from my hair blogging days and sort of what you asked me at the beginning of this interview, was like, “tell the real story.” I found when I was blogging, people really feel more connected when you’re authentic. Whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, whether it’s a success, whether it’s a struggle, being able to tell those stories is what really allows people to become inspired and it’s content that really resonates with them. I think that is everything Bevel taps into, how to create authentic stories from a brand perspective, and there are so many stories, and so we have so many platforms and opportunities on which we can tell them.

For sure. I’m curious, I touched on this with Tristan, about how VCs in Silicon Valley only really invest in problems that they can relate to, and there’s definitely a little bubble of people not understanding products that are created for people outside of their immediate experience. Despite all of these genuine stories of how your product is changing people’s lives, do you still experience skepticism outside of your company? How do you deal with that?

I mean, I think we have the hardest job in the world. It’s not even VCs not getting it, it’s that our target consumer is still very traumatized by a razor, because they have historically been served tools that are not designed for them. I’d say that, to me, is the area of understanding and education that we need to and are focusing on most. Encouraging, enabling, and educating men of color on how to shave properly.

What makes me really hopeful is that was the same issue that I experienced in hair. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be wearing my hair natural, I would have been like, “Yeah fucking right. There is no way I will ever stop straightening my hair,” but I just think that just, the power of a movement and the quality of products does so much.  I’m just very hopeful and confident that what we provide is going to be a real key.

Yeah. Absolutely. A big thing I’ve been focusing on in this project is people coming from diverse backgrounds and how that affects their work and how it makes them better at building products and designing products. How bringing more backgrounds to the table informs better product design. I’d love to hear more about how you guys have hired and how that has really contributed to the success of your company.

For me, and what we were looking for is, you just want people that can perform. What I have personally realized in my life is you don’t want people who are just going to take a job for money. I think that we have to find people with whom our values and product resonate that can also perform and, in that center of the Venn diagram, is where we’ll find that core team. We’ve been really, really good at doing that, because you can really tell, somebody’s like, “yeah, you just do this,” and they want to apply some other things just to this, like a business model. When you find that person who actually cares, who understands, I mean, who can understand the needs regardless of ethnic background, then I think that there are lots of people out there who get it, which is really cool.

Absolutely. What would you say are your biggest motivators, what drives you in your work?

I think that there are just so many cool things that we can do, cool people to talk to, cool concepts to execute, but the fact remains that, as I said, we have the challenge of being able to show people a different experience and give them a high quality design and product experience. That’s what keeps me motivated every day. It always has and I think that’s what’s gotten me to this place. From my days of blogging, showing people that there’s a better way for them, just still rings very true.

What do you look for in your work now versus when you started, like what do you look for in a job?

Well, I think it kind of is a good dovetail from what I was saying before. I have made the mistake of taking an opportunity just for money, and it sucks, and you’re just working without any passion behind what you do. Whereas now, holding true to the fact that I want to do things that matter to me and that resonate with me, I’ve been able to bring a lot more of myself to my work. I’m really lucky and fortunate that I get to do that. I know a lot of people don’t, and make money the number one motivator. I had an old boss who drew this—I’ve mentioned Venn diagrams twice now but—he drew this triple Venn diagram, and it’s like, what I’m good at, what makes me money, and what I’m passionate about. In the center is, that is where the magic happens.

“Decades of trauma within our African American communities, and undoing that and showing that there is a different way. It’s just really hard to do. It’s not impossible, but it’s really hard to do. For men it’s this shaving situation. For women, it is the chemical products and thinking that people have to adhere to this Euro-centric standard. I think it’s just the hard thing to do, to show people that there is a different, better way that’s for them, and that they need to be authentic and true to themselves.”

Absolutely. Let’s go high level for a second in your work. In your experience working in tech, what have been some of the really proud and exciting moments for you, and what have been some of the biggest struggles that you’ve had to overcome?

Yeah. It’s so funny, because working in “tech”, quote, unquote, is such a thing that I don’t think I would ever say. I never lead tech first. I might be with somebody who’s like, “Oh, I work in the fashion biz, and now I’m working in the beauty biz.” I think, for me, what really excites me is to pull together projects that really resonate and drive our businesses forward, which is really cool.

Then what have been some of the biggest roadblocks or struggles that you’ve had to overcome in terms of work?

Decades of trauma within our African American communities, and undoing that and showing that there is a different way. It’s just really hard to do. It’s not impossible, but it’s really hard to do. For men it’s this shaving situation. For women, it is the chemical products and thinking that people have to adhere to this Euro-centric standard. I think it’s just the hard thing to do, to show people that there is a different, better way that’s for them, and that they need to be authentic and true to themselves.

Yeah, that’s an amazing thing. How do your friends and family feel about the work that you’ve done? 

Yeah, they’re super stoked. They always get talking points because people like to say the craziest things. Now I know how to do this, I know how to control a message, because it’s my job to be able to do that. I lead the PR team at Walker, so I can say, “Okay. This is what I do, these are the products, this is the positioning statement” and they get it. They are so excited.

For a while, as I was doing my blog, they were like, “okay, we don’t get it,” but now that they’ve been able to see how it’s evolved, and my friends are like, “wow, I can’t believe!” “I remember 7 years ago, when you had your blogger website, and were kind of like, ‘I’m going to bring back the black look with natural hair!” They’re like, “We just can’t believe that now you’re posting pictures of you and Nas on Instagram. That’s really cool.” And everybody else, I just get lots of compliments and hear that they’re so excited about it.

The alumni director from my upper school just called me. I told her that we’re going to be in Minnesota for Target next week. I’m from Minnesota, and she asks, “Can I finally meet you? This is so exciting, we’ve been watching everything that you’re doing with Walker and Company, and it’s so inspiring to have somebody from our community doing such a cool, unique thing.”

Even though you don’t really consider yourself in tech, you are definitely involved in the industry. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you about it, what frustrates you, what would you like to see change?

I’ve been in San Francisco for almost 10 years and I’d say the thing that frustrates me most is seeing how it has shifted the greater community. That really scares me, in a way. I think that this greater region has been the most magical when there are a lot of different types of people around. For me, it’s something I’ve always drawn a lot of creative inspiration from, that there are communities and people who actually care about the city that are really present in it. As those native communities have eroded, it’s really sad, and it’s really scary to see, just because a place that you love is being infused with people who don’t necessarily love it as much or for the same reason, is just hard to stomach.

I feel you. I dress down when I go out of the house at all now, because I don’t want to be misconstrued for someone who is here for the wrong reasons.  It’s a really weird time.

Right? I know. You just go on a dating app, and somebody’s saying, “I just moved here 2 weeks ago, woo hoo,” and I’m like, “Oh, boy.”

My last question for you would be, based on the things that you’ve learned in your career and your time here, what advice would you give to folks from similar backgrounds who are hoping to get into this industry and just getting started?

I’m going to end with the same thing I started with. There’s no “one road” into tech. Do what feels right to you, what your passion is about, and hopefully, and almost indefinitely, it will align, so don’t compromise who you actually are.

“I’m going to end with the same thing I started with. There’s no “one road” into tech. Do what feels right to you, what your passion is about, and hopefully, and almost indefinitely, it will align, so don’t compromise who you actually are.”

I’m originally from Queens New York, born and raised. I was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York. It’s called 40 Projects. I lived there until I was about 6. Once I turned six I moved to Flushing, Queens, Latimer Gardens Projects. A lot of my life was school of hard knocks, in the struggle. I like to describe my story as that “rose that grew from concrete” story.

I’ve been very fortunate and blessed, quite frankly, to have gone through that because it actually made me a lot stronger, a lot more resilient, a lot more confident in my ability to move faster out of need and necessity. That hunger comes out of nothing other than need. It’s just a part of me now.

Yeah, totally. I know this is a loaded question, but can you share some of those struggles that you faced in childhood that you had to overcome to get where you are?

Well one, living in the projects is not easy. Two, I’ve had to go through the whole welfare thing among other things, right? I had the great fortune to go to boarding school for high school on full scholarship, one of the best high schools in the country. At that point I got to see really how the other half lives. Going to school with Fords and Rockefellers and that sort of thing. It was a really inspiring thing to me because I got to see number one, that I could compete similarly at the highest level and with the best of them. No matter what our upbringings were. It also showed me that I had a hell of a lot to learn.

When I juxtapose my upbringing with that boarding school experience it’s kind of night and day. To be honest, I needed to have both of those experiences to become who I am.

“I like to describe my story as that ‘rose that grew from concrete’ story. I’ve been very fortunate and blessed, quite frankly, to have gone through that because it actually made me a lot stronger, a lot more resilient, a lot more confident in my ability to move faster out of need and necessity. That hunger comes out of nothing other than need. It’s just a part of me now.”

I want to quickly segue to your work now. I personally think you guys are doing the best consumer facing brand work in Silicon Valley. I am a super fan.

Thank you. That makes me feel great.

Tell me more about the brand that you guys have built and your philosophy behind it.

Yeah, my philosophy about branding is I don’t like describing our brand. I’ve got a lesson I learned a couple of years ago from a marketing professor I trust from Stanford. She said “Tristan, brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is.” I really articulate our brand through our customer stories. Fortunately a lot of them are consistent!

I get emails all the time from customers that talk about the success they’re having. I got an email from a woman who said “thank you for finally helping single moms teach their sons how to shave.” Or “thank you for fighting for a product that works.”

You know that’s my story. A pretty important rite of passage. As a young man in the Army, you have to shave everyday. These are the stories that I need to hear, that we’re onto something special. A lot of these stories are incredibly similar. If we can tell those stories through our own kind of authentic narrative, then I think we’ve nailed something and we’ve done it, right?

I’m always hard-pressed to say, “Hey, here’s what our brand is right now” because it’s also so adaptive, but so far it’s been incredibly consistent and told through our own customers stories.

I love it. Tell me a bit more about how you hire and how that has contributed to the success of your company.

I think one thing I think a lot about is this term ‘culture fit’. I think it’s a silly, silly, silly, silly phrase, specifically because no one defines it. It is important to me to really define what that means to people. Before I raised a cent in money, I wrote down the six values of the company. Courage, Inspiration, Respect, Judgement, Wellness, Loyalty. They’re all defined on our website etcetera. It wasn’t enough to just put in on our website. I wanted to entrench it in every single thing that we do. If you get reviews, you are rated according to your goal attainment but also every single one of those values. Are you inspiring? Are you practicing good judgement? Are you being courageous and inspiring?

“I think one thing I think a lot about is this term ‘culture fit’. I think it’s a silly, silly, silly, silly phrase, specifically because no one defines it. It is important to me to really define what that means to people.”

Also our interview process. We’re going to ask leading questions to get at one’s courage. We’re going to ask leading questions to get at one’s loyalty and respect. It provides an objective framework for folks who are not me to scale the hiring process in a way that’s clearly defined. I think that’s contributed quite a bit to a lot of success that we’ve had, and because Bevel is probably one of the most diverse companies on the planet in technology especially.

Yeah, absolutely. Something that’s come up in this project is that VC’s typically invest in problems that they can personally relate to. I’m curious if you experience quite a bit of skepticism building products for people of color in tech…

Yeah, I still do.

And how do you overcome that?

I mean, I overcome it by delivering product that works, building product that people love. To this day, people still don’t think this thing is going to work which is crazy to me because it’s just so clear that there’s such a consumer demand for this. That’s fine. They can think what they want to but we’re just going to keep moving towards our true north which is just delighting our customers and making health and beauty simple. That’s it. I don’t need their validation.

Yeah. I feel you. Another huge thing in this project has been people feeling a sense of isolation not knowing anyone who was like them or came from an unusual background, something that I definitely felt when I worked in tech.

Yeah.

I’m curious about your experience early in your career coming into tech in terms of feeling isolated or not knowing anyone like you and how you feel about it now.

My whole journey here started in 2008 when I came out to go to business school. That was the first time I had even heard about Silicon Valley. I didn’t even know it was a place. I was very lucky to have an email address that had .edu at the end. It allowed me to speak to a lot of folks that I might not have gotten access to otherwise. Fortunately, they saw it as coming from a place of pure genuine interest. For me, the isolation wasn’t there insomuch as my ability to speak to folks. Primarily, it was inability to speak to folks that looked like me. There just aren’t enough people. One thing that’s important is to increase the number of folks. Some of the stuff that we’re doing at CODE2040 really speaks to that because I saw there was a need. Even some of the stuff that we’re doing at Walker & Company. I see bouts of isolation but nothing to really restrict me from chasing ambition I suppose.

“To this day, people still don’t think this thing is going to work which is crazy to me because it’s just so clear that there’s such a consumer demand for this. That’s fine. They can think what they want to but we’re just going to keep moving towards our true north which is just delighting our customers and making health and beauty simple. That’s it. I don’t need their validation.”

What would you say are your biggest motivators right now? What drives you?

I think a lot about looking longer term. I want this to be 150 year old organization right? When I’m long gone, what’s the kind of legacy that I hope to leave? There are two things I think are incredibly important here. Number one (and this is the stuff that motivates me), I look at my son.

I want him to be treated as a first class consumer along with anyone else where his interests and needs are respected. Secondly, I want him to know and feel like he can produce at the highest level without bias.

When I think about my motivational driver, it’s allowing and getting him to live in that world.

“I look at my son. I want him to be treated as a first class consumer along with anyone else where his interests and needs are respected. Secondly, I want him to know and feel like he can produce at the highest level without bias. When I think about my motivational driver, it’s allowing and getting him to live in that world.”

Similar question, do you feel pressure as one of the few celebrated founders of color in Silicon Valley?

Well, I mean I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel any semblance of it. I have a responsibility. I’ve been given this amazing opportunity to give back. Period. I want to make sure that I’m doing right by the folks who have actually given me the opportunity and offering other folks that might be on the come up the same opportunity. Code 2040, Walker & Company, et cetera, I’m dedicating my life to this. I’m doing everything that I can to mitigate any need for that pressure. It’s less pressure and more responsibility. I have a responsibility to not only succeed but also to help others who look like me succeed. That just makes it easier for the next group of folks.

You’ve come up a lot in this project in other interviews.

Oh, very cool. Hopefully good things!

Good things and kind of profound things—like someone literally said “Tristan can’t carry the torch for us forever, you know.”

Nothing will have changed if that’s the case. That’s not something that I want. I say that because there are a lot of people doing amazing things that should be celebrated. Right? I get a ton of interviews all the time and folks reach out to me to talk and I’m like “stop talking to me.” Talk to these folks that really have an interesting story to tell. There are other folks and let’s celebrate them just as we celebrate Tristan because it should be done. There are some other folks who just say that Tristan’s sucking up all the oxygen. I think a lot of people think that I do that purposely. I actually try and … I really, really try to not do any of it anymore. It’s unfair. It really is.

I’m sure you’re frustrated with that, you probably feel like it’s a little lazy.

Exactly.

I get it. I’m really sensitive about it as the founder of this project, of “No, no, no, don’t talk to me. Talk to the people in this project.”

Totally.

