Conversations for Change: NCWIT Pioneer in Computing Award Celebration

The 2021 vNCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award Celebration honors Dr. Glayds West, a pioneer in GPS technology. Be a part of a candid conversation on inspiring the next generation of technologists, hosted by NCWIT CEO and Co-founder Lucy Sanders alongside NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Community Engagement Manager Terina-Jasmine Alladin.

TRANSCRIPT

BRITTNEY: So, now I would like to welcome Dr. Lucy, oh, not Dr., she seems like a doctor, she’s so smart. Now I would like to welcome Lucy Sanders who is Co-founder and CEO of NCWIT to introduce the 2021 NCWIT Pioneer in Tech Award. Hi Lucy. We’re excited to have you on today.

LUCY: Well, hi, um, I hope you can see me and hear me.

BRITTNEY: Yes, we can.

LUCY: Oh, perfect. Well welcome everybody to one of my favorite events of the year, honoring the Pioneer in Tech. I don’t think I could do a better intro than what Dr. Lisa Cook just did, in terms of why it’s so important that we recognize the women who have come before us in terms of their technological innovations and contributions and why well because we can recognize them, they certainly deserve it. We can also learn from them, they can serve to inspire us and future generations and so at NCWIT we really believe in this fully and every year we look for an honoree and you know sometimes people go well we didn’t know who that was. And it’s so important that we get the message out that we have so many great innovators that need to be recognized in this way.

So today we’re honoring Dr. Gladys West, with the 2021 Pioneer in Tech award from NCWIT. Dr.  West, I have to say, is so amazing. She earned her PhD at the age of 70, years old, and she got a master’s in mathematics from Virginia State College which is now Virginia State University.

She was hired by the Navy at the Dahlgren Virginia location in 1956 and she worked there for 42 years at the time of our hiring she was only the second Black woman who had ever been hired, and one of only four Black employees.

She is perhaps most well known for her mathematical modeling for the development of satellite, and I had to look up how to say this y’all, geodyssey models that were eventually incorporated into the global position or GPS systems that we use so much today. So she is, I’m a technological innovator and we’re so excited to honor her with this award. I do know though that you know, we’re here, that, you know, she’s the brains behind a lot of the mathematical computation in GPS today, but she also likes maps, and loves to trust our own brain and reading maps and it made me kind of want to go pull out a map or my atlas and go look to see if I could still read that.

So, we are tremendously excited. This is absolutely one of my favorite things that we do at NCWIT. So before we hear from Dr. West I think we’d like to play a video, um, which has sort of a short short recap of her life and career.

[VIDEO]

When I grew up as a little girl I was in a country area, a rural area, and we made our living by having a farm. I told myself that I did not like being out in the sun, working from sunrise to sunset and all that. So I made good grades in all my subjects. So it’s time to go to college, and they said well since you’re doing well in all subjects, you can major in math, and you’ll be successful. So when I went to college, I majored in math. I graduated after four years, and I applied for jobs in the government. I got hired at Dalgren in 1956. I came by myself, my husband wasn’t with me or anything. I was by myself. Or at least put it this way, I didn’t know him at that time. At the same time that we were coming to work here, they were also bringing in a large computer, and they hired these mathematicians, to learn to work this computer, we hadn’t had any computer, teaching or knowledge, so we had to master this job that they wanted us to do, so we had to learn how to program and code for this big computer. My part in the global positioning system would be working more with the orbit over the water. A lot goes into the scientific computation to generate an orbit, which is a database used in GPS. So the different people who did civilian applications, learned to use the database that we generated, and that was the foundation that GPS was built on. 

When you grew up as a Black girl at school separated from the white school. And we had separate buses. And many times we would get the old hand me down things from the white school, books that weren’t new like their books were. But all of that help to make us, I think, work harder because you know you were behind the eight ball to start with, you know you said you had to work harder. But I always was motivated by doing something new and completing something, having a go. Usually I had a mind of my own, I tend to think for myself and I had to learn to be patient with others who don’t think the way I do.

[END VIDEO]

LUCY: Well thank you very much. That’s a great video and I’d like to now ask Dr. West to join us on camera and make a few remarks and after which we will have an interview. A short Q and A session. Dr. West.

GLADYS: Good afternoon. Thank you for those kind words that were just given. I’m extremely honored to receive the Pioneer in Tech Award. I am very thankful to NCWIT for the recognition. Many years ago, I committed myself to be the best that I could be through my successes and challenges, I stayed focused and persevered, never losing sight of my goals. Being recognized at this point in my life brings some closure to a long and committed journey. 

I have recently published my memoirs, entitled, “It began with a dream.” I had many thoughts and dreams that dominated my thinking through our developmental years. I encourage each of you to always move confidently toward your dreams, yourselves.

I would like to say thank you to all who have helped me along the way. I thank God, for all that he has done, and for continuing to oversee my life. Thank you again to NCWIT for giving me this great honor. I will always cherish it. Thank you.

LUCY: It’s wonderful and we’re so happy to see the award is there. So, that’s awesome. We are excited to have you here today to do some short q and a but, and we’re not the only ones honoring you Dr. West, I have a letter here from Eddie Bernice Johnson, who is the US Congress Chairwoman of the Science Committee. And I’d like to just read it here and I believe we sent it to your daughter so she has a copy too, in case you haven’t seen it, but it’s really wonderful to be honored, Chairwoman Johnson sponsored the Hidden Figures Gold Medal Act, that cleared Congress I think about a year ago. And so I’ll just read it if I may: “Modern day America was built upon the contributions of talented engineers and mathematicians, such as yourself, your service to this country is a living testimony to the trailblazing abilities and women with their eyes set on the future.” We set up just so excited. So great. “From your foundational modeling work on the original global positioning system to your work on the SEASAT remote sensing technology, your brilliance, hard work and dedication, have yielded lasting benefits to society. As chairwoman of the Committee on science space and technology and throughout my 28 years in Congress, I have worked to ensure a continuing federal commitment to empowering our nation’s scientists, so that they can do what they do best, and I thank you for your pioneering efforts as the second African American woman ever to be hired at the then Naval Proving Ground, you exemplify persistence, humility and excellence that serves as a model to students, particularly women and students of color. I have no doubt that careers like yours will inspire the next generation of diverse women engineers, mathematicians, programmers, and inventors. I was thrilled to lead the effort to enact legislation to honor the Hidden Figures like you. You are one more example, whose contributions to society have been overlooked. It is a privilege to share sisterhood with you in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; I cannot think of a more deserving awardee. I offer my congratulations on your recognition as an NCWIT Pioneer in Tech. Congratulations.”

GLADYS: Thank you very much.

LUCY: And now I’d like to introduce TJ Aladdin from the NCWIT staff who manages our community of students. Dr. West, we have, we have thousands of students across the United States who will be inspired by you, and she’s got some questions to ask you.

TJ: Thank you so much Lucy, and thank you, even more Dr. West. I am TJ Aladdin, as Lucy said, and I have the honor of interviewing you today. Here at my job, I get to manage 20,000 women in tech nationwide between high school and their first two years in the workforce. And in honor of you, I did the math, by hand. And I have worked at NCWIT for 1,822 days. I promise you I did not Google that. Thank you so much for being here and thank you for all that you have contributed to the world. So my first question for you is, how would you describe yourself to someone who has never met you before? There’s been so many articles written about you by other people and Forbes and the Guardian, so on so forth. But I would really love to know what would you say to someone who has never heard of you before.

GLADYS: Yeah, I think, I think that I see myself a little bit different from others many times. Because I feel so humble. And, and, and dedicated and concerned about whatever I’m involved in, I just feel like it’s a privilege for me to be smart enough to understand what the big fuss is all about what we’re doing. And I believe that I have a plan, working on the plan. Setting goals and working those goals, and keep doing that and making sure that I’m meeting them. And then, reaching, what I want to do at stages and just continue to do that. Not, not so much having a whole lot of fun, but always being busy all the time, dedicated to what I’m involved in. And so sometimes I get discouraged about myself and thinking,. Well you should be having more fun and doing other things, but I have no desire and this service. Stay there working in trying to resolve what it is that I’m involved in. So, I am just so happy that other people are recognizing this and you’ve been wonderful.

TJ: Wonderful. Thank you. Well, at least I hope that we can have a little bit of fun today; I will try and squeeze in some fun. We’ll try and squeeze in some fun. My next question is based on what you just said about how you continue to work towards different projects and like initiatives. How do you find the motivation to keep going, especially as you know women in mathematics. The numbers are still quite low. How do you find the strength to continue to do the work that you do?

GLADYS: Yeah, I don’t know I think maybe setting, setting the goals. And so your timeline is just that goal at the time, and you start to reach that goal so that’s an incentive. That was my assignment point is to reach a goal that you’ve been working on. And seeing that you can do it, and then trying something else. So you started incite yourself. you know, to keep going. And so, I really have no problem with, you know, not continuing, but I do have a problem with not being busy all the time, I want, I want to be doing something. So that’s me.

TJ: That’s awesome. Um, I feel the same. I like to stay super busy all the time. So we both have to work on trying to squeeze in some, some fun.

So as I mentioned before I get to manage a very large community of people. And I have a question in honor of the 10th and 12th graders at the Cristo Rey High School in Brooklyn, and their teacher Mr. Bernard. They are curious to know what advice for them you have at this stage to keep pushing forward because math is hard. So what advice do you have for them.

GLADYS: Well we’re finding out now, in today’s society that more information about STEM is being provided. They’re more activities, more events, more people getting involved. And so that is always a source, where they can join some of the groups in their community and take advantage of that. And even in schools. Also, some of the teachers are beginning to be very conscious of STEM. And I always feel like you find yourself a person who’s interested in it. And, and then talk to them, have them help you, have tthem direct you to where you would like to go You may not know exactly what your final point is and what you find an interest in. But ask some guidance. And you got to work, and you got to spend some time digging yourself. You shouldn’t sit and wait for somebody else to come show you a way and push you along, you know, you gotta you gotta be curious. And you got to just talk to other people and move along, you can almost tell all the kids who want to really excel real fast because they’re so curious about life in general and testing and trying things.

TJ: Thank you so much for that response and I think that that was excellent advice for those students. I think they’re going to cherish it forever and ever. I know I will, I want to just cue the audience. Now, you can start to submit any questions that you have, into the Q and A, I’m going to continue to ask Dr. West some more questions, but in a moment we will get to your questions. So my next question for you, Dr. West, is about you getting your PhD. Okay, what. So, you accomplish all of these amazing things, you retired. And then you went back and got a PhD. And you were still the only Black woman in your course. Was that surprising to you?

GLADYS: Yeah, I guess it was surprising that I was the only Black woman; I would have thought there would be some others. But I didn’t, I didn’t really ever quit school. I, when I retired. I had all my course work done and I had done all the basic work done for the PhD, so it looks like I started back, but I didn’t start back. And I had had all my experience of working with the men who were in the program along with me, and learning a lot about how they were in and resolving issues like who’s smarter than who and all that kind of thing. I’d had all those experiences and. And now I just left then at the end to say, I got settled and I’m free. I can do it. And so I just attacked it and got the dissertation. And, and graduated.

TJ: That is amazing and so inspiring. I have a master’s degree, I’m pursuing another master’s degree. And now that I know I have another 40 or 50 years if I want to get my PhD because you have charted that path for me now so I can see something different, so thank you for that. So, I want to ask about something you mentioned before, which is about staying humble, so I don’t know but if somebody wrote about me in Forbes, I don’t know if I could stay too humble. So you were being talked about worldwide now, you’re being recognized for work that you’ve done. Has that changed you at all?

