Why don’t we start at the beginning. Tell me about your early years and where you come from.

I grew up on a farm in Oregon in the 1970’s-80’s. My dad built a computer for me and my siblings in the late 70s when I was in grade school, and I still have it. It has a wooden case. You can’t plug it into a TV anymore, because that sort of TV doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s how I first learned how to program using BASIC. It had a cassette drive that connected to it to store and load data. I would write one program at a time or I’d copy a program out of a book. Then I’d be able to play PacMan or Caterpillar, or some game I wrote, for hours and days. That computer was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I went to college at University of Washington in Seattle, and by then I had gone through a Commodore 64 and a couple of Macs: first an Apple II and then a Mac Classic. I finished degrees in statistical computing and economics at University of Washington in 1993, where there were very few women in programming and statistics.

“I grew up on a farm in Oregon in the 1970’s-80’s. My dad built a computer for me and my siblings in the late 70s when I was in grade school, and I still have it. It has a wooden case. You can’t plug it into a TV anymore, because that sort of TV doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s how I first learned how to program using BASIC. It had a cassette drive that connected to it to store and load data. I would write one program at a time or I’d copy a program out of a book. Then I’d be able to play PacMan or Caterpillar, or some game I wrote, for hours and days. That computer was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

After university I went to work for a startup cell phone company called McCaw Cellular. I was a statistician and used neural nets to do predictive modeling. I worked in the database marketing group and did analysis to predict whom to target with marketing based on how they were using their cell phones (analog phones at that time—bricks and flip phones). I was analyzing data with a Sun SPARCstation running HNC neural network software and SPSS. The SPARCstation was one of the fastest desktop computers at that time and now they are essentially doorstops—they didn’t even have 1GB of RAM and they were considered fast and powerful. [laughter]

McCaw Cellular owned the Cellular One networks in the United States and they were the largest cellphone company in the early 90’s. While I worked there, they were bought by AT&T and became a part of AT&T Wireless Services. About the same time that AT&T was buying McCaw, NCSA came out with Mosaic—the first graphical web browser. Mosaic turned into the first version of the Netscape web browser. I decided that creating things in HTML was more interesting than analyzing data and I looked for a job in San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco in 1996.

I worked for a small web company—now a huge web company called Organic Online—as their QA Manager. I left Organic to work for a startup called Electric Minds. That startup died about four months after I started there. It was 1997 and there was a lot of demand for freelance work. I started doing consulting work and then started my own consulting company.

“During the 17 years that I was the head of my own company, I would often go to meetings with prospective clients. If I brought along a man, who worked with/for me, then often the prospective client would assume he was my boss. Repeatedly—that experience never faded over all of those years.”

I named the company OTIVO and we provided a variety of research and testing consulting services—browser compatibility testing, automated testing, accessibility testing, server performance and load testing, user research and user testing. The company grew from just me to 30 people and then the NASDAQ crashed in the spring of 2000. By the end of 2000 the company had reduced to 5 people, as the dotcom bubble burst and hundreds of companies (including our clients) died.

I ran that consulting company for 17 years until I started at Dropbox about two years ago. I wanted to work with a team in a larger company and be a part of projects that lasted longer than a consulting role.

During the 17 years that I was the head of my own company, I would often go to meetings with prospective clients. If I brought along a man, who worked with/for me, then often the prospective client would assume he was my boss. Repeatedly—that experience never faded over all of those years.

“I’m acutely aware that diversity in the tech industry has progressed very little since I first started working in tech in 1993. It was mostly men then, and now, 23 years later, it’s still mostly men, particularly in engineering, product, design, and sales.”

In the fall of 2013 I put together a resume (which I hadn’t done since 1996), let everyone know I was on the market, and researched how to interview for jobs.

I joined Dropbox in May 2014 and started to grow a research team.

Tell me more about your philosophy behind growing a diverse research team at Dropbox.