“I’ve been given this amazing opportunity to give back. Period. I want to make sure that I’m doing right by the folks who have actually given me the opportunity and offering other folks that might be on the come up the same opportunity. Code 2040, Walker & Company, et cetera, I’m dedicating my life to this. I’m doing everything that I can to mitigate any need for that pressure. It’s less pressure and more responsibility. I have a responsibility to not only succeed but also to help others who look like me succeed. That just makes it easier for the next group of folks.”

Okay, let’s go macro for a second. How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you? What frustrates you?

Look, I don’t think about it. I just think about being the most faithful person I can be. I care about building the most important organization I can and I care about ensuring that my family is taken care of and safe. That’s enough for me to focus on. I can’t really focus too much on the ebbs and flows of macroeconomic stuff. If it’s not for the sake of my own personal business?

My last question for you before I send you off is what advice would you give to folks of similar background who are hoping to get in tech or just getting started.

Yeah, this is the same advice I give to pretty much anybody. I get it from Tyler Perry. What he said kind of fundamentally changed my life. He said “Tristan you realize your potential as an entrepreneur when you understand that the trials you go through and the blessings you receive are the exact same things.” What he meant by that was those trials you go through are just lessons. Lessons and blessings. You have to revel in that. It was the most important thing that I needed to hear because it’s actually made me a little bit more sane as a CEO. It’s given me more perspective. It allows me to focus on the right things right now. That’s something that should not only apply to business but just general life. Right?

That, combined with my own personal faith gives me a strong arsenal in executing my plans.

“Those trials you go through are just lessons. Lessons and blessings. You have to revel in that. It was the most important thing that I needed to hear because it’s actually made me a little bit more sane as a CEO. It’s given me more perspective. It allows me to focus on the right things right now. That’s something that should not only apply to business but just general life.”

I grew up in New York city in the upper west side of Manhattan, which is very diverse. My mom is black and my dad is white so I grew up in a mixed-race household and went to a very diverse public school growing up. And so, I had the quite fortunate experience of growing up surrounded by a very brilliant, multicultural set of people for pretty much my entire childhood.

How do you feel like that’s shaped you in your work?

I loved growing up in New York City. There are a lot of points of independence that I took for granted as a kid there. I mean, I was getting myself to and from school and playdates by the time I was 11. You see everything in New York. You see wealth. You see poverty. You see the best and the worst of society. You see people from all backgrounds. You hear every language being spoken on a daily basis. It’s just such a multicultural upbringing, that I think it really shaped my view of what the world can or should look like.

I’m curious to know if you had any inclinations growing up that you would end up in the tech industry. What did you think you were going to be as a kid?

I never thought I’d end up in the tech industry. As a little kid, I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician, because that was like the only job that I understood. But, I never was interested in tech until coming out to Stanford and spending time in Silicon Valley.

“You see everything in New York. You see wealth. You see poverty. You see the best and the worst of society. You see people from all backgrounds. You hear every language being spoken on a daily basis. It’s just such a multicultural upbringing, that I think it really shaped my view of what the world can or should look like.”

What was the impetus for that?

I felt like I wanted to go back to school because I wanted to learn how to build a better non-profit. I was kind of just disillusioned with the disconnect between revenues and expenses of the non-profit sector. You’re always begging for money. So I decided the quickest way to figure out how to be able to do that was to go to grad school. And Stanford, of all the business schools in particular that I visited, seemed to have by far the most diverse student body in terms of professional background and professional address. It was the only place I went where I didn’t feel like a total freak for trying to do something in the non-profit sector.

I was in Harvard when Zuckerberg started Facebook. There was no (the way there is I think in so many college campuses today) dialogue around entrepreneurship and tech. It was like, “Oh, there’s this weird thing that we log into and you can post your photos.” It wasn’t in my vocabulary until coming to Silicon Valley.

Tell me more about your time at Stanford. Obviously what you do now came out of that, but what were your first impressions of Silicon Valley and of Stanford Academia, and this whole kind of new tech world that suddenly you find yourself in?

My first impression was that I was horrified because you had to drive a car to get anywhere and I’d never lived in a place where that was a requirement! I found it very isolating at first.  I was used to being in cities where you walk around and you see the life and the industry. In New York, it’s obvious how much is going on. You walk out on any street in Silicon Valley and it looks like nothing is happening, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I became more curious as I had more exposure, but I think the main thing was that the mindset out here was so different than what I was used to. The East Coast tends to be more traditional. People here are always interested in the disruption or the next new thing. If you have an idea, the response is often, ”Go for it. Try it out.”

“I sat down with Tristan for coffee. We started talking about the fact that, by year 2040, people of color will be the majority in the U.S. He’d read a book that projected the demise of the middle class as accelerated by the adoption of technology and was in a place of—if this is what’s at risk, how do we make sure that disenfranchised communities aren’t further disenfranchised by the adoption and of technology? That was what lead to the impetus for the idea—how do we make the tech sector more inclusive so that people of color—Blacks and Latinos in particular—are not kind of left further on the sidelines further oppressed as our economy rapidly transitions towards a technology-enabled, technology-driven economy.”

Walk me through the moment of creation of CODE2040.

The moment of creation came about almost a year after Tristan and I had left Stanford. I did a year of business school and was trying to figure out what to do over the summer, and a friend of a friend was starting a tech company and they had a product that was in soft-mode that they were interested in rolling out across college campuses. I had, in another lifetime started a program on a college campus and had this experience in getting a bunch of shoes galvanized around an idea, and they were like, ”Cool. Just take that and write a roll-out plan for the products.” It felt like something I could properly figure out. So I went and joined this company for a summer internship with the roll-out plan. I ended up running the product team, which included kind of a segment of the company. But because my background was not in product development when I took over the work, I took an approach of systems and process design that would allow for maximal creative input and use of data. That led me to work very closely with the engineering team, the QA team, the design team. I got a real appreciation of those skillsets. There is a lot of understanding that I did there as well, about engineers’ needs.

I transitioned myself out of the organization because having a non-technical person running product for a developer facing product did not make sense. I was coming out of that when I sat down with Tristan for coffee. We started talking about the fact that, by year 2040, people of color will be the majority in the U.S. He’d read a book that projected the demise of the middle class as accelerated by the adoption of technology and was in a place of—if this is what’s at risk, how do we make sure that disenfranchised communities aren’t further disenfranchised by the adoption and of technology? That was what lead to the impetus for the idea—how do we make the tech sector more inclusive so that people of color—Blacks and Latinos in particular—are not kind of left further on the sidelines further oppressed as our economy rapidly transitions towards a technology-enabled, technology-driven economy.

What has been the most exciting and activating parts of your work since its creation?

It’s hard to choose. I think that it’s been really exciting to see how individuals have been catalyzed by their time with us. They’re so talented, but a lot of them don’t have the access to the breadth of opportunities that could really launch them into being leaders in the field. But I think one of the most gratifying pieces of what we do has been working with the tech companies. It’s certainly not true across the board, but there are companies out there who feel like they don’t know how to do diversity right. To be a place where those companies can go and have that conversation and get resources, that starts initiate systems change. I think the third piece is probably the hardest to quantify or measure, but is about amplifying others. People on Twitter reach out and are say, “I just want you to know that I am so happy that you are doing this work because I feel less alone.”

What have been some of the biggest roadblocks and struggles as an entrepreneur and in building this product?

It’s been really hard for me to wrap my head around actually being the CEO and what that means in terms of terms of how I act and how people view me. I prefer to empower people around me. To take on as much responsibility as is humanly possible, and probably more than is healthy sometimes. I believe very strongly in distributed responsibility. I believe in a hierarchy, but you push decision making down the chain as much as possible. It’s really hard for me to remember that people really look to me for a specific level of authority and that my title conveys something, rightly or wrongly about who I am and the level of importance that I hold. I think that has been my struggle that has led me to be really slow to make certain choices or improvements in ways that I think has then made my own job harder.

“It’s certainly not true across the board, but there are companies out there who feel like they don’t know how to do diversity right. To be a place where those companies can go and have that conversation and get resources, that starts initiate systems change.”

What were some roadblocks specifically to launching 2040?

They’ve shifted a lot. Initially the big question was, “How do we get companies to believe that there is black female talent out there, that is ‘qualified’?” I would say our first inflection point was two years in when enough companies had had terrific experiences with us, that it switched to entirely inbound companies who want to work with us and hire our students. We ended up throttling our growth. That’s just really hard, period. I don’t know anybody who can solve that well-—anybody who has made that extremely efficient. I’d say for the next two years, that was a real throttle for us. How do we solve those operational expansions? We’re 18 people on staff now but we could have twice as many people and that would be super helpful. But that’s twice as expensive. Now, it’s a matter of how do we create a growth plan that’s really thoughtful and then funded in a way that’s really thoughtful. Now, it’s the question of how and when do we invest for growth. That’s the hardest challenge that we’re facing right now—how do we get the right resources someplace and deploy them as efficiently as possible.

“Black and Latina/o students often say, ‘Why would I want to go to an industry where I can never advance, and nobody’s going to value me and I’m going to feel like an outsider?'”

In watching your fellows move through the industry, what have you all learned through your experience about the cultural and behavioral patterns in tech around people of color?

A lot. We’ve seen a real and really beneficial shift in the narrative over the last four years. When we started CODE2040, the dominant narrative at the time was that tech is meritocracy. If there aren’t people of color in the industry, that’s because they don’t deserve to be there. We managed to move to a place where people were willing to question that assumption, but still felt like, “Well, yeah, maybe they deserve to be there, but we can’t find them. They don’t exist.”

I think people are still trying to figure out what is that other thing that is happening. A piece of it that we know from working with 75 tech companies and close to 200 students in the fall’s program alone, is that there is a culture component. It is a combination of a retention issue, and people who opt out. Black and Latina/o students often say, “Why would I want to go to an industry where I can never advance, and nobody’s going to value me and I’m going to feel like an outsider?”

I think there’s also a growing dialogue now about this false idea of the “hiring bar.” There just is no objective set of standards around hiring. I think what we certainly believe is that there is actually is no good measurement right now. We need to get better at that.

“When we started CODE2040, the dominant narrative at the time was that tech is meritocracy. If there aren’t people of color in the industry, that’s because they don’t deserve to be there. We managed to move to a place where people were willing to question that assumption, but still felt like, ‘Well, yeah, maybe they deserve to be there, but we can’t find them. They don’t exist.'”

What have been your biggest motivators in your work? What at the core drives you?

I’ve always, since I was a kid, had a really strong sense of fairness and justice. It’s not about who’s inherently good, bad, right or wrong, but there’s all these unseen threads that influence how we each act and achieve and show up on a day to day basis. I think that CODE2040 has obviously a strong direct service component. We work directly with students, we’re not an advocacy organization, but we do all that in service of being able to create larger systems change.

How do you think your background impacts the way you approach your work?

Essentially, CODE2040 is this giant code switch for people on both sides. Like how, if you’re a person of color, you had a certain set of life experiences. How do you show up in a room that looks like a tech company? And if you are a tech company, how do you show up in a way that lets people who just don’t approach the world the way you approach the world be included and comfortable? I was in enough diverse rooms growing up that I knew it was possible and that it didn’t have to be weird and uncomfortable. It could be super normal. This whole idea of  discomfort with diversity just never crossed my mind.

“Essentially, CODE2040 is this giant code switch for people on both sides. Like how, if you’re a person of color, you had a certain set of life experiences. How do you show up in a room that looks like a tech company? And if you are a tech company, how do you show up in a way that lets people who just don’t approach the world the way you approach the world be included and comfortable?”

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you? What frustrates you? What would you like to see change?

In a lot of ways I’m way more optimistic than I was a few years back. I think tech has always been good at iterating and learning and failing forward and all of that. It’s historically been relegated to products and not people and I think we’re starting to see that ethos move into the people’s space as well. But there’s also a big question mark in my mind around—as tech becomes more pervasive across industries and across the country, now what? What does it look like when there’s a thriving tech sector in Austin? In Durham? All these places that have wildly different backgrounds and backdrops than California, both economically, culturally, ethnically, in terms of industry. I think tech in the future is going to look wildly different than it does today and I don’t know what it will look like.

How do you think tech can do a better job accommodating people of color right now?

One, we need to get serious about doing better on hiring. Treating that as a real competency where people are trained and there’s more structure around it. It’s like way too loose right now. So many companies have the intention to be more diverse but don’t actually have the actions to back it up. Tech undervalues HR.

The other piece is recognizing how important culture is and that it’s really hard to change. You have to seed it at the beginning but it’s possible to change it if it’s important to you.

What advice would you give to young folks, people of color, who really like tech and want to get into it?

Find your “tribe.” I find my most effective mentors are my peers, people who have different strengths and skill sets but also people who just have my back and who I can admit my failures to. I think if you’re in a situation where you’re not around your network, crafting a professional one can go a long way to making it feel like a more welcoming and exciting place.

“Find your ‘tribe.’ I find my most effective mentors are my peers, people who have different strengths and skill sets but also people who just have my back and who I can admit my failures to. I think if you’re in a situation where you’re not around your network, crafting a professional one can go a long way to making it feel like a more welcoming and exciting place.”

I grew up in San Jose, California. My family was middle-class. My father was a software engineer, my mother taught school. It was a very conservative household, or at least California conservative. That really textured my world view.

People ask me now, how that affected me being trans, and it’s… well, the thing that you are is such an anathema to the culture you’re brought up in. It’s problematic. I think the biggest impact was that I lacked any real sense of self. I was just trying to be what everybody around me wanted.

Teachers loved me, because I was always doing what they wanted, and I was way more concerned with the adults in my life than my peers. I always did what my parents, particularly my mom, expected. I was always filling particular roles. That really drove a lot of my life in terms of what I did. It wasn’t until decades later, post-transition, where I start to develop a real sense of self. And then I’m think, “Oh, that’s weird—how did I live so much of my life having no real sense of who I was, just trying to be what everybody around me wanted?”

Were you exposed to creativity or technology, or any of those concepts early on?

That’s an awesome thing about the household I grew up in. My dad worked in the software industry. We had computers and game systems in the house my entire life. That was always something we had. We had a Commodore 128. It has the basic interpreter on there. You could write little go-to loop-type things. Actually it was my friend’s dad who had the first computer I ever saw. I was—I want to say—three and a half, maybe four years old, and I’m over at my friend’s house and he’s got this Apple II. It has this green screen. My friend’s dad shows us this vector drawing of a frying pan. You can’t even see it on one screen all at once. You have to scroll or zoom out. I see this and then he shows this little game he wrote of where these little horses race across the screen. Seeing that was the moment where I was thought, “This is the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.” That moment still stands out in my head when people ask me, “How did you get into technology?” That moment was really defining.

Walk me from that moment to working in tech. How did you get into it? What has your career experience been like?

When I first started college I wanted to do something a bit different. I wanted do music for video games. I was strongly pushed by my mother to go into computer science. “You can make all this money doing software.” And so I went into it. It was an interesting thing—I was good at it and I did enjoy it. I think I still regret not following my heart at the time. I pursued a computer science degree, and then started working in the software industry. That’s all I’ve done since. It’s an interesting field. There are times when I love it, and there are times when I hate it.