GLADYS: What changed me in the sense that in my heart, I feel what a lot of people are expressing, I feel that. But outwardly. I still feel like I need to step softly and and look and make sure where I’m going. Because I don’t feel like I did. You know I feel like I had some blessings. I am doing this, somebody else was steering the ship. And I was just on the ship. And now I get so many people who helped me that I never thought that they were helping me and made it possible in my head, and they took care of the house, when I was keeping my head down in the books and stuff, you know, but that was very important because they gave me comfort and security that things were all right at home. So, I’m thankful. I’m as excited as those people are talking outwardly, but inwardly, I’m still humble about what I have done. I’m just feeling blessed. 

TJ: Yes. Yeah, we are. I am feeling blessed to have this opportunity to chat with you. Um, I really love that you mentioned all of the people around you that helped to support you on your journey, um, who would you say was the most impactful person for you as you are pursuing your goals?

GLADYS: I always say that, probably. My mother was the most impactful thing. But then as I look back along the way there were others also. Because I didn’t have a lot of money so I had to get a job so I worked, and the home of a Math. Professor, and a physics professor. And so even though that they didn’t always just labor and talk to me exactly what I would do it on, but but they were really role models and I was eyeing them what they were doing. And I was sort of following their guide is the way I should be going. I should. How should I carry myself, What should I do, how hard should I work. You know, and I was getting all of this, so they had a big impact on me also. And I thought the pick friends also that were a positive influence also. So, so I guess I’ve been surrounded by some wonderful people that I didn’t know. I thought I was doing everything, but I was just sort of copying a lot of who was around me.

TJ: That’s really great to hear that you had so many different people supporting you along your journey, including men, I think that’s excellent. We don’t hear enough I think about the people that get it right and that this is a problem that all genders need to come together and solve so thank you for sharing that. I have a question for you from the audience. Which is, you have set and met countless goals in your life. What do you feel most proud of, looking back now?

GLADYS: Well, I have to say we’re most proud of it just reaching the top. I just accomplished everything that I had planned to do, and got to the end. And I feel like, oh no way I still feel like I want to be working. So then I started with something else. And so even though I worked hard in, and I did a lot of things. I still feel like as long as I had energy and can work that I should be helping the world, my, my goal is getting bigger and bigger I guess I should help the world in general to arise and be counted also. So, I started getting interested in the young people and tell them my story and, and just having fun, at my age and my energy.

TJ: I was actually going to ask about how you get at, what do you eat in the morning, that you can accomplish all of these things?

GLADYS: Well, not that I eat anything so particular, is, is that we eat, I think; we have always ate a healthy breakfast, lunch as well because it was on the farm where I got started. So we were eating their well balanced meals, three times a day. And that helps. But I think, I think it’s more the inner workings of you, how dedicated, how serious you are how, how you feel about the world and and your role in in understanding what’s happening in the world and how much we need each other, you know, to get further along into make the world a better place to live in. You know, and so if you really see how big that problem is you gladly want to do your part, let me do my part, and hold up this end, and I do feel like I need to work for myself, be independent, stand up and be counted. And I do that all the time.

TJ: Oh, it’s amazing. Thank you so much. I have another question from the audience and it’s a bit of a long question so bear with me. The Atlantic recently published an article that referenced the idea that women should follow the norms of male dominated industries in order to be successful. So essentially women should do what the men do in certain careers in order to achieve success. What advice can you offer to Black and brown women in these kinds of white male dominated spaces, who are trying to be successful without necessarily conforming to that particular culture?

GLADYS: Yeah that that’s a tough one. I don’t agree with a whole lot of it. But, but we do know that we were all different. We all are individuals, separate, with our own minds and somebody on our level, don’t guide us and carry us where we need to go. We’re independent and and work upon our own thinking, doing. So I think anybody can do any work who are interested, and really want to put the time and effort. And we get it right and share. And, and connect with others, and let them know what you do and how you are doing it and and be be a role model for people who don’t believe in women; you know, women don’t have to stand back and cry. You know some are really born with a lot of strength and courage and they have fighting from the beginning. And we all different, very different. And I just did not not completely clear, understand they’re thinking. But anyway, I think we can, we can do it.

TJ: I agree with you 100 percent, and it’s really great to hear that you don’t agree with that line of thinking that women should change themselves. I think that alone will be very encouraging to the women listening to you right now. I have another question which is about the support that you can get from groups. So as I mentioned before, I have the privilege of managing a group of 20,000 women in tech. And I know that you are a member of the AKA sorority. I know it’s a bit different. But I’m just curious to know what it was like for you to be a member of of that group, what supports did you get, and do you recommend that in order to get support from peers that women find, you know, find a group of people.

GLADYS: Well, I don’t know that it is absolutely necessary, but during the time that I was connected with AKA or or. It was, we just didn’t have a whole lot of shoulders to stand on. And no and this this lady who was here, math professor. And a friend. They would always be talking about the big meetings they had to go to and what they had to do and who they saw there and who was there; anyway but in my head and I was getting pictures of these educated women, and we didn’t have that many women to, like, look at and stand up and be role models, you know. So, hearing them talk about this group of women. And then when the lady recommended that I joined AKA at the time and I did many years ago, when I went to my first big conference, I saw all of these Black women, and just just 10,000 maybe Black women. And that, that was really impressive to me, and, and, because we hadn’t seen it. And, and they were everything that I had imagined in my mind that a professional Black woman would look like and act like. And so for me it was a role model, it will help me because I tried to emulate. You know someone that I was seeing. And so this other AKA always was start a business like you know work on did it right. No, no, playing around. So I think to get it, get that same kind of modeling from for myself. And so, I don’t think you have to be in a group that big but I do think you have to have something that’s complimentary to your way of thinking.

TJ: Thank you so much. That’s excellent, excellent advice. And yes, the 20,000 women in our group are going to take that on for sure. I have a few more questions for you and then I have some special folks that I want you to meet. So I have a little surprise coming later but I want to know specifically because you’re from a rural area. And as you mentioned, the farm was the thing, it was a place to be. But you did not want to be there, even nowadays we find that a lot of the focus on recruiting young folks in STEM happens in the big cities and on the coasts. So I’m wondering if you have any advice for folks who are looking for more talent, how can we reach more students in rural areas.

GLADYS: Yeah, I think it’s easier in here I guess what we were doing, would be sending out on the job is sending out recruiters from the job. Looking for the kind of people that we needed, and also for the kind of people that you could work with and that you know, it’s more than just, just the technical. And, and, again, we have to attend some of the sessions where people are having activities that talk about their schools and what they’re doing, what kind of work they do. He has to sort of tap in a little bit to the university also. And, something to be aware of are the things that you are looking for in a person on the job and that is sometimes it’s not easy to see that far. Before the job to after the job, but you can tell the people who want to be a value, want to add to what you have listened to and you have to have people who can tap into that inner part, also in addition to the technical points that you want to get covered.

TJ: I think that’s just so amazing to hear from you because we often focus only on the technical skills, can they code, can they do math and I think that you’re right that we sometimes miss out on the other skills that actually going to help that person to do the, you know, do the job, you know persevere, so thank you for that.

Okay, one more question and then some special guests will be here. I want to know from you what changes have you seen in the past decade or so that are inspiring to you.

GLADYS: Well, there’s been a lot a lot of changes, I guess, and they made pretty fast. It’s hard to keep up with with them. I guess, at a very early time when I was younger, I didn’t even know anything about STEM. So now we have more STEM activities that are popping up. And from what I’m hearing is they’re being really advantageous for a lot of the young people and to the girls, and how they are stepping up and taking part in what’s available for them. And a lot of the youth are getting involved in things in their schools. And also, and we have a museum close by, and this is a museum where there are people who have children in high school, you know, who are interested in these kind of activities to put their children in, so they join the museum and they come to a lot of these activities and projects and robot training and all kinds of things. And then there are just more people trying to get their people into this. To learn more about STEM, and I think that is working. So we are inspiring them.

TJ: I am living proof that, that is working. Growing up, I wanted to be a dancer. I still want to be a dancer. I decided to pursue a career in science, and that is largely due to women like you and the work that you still continue to do so. Thank you again so much. And now I want to invite Claudia and Crystal to come on camera. Claudia and Crystal are two of our change leader scholars. These are women in college who are pursuing technology, and who wanted to come and tell you a bit about themselves and to congratulate you, so Claudia. Please join us. Thank you.

CLAUDIA: Thank you. Thank you. Hi everyone. Hi Dr. West I’m absolutely honored to be here and to be congratulating you for this award. My name is Claudia Hernandez and I am majoring in computer science and plan to pursue special interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning, astronomy and business. And I want to say hearing about your story is absolutely astonishing. You’ve been a huge inspiration to me and to my efforts, the, the emphasis that you put on educating girls in STEM has been a real inspiration to my efforts and trying to not only make an impactful contribution to stem itself, but also to open the door to bring other women into STEM. So as a female majoring the computer science. I think that it’s incredibly important to share stories like yours. I started a community coding club and a national resource website to help educate women, and to bring them into the field and inspire them, and sharing stories with change makers like you has been incredibly, incredibly impactful into their interest and their belief that they can in fact pursue and succeed in STEM. I mean being a groundbreaking programmer and mathematician whose models and algorithms are crucial to advancing both our understanding of the world and creating GPS systems that billions use every day, all in the face of adversity, your excellence motivates me to pursue my technological aspirations fearlessly and work harder to make a difference. And I’m sure millions of other girls consider the same. 

GLADYS: Thank you so much. Oh, that’s fantastic, then that that is a winner

CLAUDIA: It’s definitely an honor to meet you and I just wanted to say that I thank you for your loveless determination, your love of learning your incredible journey, and ultimately your revolutionary innovations and how you’ve helped pave the way for women in STEM, especially women of color to thrive in the field. You’re an inspiration to me and women everywhere, and I’m honored to offer you this award that is long overdue. You’re truly a pioneer for women in tech and I’d like to congratulate and thank you.

GLADYS: Thank you. Thank you so much, this is wonderful.

TJ: And now, Crystal will share some words as well.

CRYSTAL: Thank you so much for this opportunity today. Congratulations on the Pioneer in Tech award from NCWIT. Dr.  Gladys West, your own work has impacted so much of our technology today. And it’s a guiding light on what it means to do the work ethically and on persisting regardless of being the first. So today, the percentage of Black mathematicians and computer scientists is still exceedingly low, and students from traditionally underrepresented groups who wish to excel in these fields, often find themselves isolated and wondering if there’s a place for them in this field, and role models like yourself, are critical in making sure that talented students from traditionally underrepresented groups, know that they can succeed.

My own grad school journey started because a NASA mathematician who works in satellite remote sensing using GPS for climate science encouraged me to attend grad school, and my research focuses on applied cryptography, fairness and machine learning, because I believe that regardless of which neighborhood, you grew up in. You have a right to protect your data, and that data should be used fairly and ethically your story of resilience, hard work and excellence, has the most recent me throughout my own studies, in reimagining the ways that we could chart our own paths, leave our own legacy and in remembering that there is a place for us. I’m personally inspired by the fact that you still use paper maps over GPS and trust your intellect, because it shows a continued empathy towards accessibility and in understanding socio technical and inclusive ways of thinking about technology and how the systems we make can impact the world. We a change leaders are all inspired by your Purpose Driven Life. 

GLADYS: Thank you so much. I am just beyond words. I just wish you luck in everything you’re doing both of you; that’s wonderful. Makes me feel really honored that someone is making decisions because of me!