I’m acutely aware that diversity in the tech industry has progressed very little since I first started working in tech in 1993. It was mostly men then, and now, 23 years later, it’s still mostly men, particularly in engineering, product, design, and sales. As I was interviewing dozens and dozens of people for research positions (to grow the team), I made a plan in my mind to create a diverse team.

A lot of people think that it’s hard to hire a diverse team in tech. It’s not. I think it’s all about where you’re looking for hires and how you’re evaluating their qualifications. If you’re relying on referrals, then you’re going to get more people like you. If you’re only looking at people from specific universities or specific companies/industries, then you’ve narrowed your pool of potential hires to a small group (who are probably fairly homogenous).

Look outside your networks, look outside specific roles, take a second or third look at a resume that you dismiss. If you don’t know the school or the company or the industry or the roles, do some research. Often you will find smart creative people who are a good fit for the role from other industries/companies/universities/roles who can apply their experience and skills very adeptly to the role you’re hiring.

“A lot of people think that it’s hard to hire a diverse team in tech. It’s not. I think it’s all about where you’re looking for hires and how you’re evaluating their qualifications. If you’re relying on referrals, then you’re going to get more people like you. If you’re only looking at people from specific universities or specific companies/industries, then you’ve narrowed your pool of potential hires to a small group (who are probably fairly homogenous).”

I hired a very diverse team of 20 people—millennials to genX (genX is “old” in the current tech industry), from a lot of different backgrounds, including different schools, races, genders, and cultures, and from a variety of different companies and industries. Some with kids (which is also not common in the current tech industry), and some queer and some straight. That team is the most diverse team at Dropbox.

Then, in February 2016, I changed my role and moved to the Marketing team. Most of the team I created has stayed in Design.

“Look outside your networks, look outside specific roles, take a second or third look at a resume that you dismiss. If you don’t know the school or the company or the industry or the roles, do some research. Often you will find smart creative people who are a good fit for the role from other industries/companies/universities/roles who can apply their experience and skills very adeptly to the role you’re hiring.”

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t joined the tech industry. In college, I was recruited to become an actuary (because I scored high on their tests). At the time, the biggest reason I didn’t consider that job is because I was told I would have to wear a dress or skirt to work. My pants and jacket weren’t acceptable office wear. That was only 20-some years ago. While the tech industry is great for individuality of expression as far as not caring whether most men or women wear dresses or suits, it doesn’t mean that women achieve the same heights of leadership. It’s disappointing, to me, that it’s 20-some years later and that great individuality of expression hasn’t bridged the diversity divide, and we’re still in some ways talking about the same (or even bigger) issues with diversity in tech.

How do you think the culmination of your background and life experience impacts your approach to research and building teams?

When you do research for a product that has hundreds of millions of people using it, then you know that those people have two things in common: (1) they’re human and (2) they’re using some device to access your product. If you’re a team that’s doing research to represent the people who use your product (or, by same logic, if you’re a product manager or designer or engineer building/designing product for those people) then it helps to have a team that represents those hundreds of millions of people.

“The more diverse your team is, the more you’ll empathize with a wider swath of the people who use your product, and the better your product will become for the people who use it. When the team gets together to meet, then there are a lot of different life experiences and perspectives to improve the discussion.”

The more diverse your team is, the more you’ll empathize with a wider swath of the people who use your product, and the better your product will become for the people who use it. When the team gets together to meet, then there are a lot of different life experiences and perspectives to improve the discussion.

For example, everybody can look at a chair and say it’s blue, but if you ask if about the chair’s style, then everyone will use their subjective experiences and knowledge and data to say something different about the chair.

Of course, you can do amazing work and create excellent products with a homogenous group. However, I’ve worked with hundreds of different teams throughout my career and have noticed that more ideas are created with a group that has more differences. It’s simply because how you experienced life lends differently to the work that you do.

For example, I grew up on a farm, you grew up in a city, I went to a public school, you went to a private school. Those experiences will give both of us different viewpoints and perspectives that will give me ideas and you ideas we wouldn’t have thought of on our own.