“I was presenting very gender-queer in interviews. And not getting any offers. Finally, one day, I gave up. I went to an interview without nail polish, no lip gloss. I presented as male as possible. Lo and behold: I got an offer. The thing of it is every time I’ve been brought in for an on site interview, where I was presenting male, I received an offer.”

What are some of the highlights, and proudest moments, and things that have excited you the most about your time in tech?

That’s a great question. I was really proud of my work at One Medical. Before I left there, I took a few minutes and ran a query on the git repository. I wondered, “How much of this code base did I write?” It turned out to be around 40%. During the time I was there, the software team was on average of about five people. Sometimes less, sometimes a little bit more but I was the first developer they hired. Writing that much code could potentially be embarrassing, except that I’m very particular about not writing verbose or excessive code. I write what I need.

I’m really proud of what I did there. I’m proud of the type of work that we did and the direction we were going. That was a really neat part of my career.

Your work has certainly impacted me as a One Medical member.

I look at it, and it’s this was a really big thing that I poured a huge part of my life into, and I look at a lot of other things I’m really proud of, and I feel like none of them quite stand on that same tier. I think I wrote some beautiful code when I was doing device drivers, some really elegant things. I solved some really hard problems, but they just don’t stand up in terms of the long term term impact that they have. One thing exciting about my current role is that it has the same potential for long term impact. We are building tools to fight harassment. To me, that is just as big as doing medical software.

Tell me more about that.

Being harassed online sucks. And I’m working for the biggest player in open source community platforms: Github. They made a decision at a very high level to put money and people behind actually making Github a platform that is safe and inclusive. I’m building up a team; we’ve got a really good foundation in the works. It’s going to be a while until we have real tangible results, and it’s not an easy area. There are a lot of really tricky aspects to it. But those are challenges that I’m excited to rise to. I want to build the online space that I want to have for myself. I want to build an online space that sets the tone for the future. I don’t want just to make this platform good. I want to make it the best of show: a place where voices are not suppressed and that people feel safe.

“I want to build the online space that I want to have for myself. A place where voices are not suppressed and that people feel safe.”

On the flipside, what have some of your biggest struggles been in your career?

The biggest struggle was post-transition, or probably mid-transition, when I was trying to figure things out and just living in a sort of gender-queer life, and I needed to find a different job. I was determined that I didn’t want to work any place that won’t accept me as I am. So I was presenting very gender-queer in interviews. And not getting any offers. Finally, one day, I gave up. I went to an interview without nail polish, no lip gloss. I presented as male as possible. Lo and behold: I got an offer. The thing of it is every time I’ve been brought in for an on site interview, where I was presenting male, I received an offer.

So I got that job. I worked there for a couple of years, and then there were some really negative situations there, however I did manage to transition during that time. That company ended up being a mixed bag. I had some solid support from my peers, but I could’ve had a lot better support from management. I realized, at some point, that the professional relationship had become fairly dysfunctional.

I needed to move on. I started interviewing for other positions. At this point, I was presenting female. It’s a lot different interviewing for a tech job when presenting female.

The bad interviews were not a big deal. If my skill set and approach don’t line up with a company, I expect them to pass. But the good ones… the good ones kept resulting in rejection. When a company decides to keep moving forward, especially when it’s been multiple rounds, it’s clear that they think you are suited for the job. They are spending time and money to pursue you. These companies would get to the end of all of this and then decline me on the grounds of something we discussed as a non-issue in the very early rounds of screening. For example, “We think we want somebody with more such and such experience.” and you’re like, “Wait, we talked about that exact thing during the first phone screen!” Why would you put hours of your employees’ time and mine into this interview process if that thing was an issue?

It’s clear there is a bias at work. A lot of men don’t want to work for or with a woman. On top of that, I never know who might have read me as trans and had their own transphobia come into play. But it’s pretty easy to sabotage somebody in the interview process if you want to. And I’m sure anyone with a non-privileged background faces these exact same type of things where all it takes is, “I don’t think they’re a good fit,” or, “Nah, they made me kind of uncomfortable,” or, “I really didn’t like the way they answered this one thing.” It’s much easier to sabotage somebody than it is to champion for them.

“It’s pretty easy to sabotage somebody in the interview process if you want to. And I’m sure anyone with a non-privileged background faces these exact same type of things where all it takes is, ‘I don’t think they’re a good fit,’ or, ‘Nah, they made me kind of uncomfortable,’ or, ‘I really didn’t like the way they answered this one thing.’ It’s much easier to sabotage somebody than it is to champion for them.”

Let’s dig deeper into that because I’m sure you have a lot to say. You worked in tech for 15 years before you transitioned. So you have tons of experience in the industry. How is life before and after?

I have a much different understanding of privilege. There’s a difference between knowledge and understanding. And to fully grasp the level of privilege I was afforded, it took this very painful experience of having to job search for over a year, and a lot of great interviews that my previous experience said, oh yeah, you have an interview like that you’re going to get a nice offer, you’re going to have multiple offers coming in. You’ll be in this great competitive situation!

Instead I would find that even when things went really well, when I was expecting to receive an offer. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work at some of these places. I would have been the first woman engineer. Do I really want to be that person? I’ve got a thick skin. I can handle it. I’ll do it.

But then they make the decision for me. They decide I am not up to the challenge of being the first woman. They can’t legally turn you away for that. But they can always come up with some other reason.

These situations brought me to very deep understanding of privilege. It is a much more nuanced and deep and personal thing than I understood before that.

“I’ve had to learn a lot about this privilege thing, and how much I had, and how much I’ve lost.”

There is a huge difference between the male friend who knows, “Oh, it’s not safe for you to walk down this street at night,” They will walk you to your car, all that stuff. They know about that and they do the right thing. But it’s a very different experience when you feel mortal terror. When you have to that walk by yourself, and you have some guy on a bicycle circling up, and coming up towards you, and approaching you, and– There’s a very different feeling and if you don’t have that experience, you’ll never fully understand. You will know. But you won’t understand.

That’s a much scarier place than just not being able to get a job. I’ve had to learn a lot about this privilege thing, and how much I had, and how much I’ve lost.

All of this has impacted me in a professional capacity. I am a huge champion of mitigating and eliminating bias in hiring. We have to really work hard to do this. Fortunately, we have good economic data on why you should do this. Ultimately companies should do this because it’s ethical, but sometimes you can’t always win over a board with the ethical argument. But you can at least win them over with the profit argument.

My experiences have made me a big advocate and champion for how to we empirically cut biases out of these processes, how do we give more opportunities to people from underprivileged backgrounds, how do we make tech a more equitable place? It already has huge economic barriers to entry, for instance, if you can’t afford to have a computer in your house. If I hadn’t grown up in an upper middle class family, would I be in tech right now? Probably not. I might have eventually had access to a computer at school and maybe that would’ve been enough, but it’s very different having had access to a lot of really interesting pieces of technology very young and very early and being able to just play with these things and grow to love them.

Where do you find your support networks?

Professionally or personally?

Both.

Personally, I’ve been very fortunate in terms of the circles of friends that were around me through my transition. The nature of all those relationships changed more than I thought it would. But in pretty much all cases, it was positive – even when that meant the distance in some of those relationships increased. I had a good group of friends to begin with, and that group turned into what I needed it to be. The nature of that circle of friends has changed and who I’m close to and who I’m not, but I have some absolutely amazing people in my life that are there when I need them, and people that I can count on when I feel like I can count on no one else.

“My experiences have made me a big advocate and champion for how to we empirically cut biases out of these processes, how do we give more opportunities to people from underprivileged backgrounds, how do we make tech a more equitable place? It already has huge economic barriers to entry, for instance, if you can’t afford to have a computer in your house. If I hadn’t grown up in an upper middle class family, would I be in tech right now? Probably not. I might have eventually had access to a computer at school and maybe that would’ve been enough, but it’s very different having had access to a lot of really interesting pieces of technology very young and very early and being able to just play with these things and grow to love them.”

Professionally, I feel like I’m only just dabbing my feet in. I’ve only been functioning in the professional world in a gender-variant way and then trans way for like the last four years. I don’t think I really gained much during the genderqueer portion of that, but once I transitioned and was presenting fully female, I have been able to establish some really good professional contacts. I was able to get more involved in organizations like Lesbians Who Tech and connect with other ladies in tech. That’s been very helpful.

It was a huge thing walking into GitHub and finding that there was a built-in support network of ladies there, who are in technology. And having lady managers as peers was actually a big thing. My previous company was too small for me to have any peers, let alone peers of the same gender as mine. That’s been huge. And that’s very recent, but there’s a couple of those people I know that long after I leave this place, they will still support me. I know who to go talk to. There’s experience and depth there.

How do you feel like your life experience has shaped the way that you approach your work?

It definitely shapes how I view the projects I’m working on. I am fortunate to get to take on a project that is directly related to being part of an underprivileged group. I have friends who’ve been deeply harassed for being trans online. Being able to directly work to change that is an incredible professional opportunity.

I have a fairly quiet online profile right now. Because of that, I haven’t faced a lot of direct harassment myself. But I’ve watched this play out in some friends’ lives. It’s personal. It is a very real thing, and being able to do something very real about it is very meaningful.

Earlier we were talking a little bit about really grasping the level of privilege that exists if you are a perceived straight, white, cis male. I’m not white, but I’m “white enough,” at least in the Bay Area. That’s definitely something I’ve started to understand better recently. Maybe some place else, I wouldn’t be white enough.

“We want the a diverse spectrum of candidates. We want to ask all of them questions about diversity, inclusion, and social impact. Those answers matter just as much as the technical questions. It has an amazing way of normalizing a lot of things. On top of that, you’ve now selected for people that are going to be looking for those qualities in others around them. You can leverage the effect people intrinsically wanting to hire others like themselves in a positive way, instead of the typical homogeneous, limiting way.”

These thing impact how I think about hiring and building teams. It changes the types of questions that types of questions you use.

We want the a diverse spectrum of candidates. We want to ask all of them questions about diversity, inclusion, and social impact. Those answers matter just as much as the technical questions. It has an amazing way of normalizing a lot of things. On top of that, you’ve now selected for people that are going to be looking for those qualities in others around them. You can leverage the effect people intrinsically wanting to hire others like themselves in a positive way, instead of the typical homogeneous, limiting way. That way tends to result in teams entirely of people from privileged white male backgrounds. I want other people to care about diversity inclusion. I want other people that are different than me.

I also want other people who might be like me. If you’re the only lady on a team, you desperately want to add another lady to that team. If you find someone who is qualified, you’re going to fight for them. Similarly, like if you’re a person of color, or if you’re a trans. Occasionally will have an interview where the video chat will come up, and I will suspect that the candidate is trans. I will want to give her extra privilege. And I have to actually fight a different type of bias there.  I still have to evaluate her on the same criteria I would any other candidate. Even though personally, I’m like, “I’d love to hire you just because you’re like me.” It’s the same thing. It’s an odd sensation.

Totally.

It ties in a little bit to my experiences, being functionally the same candidate presenting male and presenting female. It’s not that I answered questions differently, or did less well on the technical portions. It was like, yeah I’ve dealt with a lot of identity stuff, but that didn’t change in how smart I was. That didn’t change in how well I do in technical interviews. None of that changed, and yet the responses to me changed dramatically.

Did you experience similar biases when you were employed as well?

Oh,  I can talk about that little bit. In my previous position, it was a place where they all knew me through my transition (which was gradual). Having folks who are not close to you on a personal level see you in both genders is a little odd. I definitely saw ways where I was treated differently after transitioning. In the 15 years of my career prior to transitioning I was never, ever labeled as “aggressive.” Sometimes “assertive,” even “overly energetic,” “frenetic.” All sorts of labels would be applied to me, but never “aggressive.” Post-transition I got that feedback constantly. Especially when I was seeking any form of promotion – where that very behavior that almost guarantees reward of promotion in a male – it was used as criteria to claim that I was unsuited for a particular promotion.

“In the 15 years of my career prior to transitioning I was never, ever labeled as ‘aggressive.’ Sometimes ‘assertive,’ even ‘overly energetic,’ ‘frenetic.’ All sorts of labels would be applied to me, but never ‘aggressive.’ Post-transition I got that feedback constantly. Especially when I was seeking any form of promotion – where that very behavior that almost guarantees reward of promotion in a male – it was used as criteria to claim that I was unsuited for a particular promotion.”

If you get things done as a lady, you’re too aggressive.

Have you had mentors or people that you’ve looked up to along the way?

I have had people who have been mentors in very specific technical areas. I learned a lot about what good code looks like. When I was writing device drivers, I worked for this guy who was a terrible people manager, but a marvelous coder. He wrote beautiful code. That was when I really developed a sense of what beautiful code is. He was the type of person who wrote such beautiful code that almost anything you presented to him, he would not be super happy with. The highest praise was if you put something in front of him and he’d just scowl at it, but he’d have nothing to say. He would be essentially unhappy with it because it wasn’t something that he wrote, but he couldn’t actually come up with any criticism. I learned a lot from that.

I feel like I learned a lot about software management from watching a lot of people do it poorly. It’s an area where I can’t actually talk about a good mentor I have had because it’s a case where I, for the most part, just watched people fumble. I’ve also watched people who fumbled in many areas and then did one or two things right. I’ve tried to glean all these little bits. My strength as a manager is in aggregating all these lessons I’ve learned over years of watching people do things, both good and bad.

There was also a time when I had someone further up in the organization, two levels above me, at the start of my career, who saw potential in me as a leader. She started working with me to develop leadership traits and took time to meet with me one-on-one. That was actually really powerful now that I think back on it.

This was pre-transition for me. I never realized at the time what it must have taken for her to reach that level in that company as a woman. Now I can only imagine the battles she had to fight and what she had to do to get there. What an honor it was that she took time to mentor me.

More recently, I’ve been at a lot of startups and smaller firms. You often have a lot less opportunities for mentorship in those cases. You have a lot of opportunities for growth, but essentially if you’re at too small of a company, you have to look for external mentorship. This goes back to the identity thing I was talking about. If you don’t have a strong sense of self it’s hard to have really solid goals about what you wanna do with your career. Without clear goals it is easy to neglect mentorship and other career development.

It fascinates me that the shift into my actual gender was accompanied by a much clearer set of career and personal goals. Without low level psychological needs being met you can be blind to the higher level stuff. And it’s weird that you can be unaware that those needs are not being met.

How do you feel the state of tech in 2016? You’ve been here for a long time. What excites you, what frustrates you?

The thing that excites me the most, is that the conversation around diversity in tech feels like it is taking on a very vibrant life and it is very real. It’s both data-driven and personal, and we’re seeing that conversation play out, and we’re seeing the beginnings of real change. On the flipside, we’re seeing some really nasty counter-arguments, and we’re seeing a lot of people basically defend this concept of, “No. It’s a meritocracy. If you’re having issues, it’s because you are not good enough,” yet the data says that’s wrong.

“The conversation around diversity in tech feels like it is taking on a very vibrant life and it is very real. It’s both data-driven and personal, and we’re seeing that conversation play out, and we’re seeing the beginnings of real change. On the flipside, we’re seeing some really nasty counter-arguments, and we’re seeing a lot of people basically defend this concept of, “No. It’s a meritocracy. If you’re having issues, it’s because you are not good enough,” yet the data says that’s wrong.”