TJ: You guys I have one more for you, this zoom space is about to get a lot more impressive and a lot smarter because Dr. Cook is about to join us again. Please, come on camera Dr. Cook.

LISA: Thank you so much and Dr. West, I want to congratulate you. I want to just tell you what an inspiration you are and I’ve been stalking you for about 20 years. I just want to let you know. And I’ll tell you why. My aunt was the chair of the math department at Virginia State for about 20 years. She just passed away two years ago, and your paths are so incredibly similar. Well she grew up in Winston Salem North Carolina, I grew up in Milledgeville Georgia. Our sensibilities were those country sensibilities that you’re talking about, where the, the values of the farm, the hard work of the farm, were brought to us, and at the same time, the values related to STEM, all my mom’s family is is steeped in STEM, so everybody’s a mathematician and engineer, so it never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that this was a skill that women were not supposed to have.

GLADYS: Yeah.

LISA: It was amazing and when you talk about it, you talk about it just like she did. “I got the best grades, so they told me to go do math.” That’s exactly what happened. You know when she was teaching there, she just ran across so many people that she inspired in the way that you inspire people and you know you, I’m sure, inspired many more people; your technology has been deployed, and in so many different ways. And I’ll tell you what, before I knew that you were such a pioneer in GPS technology, I used to ask my students. When I am teaching them economics and the economics of innovation, what innovations have been life changing, that you depend on the most, and they all say, and this is ok so I started teaching systematically in 2005, GPS is at the top of that list, the top of that list. Now you know I primarily teach men, right. So this is a good thing, this is a public service. They can get where they’re supposed to go. And they’re not circling the block, they’re not circling the earth. Thank you so much.

GLADYS: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for those kind compliments. Thank you so much.

TJ: And thank you once more Dr. West, thank you as well to Claudia and Crystal for being here to also let you know how valued you are in the lives of women and all people today. I told you before that I did the math by hand, and I worked at NCWIT for 1,822 days, and this is by far the best day of them all. I get the chance to honor you for all your contributions and all the things that you’re going to continue to contribute. For many, many more years to come. Once again, congratulations and thank you so much, Dr. West. 

GLADYS: Thank you so much for giving me this great honor, you know, I’m sure I’ll begin to feel more and more honored to know that people are making changes to their life because of me. Thank you so much.

TJ: Thank you. And now I’m going to invite Lucy Sanders, our CEO and founder back on camera.

LUCY: Well, thank you. Now I think you know why this is our most favorite part of the NCWIT Summit, by far, you know, congratulations. I’m so wrapped up in your story and everything and the students and what they’re talking about and heartfelt congratulations, because we know, we know you’re not done yet. So make sure you stay in touch and let us know what you’re up to. And we are just so thrilled to honor you with this award. I just don’t want this to end, this whole conversation. It was so rich and so authentic. And I just want to encourage people who are listening. This is a great recording to share out and to inspire others and to tell your story Dr.  West to the thousands of people we interact with every year so do not doubt for a moment that you will not continue will continue to inspire people, right. Thank you. It’s awesome. So thank you so much I wanted to continue doing smart. Yeah, don’t worry it’s coming. For sure, and thanks for joining us. 

I just have a few last minute housekeeping things to do before we close this out. And so I’m going to ask Brittney to share her screen quickly, and we’ll, We’ll take care of business here. I’m just another shout out to all of our sponsors who have made this summit possible so thank you for your ongoing support. Let’s keep going for me. Next please.

We have a new website; as if having the summit in one week wasn’t enough we also cut over a new and see what website, go check it out at ncwit.org, and you’ll see all kinds of new features better navigation better graphics etc so do make sure you go check that out and a hearty congratulations to all of our tech team and operations team and communications team that made this new website possible.

Go to the next one. Please wait. We also have a new partnership report so we’re not going to spend a lot of time here at the end of the summit going through and seeing what announcements and current going on, but if you access this URL you’ll be able to read all about it in our annual report from 2020.

So next, please.

We also wanted to tell you about our magazine, and you’ll get it in the swag box which I will advertise one last time as the summit, but I have it right here as part of my sweat, you know my show off things so I’m pleased to check it out, and we’ll have a new one coming out in June. So look forward to the next version of our magazine as well. This is a way for us to continue to put great resources, opinion pieces etc. out to the NCWIT community and beyond. So that’s the new magazine re:think.

And then please don’t forget your swag box, you’ll get a copy of the print copy of the rethink magazine in this white box, and as Brittany mentioned earlier some goodies, and also some different sort of flash cards playing cards etc on critical listening, So make sure you order your swag box as well. And I think with that, we don’t have any more. So thank you for joining our summit this week, we have recordings online.

YouTube ID QVbC_UyepU0


“Conversations for Change” with Lisa D. Cook | Video Playback

Lisa D. Cook is Professor of Economics and International Relations at Michigan State University. She was the first Marshall Scholar from Spelman College and received a second B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley with fields in macroeconomics and international economics. Prior to this appointment, she was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Deputy Director for Africa Research at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and a National Fellow at Stanford University.

YouTube ID DOl81RSUu3A


Conversations for Change: #YesWeCode: Race, Gender & The Digital Divide

CNN Host and Dream Corps Founder Van Jones created #YesWeCode to find real solutions. Housed at Dream Corps Unlimited, #YesWeCode is working to help 100,000 young adults of color – both women and men – find employment in the technology sector. Learn from the many insights that Van has gleaned by working directly with dozens of major tech firms, the Obama White House, and the nation’s top accelerated training programs. Hear how cultural barriers – on both sides of the divide – may be the biggest obstacles to an inclusive tech sector.

TRANSCRIPT

[VIDEO]

But also learning important scientific properties and relationships about the objects in the future I want to continue to develop computational tools to make going through massive data sets, easier and more accessible.Thank you.

Hi, my name is Bonnie by the agency. The title of my project is learning efficient natural language processing bottles. I developed an optimization procedure that specifies large language models. This means that instead of storing billions of floating point parameters for models like GPT. We only need to store billions of binary parameters which greatly reduces their computational cost. In the future, I hope to conduct to work at the intersection of text and policy and work on research on ethical AI.

Hi, my name is Vivek at home and my project is called adding YouTube h LS output to OBS Open Broadcaster Software. Last summer I interned on Google team called the super infrastructure to implement HLS suggestion to YouTube from OBS that’s giving YouTube users another protocol over which they can choose to live stream, their offers to get a progression. In the fall, I will be returning to Google as a full time software engineer for I am very excited to continue and see what appreciates the support of our sponsors, without whom recognizing these technologists would not be possible.

00:07:27.000 –> 00:07:57.000

Thank you to the NCWIT Collegiate Award Sponsors, Amazon Qualcomm and Palo Alto Networks. And thank you to NCWIT lifetime partner, Apple for its generous support of the entire aspirations and computing program.

[END VIDEO]

[CATHERINE] Always so inspiring and a hard act to follow. But we’ll try. So, here we would like to thank our sponsors for making this event possible without them of course it would not be possible. And I’d also like to thank you, the viewing audience in advance for your patience, should we encounter any technical difficulties or bandwidth issues. And I encourage you to post your questions and comments in the q and a section at any time throughout the session and upload questions that you want to have answered, and we’ll try to answer as many questions as possible. At the end of the presentation.

So with that, I’d like to introduce today’s speaker who for many here today actually needs no introduction, but we want to give him one anyway. We are very excited to have Van Jones join us to speak about connections between tech racial justice, and other unique challenges for this moment in time. Van is the founder of Dream Corps and its associated Dream Corps tech initiative, which works to shift the culture of the tech sector cultivating tech leaders and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds. He’s also a social entrepreneur, a CNN political commentator, Emmy Award winning producer, and a three time, New York Times bestselling author. He earned his law degree from Yale, and to successfully advocated for key legislation to improve the environment and criminal justice system. He also was founded and led numerous social enterprises engaged in social racial and environmental justice. And I also know for one that I’ve greatly always appreciated the heartfelt, poignant and incisive perspective that he brings in both his CNN role as commentator, and other venues to the national conversation around these trying issues in this particularly trying time. We are thrilled that he’s here today to speak to us about his unique perspective on these topics. And with that, welcome, Van.

VAN: I’m honored to be here and those films that, would you call them, those testimonials to the genius of the next generation. I hope that those are made available to everybody. It’s so humbling and so inspiring to see what the young people are able to do. And, you know, that’s really the subject of my talk, which is, how is it that we can make sure that the the genius of this generation that’s rising, their magic they are understanding that the stakes for them. The hope for them. Actually, are given the support, so they can springboard into a future that works better for them and works better for everybody else. That’s the big challenge.

You know, every kid has to climb that ladder from their original birth circumstances to their own destiny and have to climb it on their own efforts. They’ve got to do the work they’ve got a, they’ve got to reach deep. Next responsibility of every kid, but adults have responsibility to and that’s to make sure that every kid has a ladder to climb. And that’s where we have some real challenges. And so, the title of this talk is, you know: breakdowns can lead to breakthroughs, if we use them right.

We are in a moment of tremendous unbelievable breakdown. That also creates opportunities for tremendous unbelievable breakthroughs. Let me talk about the breakdowns first. Then let me talk about the breakthroughs, and then let me talk about how I think we can get there. 

But the breakdowns are serious, we are. I mean, Pick any topic you want to a year ago, we were all still reeling from the televised murder and social media, you know, shared murder of George Floyd. And I think that changed world history. The fact that everybody at the same time get see what in our community we would consider to be a lynching anytime a white man chokes the life out of another human being, especially a black man while the whole community is screaming and horror that for us for 20 years is called the lynching. So for a lynching a modern day lynching to be shown around the world on our cell phones and the incredible response from humanity to that was was unbelievable. And yet, there has not been a change in federal law on any of the issues that were raised to calls are still legal cop still don’t have a duty to intervene when a police officer is breaking the law, you can go down the whole list all the stuff we were appalled about is still illegal under federal law.

That’s a breakdown, and it’s the reason that Black Lives Matter and these other movements have taken off isn’t just because of the need for, you know, equal protection from that stuff. There’s also a lack of equal opportunity to the good stuff. Those are the two breakdowns. Not enough equal protection from bad stuff policing as a tip of the iceberg, our prison system, our criminal justice system here in United States as sad as it is is unbelievably heartbreaking as it is to acknowledge, we have the biggest prison system in the history of the world, times to that we’re only us 5% of the world’s population we have 25% of the world’s prisoners, one out of every four people right now is locked up and shackled he’s behind bars, who has no freedom is one out of four is United States, we’re only 5% of the world’s population. So that’s true here in the land of the free and we all know that is disproportionately Black, brown and poor people who find themselves, you know, crushed. Because of the lack of equal protection from bias in the system. I can hit another number of topics I wanted to impress anybody because we’re for solutions but trust me. We don’t have equal protection from the bad stuff. And we also don’t have equal access yet and equal opportunity to the good stuff. 

What’s the good stuff. there is a tremendous tidal wave of disruption and change coming through technology. When you think about the fact that 10 years from now, they’re going to be billionaires multimillionaires that might be a millionaire by then. Many of them in industries that right now barely exist. You’re talking about you know some of the biotech revolution, you’re talking about artificial intelligence you’re talking about the race for Mars, which is heating up, you know, virtual reality, augmented reality cryptocurrencies. So many of these things down the blockchain. These are tremendous disruption disruptive waves that are going to create some losers but they’re also going to create a whole bunch of winners. And yet we don’t have equal access and equal opportunity yet on a regular basis on our agenda basis to this incredible wave, that’s coming. So those are the breakdowns.