It’s important to show up and be yourself in tech, particularly if you aren’t a part of the majority. We all have limited time here on the planet and we’re all better for the experience of working with and collaborating with and hanging out with people who are not like us. I learn better and work better when I’m around people who aren’t all just like me.

“Of course, you can do amazing work and create excellent products with a homogenous group. However, I’ve worked with hundreds of different teams throughout my career and have noticed that more ideas are created with a group that has more differences. It’s simply because how you experienced life lends differently to the work that you do.”

I’m a middle aged lesbian, and a mother, so it’s super easy, in the tech industry, to work with people who aren’t just like me (middle aged lesbians with kids are usually a minority in tech). But I could, of course, go back to consulting, or find a company that has more people like me, and be familiar and comfortable and, quite frankly, be completely bored.

Our experience at work is made better when we work with and talk with people who didn’t have similar life/work/education experiences. We find that we all have human experiences in common that aren’t necessarily defined by demographics or university affiliations.

In your personal experience, what have been some of your biggest struggles in the industry, either as a woman or part of other minority groups?

There was an article in the New York Times recently about why young women aren’t identifying with Hillary Clinton and there was one piece in that article that really struck me. It’s that young women in college haven’t been in a workplace yet so they don’t identify with somebody who talks about workplace struggles because that’s not something that’s happened to them yet. But women over 30 tend to identify more with Hillary Clinton because, when she talks about issues in the workplace, those women have already been in the workplace long enough that they’ve seen things happen, and they realize, “Oh, yeah. This is true.” That was me in my 20’s—I’d had a few experiences of gender discrimination but I wasn’t yet a parent and I hadn’t yet had decades of work experience and micro-aggressions and discrimination based on my gender.

I’ve noticed, anecdotally, that it’s sometimes more difficult for women to get promoted because it’s the men who are doing the promoting and they tend to promote other men. I’ve noticed this across dozens of companies where I’ve consulted or worked—not any specific company. The people who are in charge of hiring or promotions often tend towards hiring and promoting the people who look like them.

“I’ve noticed, anecdotally, that it’s sometimes more difficult for women to get promoted because it’s the men who are doing the promoting and they tend to promote other men. I’ve noticed this across dozens of companies where I’ve consulted or worked—not any specific company. The people who are in charge of hiring or promotions often tend towards hiring and promoting the people who look like them.”

This means that if you’re a woman you have to do more to make yourself stand out and be noticed, because you don’t just automatically stand out and be noticed because you don’t look like the people who are making the decisions. That was the theme in the article about Hillary Clinton. In my experience, most women I’ve worked with have experienced or heard stories of seeing men get promoted and recognized when the women are doing exactly the same work. I would love to see someone do research and put hard and fast numbers on this but, since this happens inside of groups and teams, you can’t easily do research on that.

You’ve stuck it out and there are positives to your career. And you’ve done a lot of amazing things. I’m curious, what’s the glue that holds you in place? What are the things about your work that really continues to activate you and what else is keeping you here? Is it support networks? Has it been mentors?

I love the tech industry for the challenges and problems to solve. There’s always more to do than time in the day and it forces prioritization and organization. I like working on a team of people who are working on different projects. I started to get lonely towards the end of the 17 years of running a consulting company. It’s more social, with more opportunities to get to know different perspectives, in a larger company.

I saw a friend of mine recently who has also been running his own consulting company for a while, and he asked me, “Do you miss it?” And I immediately responded, “Absolutely not.” As much the continued diversity issues in tech frustrate me, I still love working in tech.

I like it for working on problems and solving things, or not solving things, or creating things and failing, or creating things and succeeding. It’s much more interesting to me than the consulting work I did where I’d work with a company for four months, work on one thing and then leave. I like being in a more dynamic atmosphere. Tech gives you that, and other industries give you that too—medicine gives you that, law can give you that, politics gives you that. There are a bunch of different types of work that give you that.