We’re seeing some companies are stepping up and doing things about it. And my hope is that those companies that are doing something about it don’t just play lip service to diversity and inclusion, but actually really step into that role and say, “We are going to do this really well,” and especially if they then see the rewards and they see economic benefits. That will really help as time moves forward, we’ll see a lot. We’ll see big shifts. If you look at other industries that had deal more direct with affirmative action in the 70s and 80s, you’ll see this indeed happened. Even some industries that are still known for being incredibly sexist. Take Law, which is known for having some really nasty misogyny baked into the system and yet we’re also still seeing that female lawyers are pretty big percentage.

I see tech in a position to actually do better. I want to see tech sidestep the “lean in” approach. Can tech avoid teaching everyone from diverse background to simply behave like the status quo? Can we instead bring a diversity of approaches and personalities into the workplace? The status quo is to expect underprivileged people to to go and behave like the white men in the industry. The more you can behave like these men, the better you will do.

We’re seeing in tech companies that are willing to actually move women into leadership. We do even better when we don’t just look for the women that emulate men but we look for women and people of diverse backgrounds that just are themselves. They bring a slightly different tone and perspective on things, as opposed to just the very stereotypical driven Type A masculine. Type A females are great but they are very different than their male counterparts in terms of their approach and what their goals are. And we’re seeing this type of shift, very slowly. I feel like we’re just at the beginning of this, which is a little painful, but we’re seeing that these shifts are happening and that there are more opportunities.

“The status quo is to expect underprivileged people to to go and behave like the white men in the industry. The more you can behave like these men, the better you will do.”

And we’re definitely seeing a lot more companies trying to just fix their diversity from this big number-game side of it and be like, “Well, we need to hire more women, we need to hire more people of color.” And that by itself is not good enough, because we’ll continue to maintain the reality, most women and people of color leave tech after less than 10 years. If we just hire diversity and we don’t build support networks, these people will be bullied out.

At my current company, I am part of several internal support networks. We are building sub-communities around being Latina or being a woman, etc. We are building these support networks internally in parallel with our recruiting efforts, and that’s a huge deal. And I’m seeing a couple other companies that are doing a pretty good job of that too. They understand that they can’t just hire people from diverse background, because they’ll end up leaving. You have to actually put a support system in for them. And as we see that, we’re seeing this growth and this vibrancy, and you see these just amazing things.

“Most women and people of color leave tech after less than 10 years. If we just hire diversity and we don’t build support networks, these people will be bullied out.”

What are you working on right now, either work-wise or personally, in 2016?

Professionally, I’m really working to build a solid team, to accomplish these goals that I have in terms of fighting harassment and abuse on the GitHub platform. That’s just an exciting thing to be working on, and I’m really excited to be recruiting and hiring for that, and trying to put in really solid processes around how we’re going about building the software we need. That’s exciting.

On a pseudo-professional note, I’m trying to do a lot more speaking and writing about these topics. There’s a reason I’m openly trans on the internet. I made a very conscious decision about that a year ago. I could very well be stealth on the internet. I can mostly be stealth in person, but I made a conscious decision that I have this privilege and if I’m stealth, I give up my voice. And it’s really hard to drive changes solely from the perspective of outsiders who are allies without the voice of those who are actually affected.

One of my big things for 2016 is doing a lot more speaking, and writing about this very topic, and sharing my stories. I’m an empiricist, so I want data on all this stuff. And I get frustrated. There’s not a lot of good data on many aspects of this. In some areas there’s great data. Like we know a lot about gender bias in terms of how it affects interviews. But there’s a lot less about how transphobia, or homophobia, etc come into play. So often the best we have is our stories and our anecdotes. And especially since they’re very real. We may not be able to statistically prove that this is happening, but we can appeal to people’s life experiences and hope they say, “Oh, yeah. That happened. I could totally see that happening more, and that shouldn’t be happening. What can I do about it?” I definitely am trying to use my voice to make the world a better place for anybody from a non-privileged background.

I would love to hear you speak. You’re so eloquent in everything you’ve said here.

Thank you.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’ll still be in tech?

Probably. I could see using some of my work, in terms of the trust and safety, could move me someplace different. But, if I do that it would still be someplace clearly related to these very issues of making sure that people have safe and inclusive spaces and that we’re building these types of places both in real life and on the internet. If I stay in tech I definitely hope to tackle some level of upper executive-style work within the tech industry. I think I have a lot to draw on in terms of that, and that’s a direction I would like to see my career go long-term.

What advice would you give to folks going through similar struggles or coming from similar backgrounds to you in tech?

That’s a hard one, because there’s a degree where I want to say,”Don’t give up.” And there’s another part of me that feels like that’s the most flippant advice in the world.

It was incredibly emotionally destructive for me to deal with the rejections of interviews I knew went well. I expected to be rejected for something that didn’t go very well, or I could tell we were just on different pages regarding management style. But the interviews where it was clear that we synced and it was clear that there was a good match and a good fit…. To get turned down for those was just unbearable. And no, not just once or twice — the first couple times you dismiss it. By the third and fourth time, it was really so incredibly emotionally destructive.

It’s hard for me in good faith to say, “Just stick it out, it’ll be fine.” We need diverse people in tech. I don’t know what the answer is there. It makes me sad that that’s the case.

“I’m an empiricist, so I want data on all this stuff. And I get frustrated. There’s not a lot of good data on many aspects of this. In some areas there’s great data. Like we know a lot about gender bias in terms of how it affects interviews. But there’s a lot less about how transphobia, or homophobia, etc come into play. So often the best we have is our stories and our anecdotes.”

We need to keep fighting to eliminate these biases and make sure people really do have a fair chance. Yet I know that not every company is trying to do that, and so I don’t know what the answer is. There’s a school of thought out there advocating that underprivileged folks should just be the entrepreneur and go that route. But then you have the problem of, yeah, you can do that, but the bias is then going to happen to you at the funding level.

The best I can do is try to leverage the privilege in my life to improve these situations. I have this privilege, I have a job, I have a position, I have authority. I can use that to try to fix these problems from that side. What do I tell someone who is young and up-and-coming? I can say, don’t even apply at the places that are shitty?

[laughter]

I don’t know how you make it. We’ve built a system that is so just difficult and ultimately cruel. I’m really hoping to see some of the very big players build out better programs for early engineers, early career engineers. I’m also hoping to see them build out better support systems for people in their mid-to-late career so that they can bring in women and people of color that have managed to survive and make it a good place to be. We have to see some big changes, both from start-ups and also from the big players, the big employers, the ones that employ tens of thousands and not just a few hundred here and there.

Sure. I’m from the St. Louis, Missouri area. Technically I’m from southern Illinois, but when I say Illinois, people think Chicago, which is like six hours north of Shiloh, Illinois, where I’m from. I lived there from kindergarten until I graduated from high school.

I was always a shy kid—soft spoken, quiet, very much a bookworm. I was also into video games from an early age thanks to my dad’s influence. I also really liked the internet because it was this new, shiny thing. In Belleville, most people are like-minded—so because the Internet has so many subcultures,  I felt like I could finally find my place. I eventually taught myself how to code, HTML and CSS to start, and how to create graphics. I made random websites based on stuff I was interested in; I think I made my first website in 6th grade. It was on Geocities [laughter]. I kept doing it throughout high school and it morphed into my passion.

After high school, I went to a small school called Maryville University in St. Louis, thinking like, “I’m going to be a web designer for a living, that’s a thing people do I guess?” But my school didn’t actually have much for web design. I told them I wanted to major in web design, but they’re like “uh, we don’t have that, what are you talking about?” They did have very small graphic design program, so I decided to major in that.

“The summer before my sophomore year, my dad got laid off so my parents couldn’t help me with school anymore. I had a decent scholarship based on my strong academics from high school, but my university was so expensive that I couldn’t afford the rest of the tuition. The school wouldn’t let me continue until I paid back what owed from my freshman year, so I left school and got two jobs: first at Build a Bear and the Apple Store, and then Apple and a waitressing job.”

The summer before my sophomore year, my dad got laid off so my parents couldn’t help me with school anymore. I had a decent scholarship based on my strong academics from high school, but my university was so expensive that I couldn’t afford the rest of the tuition. The school wouldn’t let me continue until I paid back what owed from my freshman year, so I left school and got two jobs: first at Build a Bear and the Apple Store, and then Apple and a waitressing job. I was thinking, “well, I’ll work on paying them back and just figure it out as I go.” After about 2 years of working while taking a few community college classes, I finally paid back the freshman year debt. But by then I was so disillusioned with Maryville University and the Midwest in general that I was like, “well, I’m moving to California now.” So I went online and searched for design programs in California.

I found a school in San Francisco and I got interested in their animation program. Suddenly I was like “well now I’m going to be an animator.” So I saved up, transferred Apple stores, and moved to San Francisco to attend the Art Institute of California (AI). Eventually I figured out that animation wasn’t a great fit for me. I love to watch animation, but I didn’t enjoy the process of making it and the school was extremely expensive. But by that point I was already kind of in love with San Francisco. I’d been here about a year, so I was like, well I may not be going to school there anymore, but I have to figure out how I can stay here. So I left AI, then I went on Craigslist and found a second job, working as an office assistant at a startup called Socialcast in SOMA. I  eventually let them know I was into design and that I could code, so they allowed me to take on some small projects for the company while I worked as an office assistant. When my boss went on maternity leave, I quit my job at Apple and went to Socialcast full time, which kind of started me on this tech path.

“Learning how to code was very tedious for me [chuckles]. I had to follow so many tutorials. I also feel like I’m always comparing myself to developers I meet here who are extremely talented. Sometimes I don’t even want to call myself a coder or developer compared to them. I’m a designer who can code. That’s an important distinction to me.”

What was the experience like for you, teaching yourself to design and code?

It partially goes on instinct. I’ve always be attracted to visual endeavors; I’ve been drawing, painting, and things like that since I was in junior high. So I feel like design is very similar to where it really helps if you some natural instinct for things like handling visuals and being empathetic to users, but there are also many things you have to be taught. As for coding, there’s more effort involved for me. I enjoy it, but I sometimes struggle with the logic behind it. Learning how to code was very tedious for me [chuckles]. I had to follow so many tutorials. I also feel like I’m always comparing myself to developers I meet here who are extremely talented. Sometimes I don’t even want to call myself a coder or developer compared to them. I’m a designer who can code. That’s an important distinction to me. Learning how to code was challenging, but learning how to design has been fun because it’s about reading people’s emotions, designing interactions and visuals, and things like that. And I am always learning. I’ve never had a full formal design education. It’s mostly been on the job experience. Since that’s something I’m aware of, I always try to keep reading and learning.

Tell me a little bit more about your work and things that you’re proud of—things that really excite you about your work.

One thing I’m a big advocate for in my work is thinking outside the typical mold that tech people in Silicon valley seem to be designing for. Even in the most subtle ways, so many people are designing for users who are in demographics that are similar to themselves or other people in their “bubble.” By default, they are designing for someone who looks like them. And most designers in San Francisco are white guys, with some white girls mixed in here and there. So I’m often the person chiming in with things like “Wait why do all of the avatars have that kind of hair? Not everyone has that texture. Why are all the hands holding the mobile devices in these photo white” And I know details like that are such a non-issue for some people, but because I notice it I like to challenge other designers on it when I can. Lately I’m reading up on things like how to design for those with disabilities, like design for people with hearing or visual disabilities. So that’s kind of the thing I really get excited about, just thinking about audiences that aren’t as focused on.

“One thing I’m a big advocate for in my work is thinking outside the typical mold that tech people in Silicon valley seem to be designing for. Even in the most subtle ways, so many people are designing for users who are in demographics that are similar to themselves or other people in their “bubble.” By default, they are designing for someone who looks like them.”

What were your first impressions of Silicon Valley?

I didn’t really have a strong impression of it before moving here. I think I saw a movie when I was in junior high, Pirates of Silicon Valley? I really never saw myself having anything to do with it—I didn’t correlate my nerdy hobbies like web design to be related to tech. And then when I got the job at Socialcast, it was still all so new to me. There were only like 10 to 15 people in the office at the time, and I didn’t even know what a startup was. I was coming in thinking like, “Ok, I need something that’s going to pay my bills—that’s all I care about.” But when I got hired they were starting a round of funding, so I was being thrown into this fast paced startup world. And at the same time, I was still working part time at the Apple Store. So it was very different, being an hourly retail employee going into a startup world. I had no idea of what to expect but what I learned very quickly is there’s a lot of really smart people working really hard on something, and everyone’s really passionate. So that was kind of cool because that’s the kind of work ethic that I personally admire. So I was like, “Okay, so much is happening here.” So I didn’t know what I was witnessing when I first moved here, and in retrospect I’m like, “Man, I should have met more people and networked and all that!” But also, I’m terrible at networking, but it was still cool though to be a part of it.

“I would definitely say a sense of isolation. It’s a little due to my own personal insecurities because I haven’t finished school, but on top of that, it’s hard when no one looks like you or can relate to struggles you may have.”

What have been some of the tougher parts about working in tech for you?

I would definitely say a sense of isolation. It’s a little due to my own personal insecurities because I haven’t finished school, but on top of that, it’s hard when no one looks like you or can relate to struggles you may have. It’s been a challenge for me lately, especially now that I’m getting older and really wanting to explore and embrace my ethnicity. I actually did a 23andme genealogy test like two years ago to learn about my heritage and ethnicity because there’s a lot of holes in my family tree and I just had this feeling of wanting to define who I am, ethnically. Lately I’m feeling much more aware of what it means to be a Black woman than I have been ever before. I’m finally confident in proudly declaring that I’m a Black woman, but I work in an industry where I feel like I can’t let that pride be known because I don’t want to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So it’s kind of like a weird double act where outside of work, I feel very “woke” or aware of social justice and civil rights issues affecting Black Americans and other minority groups, but then at work that side of me never comes out because I’m scared that it’s not appropriate. And then I feel so frustrated that I’m even having this internal struggle where I’m so concerned about making other people uncomfortable.

“Lately I’m feeling much more aware of what it means to be a Black woman than I have been ever before. I’m finally confident in proudly declaring that I’m a Black woman, but I work in an industry where I feel like I can’t let that pride be known because I don’t want to make a lot of people uncomfortable. So it’s kind of like a weird double act where outside of work, I feel very “woke” or aware of social justice and civil rights issues affecting Black Americans and other minority groups, but then at work that side of me never comes out because I’m scared that it’s not appropriate. And then I feel so frustrated that I’m even having this internal struggle where I’m so concerned about making other people uncomfortable.”

It doesn’t help that I have had these awkward conversations where people just don’t know or care that I identify as Black so they feel comfortable saying really ridiculous or ignorant things. Like once I was in Lyft and the driver talking about Ferguson because I mentioned I’m from St. Louis. It was right around the protests that happened after Mike Brown was shot and he was totally ragging on protesters, and just being very insulting and condescending to the community as a whole. I remember thinking “Wow, would he say all of that to me if I had visibly darker skin?” Would he be comfortable saying, “These people are rioting like animals”’ or whatever he said. I think the answer is no, he wouldn’t have.