The potential for the breakthrough is obvious. At the same time you have all of these bad things that are going on, that is created something. The fact that all of us are witness to the injustice is created something new on this earth. 

The news reported that tens of millions of people marched, that the Black Lives Matter movement became the biggest movement for human rights in terms of demonstrations in the history of our species. There were people doing Black Lives Matter marches in Idaho, with no black people in them. You know, unbelievable, Dr. King, never had a summer where 10s of millions of people marched with him. Never. You’d be lucky to have thousands 10s of thousands of the height. 10s of millions.

The movement for gender equality has leaped to a whole different level with the time’s up movement the me too movement ,and other movement. The movement for LGBTQ equality that the understanding of the plight of immigrants, growing concern for the indigenous population, you know, indigenous people only make up 4% of the global population. They only control 20% of the world’s landmass indigenous people, but that’s where 80% of the biodiversity of the planet is. 4% of humanity, maintaining 80% of the biodiversity. That’s the contribution of our indigenous communities all around the world, people are becoming more aware of this, this rising tide of awareness of the opportunity for gender justice racial justice, other forms of justice ecological solutions is a force unto itself in the culture, it’s a force unto itself. This rising tide of consciousness. 

And the question is, how do you change turn the consciousness into will change, but luckily this change in consciousness is happening at the very same moment at the very same time that you see this change in the economy, which means we have a opposite an opportunity, unique in human history to combine the two. To take the consciousness that’s developing around ecological solutions around justice solutions, and wed them to the people who are driving for these technological solutions and have a leap frog economics, it would be possible, they will they will be, It wouldn’t be possible, because they will be and what are you talking about, you’re saying you want poor kids from Appalachia, to be a part of this technological revolution, poor kids from reservations poor kids from Black communities poor kids from the barrio to be a part of this revolution, you must be nuts. These poor Black, brown kids his kids from rural backwaters, they don’t know anything about the blockchain, they don’t know anything about Mars, you’re correct.

You’re 100% correct, and most middle class kids and rich kids don’t either. There’s an equality of ignorance across all sectors against this onrushing future of just mind blowing changes that are coming. We’re all somewhat equally ignorant of how biotech could be used to make everyone’s life better. How drones could be used. It’s unbelievable how much learning, everybody’s going to have to do, how much unlearning and relearning everybody’s going to have to do well if you’re going to have to hard boot reset. You know, everybody’s brains, so they could be a part of this incredible new future, why not start with the people who most desperately need a new opportunity.

Why not start with the people, why not focus, why not prioritize. Some of the communities that were left out of the last centuries, industrial based economy and didn’t do that well frankly in the prior centuries agrarian economy. Why not make sure those people are dialed into the center and the heart and the soul of the new digital economies as they began to take off. Well what’s in the way of doing that, what’s required to do that, that it that should be this this idea of 21st century jobs, not jails, for the next generation.

Could be the rallying cry, should be the rallying cry, I’m so proud to be a part of the Dream Corps of the Dream Corps program, Yes We Code and Dream Corps TECH, those programs have been proving that you can take folks from Oakland, from the tough parts of Oakland, and in a six week period and a three month period, get them job ready to go into places like Target and other other other major corporations and do incredibly well as a part of this growing digital workforce cloud computing doesn’t happen on a cloud it happens in buildings, it happens, you know here on the ground. And there’s a tremendous need to have people who know how to make all those buildings hum. So you have a whole new industrial workforce just based on cloud computing. There is so much good stuff that can happen. There is so it’s unbelievable, and yet there’s three simple things that are holding us back.

There’s three simple concepts. And it’s nobody’s fault, you know, we can get this whole blame game and guilt tripping each other and canceling each other and all this crap, and it doesn’t add up to a hill of beans doesn’t help one kid get a job to help one community get on its feet. I’m sick of it, it’s it’s it’s. We’re not, we haven’t been trained. We haven’t been taught. These three approaches that would unlock so much potential, and we just have to start digital and get on with it. 

You weren’t taught in school. The importance of empathy in school, we were taught the importance of the competition of achievement of success of accomplishment, which is really about how can you yourself get out there and meet your needs and get your goals met or whatever. But the idea of empathy, that wasn’t really even a thing. Here’s a challenge. You wake up on a planet with a billion Chinese people, a billion Indians and a billion Africans every day you want to eat your lunch in the United States and our and all got cell phones and all got smartphones and incoming. And you wake up United States in the most diverse his country in history of the world we got every kind of human being ever born just in the US, every faith every gender expression every sexuality expression, every race every kind of human being ever born here in one country. If you cannot partner authentically across lines of different. You are going to have a tremendously tough time succeeding in the years and decades to come. That’s just a fact. And yet, if you can partner authentically across lines of different racial difference gender difference, religious different regional different. You have a superpower, that is going to set you up to be massively successful in your own life. Oh and by the way the world be better for everybody else.

But you are going to be more successful. We don’t talk about empathy, as a competitive advantage in the global marketplace, but it really is that you can understand where a Sikh is coming from, and a Muslim is coming from and someone from Latin America coming from, and you can can therefore kind of predict where a deal might break down and where there might be a market opportunity or partnership, you have a superpower empathy as a competitive advantage in the global marketplace, we don’t train people for it we don’t think about it, we think it’s some moody poop. Whoo whoo way call it a Kumbaya nonsense. And I’m going to tell you you’re going to get your, your lunch eaten by somebody who can knows when it’s time to be competitive and has those skill sets and those were assigned to be cooperative and has those sets. 

And what’s the second skill set: the mindset and empathy and the skill set of listening. We reward people for talking. I’m talking right now. All we need a speaker we need a presenter who’s going to do the pitch he’s gonna make the pitch deck who’s talk is under the energy. It’s all about who’s going to talk and we never asked the question Who’s going to listen. The problem is, we have to elevate the ability to deeply and authentically listen to each other, to the same level of skill that we hold speaking, who can listen as powerfully as Dr. King spoke. That should be the question. 

So, how’s that gonna help me do anything. Well first of all, Just to be very very clear. Have you ever. Have you ever gone up to somebody trying to tell them something I want to talk to them about something. And they, they’re terrible listeners. They’re looking at their watch or their cell phone or they’re there they got their arms crossed and they can’t wait to interrupt and jumped in and tell you what they think about everything. You don’t happen to you. You lose about 15 IQ points. You lose 15 IQ points for I talked to somebody I know I listen. You can’t even get your thoughts form you’re struggling just to be heard you. You’re spending so much energy just trying to figure out what the heck is going on that you actually get dumber in the conversation therefore the outcome for everybody else is less than it could be at the same time. 

We also all had the experience of somebody actually listened to actually giving a damn enough to put their phone down. But their pin down. Unfold their arms and actually listen to what we had to say. Not for the purpose of interrupting or agreeing or disagreeing, but just being present really want to know, how do you see it. You don’t have you gained 30 IQ points in that conversation, all sudden you start saying stuff. You didn’t even know you had to say. You start you you become a genius, you start, you know hey you know he didn’t and you realize that I know a lot a lot to offer here. I’ve seen some stuff.

The crazy thing about this whole diversity and inclusion conversation is that it misses the point half the time. Well, how do you get the Black guy or the lesbian person or whatever the other the marginal person in the door, so that they can stick and stay and not, you know, leave in a huff and you act as if the only problem in that organization is that one person. Nobody know that person is a canary in the coal mine. I guarantee you if you’re having trouble recruiting and retaining quote unquote diverse talent, your non diverse talent is suffering till you got some secretaries in your organization that should have been executives, but they can’t figure out how to be heard. You’ve got some of your mentors you guys have nurses nurses that could have been surgeons in a different system, you got straight white guys are sitting there and they’re afraid to be their true selves.

You’re getting only about 20-30% of the value of your existing team because everybody knows that there’s one way to do things and there’s only one way to be and if you get outside of that you’re going to get punished. And so, don’t look at me. We got to optimize all of these systems so that everybody can be more of themselves everybody can participate at a higher level everybody can feel more comfortable everybody can feel more joy. Everybody can make more money, everybody can be happier. This isn’t a charity. We’re not looking for pity, we’re looking for partners, which gets me to the third piece. One empathy has to be key.

Yes, sometimes you got to compete, don’t lose that. Sometimes you got to go go toe to toe, don’t lose that competitive edge, but you also got to be able to cooperate. And that’s about empathy and we’re not good at that. We’re not good at that. You got to be able to speak well you know very well. You also got to be able to listen well, if you’re going to be able to deal with this global market, and all the opportunities that are coming forward.

And then lastly, we have to take a more asset based when when approach to this whole conversation.

This is not a grievance based conference conversation. All the women have been put down in the black you’ll have been put down and everybody’s been put down and you guys all sucking in what the hell you done, you don’t understand anything and now you guys got sit down, shut up, let us have a tournament, all that stuff is just poisonous because it’s trying to use sticks when we really should be using carrots, sometimes things are appropriate. But not all the time, and trying to browbeat people and guilt people and based on a bunch of agreements. It’s important for people to know these histories important people to understand and to know the pain that’s gotten that’s gone on that’s in the empathy part.

But fundamentally, I think we have to start to accept and recognize that there’s gonna be some people that do stuff on a charitable basis, they’re gonna be some people that do stuff on a, on a, on a compassionate basis but most people can only sustain that for so long, even in their own families you got some in your own families always need something, and you don’t see what they’re bringing to the table you stop returning your cousin’s phone call. So let’s not fall into the male supremacy and the white supremacy of acting as if all the way guys have everything perfect and they’re doing all great and everybody else is doing terrible, let’s reverse it and say, we’re bringing stuff to the table, you’re missing out. 

You can make a whole lot more money. If you put women in charge of some parts of your company, you can make a whole lot more. You get a whole lot more market share. If your supplier chain has, you know, different kinds of people in this you know who you’re working with its suppliers, you can learn a lot more you can figure out a lot more about what’s going on in the world. You can be less dumb. You can be less a narrow you could be broader you could be smarter you can be more rich you can be more dynamic. In other words, we don’t talk about the upside of a world in which we can all work together with more equality. We talked about. And that has to shift, so you need the empathy the listing and everybody has to sign up for a win win asset based assessment, how can we help each other get more. I’m not trying to take anything off of your plate, I’m trying to grow the whole restaurant. That kind of mentality. 

But if you believe as I believe that all these breakdowns are leading to some breakthroughs. Yes, there’s a lot of racial injustice, and a lot of gender injustice is also a growing tidal wave of awareness about that that gives us an opportunity. Yes, a lot of industries are about to be knocked offline. And a lot of people are about to lose their jobs but we can also get some communities in on the ground floor of the next economy and have a leapfrog economics, where people who were been left out for centuries can actually be in the center of this thing and make it a whole lot more fun. And lastly, it is, is the case that if we approach this the right way, was we tried to do with the dream for this asset base you’re wasting leaving those incredible kids in Oakland, out of Silicon Valley, you’re wasting genius, leaving some of those low income kids in and around the Boston area out of technology you’re wasting genius in Texas, leaving Latin kids and Native American kids out of the technology boom in Austin you’re wasting genius, you’re missing out on money, you’re missing out on products you’re missing out on services, you’re missing out that this there’s more carousel here than six that I think we can get somewhere.

And the last thing I’ll say is this. I take responsibility for being a part of an industry that I think is doing a lot of harm. In terms of where the media is right now if you pay close attention to the media. You might have the wrong conclusion about what’s wrong with our country. You might come to conclusion. If you watch all the media out here that there’s just too many awful people in America too many awful people in the world for anything good that.