“There’s a stereotype of women, of moms and of grandmas, of not being tech-savvy (though most women over 70 are quite tech-savvy). Also there’s an assumption that I often hear, that if you’re over 40 or over 50 then you aren’t a tech native and you probably have a hard time with technology compared with a millennial. I’m not offended. When I hear this (at least once/week) then I point out that I’m one of billions of people in my age group who know how to do a lot more than just turn their phone on and off.”

Back to ageism, I’m curious to know if you have started experiencing any. You joked about being people’s mom’s age, but I’m curious to know if you’ve started experiencing what might be microaggressions, or if you’ve been hearing about the same kind of things from your peers, that sort of thing.

If you glance at me you might not think that I’m in my mid-40’s, so people usually think that I’m in my 30s and say things to me like, “We need to make this easy enough for moms to use. Moms can’t usually figure out something like this.” I’ll let them talk some more about their ideas and then I’ll mention that I’m a mom. Or someone will say, “only young people do this, like you and me” And I’ll ask, “What’s young? I’m in my mid-40’s.” Being tech-savvy or using a lot of tech is not only the domain of people under 35 (any more).

There’s a stereotype of women, of moms and of grandmas, of not being tech-savvy (though most women over 70 are quite tech-savvy). Also there’s an assumption that I often hear, that if you’re over 40 or over 50 then you aren’t a tech native and you probably have a hard time with technology compared with a millennial. I’m not offended. When I hear this (at least once/week) then I point out that I’m one of billions of people in my age group who know how to do a lot more than just turn their phone on and off.

From a high level, how do you feel about the state of tech in 2016? What excites you about the future? What frustrates you and would you like to see change?

I wish someone would solve the video conferencing problem—video conferencing still does not work really well. I want a less bulky Android watch. The new ASUS zenwatch is smaller than the first one but still not slim and streamlined.

I anticipate some general anxiety about the tech industry because I think that we’ve already hit a bubble and we haven’t realized it yet. I fear we may see lots of companies dying and we are already seeing people leaving the city and getting laid off.  I hope this year doesn’t become as bad as I fear.

I’m also curious to see what happens with all of the contract work that people are doing because there aren’t good laws to protect contractors. A lot of tech companies have started up in the last few years that rely on contractors. I don’t know if it will happen this year or next year but it will happen sometime soon; either people will band together and unionize or they’ll start demanding higher wages or demand to be employees, or all of the above.

I believe and hope that automation and assistive robotics will become more integrated into our lives over the next 3-5 years.

“I anticipate some general anxiety about the tech industry because I think that we’ve already hit a bubble and we haven’t realized it yet. I fear we may see lots of companies dying and we are already seeing people leaving the city and getting laid off.  I hope this year doesn’t become as bad as I fear.”

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

Getting to know as many different types of people as possible will help you in any career, but it will particularly help you in tech, because tech is basically a network of people who will keep you and hold on to you if you belong to the group.

As soon as people know who you are—they know what your skills and experience are, they’ve worked with you, they’ve done something with you, they’ve enjoyed conversations with you—they will stick with you. And I think that that isn’t valued enough, and it certainly wasn’t valued by me when I was straight out of college or in my mid-20s. I just thought, “Whatever, I know everything, I can do anything, nobody will ever discriminate against me.”

Now I know it’s imminently important to show up, to get to know lots of different types of people and to be present and to talk and be true to myself. If I show up and I talk and I connect and I listen and I make conversation then I’m a whole person instead of a middle aged woman, a cute woman, a potential date, a young woman, whatever it is that you’re judged/labelled in the first couple seconds you’re seen.

“Now I know it’s imminently important to show up, to get to know lots of different types of people and to be present and to talk and be true to myself. If I show up and I talk and I connect and I listen and I make conversation then I’m a whole person instead of a middle aged woman, a cute woman, a potential date, a young woman, whatever it is that you’re judged/labelled in the first couple seconds you’re seen.”