And so that’s the worry I have—although someone may seem like a great person overall, they’ll have some beliefs may be really different than mine when it comes down to it and I don’t want to cause problems at work or networking as a result. I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable or exclude them from my life due to difference of opinion, but to me there are some ways of thinking that I can’t accept because they actively hurt people. So I end up compromising my beliefs and tolerating things that I know I shouldn’t. In the past, I would just nervously laugh along with jokes and smile when on the inside I don’t agree. Lately, in the last year or so, I’m trying harder to tactfully call people out, but it’s quite hard to do sometimes.

“I don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable or exclude them from my life due to difference of opinion, but to me there are some ways of thinking that I can’t accept because they actively hurt people. So I end up compromising my beliefs and tolerating things that I know I shouldn’t. In the past, I would just nervously laugh along with jokes and smile when on the inside I don’t agree. Lately, in the last year or so, I’m trying harder to tactfully call people out, but it’s quite hard to do sometimes.”

One star for that driver.

Yeah, but, ugh, that’s one thing I’m so embarrassed about to this day! I didn’t even rate him badly. I just was like, “Oh, he was really nice before we talked about Ferguson, and he obviously has no idea what he was talking about.” I still gave him 5 stars. I basically give everyone a 5 star, but after that, it haunted me for weeks. I feel like Tiffany today would not have been so meek, but back then I was still so mousy about issues of race and politics. I just didn’t want to talk about it, because ignoring microaggressions is what has helped me thrive in college and in my career.

And I don’t want to sound like I think I some perfect person who gets it right each time. Honestly, in the past I used to think most race issues didn’t affect me. But because I have a younger brother, I see him in all of these young black and brown men being targeted by police brutality or the justice system. So that helped wake me up, because my family isn’t totally protected from the effects of institutional racism just because we have lighter skin. It could happen to me too. And at the same time, me finally realizing that social justice issues directly affect me or those I care about shouldn’t have been what made me finally pay attention to systematic inequalities. So now I occasionally feel guilty for judging people who are ignorant about civil rights issues because I was still quite naive seven years ago when I first moved here.

“Honestly, in the past I used to think most race issues didn’t affect me. But because I have a younger brother, I see him in all of these young black and brown men being targeted by police brutality or the justice system. So that helped wake me up, because my family isn’t totally protected from the effects of institutional racism just because we have lighter skin. It could happen to me too.”

But I think most people, even the naive, now know that something is going with the race relations in this country. It’s good. I feel like it all of of this racial tension needs to come up to the surface so people can talk about it. While we may never be able to end racism, we can start acknowledging and addressing the systemic issues and begin to move forward. Because I think when Barack Obama got elected, people were like, “Well, racism is over!” I don’t think that’s been quite the case [chuckles]. It’s been a very weird thing to witness on the activism I’m seeing online and offline elsewhere versus what I’m witnessing in my real life.

Yeah, it’s so interesting. Have you found support networks here yet?

I have, and I haven’t. I follow lots of different social justice accounts on Tumblr and Twitter, where people can share their own personal stories or report on different situations happening across the globe. It’s nice to find a connection through other people’s experiences.

The one support group I have found that is local is online, a Bay Area “Women of Color in Tech” group. It’s nice to have a place where other women of color will listen to my concerns and validate my feelings. So I have found a support group in that sense, but I haven’t actually made any friends in the group.

I have friends in the Bay Area that are designers of course—other women designers and other women of color designers—mostly Asian women. And while I’m sure we could discuss the hardships of being a woman in tech, I don’t think I could approach them about issues concerning race or anti-blackness. I don’t know if they will feel comfortable talking about it, and honestly I also don’t know how much they would care. I don’t think I’d find any support in my professional network. So that’s something I do think is missing, that solidarity.

“The Bay Area is more diverse overall than my hometown, but seeing black and brown faces is so rare in tech. One of my friends from grade school had a work trip here recently, we met to catch up and talk about work and life in general. It was so nice just vibing with her. Because I hadn’t done that ever, really— talking about professional issues as a black woman with another black woman. She isn’t a designer—she works in economics. But it was still nice to have that moment.”

The Bay Area is more diverse overall than my hometown, but seeing black and brown faces is so rare in tech. One of my friends from grade school had a work trip here recently, we met to catch up and talk about work and life in general. It was so nice just vibing with her. Because I hadn’t done that ever, really— talking about professional issues as a black woman with another black woman. She isn’t a designer—she works in economics. But it was still nice to have that moment. I wish I could discuss social justice issues more and talk about these things openly, instead of me being complacent and pretending that race isn’t the issue. Unless I’m on Tumblr, and then I feel okay publicly acknowledging that it’s an issue [chuckles].

Yeah. You mentioned in your pre-interview that you hadn’t met another black woman designer in your six years here in tech?

Yeah. I feel like I’ve met maybe one or two in passing, but I’ve definitely never worked with or had a friendship with another black woman designer. Obviously I don’t want to be friends with someone just because we have a similar ethnic background—that’s shallow. But it does make me sad to knowing I have no black designer friends—male or female. That’s weird to me. I know there’s black women designers out there. There has to be. But where are they? If there are no black women designing the apps and sites that so many people use, then that voice isn’t being presented or considered in the design. Are things being designed with black women in mind? Or Latina or Hispanic women? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Do you feel like you have role models that you can look up to?

I don’t have any black woman designers, but I do have other female designers as role models, for sure. Actually, one of my personal designer role models is one of my really good friends. She’s an amazing designer and an even better person. She’s also a woman of color too. I used to work with her at my last job. Once she left, I realized how wonderful it is to have a friend and mentor at work. Not only does she mentor me in design, but I’ve learned so much from her about workplace politics. I’ve witnessed people discriminate against her. I don’t know how much of it was race related, perhaps some of it was, but working with her I saw what it looks like when men are threatened by strong women. Confident and smart women taking taking leadership positions threatens some men, and I witnessed that happen. And it was unfortunate, but she handled it with such grace, elegance, and perseverance. I’m glad that I have someone that I can turn to not only for career and design advice, but also for help in navigating the realities of being a minority and a woman in the design world. She’s definitely someone I can go to when I feel like I’m lost.

You touched on this and you mentioned in your pre-interview that you’ve had some really unique experiences as a pale black person.

Sometimes I think that non-black people don’t really know what I am, which used to actually really surprise me. I never thought of myself as being racially ambiguous until I got to college. My school wasn’t diverse and I started getting the “what are you?” questions. Right now I have braids, I think maybe that helps. People are like “oh ok, well, she’s something…” but when I first moved here I used to straighten my hair. A common question I get is if I am part Japanese, which is amusing to me because I have 0% East Asian genetics. I just happen to love studying the language.

But from time to time, I’ll hear comments from people or they do things like casually quote a song and use the n-word, I’m just like “whoa, would you have been as comfortable saying that if I had darker skin?” I don’t think they would. Like you wouldn’t have said that if I had the same skin tone as my dad, who matches the visible spectrum of what non-black people perceive as being black. So I think sometimes people feel like more comfortable saying things that are not appropriate around me, but on the flip side I think that it’s kind of up to me to say something. But that’s also much pressure! I’m naturally not a combative or antagonistic person, but even when I’ve spoken up in the past, people are like “Oh, what are you mixed with?” So it’s always really awkward. But I’ve always felt like I have had to prove my blackness. So even today, I find myself being like “Stereotypes are gross but of course I can dance, of course I can cook soul food.”

As an adult, I have wondered how many other black people think about this stuff, but I don’t have a network of people talk about it with in the Bay Area. Growing up, I really never talked about race like this. The St. Louis area is very segregated. It’s like you’re black or you’re white—even non-black people of color seemed to “pick a side,” if you will. And I liked things that black people weren’t supposed to like, like computers, video games, and anime. I took advanced classes in junior high and high school where there were only a handful of black kids, in a school that was like 50% black. And then I had this super light skin, eyes, and hair that somehow made me a target for some black kid bullies, saying I stuff like I wasn’t even an Oreo (an insult saying someone is black on the outside, white on the inside), that I was just an other.

So, by the time I started college, I was perfectly happy being like “fine, they don’t think I’m black, whatever. I’m just my own thing.” Which was so weird, because my dad is Black, and my mom is technically mixed with White but identifies as Black. So at home, I was Black but at school I felt too intimidated to say I was Black. So that’s why I think I’ve had this epiphany in the last few years where I’m like, no I am Black too. The 23andme test was like the final bit of ammo I needed. I’m 68% African. I may be mixed with other things, but that is my proof. It’s what made feel like I can claim my blackness, even though I’m on the lighter side of the spectrum of American Blackness.

“I feel like I’ve met maybe one or two in passing, but I’ve definitely never worked with or had a friendship with another black woman designer. Obviously I don’t want to be friends with someone just because we have a similar ethnic background—that’s shallow. But it does make me sad to knowing I have no black designer friends—male or female. That’s weird to me. I know there’s black women designers out there. There has to be. But where are they? If there are no black women designing the apps and sites that so many people use, then that voice isn’t being presented or considered in the design. Are things being designed with black women in mind? Or Latina or Hispanic women? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

I know my friends and even family aren’t aware of these internal identity struggles I have. So, I know sometimes I’m more sensitive about making people accept that I am a valid form of Blackness. Which sounds really weird because at the same time if you talked to me ten years ago I would be like, “No, I’m not black. Black people don’t accept me and so I don’t accept them.”

And I know I don’t face the same level of discrimination that comes with darker skin. I also know that light skin privilege exists. I feel like I’m in a very interesting place today and definitely this is like—I’ve never even talked about this with anybody like before. I feel so comfortable discussing this with you [chuckles], but now that you asked that question, all of the feelings that I had before about how I never really felt like I could proudly say that I’m a black person. But now, I do feel like that and sometimes I’m almost like beating that fact over people’s heads because I’m finally like comfortable saying that. But, that’s only around friends. When it comes to work, I don’t really like to talk about race because like I said, I’m always worried about the reaction I’ll get.

I’ve talked a lot with people about how like the way that they grew up and how it impacts like how they are in work environments and stuff like that. For some people, it manifests in now wanting to like minimize conflict and that sort of thing. So I’m curious how like you’re upbringing you think affects like how you deal with stuff in the workplace.

I would agree with that for sure. I think people from the Midwest tend to like be really nice up front, because that’s just how you’re supposed to be—neighborly and super accommodating. And so I definitely have that quality, but even in my own home growing up, I was always the very quiet one. But that said, I feel like as I’m getting older, finding my voice, and becoming more comfortable in myself, I definitely am getting better at speaking out when I don’t like something. But I do sometimes catch people off guard when I don’t like something because I usually am so easygoing. I naturally want people to get along and want there to be harmony and balance. But when I do have to confront someone over something I have to psyche myself into it. Like I said about the Lyft driver guy, like I could have passively given him a bad review, but I still felt bad doing that. I was thinking “Oh but he has a hard job too and maybe he had a bad day.”

I have a very similar temperament. I’m just now learning to stand up for myself too—not letting everything slide.

That’s my biggest thing. I’ve always struggled with microaggressions, even before I knew what they were called. They have happened to me my whole life and I have typically just let them slide. I felt like at some point, I’d eventually reach a breaking point over it so that’s why I felt I had to get better at not letting them go. But standing up for myself—even if it’s not confronting someone in the moment—that’s my personal goal is to be able to do that.

I honestly still can’t.

It’s hard. One of my current goals is to, especially with someone I care about, is to call them out on it if they say something that isn’t cool. For all scenarios, even when it’s not something that directly relates to me. Especially in work situations, where I’m like, “I’m cool with you and we’re friends, but you can’t say that kind of stuff about women or make jokes about someone’s body or sexuality or anything like that.” Being in the Bay Area, sometimes I feel like I’m working with a lot of immature man children. Like a designer I worked with compared an Asian interview subject, specifically her voice and laugh, to a yellowface character from a sketch tv show. This was during an interview round table session, in front of other senior people and the recruiter. No one said anything. Like, he was a senior team member and he was openly making jokes like that. I wish I had said something, you know? When I think back to stuff like that I always feel a kind of pang of regret, like “I should have said something.”

Based on all of your experiences, what would you look for in a future job?

That’s something I’m thinking about a lot now. I have separate buckets of criteria for what I’m looking for in future roles. Like is it a job where the product is  making a difference in people’s lives, helping somehow? Is it a job where I am being fulfilled personally? Is the team diverse? So far, the jobs I’ve had have been really good for personal growth and career growth, but they haven’t matched the other criteria as much. And for the second criteria bucket, for a future job I definitely would love to do something related to like my hobbies or interests. Like I have been studying Japanese for almost a decade now. So I would love to do something with Japanese in my career so it feels like it’s not just a hobby and something that I’m actually using everyday.

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What really excites you? What frustrates you?

I think what’s really exciting is that the things we work on in tech are so normal for everyone, even those outside of the tech world now. Actually, I just got back from Bahrain last week. My friend is from there and I went for her wedding. In Bahrain, Instagram was everywhere. And it was so crazy think that this product that was originally created by a small team in the same city where I live is touching so many people’s lives across the world. Like storefronts had their Instagram names on the sign below the store’s name, like that’s how big it is there.

But what scares or frustrates me is like stuff like bullying, or how tech can give hatred such a prominent platform.

“Diversity and inclusion just isn’t a concern for most people in tech. For example, if you’re happy and comfortable with your design team being homogenous, then you’re probably not going to feel challenged to make it diverse unless somebody points out, ‘Hey, this is a problem.'”

Also, it seems that now people are getting so hung up on online relationships that they don’t know how to have offline relationships anymore. I just watched Master of None and all those things he’s talking about are things that I am witnessing friends go through. Like people don’t know how to have relationships. They’re so worried because there’s like 5,000 people they can date via an app. They don’t want to settle and things like that. So that kind of scares me… And I’m a technology optimist.

A lot of people are scared of the Big Brotherness Google a lot, but I’m the person who’s like, “Google, take my data. You help me get to meetings on time; you help me not get lost. You can have all my data.” But I’m always a little worried that the era of optimism and innocence with the Internet is gone. People are more nefarious and don’t have the best intentions with your data out there. So that’s another thing I think is really big for tech right now is security. Now that the internet is more mature, we’re starting to really see more standards now. From a product development standpoint, maybe you can’t move fast and break things—to quote Facebook—but now users are more aware about their data. So you have to spend more time making sure your product is safe and compliant. So I think it’s nice that we are self-regulating things, but I don’t want tech to get too regulated. The Internet has always been a special place with unlimited creativity. Overall, tech is very exciting right now. So that’s kind of the cool part, witnessing it all.

How do you think tech can be more accommodating to diverse perspectives in design?

That’s something that I think about a lot. I really think it goes down to getting people involved early. I’ve met people here who have a lot of privilege, but they don’t realize it. And it’s very much a buddy system in tech where one person gets into a company, and then they only refer their friends and others in the social bubble. And because they don’t have a diverse friend group, the company’s demographics become very uniformed. Many people seem threatened by the idea of forcing diversity, but I think it is good to have someone at an executive level who is tasked with increasing diversity and making workplaces inclusive to all kinds of people.