And both sides do it, you know people on the right all those terrible people on the left, what can we do those crazy socialist democrats was cancelled culture PC race card playing Marx’s loving Democrats, we got to meet Republican side, we got too many awful progressive what can we do, and then on our side democrats say the same thing all these, you know bigoted backwards cult this Republicans who just heard are terrible and love guns more than people and I’ll simply say about that. We got too many awful people Republican Party, what can we do.

And I just want to say in closing, guys. We have some awful people in both parties, all races. That’s true. It is the smallest problem that we have in America. Yes, we have some awful people. It is a small problem we have in there. The biggest problem we have. There are so many awesome people of all races, both political parties, all faith backgrounds, so many awesome people who are actually just don’t know what to do. They literally just don’t know what to do, how to work together, how to solve the problem.

We don’t have an awful people problem; we have an awesome people problem.

And if we take some of these tools and I’m talking about, empathy, win-win asset base, listening, and we apply it to move this conscious revolution over more fully into the techno technological revolution. We can have awesome outcomes, we deserve awesome outcomes, the next generation needs awesome outcomes, and we have the chance to deliver breakdowns can become breakthroughs. Let’s use them right.

CATHERINE: And thanks so much, Van, for your perspective, and we’re going to take some, start with some questions now from the audience and some questions that we have.

And I really love the way you said the idea of empathy as competitive advantage, and the partnering authentically it cost difference. And I was just wondering if you could maybe say a little bit more about, especially we have educators in the audience and industry people as well and how they can strategies or tips you have for them on ways that they can do that or help children, you know, teach the way that you said we aren’t doing as good a job of that.

VAN: Well I mean I think that, first of all, I think we’re set up to be less successful than we could be because of the way that our education system functions I don’t just mean public versus private I just mean that like for as we always say like there are only five senses. And you know the more senses in that, you know, there’s an interception like your ability to understand what’s going on inside your own body, you know, your ability to kind of look at yourself and spit like we told get some very beginning, there’s 12 senses. Let’s optimize, you know, for for all 12, then their kids who are, you know, better with learning with their hands but are learning through experience but like, you know, kinesthetic learners would just their what they have to contribute would be better recognize we still have an education system that’s based on the industrial model, where everybody kind of has to do the same thing move at the same pace learn the same material. And so some kids do well and that some kids don’t, and the kids who fall out of that system their genius is not recognizing we aren’t don’t have access to it so just you’re set up to fail. In the very beginning, we’ve got to be much more creative, maybe about tapping different types of talent and making use of it.

The thing that I’ve found the most interesting with the dream course I’m stuff that we’ve done is just the power of colocation. Just the power of putting people getting close to each other, next to each other. brings down some of the social barriers. For instance, We used to do this thing where we would have cohorts of young people were trying to use technology ship. And we would have them at our community center learning. Well that’s dumb. Because we’re reinforcing that, you know, they’re kind of over here, as opposed to being in the center of the action so what we found some technology companies that just let us do the teaching in their spare office spaces before the before the before coven. Just the mere fact of people in the company seeing these young kids from Oakland walking in and out of the office, made them much more receptive later on to hiring people, because it became normal for people just to see each other. I think people sometimes forget a big barrier that we have is we don’t have a diverse country we have bubbles that touch.

So, no matter how hard we try to work inside our own bubbles. We don’t break down some of those barriers is before you get to hiring anything else to just let people know each other let people socialize i think that’s that’s very, very important.

I think the other thing is that, I think, as I said before, equipping everyone with the tools of empathy, listening and looking for a win win outcomes will make it possible, much more likely that when we then layer on questions around gender and questions around race and questions around other things for those lessons to make sense to people, they have a place to stick. I sometimes feel like we’re asking people who’ve been couch potatoes to run marathons. If you don’t have any empathy, or listening, or, or any that going on in your life for yourself, you got people who don’t have empathy for themselves. Yeah, people don’t have empathy, compassion for their neighbor for their spouse, for their grandparents, and now you’re saying you got to have empathy and compassion for all these other people, that’s a little bit a little bit of a leap. And so I think it turns out that there are some pre some skills, some, some prerequisite skills, and some prerequisite worldview shifts that need to happen before you get into the deep waters of talking about racial so you know some of the toughest racial and gender topics. And I would encourage people to think about that.

CATHERINE: Yeah, I think that that’s important I think they call a location ideas really interesting in the power of just seeing things and having them become normal like that seep into your consciousness. And so a few of our other speakers have talked about and increasingly in public conversation I think you hear this idea of that we’re entering a new era of Jim Code, where you know technology sort of taking the place of what used to be implemented through through Jim Crow laws and I just wonder, especially since you know we do have a highly technical audience what are your some, some of your thoughts about how this is playing out, and how you see that happening.

VAN: I hope everybody has seen the film Coded Bias, who haven’t seen that film yet, please do. It’s just a big eye opener. I think we still believe that it’s about technology is neutral. So if you know the police adopt. You know, a surveillance technology that results in a massive increase in the arrest of people color will then be will call us as be doing more crime. That’s not true like the garbage in, garbage out, bias in bias out. 

And so, for instance, I went to Yale for law school. I taught at Princeton. I was a fellow at MIT. I saw privileged kids commit every crime imaginable. Do every drug imaginable. Be belligerent, start fights, drive too fast, do all kinds of stuff. There were sexual assaults, almost never were the police ever called. I mean, Almost I mean, certainly with drug offenses, please. You never call.

When I was in New Haven going to Yale though, the police would go past the campus with their lights on to the housing projects a few blocks away. And those kids who were doing fewer drugs and have less money all got arrested and went to prison. So, the data set would say that kids at Ivy League campuses don’t do drugs and kids in housing projects do.

So then, that’s your input data. You’re going to then you know your your your entire product but we know that’s not true. In fact, the same government that has prisons full of people of color for drug crimes will also tell you that white people of color do illicit drugs at exactly the same rate. And that, when it comes to drug sales, there are more white people selling drugs, proportionally and absolute, than people of color, but people of color are six times more likely to be in prison for selling drugs than white people. 

So wait, hold on a second. So you have a massive glitch in the actual world. And if you’re not aware of that. If you’re not skeptical. If you don’t have friends and associates, that will you know we’re different religions, different races different guy. If you’re in a small bubble, you’ll just rubber stamp, all of that bias right into all of your technology.

It requires a different social context, and to weed out, and to interrupt the transmission of social bias into data bias and into biased data. And so, these are things that shouldn’t be at this these are things that should be taught from the very beginning that you were building a different society based on data. The data can be corrupt, it can be corrupted and it can be corrupting.

CATHERINE: Yeah, and that dovetails so well with something, I went to our first speakers on Monday Cathy O’Neil we had her here from Weapons of Math Destruction and she talked about that. The problem with arrests, being a proxy for crime rates and so yeah builds on that. We have a question here from the audience that kind of builds on what you were just saying, asking how do we influence the creators of tech to create more inclusive technology, and kind of do the things that you’re saying.

VAN: I mean just asking the question, is a positive step. You know, we did, you know, we’ve done a lot of stuff of the Dream Corps, you know, we used to do a lot of hackathons where we would bring you know engineers from Google and Facebook and other places to just interact with, you know, our aspiring talent coming out of Oakland and other parts of the East Bay. And what was amazing about it was not the, the impact, primarily on the young people. The young people got a lot out of it. But the impact on the engineers was unbelievable because they were like holy crap these kids are smart as hell. Like, I mean, whoa, I mean they, I think we all can be put to sleep by the presumption of like where the smart kids are, you know, the smart kids are in the private schools the dumb kids in public schools market late, so you show up in a community center and you’re, you’re doing a hackathon or a coding session with a bunch of kids, and these kids are just as smart as a private school and much more interesting, because their lives were just thinking their parents are from all over the world and they’ve got a different attitude a different flavor different.

And so, again, proximity matters, colocation matters, getting outside your comfort zone. You’re only going to be as good as all the experiences, all the information, all that you bring to any particular problem and any situation. I feel like we have right now we’re in danger of creating a society with an awful lot of data, but very little wisdom.

Where does the wisdom come from. Yeah, wisdom comes from reflecting deeply, being challenged, learning, doing hard things, getting outside the comfort zone, listening to people who maybe… See, a lot of wisdom accumulates at the edges of systems. A lot of wisdom accumulates at the bottom of systems. Often the intern knows more about what’s going on than the CEO and the janitor, the secretary, the assistant knows more about what’s going on, than the executive, but nobody’s asking him or her, nobody’s talking to him or her.

So where does. So having that orientation to, to understand that no one believed that there’s wisdom to be gained in unlikely places. This needs to be a part of shaping people, as good citizens of the digital age.

It’s so easy to be to think, you know, without knowing very much at all.

CATHERINE: Yeah, that goes back to the empathy and listening thing, and I love the data wisdom distinction because I think so often, people think that data is objective and speaks for itself and so not the case. And as a related question, back on the empathy idea, from the audience is to what extent do you think technology and specifically social media contributes to our inability to develop empathy and to listen and how might we change this.

VAN: That’s a great question and I’ll tell you I think it’s incredibly destructive. I think people look at these devices in these apps, and they think that these things are trying to give us information. Where, who, what, Who told you that? These things are trying to give us endorphins. These apps are designed to give us little brain tickles. So whatever you like or comment on or share, the algorithm starts to figure out what you like. And the only thing the app is designed to do is to keep your attention on the app, which means they’re going to show you not what you need to know. Not what you should know; what you want to know, what you want to see.

And, you know, when I am you know I’m a good strong democrat and I know we have some good strong republicans in the audience again. God bless everybody. That’s good. As long as you care about democracy, we’re on the same team. So, but I realized a few years ago that I had all everything in my social media feed was was liberal, and and I had that happen I realized, you know, well follow this liberal friend, this liberal friend’s liberal friend, then they start recommending oh well. Once you follow this one once you follow this one. and that recommendation engine wound up having me. Have a feed that’s only one side.

So I said oh that’s not good enough so I searched for a bunch of terms, you know conservative, you know right wing pro gun pro Trump whatever I could find wherever I could think of. And I, and then I followed a whole bunch of other people who I don’t agree with it for a while my feed was much more balanced: something would happen in the news, I would see the liberal and conservative point of view. And then six weeks later, it started showing me only liberals again.

And I realized I wasn’t liking that conservative comment. I wasn’t sharing it. I wasn’t commenting on it. The algorithm figured out, he really wants to this stuff. And so they started hiding it from me again.

And so, that’s not healthy. So, so you’re sitting next to somebody, you know on an airplane or, you know, in a, in a restaurant, and you’re looking at your phone, they’re looking at their phone, you’re looking at a totally different reality than they are. And so you have to know that. And then I hope that the next generation, like how about a social media algorithm self-interrupts and says hey you follow six people that are all exactly the same. Would you like to follow these other people that challenge your perspective or to give you some more like at least make it an option.

I mean it’s not innocent. When the algorithm is deliberately feeding you recommendations that are only going to make you more and more isolated from everybody else. So I think that’s something that technology should take very seriously.

CATHERINE: He has ideas for how we can get, like, empathy and listening and an understanding of the kinds of things you’re talking about actually into formal education, like, k 12 education.

VAN: I just think it’s, you know, the new citizenship requires see i think i think if you try to drive on on the outcome side. I don’t think that’s good, say what we want all the kids to think this way about race, while kids think this way about gender. We’re going to cancel you if you think this way about religion. I’m old school, man, I believe in that stuff, like I like the clash of ideas, even ideas that I hate. But I think the underlying skill set of being able to have the conversation. How do you have a tough conversation across the line of difference. What physiologically what he has to be able to do. How can you drop your diaphragm How can you recognize you’re getting triggered. What are the signs that you have developed mastery of the level of, the area of listening, like that should be a part of the curriculum, because then you know maybe people will people will agree on some stuff maybe they won’t.