Diversity and inclusion just isn’t a concern for most people in tech. For example, if you’re happy and comfortable with your design team being homogenous, then you’re probably not going to feel challenged to make it diverse unless somebody points out, “Hey, this is a problem.” I do feel lucky that at my current job we do have some diversity in the sense that there we have people of color on the team, and it’s mostly women. But we’re just a small company, and no one’s looking to us as a design leader in the industry compared to places like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google. And from what I’ve seen, those teams aren’t diverse.

“Black Twitter, a lot of the young people on there, they’re hilarious and amazing and I love it, but how many of the young kids participating are going to think, “I want to get a job doing something related to this?” I don’t think many are because it’s not being presented as something that they can be apart of. These platforms need to reach out early because that’s their audience right there.”

InVision just had a documentary they did I think last year or a couple of months ago, and it was like the top designers disrupters in the industry. Not one person of color was in there, I think. Maybe there one woman on the list. Stuff like that. People aren’t doing it on purpose. I think most of the people in these companies just don’t have very diverse professional and personal groups, so they likely couldn’t seek out diverse voices even if they wanted to. But if no one’s calling it out, it’s not going to change.

We also need to go into primary and high schools and get kids involved earlier. And not just coding—I think that introducing design as career options for underrepresented groups is important too. Because the kids—Twitter, for example. Black Twitter, a lot of the young people on there, they’re hilarious and amazing and I love it, but how many of the young kids participating are going to think, “I want to get a job doing something related to this?” I don’t think many are because it’s not being presented as something that they can be apart of. These platforms need to reach out early because that’s their audience right there. If you have a diverse user base, but the people creating the product aren’t, then you’re going to have some problems eventually. Tumblr had a problem, actually, awhile ago where they censored some popular tag, flagging it as not safe for work or something? I don’t remember, but it impacted a huge chunk of Tumblr’s user base. A lot of marginalized groups that feel like they can find their place or community on Tumblr, but suddenly they’re being treated different by the app developers. So now they don’t trust the app, and it’s perceived value for the user goes down. If only there had been one person, one voice on the team that could have been like, “Hey, this isn’t such a good idea.” That could have been avoided.

That’s why you need diverse teams. My hope is that as the internet generation grows up, we start seeing more diversity. I hope that tech becomes less of a “bro club.”

“I would love to stay in San Francisco for the next five years but realistically, I can’t. And I know I am speaking of a place of total privilege, as a tech worker in San Francisco. I can’t imagine how hard it was if I was still working retail or if I was working as an artist. I worry that life in San Francisco is not sustainable, so I really don’t know where I’ll be in five years.”

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

Oh gosh. Well as much as I love San Francisco, it’s really different now compared to when I moved here. I moved from Lower Haight to live in the Outer Sunset by the by the beach in 2014. I love living by the beach, but we truly only moved there because it was the cheapest place to find a bigger apartment at the time. But now getting downtown for work is such a hassle. I would love the ability to live closer to downtown, but I am not comfortable with how high rents are here. I would love to stay in San Francisco for the next five years but realistically, I can’t. And I know I am speaking of a place of total privilege, as a tech worker in San Francisco. I can’t imagine how hard it was if I was still working retail or if I was working as an artist. I worry that life in San Francisco is not sustainable, so I really don’t know where I’ll be in five years. I hope I’m still working as a designer, but likely it’ll be in a different area. I’ve heard that L.A. has a “Silicon Beach,” and I know there is a “Silicon Prairie” somewhere in the Midwest, although I see myself on a coast. I just hope that wherever I am in five years, I am making user experiences that are helpful to someone.

“You really have to be very self-driven because there are times where it seems that no one’s going to help you. You really do have to be self-driven, which I know can be hard, especially when you’re young. But when you’re competing with very privileged people for highly desired jobs, you can’t afford to wait around—you have to create opportunities by showing others your talents and interests.”

My last question for you would be, what advice would you have to people from similar backgrounds who are hoping to get into tech?

You really have to be very self-driven because there are times where it seems that no one’s going to help you. You really do have to be self-driven, which I know can be hard, especially when you’re young. But when you’re competing with very privileged people for highly desired jobs, you can’t afford to wait around—you have to create opportunities by showing others your talents and interests. When I got that job at my first startup, if I had waited for someone to ask me, “Well what do you want want to do besides admin work?” I don’t think that day would have come. Instead, I was like, “I know how to code. You guys need someone to make these internal pages. Do you want me to do?”

Another piece of advice is, as a person of color, people may look down on you sometimes or have lowered expectations. It hurts, but you have to say, “You know what, I don’t care about you. I’m going to give it 110% and prove you wrong.”

And finally, if you’re feeling alone, go online for support! Learn very early how to efficiently use Google. Search engines are your best friend. You can learn the basics by getting on free sites like Codecademy for code or UXPin for design. There are also tons of design and code communities out there, from Twitter to StackExchange to Quora to Reddit. It can be lonely and frustrating to work in tech, and it can be a lot of hard work, but overall it’s such an interesting and exciting place to be.

“It can be lonely and frustrating to work in tech, and it can be a lot of hard work, but overall it’s such an interesting and exciting place to be.”

]]> /tiffany-taylor/feed/ 0 /arman-nobari/ /arman-nobari/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2016 05:19:46 +0000 http://techies.wpengine.com/?p=107 Tell me a bit about your early years and where you come from.

I come from Sacramento, California. I come from a mixed-race, mixed-identity household, and that set me up for a really open view [chuckles] growing up. I’ve always been into creative things, but never really honed in on it or went to any kinds of young art schools or anything like that. It was only through being diagnosed with cancer that I even discovered design or anything that I’m doing now.

“It was only through being diagnosed with cancer that I even discovered design or anything that I’m doing now.”

That is wild. How old were you?

I was 14.

Walk me through that: getting diagnosed and discovering design at the same time, how does that even work?

I went to the doctor after having some discomfort in my neck for a few months, and then carried on about my business like nothing was wrong. Initially, I was diagnosed with a lymph node infection, so I just went to school. After a couple more days though, they retested the sample and it turned out that I had cancer—so they abruptly pulled me out of school out of nowhere. My mom was like, “We need to go to the hospital right now. Don’t worry about class. Don’t worry about any of that.” And I go there and they sit me down and say, “Hey, you have stage three Burkitt’s lymphoma. We need to start chemotherapy immediately.”

How does a 14 year old even know what that means?

I don’t know. I was on my way to lunch and then took the detour. So then I started chemo the next day, and it was pretty intense. I had to shave my head, I lost the rest of my hair, couldn’t keep food down—I was throwing up pretty much every day. And then one day, I was laying in the ICU—isolated because I had zero white blood cells due to treatment—and I saw the little icons to adjust the bed angle up and down. They stood out to me because I could understand them but they didn’t have any words. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t really talking to people—I was in my head a lot and I started asking myself, “What’s the thing that lets me understand what this does? Like why can I read this symbol? It’s not a hieroglyph, it’s not a word, but why do I know what it’s doing. Like what’s that magic or that secret sauce behind understanding symbols?” And then I started researching things like ISOTYPE and iconography, and then that led me down the rabbit hole of digital design and now here I am.

“After a couple more days though, they retested the sample and it turned out that I had cancer—so they abruptly pulled me out of school out of nowhere. My mom was like, ‘We need to go to the hospital right now. Don’t worry about class. Don’t worry about any of that.’ And I go there and they sit me down and say, ‘Hey, you have stage three Burkitt’s lymphoma. We need to start chemotherapy immediately.'”

Wow. In a similar vein, did you know that you’d end up in tech, or when did you first get intrigued by that?

Working in tech kind of came as a really big surprise. The only reason I’m even working in tech is because a friend of mine who I knew, back from when I used to do graffiti in college, told me about some event that Google was holding and he said, “You should throw your hat in the ring and see if they pick you for it.” I was like, “Eh, I’m not going to get picked. I don’t have any art background or I don’t really even know how to use Photoshop, but I’ll do it.” So I applied for a thing called Google +20 at the recommendation of a graffiti artist in Australia. +20 was Google’s search for a top-20 selection of emerging creatives around the world, which teamed up for a hackathon, as part of Semi-Permanent LA. I pitched them a moonshot, and I was picked for it. From that, I met a lot of great designers at Google, Maud, and from Wieden+Kennedy. That introduced me to my first set of mentors and I decided to take it seriously, and that’s how I got my start in tech.

Since then, what are your proudest projects and what have been the highlights of your career?

I guess I’d consider my ‘career’ as starting before my first actual job in tech. There was one big challenge that I took a leap in, that was coming out of the +20 event with Google. I wanted to hold my own similar thing. I had just been introduced to the idea of moonshot thinking, and I was riding this high of like, “Nothing is impossible.” So I held a design sprint with Google on civic innovation when I was 22. Most of the mentors from the previous Google event came out to Sacramento to help me run the event. That kind of gave me the spark that I still kind of hold on to—that with enough planning and focus and determination… so far I’ve encountered nothing that’s impossible.

“It is a pretty big daily struggle. I’m still going through scares about, “Oh, my God. What is this bump?” Or, “This fever’s lasted too long.” I was at a gastroenterologist yesterday getting an ultrasound and a biopsy just because it’s such an ongoing concern.”

One of the mentors that came to the event—her name was Krista Sanders, and she was the design director at a company called Whistle. They make a GPS tracker for dogs. That’s where I still work now as the Sr. Visual Designer. Just getting to build that kind of trial by fire has just been one long, very drawn-out accomplishment, in my eyes.

What have you felt are your biggest struggles?

I think one of my biggest struggles is—and I talk pretty openly about how cancer has been the catalyst to why and how I became a designer—but it is a pretty big daily struggle. I’m still going through scares about, “Oh, my God. What is this bump?” Or, “This fever’s lasted too long.” I was at a gastroenterologist yesterday getting an ultrasound and a biopsy just because it’s such an ongoing concern.

Also coming from a self-taught background proved to be a huge challenge. I studied communication and mass media in college, and I took one design class once and decided to switch my major because I didn’t like how it was taught. But I found that I have to learn a lot of things really quickly when I found out I don’t know them because it wasn’t included in the self-taught curriculum of just learning Photoshop and Illustrator. There’s so much that I realize I don’t know that I have to be really agile in learning. It’s kind of an ongoing challenge, I kind of like it, but it is kind of tough at times.

Yeah. You had a freelance time in your career, right?

Going through college, one of the ways I made a living was doing commissioned artwork and freelance design. I met some interesting characters throughout the freelancing [laughter].

Would you want to go back to that or do you prefer what you’re doing now?

In freelancing?

Yeah.

I mean, I’ve always  I’ve had this idea of one day, just owning a studio and doing strictly client work on a more structured basis. I just don’t want to go back to how I was doing it previously [laughter].

“There’s no class to learn how to do graffiti. You just had to figure it out, and take your knocks, and your critiques. And people will cover your stuff with expletives, which is more in your face than a design critique, but in the same way that’s kind of really helped me be able to kill my darlings and focus on bettering my craft. I don’t get attached to things. Everything I’ve created since day one has been temporary, from graffiti to iterating in designs, so if we’re going to kill it and make something better, I’m all for it. I think it’s a strength [chuckles].”

Yeah, for sure. So, your background’s in graffiti, which I think is really cool. And how do you feel like that informs your work?

It showed me the underbelly of society—the good and the bad of it. It helps humanize the strangers out on the street, and it absolutely helped me empathize in things like user testing or doing emotional design. It’s also helped me really cut my teeth to some hard challenges. There’s no class to learn how to do graffiti. You just had to figure it out, and take your knocks, and your critiques. And people will cover your stuff with expletives, which is more in your face than a design critique, but in the same way that’s kind of really helped me be able to kill my darlings and focus on bettering my craft. I don’t get attached to things. Everything I’ve created since day one has been temporary, from graffiti to iterating in designs, so if we’re going to kill it and make something better, I’m all for it. I think it’s a strength [chuckles].

Have you had mentors or folks that you looked up to for inspiration on the way?

Yes, I think the core group of mentors that—that during Google+ came out to my little event that I held—I really looked up to them in such a serious way. They’ve made me the designer I am today. Among them are Mike Buzzard, Brynne Evans, Chris Messina, Christa Sanders and Chikezie Ejiasi. In each of their own ways, they each taught me so much about design and tech, building my soft skills and design chops. They helped to demystify my preconceptions about what I saw, at the time, as the ivory tower of tech.

“I was worried it would be a bunch of privileged, rich, Harvard-dropout types. While the stereotypical person in tech certainly exists, it’s not by any means the norm that I’ve experienced. From what I’ve seen, it’s people who are drowning in debt and struggling to make it by, and people who lost their previous jobs when the economy tanked, and who have real worries.”

What were your preconceptions? What were you worried about going into it?

I was worried it would be a bunch of privileged, rich, Harvard-dropout types. While the stereotypical person in tech certainly exists, it’s not by any means the norm that I’ve experienced. From what I’ve seen, it’s people who are drowning in debt and struggling to make it by, and people who lost their previous jobs when the economy tanked, and who have real worries.

How has being different—like coming from a graffiti community, having a diverse racial composition—how have those things been both an asset and a hindrance to you?

I’ve met a lot of people, between previous clients and other designers I’ve met, that have been pretty vocal with judgmental concepts about race. I’m Persian, and I have a lot of family from the Middle East. I went to a design meet-up, and I heard a couple designers right in front of me talking pretty offensively about people from the Middle East. Because perhaps they looked around and didn’t see anyone wearing a turban, they thought it was okay to talk like this. People say what they want to say when they think it’s okay. They’ll do a quick racial check around themselves, and then they can take the filters off. It’s made me a little bit more distrustful, or maybe a bit more cynical, of the design and tech community. For every bit that is the optimism I have, there’s a part that’s wanting to cautiously question who I’m talking to, or the people around me.

“I’m Persian, and I have a lot of family from the Middle East. I went to a design meet-up, and I heard a couple designers right in front of me talking pretty offensively about people from the Middle East. Because perhaps they looked around and didn’t see anyone wearing a turban, they thought it was okay to talk like this. People say what they want to say when they think it’s okay. They’ll do a quick racial check around themselves, and then they can take the filters off. It’s made me a little bit more distrustful, or maybe a bit more cynical, of the design and tech community. For every bit that is the optimism I have, there’s a part that’s wanting to cautiously question who I’m talking to, or the people around me.”

I talked to someone earlier today that spoke of the concept of “white enough.” Someone white enough that he passes for certain things, but also hears racial aggressions that probably wouldn’t be said in front of him otherwise.

It’s kind of turned into not so much a daily thing, but at least two or three times a week and that’s just in talking to the extended design community.

“One time I had a client very blatantly ask me, ‘Where’s your name from? Like ethnically?’ I’ve always dreaded any ethnic-related questions in interviews, and I’ve had a couple of times people break what’s acceptable to talk about in interviews and ask me what my ethnicity was in tech, just generally.”

That’s wild.

It sounds made up for so many reasons. I want to not believe it, despite having witnessed it.

It gets a little depressing after a while. One time I had a client very blatantly ask me, “Where’s your name from? Like ethnically?” I’ve always dreaded any ethnic-related questions in interviews, and I’ve had a couple of times people break what’s acceptable to talk about in interviews and ask me what my ethnicity was in tech, just generally.

Wow.  On the flip side of that, where do you find your support networks?

I find my support networks with designers who’ve been around the block a little bit more. Thinking back—it seems like everyone who’s been saying such extreme and inappropriate things has been earlier in their career—no more than 4 or 5 years into their career. Despite falling within that range, I find myself identifying and just appreciating more with how people who are closer to a decade or two into their career. Maybe it’s because all of them who chose not to clean up how they act, didn’t make it that far [chuckles].

“Thinking back—it seems like everyone who’s been saying such extreme and inappropriate things has been earlier in their career—no more than 4 or 5 years into their career. Despite falling within that range, I find myself identifying and just appreciating more with how people who are closer to a decade or two into their career. Maybe it’s because all of them who chose not to clean up how they act, didn’t make it that far [chuckles].”

Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah, same [chuckles].

Let’s see. Have we talked about motivators? We talked about mentors. I don’t know if we talked about motivators.

I don’t think we talked about motivators.

Kind of similar, but different. What motivates you, and what are the motivations behind your work?

To me, finding design inspired me with something to really fight through chemo for. I was so depressed and just mugging through everyday. It gave me something to really purpose myself towards. Ever since then, I’ve always had this greater idea – or greater purpose, or need – to just do massive amounts of good. And I’m really trying to refrain from saying the stereotypical, “Make the world a better place.” [laughter] That’s kind of become a trademarked term in Silicon Valley.

“Finding design inspired me with something to really fight through chemo for. I was so depressed and just mugging through everyday. It gave me something to really purpose myself towards. Ever since then, I’ve always had this greater idea – or greater purpose, or need – to just do massive amounts of good.”

There’s some genuine good work being done out there. I’d rather use design to solve problems that people can’t afford to not have solved. To me it’s not necessarily about calling a ride faster, but maybe how to get clean water. Or how to get food. Or the basic necessities to life. I think that kind of design, for me, is my greatest inspiration.

Do you think your background and life experience—do you think that feeds into that desire to affect greater the world than just here in Silicon Valley?

Absolutely. Even as a kid, I had a pretty broad world view just like having family in the Middle East but also being Native American. I think that’s really humanized a lot for me.

How do your friends and family feel about the work that you’ve done?

They love it. My current work at Whistle is a common point for a lot of friends and family. We all have rescued dogs, so it’s a huge motivator to design with those pups in mind.

“There’s some genuine good work being done out there. I’d rather use design to solve problems that people can’t afford to not have solved.”

It’s nice that you are designing something your family can use.

Yeah [laughter]. It was part of the reason why I was so excited to work at Whistle. It’s just really cool to build something for something that’s so close to my heart, and the hearts of my friends and family.

It’s cool to hand them a tech device and say, “Hey, I helped make this thing. Open your phone and I’ll show you how to use it.” It’s really nice.

That’s awesome.

It feels very tangible.

What do you think about the state of tech in general in 2016? What excites you about it, what frustrates you about it?

Whoa. [laughter]

Loaded question.

Yeah, a lot excites me. I think that there’s a very democratic change happening to how companies are founded, and how they are threatened by one another that lets the users ultimately win. I work with IOT devices—the Internet of Things—and the space is really starting to really feel validated. I see a lot of huge opportunity in connecting various devices, and letting them all interact with one another – especially in the medical field. Biometric sensors have a long way to go and I can think of personal times in a hospital bed being covered and tangled up in IV lines—could have been relieved by having everything be wireless and connected. [chuckle] It’s a pretty graphic image to think of, but imagine being lined up with IVs in your arms and then falling is the worst thing ever. IOT could make that fear never exist again. [chuckles]

“I can think of personal times in a hospital bed being covered and tangled up in IV lines—could have been relieved by having everything be wireless and connected.

Quite literally my worst fear.

One day, thanks to technology, no one will ever have to experience that fear come to life.

But I am curious, because when I—recently I had my first major surgery. When your appendix bursts you could die, and that moment was kind of getting struck by lightning for me. And my priorities have completely—they haven’t changed necessarily—but all this other little shit that used to take up mindspace doesn’t matter anymore.  And I’m curious how becoming so sick so early and almost losing your life—how do you feel like your perspective and your priorities are different than other young designers around you?

I feel like my priorities are definitely different than my peers. It’s going to sound like a super old dusty thing to say, but “fun” isn’t exactly what excites me about life or what I, in any way, feel the need to focus my time on. I’d much rather spend 36 hours a day building something that’s going to outlive me, because at any moment—very literally—bad news could come in. And your present self is the culmination of all your choices in the past. I want to make sure that whenever that ultimate day comes along, I’ve got a lot of shit that stays around after I’m gone.

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years? Do you think you’ll be in tech?

I think I’ll definitely still be in tech in five or ten years. Specifically in product design. Not entirely sure about still being in San Francisco. Nothing against the city—but I’ve traveled a lot my whole life—and I just love the idea of one day designing in Brooklyn or something, and one day designing somewhere in Colorado, or Portland, or Zimbabwe. Or Vietnam. [chuckles]

“I feel like my priorities are definitely different than my peers. It’s going to sound like a super old dusty thing to say, but “fun” isn’t exactly what excites me about life or what I, in any way, feel the need to focus my time on. I’d much rather spend 36 hours a day building something that’s going to outlive me, because at any moment—very literally—bad news could come in. And your present self is the culmination of all your choices in the past. I want to make sure that whenever that ultimate day comes along, I’ve got a lot of shit that stays around after I’m gone.”

I’m curious what advice you would give to folks from similar backgrounds—or folks that have been through similar struggles—that are in tech or hoping to get in.

“Don’t give up.” I don’t want to soapbox, but I’ve been through some pretty shitty experiences—I’ve gone through cancer, being robbed, debt, etc. But at the same time it’s been just as motivating because I firmly believe—and maybe this is just the optimist in me speaking—but I firmly believe people and life are intrinsically good. There’s such a bright light at the end of this tunnel. At the end of this career I want to look back and see so much cool stuff I’ve built. And that’s not going to happen if I let everything get to me, or if I get bummed out by material things. So I guess just focus on what’s really important if you’re looking back from the end of your life and let that guide you.

]]> /arman-nobari/feed/ 0 /erica-baker/ /erica-baker/#respond Tue, 29 Mar 2016 03:50:56 +0000 http://techies.wpengine.com/?p=178 Where are you from? What were your early years like and where did you come from?

I am, technically, from Germany. I was born in Germany because I’m a military kid, but I lived all over the place. My path was Germany, to New Mexico, to Miami, to Alaska, to South Carolina, back to Alaska, back to Miami, back to Alaska, then to Atlanta, then New York, then California. I have to look at the map in my head as I’m saying that [chuckles].

How’d you first get interested in tech?

When I was younger my mom had a computer in the house. She was in the Air Force, also, and she did combat plans. And she had the computer around, and I used to poke around on it. And this was before Windows even happened. I still very much remember the black and green screen. And then about 5th grade— I was poking around when I was little, just playing Carmen Sandiego and that sort of thing. In about 5th grade my teacher decided that I should go to this thing that was in the city because we were in Alaska by this time. And so I got in a taxicab and went to a city as a ten-year-old all by myself, which — I thought I was grown. But it was teaching kids how to use HyperCard, which is, I don’t know, very early precursor, predecessor, I guess, to the web. It didn’t connect, but it was the idea of linking things together, and that’s how you navigated it. So I learned that, and then I was like, “I love this. I want to do this.” And I was just so enamored with computers, and I just spent all the time I possibly could either reading books or on computers. And then I learned how to install things on computers. And I learned how to dabble in hacking computers—and then senior year in high school I took a zero hour class which is like a class before school started that was not for credit that was learning how to program calculators. TI-83s. So we wrote BASIC on calculators which was good times typing and pressing those little buttons. There was no keyboard. Oh, yeah. Writing code on those things is not fun, but I got that. I got that feel, got that passion for it. So I—

You went to school early for it!

Yeah. And I was writing and making websites when I was a teenager and that sort of thing. My Geocities site was legit [laughter].

But yeah, I had that and I was like, “All right! I want to do this for my job.”

So I went to school at the University of Miami and I was a CS major for a year and it was the worst thing I ever did. Going back to Miami was great, but going to school next to one of the best beaches in the world was not a good idea when you’re coming from Alaska. Because it’s like, “But the beach is there. Class? The beach is there.” Then, when your classes are horrible because you’re the only woman, or one of  a few women in your CS class, and also you’re the only black person or one of two black people, and definitely the only black woman in your CS class, it’s like, “I don’t want to go there. It doesn’t feel good. The professor sucks and also he looks at me like I shouldn’t even be there. He won’t even call on me when I raise my hand, and he acts like I’m wasting his time,” and I’m like, “I don’t like it.”  So I didn’t finish my CS major there. I left after my first year and went back to, the University of Alaska, switched to a degree program, an AS degree, micro-computer support, which they’ve changed to IT something or another. Finished that, and then started working for the University. I intended to get my bachelor’s but they were like, “Hey, 21 year old Erica, we’re going to pay you $45,000 a year. Into it?” I was like, “Yup. Into it. Give me the money.”

So that was your first foray into work.

That was it. Windows Domain Administrator for the University of Alaska Statewide Systems.

Amazing. And so walk me through the path from that to what you’re doing now? Take me through it.

Windows domain admin at the University of Alaska. I got married—that didn’t work out. Then I was like, “I’m getting the fuck out of Alaska.” I was like, “All right. I’m going to apply for any job in a warm place.” And I was like, “East Coast”, because that is where the rest of my family is.  My dad was in Florida at the time. I was like, “Okay, anywhere in the East Coast that’s warm: I’m there.” I applied for a network operations position at Home Depot’s headquarters. Got that. Moved my entire life to Atlanta in three weeks from Alaska, which was fun. Yeah. I was at Home Depot for a year—I did network operations and mobile desktop support—then switched to this company called Scientific Games because they were going to pay me more money to do desktop support. So I did that. While I was there, someone told me about this site called Craigslist. I was like, “What is even a Craigslist?” I was looking at Craigslist and there was a job opening for Google. I was like, “Google doesn’t advertise jobs on Craigslist. No one even knows what Craigslist is. Why would Google have their jobs there?” I applied for this job at Google and I thought it was fake. I thought it was pretend, right? “This is a scam. I’m going to use my throwaway email address because this is totally a scam, but I’m going to send them my resume. But I know this is not real.”, until I flew in for my onsite interview in New York. And at this point I’m like, “Okay, so this is not fake. This is for real. Let me put my game face on.” So I pull up to New York, put my game face on, got the job. Worked at Google for nine years. Started as a field tech—which is kind of desktop support plus plus, and then did Google TV for awhile because I’m really into TV—I like to watch TV a lot—and then I switched back to the corporate engineering organization, and then I switched to SRE,  Site Reliability Engineering.

After that I went to Slack, because I was like, “I can’t work at Google anymore. It’s horrible. It hurts my soul to work here. I’m gonna work somewhere that is either making a difference in the world, or a place where I can be happy.’ Slack was a place where I can be happy.

I’m assuming that in your nine years at Google— I kind of want to dig deeper into— hopping from department to department, how was that? What were some of the projects that you worked on? Hopefully there were some parts that were really exciting and appealed to you and that you’re proud of.

In Atlanta it was cool because it was a small office and there were a lot of people there and it was very diverse. This was the most diverse office I worked in my entire time at Google. Everybody was there. When I moved to the New York office, it wasn’t as diverse. Also I was in a cold place again. Bad choice [laughs].  But I worked on  my favorite projects there, which is when Google did the DoubleClick acquisition, I did the IT onboarding. I was responsible for making sure all 500 employees that we onboarded got all their stuff, like their hardware, their usernames. I had to set up a whole process to get 500 people through the onboarding process within two days.

But that project was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever, ever done in my life. It’s one of the most rewarding projects that I’ve ever done. And I only got to do that project because my manager switched to a female manager at the time, and she believed in me and was like, “Erica can do this. She’s going to do it.” I don’t think that any other manager would have taken that chance on me because it was huge and I really appreciate her. She’s one of my favorite people at Google. I hope she ends up running Google one day, she was great.

And I switched— when I left New York, when I came to Mountain View, I was an Exec Tech and that was interesting, being in a position to work with all the executives at Google is tricky, because they are in positions—or were in positions—where they felt like they could say whatever they want to say. They didn’t have to put any checks on what they said. One executive thought I was my office mate’s admin assistant, walked in and was like, “Is Frank here?” I was like, “No Frank’s not here.” He’s like, “Oh, well can you tell him I came by and take this message?” I was like, “Can I help you with something? Do you need technical support or something? Is there something I can bring you?” Like, “Oh, you can do that too?” I was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Oh, I just thought you were his admin assistant.” I’m like, “Word? Really? Really?!” So that was super frustrating. They just had no qualms about saying the most fucked up shit. One of the executive’s admins— I was sitting outside a board meeting, and she walks over to me—as I’m sitting outside of the board meeting—and she’s, “Are you security?” I’m like, “No. I’m sitting here in my not security uniform wearing my work dress clothes, because I’m sitting outside a board meeting waiting for them to tell me that they need support with something. No! Not security!” I was so pissed off about that, but that sort of thing happened all the time. It was interesting, it was never that overt in either Atlanta or New York. I didn’t have much issue in New York, aside from them passing me over for stuff that could help my career for white dudes. That was the only problem I had in New York. Nobody ever came up to me and was like, “I think you’re an admin,” or “You must be security, because what else would you be doing here.” Working with the exec support— like the project I worked on, like working with the exec assistants to help them get their jobs done, like writing one auth little tools for them to blast an entire department with emails to go on a ski trip. Neat little tools to help them— I don’t know, like migrate from Palm contacts to Google contacts because that was the thing that they had to do. That was fun. That was rewarding. Even though there was bad, there was that good. There were some good people I was working with.

Well, we’ve already touched on this a good bit, but what have been your biggest struggles?

Like those things that I told you about. People just assuming that because I am a black woman—the worst one is people who assume that I only got hired because of affirmative action or whatever. It’s like, “No. I came in and I destroyed the interviews, and that’s how I got hired. I’m really fucking smart. I don’t throw it around, but I’m in MENSA. I’m not dumb, but you want to assume just because you look at me, you see I have brown skin and I’m a woman that, somehow, I’m not worthy. Immediately, that’s your assumption, and that is the worst thing that I have to deal with always.

“People just assuming that because I am a black woman—the worst one is people who assume that I only got hired because of Affirmative Action or whatever. It’s like, ‘No. I came in and I destroyed the interviews, and that’s how I got hired. I’m really fucking smart.'”