This will be popular, this idea will be less popular, that all can change I don’t like saying everyone has to think the same way. I don’t really like that. But people need better tools to think, if you will need better tools to share their thinking. And that’s where I think we could come together and get more aggressive about changing some curriculum, adding stuff, but then like we had a, we had high school civics. Now when I was growing up I don’t know what they have these days. But whoever is supposed to be helping people function in the world, we need some new tools.

CATHERINE: And have you found any tools that help you with this or I think this also relates to whole like your philosophy of dialogue in terms of these polarized times, and like just ideas of tools you’ve used?

VAN: You know I loved the book nonviolent communication, which was very popular 20 years ago, I still think it’s great i mean it’s it’s it looks a little old fashioned now in terms of the, the cover and maybe doesn’t. They have an audio book about it but nonviolent communication I found was very, very helpful.

You know in there, but I think that whole literature around conflict resolution and mediation, that needs to be more widely available because more people find themselves in conflict every day. And also because, look if we all were watching TV and watching the same show and we all saw the same stuff. The next day at work the next day at school is at least some common reference point as to reality. Now, people, the algorithms help them kind of design their own worlds. And if they do watch the news, they’re going to watch you know they’re going to, you know, watch a more partisan probably news source. You’re going to be more in conflict.

Bottom line, I mean, you know, you’ll be in conflict about basic facts. You know one plus one is two type of conflict. So you need more conflict resolution skills more mediation skills, more negotiation skills, then your parents did, then your grandparents did. So we shouldn’t, we should make that more available.

CATHERINE: So a little switch on the question here I also liked what you talked about in the canary in the coal mine setting and that kind of dovetails a lot with what we do at NCWIT, not focusing on fixing the person, you know, and fixing rather than fixing the systems, and the audience has a couple questions on what NCWIT, or others can do to encourage inspire and support the next generation of Black students in particular, women and men who are underrepresented in tech, what they can do to support them and what kinds of systems needs to change in order to make the environment better.

VAN: Look, if you had two people who were on the first floor of a building, trying to climb, climb a ladder to get to the 10th floor. One person had lots of steps, and one person had a bunch of rungs missing. You wouldn’t be wrong to spend some time adding steps to get to that second ladder. Because you say listen, it’s not, this person, it’s not just his fault that the ladder that they’re trying to climb is broken with a whole bunch of missing rungs.

And yet, we do this really weird thing when it comes to hiring, when it comes to selection. When we say well this kid’s ahead of this kid, we should give this kid a break, and we give, we should give the award or the opportunity or the job or the internship of the scholarship to this kid who’s ahead. The kid who’s behind, well you know maybe give him some videos and some charity but the bottom line is, they’re behind.

I think that mindset is very very limited. If you want to have a bunch of African American kids join your program and do well… Nothing good happens to Black kids in America, in general, by accident. Nothing good happens in general. My kids are well off but you average like, statistically, nothing is going to happen to the average Black kid by accident. It’s going to take strategies and take dedication, it’s gonna take extra resources and programming and effort, because you’re, you’re dealing with, you have to make up for some of the lack in society. And the trauma.

If any white person I know had to spend a week being Black they’d be in therapy for rest of their lives. It is unbelievably stressful to be in a society where everywhere you go there you’re under suspicion, there’s the idea that you’re a threat or you’re not supposed to be there or you’re not as smart or whatever. It’s stressful to me. I’m grown and successful, let alone to be a kid trying to navigate that.

And so what I was a very long way of saying, we have found that we’ve had to put extra weeks of pre-programming on the front end of a lot of what we do, trying to help African American and other kids of color perform. They need, it just turns out they need a little bit more of a head start, they need more programming, more empathy, more coaching. Society is not giving the same amount of help. So by the time they get to you, there’s a deficit of help. There’s a deficit of support. And if you’re not willing to lean in and say you know what we’ll, we’ll make up for that, we’ll put extra resources or extra effort, then you’re not going to have success.

And well we don’t want to play favorites. Well, we’re not asking my to play favorites, we’re asking people to play fair. And if one group is, you can show statistically by the data, is going to, see advantage compounds and disadvantage compounds as well. 

The fact that you know my kids, you know, have just massively unfair advantages. I mean my kid, I mean it’s ridiculous. You know, my, my little guy got to take a picture with Beyonce and Jay Z because we’re doing something with them. And, you know, it comes home he tells his, true story, comes home and tells my then wife, Janet, still my best friend Janet. You know, I like spending time with daddy. Because, you know, he’s like a D list celebrity, and I get to meet real stars, like this is how he sees the world. So so, so his entire world, from the very beginning, has had so many advantages baked in, the school he goes to, the problems, he doesn’t have any, any situation gets into we can bring in tutors, mentors, help.

Well, it’s not fair for my kids to then, you know, directly go head to head with some kid who grew up in the housing project and went to, you know, crappy schools with 33 kids in a classroom, six books and no job.

I can say it’s a fair fight; it’s not. And I can cry and complain if you put more resources trying to help that other kid do well. But that just makes me an asshole, like that’s just not the right way to be about life. And so, It’s not about playing favorites, it’s about playing fair. 

It takes more effort, it takes more and it can be like well we tried. You know we send some emails around, we asked our one Black friend, I don’t know. See, the thing about it is, and this is the toughest by, the toughest thing I’m gonna say. The thing about it is, most of the people who tell me they can’t solve this problem, have solved every other problem and the other problems are a lot harder. You got people who are solving literally the toughest problems in technology, the toughest problem in the world. These are much tougher problems than how to like get four Black kids in your program. And it might take some innovation, but but guys, I mean at some point this is, it’s a little bit silly. 

I’ll tell you this. And then I’ll let you ask another question if we can squeeze in. But if if you found that, you know, God forbid you found out on Monday, God forbid, that one of your kids had a rare form of cancer. God forbid or someone that you love, had a rare form of cancer, a form you’d never heard of on Monday morning. By Friday afternoon you would be a world class expert in that form of cancer, you would have read every book, every study. You to watch a YouTube video, you know them every experts you would be literally bossing around the surgeons and everybody else, within five days, what, because you would be unbelievably committed to solving this problem.

And yet I hear people, year after year telling, well then what can we do. What can we do, I just don’t know what to do, so terrible, what can it, guys. I mean just honestly, we’re not blinking buddy, at this point, like the James Baldwin said something by toughest thing he ever said, said when it comes to race. White people are always innocent. Oh my god, I didn’t know it down so terrible, my God, what did I do, didn’t know when it comes to race, white people are always innocent and their innocence constitutes their crime, their innocence constitutes their crime.

It’s too late to be this innocent guys, it’s too late to be this shocked and appalled. You can see we already know the numbers, we already know, we see the videos, we know what’s going on. The question is, how committed are we to get into better answers. Over time, people always say, Hey, what’s the one workshop I can do and understand a race better. I say what what in your life that you care about you asked that question on this one in your life that you care about the is like somebody who is a big and technology that’s come to you. Hey, what’s the workshop I can do there’s gonna everything about technology use it. That’s not how you learn about technology. Somebody who’s great in business. Hey, what’s one book I can read and be great in business. It takes persistent effort over time, with a commitment to go through the tough part to get to the outcome and everything including this issue. 

CATHERINE: Yeah, it’s so true often looking for the easy answers. If we have time, I do have one more if we have time. And it kind of. It builds off and maybe it contradicts what you just said so not not not asking this in this sort of easy recipe sense but the question is, are there other levers we can pull, pull to speed up the pace of change needed to achieve the equity in tech and wondering about, like the role of state and federal policy. 

VAN: No, that’s a great question. I may not have a great answer. Um, you know, I think that, you know, obviously, it’d be great if we had a federal government that would do something more than it’s done, there is going to be a much. I think in the infrastructure bill that’s going to be a big push on research and development and all that kind of stuff. People, they have those connections or the capacity or desire to try to fight for some conditioning of those funds to get them to be spent more fairly or to get them to historically Black colleges and universities or Native American colleges.

But I don’t have a good policy answer, and I don’t think we should wait for one. I really think to the extent that especially for the younger generations coming up. We want them to have a great life, where I’m doing an awful lot of stuff here. There will be there won’t be truck drivers, or Uber drivers in 10 years. It’s going to be all self driving. Most of the new factories that are being built now are mostly, used to be you had a lot of people working on a few machines, all the new factories is a lot of machines with a few people working on them. The robots have more jobs than the people. That’s going to keep going and doing a lot of stuff we’re disrupting a lot of stuff. The only way that’s going to work out well without a lot of social upheaval, without a lot of violence, without a lot of of pain and suffering is for us to know each other well not so that the people who are designing the new future aren’t making things any worse than they have to be, in fact are deliberately trying to make things better. The people are, these young people are architects of a new millennium.

That’s what’s happening, we are building a digital society that will probably be on Mars, within 30 years, and will be spread throughout, you know the cosmos over the coming thousand years, and and these young people that were talking to you, or the Arkadin the boundaries of that, in many ways, the architects of that. And so there what’s not just in their head but what’s in their heart, not just just what they know, but about whom they care can have tremendous outcomes for the human species for human civilization.  We shouldn’t take it lightly. And we shouldn’t wait for the government to tell us that we need to make sure these kids are all mixed up together and loving each other and helping each other, we should see that as a much a part of our job as educators and leaders as making sure that the program works out right because they can have a great algorithm that works really well and tears up society, or they can have an algorithm works really well and pulls it together. It’s going to be up to them, it’s going to be up to us to make sure they at least have the option.

CATHERINE: That’s great, kind of brings it all back to empathy and that part, knowing authentically across lines of difference that you mentioned. Thank you so much, man. It’s been a pleasure to have you with us today. Thank you very much.

VAN: Thank you. 

CATHERINE: Thank you. All right. All right. We’ll just end with a few last housekeeping things. So in case you missed your swag bag, make sure you stop by and pick that up at the website indicated below. It’s full of popcorn and a printed copy of our re:think magazine and a set of flashcards. Also, up next on Friday, you won’t want to miss Dr. Lisa Cook who’s going to be talking about innovation, race and patenting, and the effect on the economy.