I wrote this thing called “The Other Side of Diversity.” I had been going to therapy and I was like, “I need to work out and figure out why I’m so unhealthy.” I was writing things— there were so many other things that I wrote about my life that I posted on my personal blog, and this one thing was like, “This is going to be the thing I write about working in tech, what it feels like to be a black woman in tech.” Everybody’s like, “Oh, we need more women of color in tech,” but here’s what it actually feels like to be a woman of color in tech. I wrote it all down and then it got so much feedback and when I wrote it, I was like, “This is what it feels like for me, but I didn’t know that it was everybody. There were so many people who were like, “This is exactly my story, this has happened to me, all these things.” I was like, “You know what? I don’t need to put myself through this.” There are other options out there. I don’t need to be hurting myself because someone says, “Oh, Google is the best place to work.” P.S., not the best place to work at all. But there was just a moment where I was like, “You know what, I don’t need to be here. I can go somewhere else.” At that point, I was like, “I’m going to go somewhere else,” because staying here will literally make me sick. It will make me stressed out, and stress leads to sickness, and I’m not going to do it anymore. And so I left. Right? [chuckles]

It’s amazing you lasted nine years.

My family got a lot of pride out of me working at Google. I was the one who made it, and I didn’t want to let them down. After a while, I was like, “I need to do this for me.”

How’s life been at Slack?

So great. It’s just so different to work in a place where the focus on inclusion comes from leadership. At Google, Larry would sometimes say something about diversity when a bad thing happened, but he would never proactively be like, “We need to fix this. This is a problem for us. I care about this.” It was either a PR situation for him or it was that something bad happened and we need to make sure that people know that we care about the diversity. But at Slack, Stewart was just like, “Yeah, this is important. This is super important to me, and this is super important to this company. We need to be out ahead of this before we even become a big company. This is really fucking crucial. We can’t mess this up,” because he’s so big on fairness and justice and making sure that we don’t contribute to the problems in tech. And so just to have the different ethos at the top of the company affects so much. Every company should be run by a philosophy major.

“Just to have the different ethos at the top of the company affects so much. Every company should be run by a philosophy major.”

Tell me about whether or not you’ve had mentors or role models or even inspiration during your time in tech, or none at all?

None. No mentors. I guess maybe the lady I told you about who believed in me to do the project, that was the closest thing to a role model. I had something like a mentor for the last few months I was at Google, and she was pretty cool, but she was super busy, because everybody knew she was great, and so we rarely had time to meet up. Besides those two, from my 15 years in tech, I’ve not had a mentor, ever. People like to mentor people who look like them, and there’s nobody in tech who looks like me. Well not nobody, but there are very few people in tech who look like me. There are definitely very few within my line of work, like in operations and system administrations and that sort of thing.

Yeah, for sure. And your family’s not here, so I’m curious to know where you found early support networks.

Yeah, my mom was up in Yuba City and my sister is still up in Yuba City. My mom passed away in 2010, but my step-dad is still there, and my sister and her kids and husband are still there so, when I need to get away, that is where I go. But outside of going to see them, like there were no support networks here for me, until I decided that I needed to not be in the South Bay. Because there’s nothing there for me, like everybody there treated me like I was different, because I looked different, and so I felt different.  Oakland, it was like “Oh, hey, my people.” And I now have a great support network, I have so many friends and places I can go and get away from tech, which is important to me. I think that’s a good thing for everyone to have, an outlet to get away from tech.

How did you do it?

I just survived. I didn’t flourish. We have this thing at Slack called “thriving,” and I didn’t thrive, I survived. That’s how I did it. So glad I feel like I’m living again, versus existing.

What are your biggest motivators? What drives you?

Making sure my nieces and nephews have a good role model. My nieces and nephews’ mom and dad are great, but they aren’t in tech and my nieces and nephews don’t see that tech is a thing that someone can do. I want for them to be able to see me do these things. I want for them to see me achieve. I want them to know that it is something that they can aspire to. That’s a huge motivator for me. My work on diversity and inclusion, I am motivated by making sure that the industry gets better for people who come after me. Because I don’t want anybody else to have to experience what I experienced. Diversity and inclusion work is not my first choice. If I could be spending my free time doing stuff, I’d be doing genealogy all the time. That is what I love to do. But I work on diversity and inclusion because it’s super important. Right now I get to have this voice—people listen to me for some reason, and I have support at work to continue speaking about these things;and permission to say whatever I feel from the CEO of my company—which is super rare, Not everybody gets that. And it’s a huge privilege, and so I’m not going to waste that privilege. I want to use it to speak up so that we can make improvements. I think the first step is talking about what’s going on and then getting uncomfortable. It’s not going to be easy, right? Talking about sexism and racism is super hard, but I feel like we keep talking about it, people will get used to talking about it. And then we can move on to fixing it.

How do you feel about the state of tech in 2016?

I think we are doing major things and making major accomplishments and taking major steps forward in tech. So many innovations, so many new cool things out there. Tech itself is great. The social structures, I guess that have been built within tech, the diversity of Tech? Horrible. The way people behave in Tech, horrible. We’ve created this system wherein as long as you know how to write code, as long as you perform well in your job, you should feel free to say whatever you want to about whoever. Like that’s the system we’ve built, and that’s not so good.

“The problem in Tech is that nobody wants to acknowledge that because they want to believe that it’s a meritocracy. They want to believe that their hard work is what got them here like they’ve struggled and suffered for all this time and that’s how they got here instead saying, ‘Maybe you got here because that guy you knew in college he referred you for a job but he didn’t refer the black girl who was also in the same class who actually got better grades than you.'”

And also, people are so married to this idea of meritocracy and like “Oh Tech is a meritocracy,” and whatnot that they can’t get beyond that and see that Tech is just another part of the society we’re in and it is affected by systemic racism, systemic sexism, and all manner of injustice just like everything else.

The problem in Tech is that nobody wants to acknowledge that because they want to believe that it’s a meritocracy. They want to believe that their hard work is what got them here like they’ve struggled and suffered for all this time and that’s how they got here instead saying, “Maybe you got here because that guy you knew in college he referred you for a job but he didn’t refer the black girl who was also in the same class who actually got better grades than you.” They don’t think about that—it’s just like, “I worked hard to get here, so I deserve to be here.” And that’s— it’s really unfortunate that that’s a widespread belief, and it’s hard to change people’s thinking on that. They’re really really married to that idea that it’s a meritocracy and if we can convince some folks that it’s not and that there’s some systemic issues that we need to work on then I think we can move forward.

I think the idea that it’s not a perfect meritocracy threatens some people’s own credentials and it scares them.

Oh it definitely does, and I think that there are many people who are frightened of it.  Yes. They’re so scared of that. Because to consider that maybe you are not like this super smart, super special person, that got into tech…like that’s the story that they’ve been told, like at Google “we hire the BEST engineers in the world, only the best. We get all the best.” It’s the story that they’ve been spoon-fed and they get attached to that story, and to take that story away is just like NO. This legitimizes me. This makes me important, and to take that away is like, now they don’t have something to cling to, to show that they have value.

Yeah. I remember the moment where I became disillusioned. It was when I worked at this little YC startup, and I was so passionate about the product. I was obsessed with it. But I started seeing that it wasn’t about the products—for me it was about the product, but for them it wasn’t about that, it was about finding something that they could sell, or making something decent enough that they could sell. And then, it was about hiring another McKinsey alum to help them sell it through the connections that they all had from their networks and it was just like, “Oh, this isn’t about what I thought it was. This is about boys all sitting in a room together and selling stuff to each other.” And that was a moment where I was like, “Oh man, like, my high hopes and my naive ideas about what everyone was here for. It’s not what I thought it was.”

To have that moment of realization is hard.  Oh, I thought I was working in the best company in the world. Turns out, no—I believed the hype I drank the Kool-aid. But, no. I am sorry you experienced that. It’s frustrating.

How do you think that your background and life experience impacts the way that you approach your work?

I already spoke about being able to assimilate really easily, so that has impacted my life, But also when I was growing up I had this button that said question authority. And I believe that. I don’t know where I got it. I am pretty sure my mom never gave it to me, because my mom did not like when I questioned her. She was the authority person. But, you know, I strongly believed in questioning authority. And also there is a song in 1996-1997, in Biggie’s last album. It was “N-words bleed”. And the lyric that really stuck to me was “N-words bleed just like us. Picture me being scared of an N-word who breathes the same air as me.” And even though the language is wrong, and the song is about being in the streets, and murder and that sort of thing,that line for me, is like, “Oh right. That’s just saying that everybody out there is a person just like me. And I don’t need to be afraid of them because they’re just another person. They breathe just like me. They poop just like me. That CEO, or whatever, that I just said, “Hi” to or whatever, or emailed or asked the question or didn’t feel any qualms about talking to, that’s just another person. They just had different life experience than me and they got a little luckier than I did. And so that has helped me a lot in my career because, for some reason, people think that being able to speak to people in positions of power and authority— it’s like a magic trick or something. No. They’re just other human beings.

Let’s go back to Slack. As an outsider, I just feel like they’re leading the front, in terms of diversity and inclusion. And not just in quantitative ways, like everybody’s doing—posting the numbers or whatever, but hosting Deray at the office. All these little things. And Stewart not being afraid to speak up as an executive.

The head of diversity should be the CEO. CEO can have a deputy. It’s like, this is my deputy of diversity or whatever. But the CEO should be the person for whom all diversity reports  go to.  The CEO should be the person who is leading this charge.

This is the person who everybody has to report to about diversity. This is the person who will tell the company how the diversity is going — that sort of thing. Like, the CEO should be the person in charge, and they might say, you know, the deputy is going to take care of these parts, but you’re still answering to me about it, right? And so that is what I think should happen with CEOs. Sadly, it doesn’t happen. Companies just hire Heads of Diversity. And then, they think that’s all they need to solve the problem. Especially Twitter hiring Head of Diversity that was ineffective as a Head of Diversity in other companies.

“The head of diversity should be the CEO. CEO can have a deputy. It’s like, this is my deputy of diversity or whatever. But the CEO should be the person for whom all diversity reports  go to.  The CEO should be the person who is leading this charge.”

What would be a very easy next step for them to do?

Those quantitative numbers about how many people they have hired, that’s all about recruiting. They need to start focusing on retention and happiness. How are people at your company feeling? A great thing Google did just before I left is that they do these surveys every year called Googlegeist—they surveyed the entire company to see how they are feeling about working at Google. For the first time last year, they asked people, randomly selected groups of people to do a separate ends of the survey. And one of those was diversity related, like if you feel comfortable sharing your gender, if you feel comfortable sharing your ethnicity and then, you know, answer a few questions. And they found that people who were black people at Google, did not feel like they could succeed in the way that other people felt like they could succeed at Google. And that is a huge metric to be watched. That should be what they pay attention to. You’re hiring? Fine. But, to feel like you cannot succeed in your workplace is a problem. And they need to make sure that number is going up, right? So, companies can be tracking retention, how people feel included in ways that works for them. They should not be high-fiving just because their 2% went up to 3%. That’s terrible. High-five when your percentage matches the rest of The United States population. When you have, whatever the current percentage is, of black people in The United States at your company, then high-five yourself. Same for the Latinas and Latinos etc. Then you can high-five.

“That should be what they pay attention to. You’re hiring? Fine. But, to feel like you cannot succeed in your workplace is a problem. And they need to make sure that number is going up, right? So, companies can be tracking retention, how people feel included in ways that works for them. They should not be high-fiving just because their 2% went up to 3%. That’s terrible.”

What do you think tech can do better to keep talent from leaving?

Understand first that your talent is leaving because your culture is horrible. Come to terms with it. Get really uncomfortable with it and then get comfortable with it and then fix it, right? Recognize that you’re going to have to do some work on your culture. You just can’t keep shoving people in like, “Oh, we’re going to just hire all these black people or these Latino people or these women. We’re just going to keep hiring and hiring, and that’ll fix it.” I feel like companies need to recognize that that’s a problem that they have and then work on it. Like I said, it’s like we’re looking at every little thing, and I feel like companies can look at every little thing. Like, “What is this here for?  Why are we playing ping-pong? What is this serving? Who is this serving? Who is this for?” That sort of thing. Every single aspect of your culture. Look at it with a fine-tooth comb. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to suck! People are not going to like it. But look at every single aspect of your culture with a fine-tooth comb and figure out what is not inclusive. What would feel weird for somebody to participate in? Maybe that trip to the gun range, maybe not the best idea for a team off-site. You know, that sort of thing.

“Understand first that your talent is leaving because your culture is horrible. Come to terms with it. Get really uncomfortable with it and then get comfortable with it and then fix it, right? Recognize that you’re going to have to do some work on your culture. You just can’t keep shoving people in like, ‘Oh, we’re going to just hire all these black people or these Latino people or these women. We’re just going to keep hiring and hiring, and that’ll fix it.’ I feel like companies need to recognize that that’s a problem that they have and then work on it.”

Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?

Hopefully alive? [laughter] You know what, I don’t know. If Slack is still here, I’ll still be here. But if Slack is not here, I won’t be. Slack is my last stop.

Unless I start my own company— which I don’t see happening. Everybody keeps trying to push me towards that, and I’m like, “I don’t have an idea that is good enough to start my own company.” But unless I start my own company, Slack is my last stop in this industry. I will go back to the East Coast and work on whatever. Photography maybe. I don’t know. Something on the East Coast and chill, and not be in this terrible, terrible environment. Unless it gets better. If it gets better, I might stick around, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in five to 10 years. Maybe 20.

“I think the first step is talking about what’s going on and then getting uncomfortable. It’s not going to be easy, right? Talking about sexism and racism is super hard, but I feel like we keep talking about it, people will get used to talking about it. And then we can move on to fixing it.”

What advice do you have for those from a similar background who want to get into tech?

If they’re in tech, recognize that you’re not alone, find your people. There may be only a few at your company, but there are many of us out there not in your company. Figure out how to get to your people. There are women in tech groups, and women of color in tech groups, and people of color in tech groups all over FaceBook. And there’s Slack groups or whatever. Find your people, and I can’t even stress how important that is because it gives you a place to go when you feel like there’s nowhere to turn. Try not to get discouraged. I’m not going to tell people not to rage-quit because I’ve been right on the cusp of doing that many times. But try not to get too discouraged, and if you do get too discouraged, tell your people. If you found them, well they can help you out with that. Don’t be afraid to speak up, and if you feel like you don’t have a voice and  you need your story to be told I’m happy to tell stories for anybody. If you need to be anonymous I’m happy to do that. For people who aren’t in the industry already, make sure you really want to be here. You have to really want to be here to deal with all this shit. Like if I did not love computers as much as I do I would not still be here. If I did not love tech as much as I do I would not be here. I’d be off somewhere trying to get a law degree or something because that was what I wanted before I discovered computers, I wanted to be a lawyer, so that’s what I’d be doing. But I love Tech so much, that I can’t let go of it. But make sure you really want to be here, because that love is what’s going to keep you here when someone tells you that you shouldn’t be here. 

“Try not to get discouraged. I’m not going to tell people not to rage-quit because I’ve been right on the cusp of doing that many times. But try not to get too discouraged, and if you do get too discouraged, tell your people. If you found them, well they can help you out with that. Don’t be afraid to speak up, and if you feel like you don’t have a voice and  you need your story to be told I’m happy to tell stories for anybody.”