YouTube Video Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNy03rp2jSk


NCWIT 2012 Summit – Orientation

LUCY SANDERS: Hello, everyone. My name is Lucy Sanders and I’m the CEO of NCWIT. And, before I came to NCWIT, which is housed at the University of Colorado, I worked for 25 years in telecommunications in Bell Labs. So, I am a computer scientist by education and by passion and by love. NCWIT is a real passion of mine to really make sure that we’re continuing to build the pipeline for girls and women in computing. So, I wanted to start with a little bit of background for you all since… How many of you this is your first summit? Okay, good, awesome. So, let’s set the context for why we need NCWIT. And these numbers are roughly right numbers. I’m sure all of you understand that data can be an imprecise science sometimes. These are the numbers we have today. And I think it’s just good to set the context so that you all understand what we are working towards. So, 13% is roughly the number of computer science AP test takers in high school who are girls. It also happens to be roughly the number of four year degree recipients in computing and information systems from the top several hundred universities in the country. 25% is the percentage of the workforce, broader IT workforce, made up of women. So, obviously, women are coming from other degrees besides CIS into the IT workforce. But they make up roughly 25% of the IT workforce. 74% of women in technology report liking to work in technology once they hit the workforce and are active. However, 56% leave corporate technical roles by mid-career. Now, there’s a lot of other data underneath that 56%. We probably don’t have time to go into it right now. It’s complicated where they’re going. You may be saying “Where are they going?” And trust me. Some of them are leaving for family obligations, but not as large a number as you think. Some of them are going to public sector IT jobs away from corporate, private sector IT jobs. Some of them are leaving to start their own companies. Some of them are leaving tech. ‘Cause that’s where they’re going. But it leads to the 5% number, which happens to be the percentage of technology leadership positions that are held by women. So, the CIO, CTO, R and D vice president, lead architect fellow. Where innovation happens. The people driving innovation. So, generally speaking, we know that women are not helping to invent the technology of the future. They are not. And they’re not in the leadership positions. They’re dropping out of the workforce. And they’re certainly not participating as much in innovation as we would like them to be. So, with that in mind, I want you to kind of go back in time to around 2003. The National Science Foundation, of course, was interested in this. In addition to being chartered with helping to fund and set the direction for US research, primary research in computing, they also care about workforce readiness. The workforce skills of the 21st century. And they have been working long and hard on turning the corner in this particular issue of girls and women in computing. And they wanted more progress more, better, sooner, faster. So, they asked a group of people to convene in Boulder, Colorado and to come up with a comprehensive, long term, sustained approach at this. Full ecosystem, full pipeline. No small task. But we did it. And what I’m about ready to describe to you is how NCWIT sort of came out of all of this. I think you’ll see that the strategy’s fairly interesting. I want to pick apart this slide for just a moment. Our mission at NCWIT is to significantly increase girls’ and women’s participation in computing. I think, from the numbers, I hope you see significantly is in order. And meaningful is very important, too. We care what they’re doing. We want them helping to invent the products and services that our world depends on. We want their thoughts, their dreams, their ideas, their approach. We want them to invent things. We don’t know what women will invent if they were inventing the technology of the future, because, right now, they, by and large, are not. And so, we care about what they’re doing. And you may be also saying “What’s information technology? Give me a definition.” Well, I’m gonna disappoint you on that one again, because we’re purposefully vague on that. It doesn’t really do us any good to be very precise about what we mean by it. We mean anything having to do with computers, information, data, the whole thing. We’re very pervasive about this. Make sense? Okay, good. So, before NCWIT, one of the things we noticed at this plenary session, if you look at the diagram, you see there are a number, at the time in 2003 and today, there are a number of programs. Many of you are associated with these programs. All across the pipeline from K-12 to post-secondary into corporate into startups into the public sector. Who were focusing on girls and women in computing and who care about it. Who really are change leader organizations. But they existed in isolation. There was no connective tissue. There was no coming together as a community and sharing practices and sharing resources and setting a national agenda, studying a national dialogue, and really moving forward as a community, as a movement. And so, as a result, if you added up the impact of all of these isolated programs, it wasn’t nearly as large as it could have been. I like to say it’s like having computers with no network. The impact of what you can do, the applications of what you can do severely limited if it’s just one computer per person. So, NCWIT aims to bring all these change leaders organizations together. All of you. And really form a community. A community that’s active all year long. We’ll talk about that. A community that is working not just on their own organizations, but also in national outreach efforts and action. And so, you can see that nice little graphic. NCWIT is a change leader network. That’s the way to think about us. We are an organization of organizations. All of whom are focused on girls and women in computing. And so, learning communities means we’re in action all year. And you all are advising us in helping set the national agenda. Evidence really implies that everything we do needs to be based on the best possible evidence we can find at the moment. And, actually, we’re working to create more and more evidence as we move new and different research projects. And then action is really around forming national campaigns that you all can participate in that are efficient, fast, where you can act on a local level and know that you have national impact. So, you’ll hear about these alliances. You may have already checked your program for the summit. Our member organizations. We have over 300 and growing organizations as part of NCWIT right now. We believe we’re getting closer to 325 or so. Maybe even more. After all of you join, it’ll be even more. So, K-12 alliance consists of large, national not for profits. Many are girl serving. Some are girl and boy serving. But they, again, are working on large national outreach programs. The K-12 alliance has an estimated reach of over half the girls in the United States. And a number of adult stakeholders, as well as a growing number of young men. The academic alliance, over 200 universities focused on improved practices in the way they recruit in curriculum, in pedagogy, in all kinds of things. And I have some results to tell you about the academic alliance to brag about them just a bit. Workforce alliance is for corporations. Large corporations. Many of whom are multinational. And they are also working on recruiting, retaining, and advancing technical women. They’ve had a special focus on mid-career technical women. The entrepreneurial alliance is for startup companies. Making sure that they recruit technical women into their companies right from the start. So, that is, they grow their company. They grow their culture. It’s part of their DNA. The affinity group alliance is a new alliance that we’re launching here at this summit that will convene women’s technical affinity groups. So, they can be corporate. They can be local. They can be state. They can be technical, like LinusChix. So, they can be any type of affinity group. And then a social science advisory board is a group of very distinguished research scientists who have a focus on technology and girls and women. And they get together and think big brain ideas. It’s really fascinating hanging around with social scientists. I would recommend it. It’s great. So, these alliances, three are very established. The workforce alliance, the academic alliance, the K-12 alliance. They’ve had projects, committees, lots of success. They’re moving… They’re starting to move the needle. The academic alliance, 60% of our universities report increased percentages of women enrolled in their programs, for example. And they are just on fire with all kinds of programs. They’re working and thinking about community colleges now. They’re thinking about research experience for undergraduates. Really, a very powerful group. Workforce alliance has done some real cutting edge research on technical women in the workforce. And they’ve just completed a study on male influencers. Men who advocate for technical women and why they do it. They’ve done a patent report. They’ve done a report on women in IT, the facts. They’ve done some top 10 cards. And now they’re busy at work trying to roll those resources back into their corporations. And the K-12 alliance is the home alliance for our Aspirations in Computing Award. It’s also the home alliance for programs like Counselors for Computing and other types of large outreach efforts. Gotta Have IT, Young Resource Kits for Teachers, et cetera. These two alliances are pretty unique approaches. We don’t know of any other group that’s working with startup companies about recruiting and retaining technical women from the day they open the doors. And we think that not only is this good for them. It’s good for the women. Because they’re there to help shape the culture, to have the big ideas and innovation. And they’re also there to take early leadership positions in startup companies when they arise. And they’re also learning valuable entrepreneurial skills sitting right on front row of these companies. So, we’re very excited about this group. And the affinity group alliance is a great idea when you think about the millions and millions of women reached by technical affinity groups that we can really make sure that these affinity groups are sharing best practices and also pushing out content. That they’re gonna be an army. I’m very excited about them. How many of you are here for the affinity group alliance? Some of you. Yeah, it’s great. I can’t wait. Millions is our goal. Millions of women. It’s awesome. And then we talked a little bit about the social science advisory board. They are just so awesome. And their project through the last year was really working… If you were here last year, you heard Joshua Aaronson talking about asking a gender question ahead of the math SAT test and how asking that gender question triggered stereotype threat for women. Such that, if they move the question to the end of the test, women’s performance on the test improved remarkably. So, the social science advisory board took this on as a project. To try to work with College Board and other people to think about what we could do here. Great group. Alright, so that’s the community part. Alliances, projects, committees, they all have project managers. We work through the year. If you’re interested, you’ll be asked to join a committee. It’s basically an advisory role. We do the heavy lifting, but we need to hear from you. The alliances are self-governed. They all have co-chairs that come from the membership. So, our aim is to be an extension of your efforts and not a whole lot more time. However, we have to hear from you and have your participation, as well. Next thing you’ll notice is that we have a large number, a growing number, of research-backed resources that are freely available on our website. We want to make them available for free, because we believe that all change leaders need access to evidence-based resources. And, if they want to make a change, we want them to make a change based on our best possible knowledge. So, I like to tell this little story. They kind of started out like this. First of all, they said “Give us data.” So, we came up with by the numbers. And we came up with some other statistic sheets. And we came up with a few reports and a scorecard. And then they said, “Give us practices that work.” So, we came up with practice sheets. And there’s the research on one side and then there’s a case study on the other side of practices that people have tried. And evaluation, evidence from those practices. Then they said, “This is really great, but, you know, we’re busy.” This is great. I love this story. We’re busy. And I said, “Of course you are.” So, they said, “Give us programs. Give us Ad Water programs.” That’s where Programs in a Box came from. Download a mentoring program for technical women. Download a mentoring program for academic women. Download an outreach program. So that, when you go out into a high school, you don’t have to reinvent all that. So, we have a five box series on technical supervisors, for example, and inclusion. So, trying to come up with those downloadable boxes so that you can take them and use them. Use pieces of it. Put your logo on it. Put your brand on it. That’s great. We love it. And they said, “Well, you know, we need talking point cards. We need those little cheat sheet cards.” So, you’ll see a collection of talking point cards. Like, tell me the top things to say to a young woman about a career in IT. And I don’t know if Gearhard’s here yet, but Gearhard from Harvard said that our six inch What Do You Tell a Young Person About a Career in IT is the most heavily researched six inch card on the face of the planet. [laughter] And I think it’s instructive to use that as an example, of course, because we wanna make sure the messages we give our young people are not made up messages. They need to be authentic and real and as inspirational as we possibly know how to make them. But they need to be based on something. Okay, so, we did talking point cards. And then we started doing workbooks and strategy books. And, lately, you’ll see out on the table, we started top 10 cards. The top 10 things you can do to retain women in your academic program. The top 10 things you can do to help technical women in a corporation become more visible. So, you can kind of see how this rolls, right? And we’re trying to professionally design them and have them really attractive so that you take them places and you’re proud of them. And you know that they’re based on the best possible evidence that we can find. We have a new website coming. Yay. I don’t know if any of you try to find an NCWIT resource, but, when I try to find them, I can’t. So, now, we have a new resource. A new webpage where the resources are really profiled quite well. It’s based on a content management system. It’s easier to sort. It’s easier to find things based on what you’re looking for. The website itself I also much more reflective of what our membership is doing. When we first started, not surprisingly, our website was kind of like an all about us website. Here’s who we are. Here’s why we exist. Here’s our mission. But now this is all about you. It’s gonna be all about you. It’s gonna be about the resources to help you. It’s gonna be about your experience with the resources. So, we have some kiosks set up in the lobby. And, if you wanna go take it for a spin, you can. We’re gonna cut it after this summit, because my IT background told me it’s a really bad idea to cut a new website before a major event. [laughter] So, yay, I remember that one. So, look for it right after the summit. And go take it for a drive. Or, if you wanna look now, it’s at preview.mcwit.org is the preview site. Curious about your feedback. The content management makes it a whole lot easier to fix, too. If you have comments, please do send them to us. Okay, so that’s resources. And now we’re in communities. We’ve done resources and now we’re into action. And these are the kinds of action program frameworks that NCWIT puts together. And I’m gonna spend a little bit of time on some of them, but, right now, I wanna just go through them quickly. Because you’re gonna hear about them. We have a talent development program that starts in high school and goes through college called Aspirations in Computing. And, here, I just wanna thank our sponsors for this. We have corporate sponsors that make this possible. We have Bank of America. We have Microsoft. We have Google. All helping us fund the creation of this award program which actually is a talent development program. So, we’ll say a little bit more about that in a moment. We have Pacesetters, which is a group of universities and corporations that are working to set quantifiable goals to move the national needle. We have Sit With Me, which was funded by Google. Which is a national advocacy campaign. And you’ll see red chairs floating around and lapel pins tonight with red chairs. And you’ll wonder what that is. And I’ll tell you in a minute more about that. We have, courtesy of Microsoft Research, our academic alliance has a seed fund program. And this is self-run, again, by the alliance. Members form committees. They do a request for proposals. And, for 10 or $15,000 to implement a practice. To do something… A new recruiting practice. Or to do something new in the classroom. It’s very successful. The academic alliance loves this program. Symantec recently came on board and is funding a similar seed fund. Although not for as much money per chapter. For women’s computing chapters on campus for academic alliance members. So that they have some seed fund money to do things in terms of their own work. We have… The Computer Science Education Week is an example of a project we do with our great partners. ACM, CRA, the Computer Science Teachers Association. Google’s there. Microsoft’s there. Oracle’s there. We’re all working hard on getting computer science out there in the mainstream as an important discipline. And so, Computer Science Education Week. You can go find the website for that. Because, when you join up, we’ll be asking you to make a pledge during Computer Science Education Week to do something. One thing. Encourage a girl. Have an event. Whatever it is you wanna do. But it’s all part of a growing movement to make computer science more visible at the high school level. And even lower. K-12 level. Counselors for Computing is funded by the Merck Foundation. And this is putting relevant resources and the facts in professional school counselors’ hands so that they no longer discourage young people from a career in information technology. Believe it or not, a lot of people still think there are no jobs. I know. Interesting, isn’t it? So, we’re out there telling… “Oh, yes, there are jobs. There are jobs.” So, that’s Counselors for Computing. So, let me show you or tell you a bit about how some of these programs work. Because the structure is interesting. So, Aspirations in Computing started as an award program. And, when we had these summits, we would bring this award program to our various summits and we would reach out locally and we would recognize young women for creative aspirations in computing at the high school level. So, this is not the use of technology. This is the creation of technology. They would submit an application. We’d have to have a teacher endorse it. We’d have judges using a technical rubric to judge the application. And then we would find 10 winners. Bank of America saw this and said, “We wanna sponsor that at the national level.” And so, we said, “Of course. This is great.” So, now… So, then, it was 35 winners. They get $500 and a laptop and a trip to Charlotte and the most gala event. You’re all welcome to join us. Huh, Bank of America? All of you can come, too. And 35 winners. And, of course, we had to put a portal in place. So, they all went online. We started to judge online. And now more judges and all of that. And it’s great. And then some of our members go, “But, wait a minute, we were used to seeing these wonderful young women. We wanna see them, too. We wanna have regionals.” So, we started forming clusters of member corporations and universities and other organizations. And we have regionals now. 32 regionals across the country. And so, we have local winners. And now we have national. And it’s great. We have applicants from all 50 states and Puerto Rico. And we have a… It’s gone viral. Our goal is to add 1,000 new young women to this talent pool as we move. So, it’s a great program. But you think, okay, it’s an award. Great. However, it’s a whole lot more than that. So, we keep them connected on Facebook. And we offer them internship possibilities. We offer them scholarship possibilities. We offer them contests, video contests. We offer them mobile application opportunities. And, all of a sudden, we’ve got ourselves guess what? A community. And a talent development pipeline. And now they’re moving from high school on to college. We just had some of our first young women graduate from college. So, the idea is we want to add 1,000 new women a year into this talent development program. And NCWIT members are growing the talent development program by helping judge or get the word out or offer possibilities to these young women. So, this is kind of a visual representation of what I just said. So, NCWIT provides the scaffolding. You see that. Project management, the technology, the materials, the kits, the resources. Our member organizations form the regionals. Start thinking about the local level and the national level. And then we have a talent pool. They’re offering, like I said, the internships, the jobs, the scholarships, et cetera. Encouragement. So, that’s how it works. And those are our lovely winners from the national award. Looking just like a very large talent pool. So, think thousands of girls coming out of this talent pool every year. All because of the work that NCWIT members are doing. We’re very honored to support it. It is an example of acting locally and making a national difference. Does that make sense? It’s all connected. We’re all pulling the same wagon here. And it’s amazing that we can create. We can move the national needle like this when we all work together. And we are. Can you move the slide? Thank you. I don’t why it didn’t. Another example, Sit With Me. You’ll see the red chair. This came out of our Pacesetters work where we had a number of members who said, “We need a way to tell technical women that we value them.” To encourage, not support, that’s kind of a weak word. But to validate them. To really show how much we appreciate their contributions. And we really would like for them to persist. And you saw the attrition rate. So, Sit With Me came from that. It was created by a marketing company BBMG. And it’s based loosely on Rosa Parks. First, you have to sit to take a stand. And it’s a way for everybody to have a conversation. Men, women, technical, non-technical. Again, we have a website, sitwithme.org. You can start to think about the taglines. First, we have to sit to take a stand. I won’t stand for anything less. I’m sitting for the future of technology. It’s an advocacy campaign. And we’re creating it again in a way that every one of you, we hope, can implement it. We have plans. And you’ll hear more tomorrow. To roll this out nationally in the fall. Given that the funding gods are good to us. I don’t know… There we go. So, here’s some examples. We rolled this out in January to our membership. And, again, we’re over 300 organizations. So, this is quite a large membership. And you can see some of the things. My personal contribution was the red chair on the United jet. And in the cockpit. But we have Microsoft roll this out 50 events around the world on International Women’s Day. Facebook ended up painting a graffiti wall of people sitting in red chairs and then invited people in to take pictures and to make statements around their personal advocacy for technical women. You can see… I don’t know if you can recognize the gentleman in that front row. That’s Intel and Craig Barrett. So, it’s more than just photos. It’s a way to have a conversation. And what we’re finding is, when people have events or they’re doing certain things, that it starts a conversation that creates some really amazing space. And it’s not in your face. It’s not controversial. It’s fun. So, we have a number of members thinking about doing other things in this space. Like a stealth campaign. Like having chairs show up. You’ll probably see the red chair moving around this event. And you’ll see it tonight at the community reception as we continue to move. But it’s really great. It’s a lot of fun. Counselors for Computing I’m just gonna skip real quick, because I wanna make sure you all have time for questions. But, again, we mentioned this earlier. This is a resource kit for counselors. We’re again gonna put it in some type of a framework so that universities can use this kind of kit to also reach out to professional school counselors where they live. I should briefly say we work in DC. We have a non-lobbying presence in DC where we have conversations that sound like this. Computing is the most important STEM discipline. Science, technology, engineering, and math. It’s very important that we have a presence in DC so that we can help shape the national dialogue as computing professionals. Very, very important. A lot going on there. We have workshops. We have a lot of great partnerships, like I mentioned before. Computer Science Teachers Association, ACM, CRA, and a number of great corporate sponsors there, as well. To really work hard in our current focus as a community. And we’ll have more to say about this on Thursday morning. Is rebuilding computer science education in K-12 in the public school system. It’s very important. So, we’re there. Great partners. Certainly not doing it alone. But we think we need to have a presence there, because we can’t attract more young women to computing if it’s not taught in high school and it’s not taught well. So, we feel very passionate about this. One of our projects that we’ve done, because we have a research staff and we were able to do it, again, is to think about data here. So, this is… You’ll find this on our website. This is a map, by US House district… It breaks down to US House district, but it also can aggregate up to state and national. Of educational preparation in computing by US House district compared to the number of jobs predicted. So, this is to fuel your local activism. If you wanna go talk to a principal or if you wanna talk to a school district or something else, you can roll this up and look at it. So that we can put data in your hands. It was incredibly hard to do. It crosses multiple data sets. Some of which we had to buy and do other things. But it’s very useful. Oops, nope, go back. In closing. No, no. Maybe we need a battery in this thing. There, okay, so, in closing, and I wanted to leave plenty of time for questions, because I know sometimes it’s kind of… The summit, there’s a lot going on. So, we’ll say a bit about the summit, too. We think the NCWIT approach is working. The approach is that we believe in collaboration. That, together, we need to collaborate and compete against the problem. This and not against each other. This is such a severe innovation issue. This is such a severe competitiveness issue. This is a severe equity issue. That there’s no room for competition here. We need to collaborate and then compete against the problem. We believe that access to information should be free. We’re sort of open source. That, if you’re a good spirited change leader, you should have access to the facts and evidence and the research and the resources that you need to get your job done. And we believe everybody should be in action. I mean, we want an active membership. And we believe people should be in action all year long. This summit is not a conference. This summit is our community meeting. And then we go home and we’re in action and we come back again and we check in and we think about new projects and we think about where we’re headed and then we do it again. So, this is very much a community meeting rather than a conference. And I wanna also say, before I tell you a little bit about the summit, what we’re not. Sometimes people think that we’re a women’s network. And we’re not. We’re a change leader network. And that’s a really important distinction. We have so many men working with us, as well as women. And that’s a very important part of the equation here. So, we’re a change leader network. I think we’re also not a coalition or an umbrella organization. We’re a learning community. And that’s a very important distinction. And we are in action. So, we’re really change leaders trying to form a movement so that, at the end of the day, we take over everything in the world. Because I know you all know that computing people run the world, anyway. It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t really know it. [laughter] True, right? Good, so now we need more women there and then we’ll be done. We will have total dominance. That’ll be great. One more, I think. There we go. So, here’s how the summit works. First of all, you all have your programs. The first day you’re here at the orientation and then we’ll move into several research presentations by some fabulous researchers. And we all like these types of talks, because they give us all kinds of new information that we, as computing professionals, have never thought about before. From a social science perspective. And it’s about being informed and it’s about having the best possible knowledge base for what you’re doing. Some of it you might agree with. Some of it you might not agree with. But it’s leading edge social science research that is pretty mind boggling sometimes. Tonight, at 5:30, we have the Aspirations in Computing ceremony for Illinois. So, we’re wrapping up Aspirations in Computing tonight right here. And that’ll be fun. And then we have a community reception. We always have great receptions, because we think the networking and the… It’s a celebration. It’s a celebration for all the hard work people have done through the year. And it’s a great chance to meet people and to network with other change leaders, such as yourself. The next day, we kind of go at it again. Our alliance meetings meet in the morning. And this is where the K-12, the academic, the workforce, et cetera are meeting. And, as visitors or new people, you will be joining conversations in progress. There’ll be contexts you don’t necessarily have. So, feel free to find people with NCWIT lapel pins. Or maybe you’re new and you just wanna ask somebody a question. Feel free to ask people questions as you navigate your way around. And then we have something new called flash talks. Five minute talks where the slides advance… If you don’t talk fast, your talk is gone. [laughter] And there are nine different topics that I remember submitted. And people voted. And so, it’s gonna be a great deal of fun to see what happens here. So, if we like it, we’ll do it again. And then we have nine different breakouts. And they repeat once. So, you can pick one and then you can pick a second one. And so, they’re back to back repeat. Tomorrow night, we have the innovator award, which honors a woman who has started a technology organization. And we honor Jessica Jackley who founded kiva.org. And/or you signed up for BOF dinners, Birds of Feather dinners, and you’re going out to dinner with your friends. And that should be on the back of your name tag. Whatever it is that you registered for. We close with a panel on DC, because that’s important. And with a second round of alliance meetings. And then we say adios. And then we’ll be back in touch to make sure everybody’s in action throughout the year. Oh, good, I left plenty of time for questions. So, with that, questions, comments. I can’t see you, but… Somebody ask the first one. Okay, good.

AUDEINCE MEMBER: Do you have any idea about how you’re working to get computer science taught and taught well?

LUCY SANDERS: Yes, you wanna repeat that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry, I was hoping you would comment on, briefly, about how you’re working to get computing taught in K-12 and getting it taught well.

LUCY SANDERS: So, I mean, the first thing I wanna say about that is this is a massive community effort. And there are a lot of partners at the table here. So, National Science Foundation cares about this. And they’ve been working in collaboration with the College Board and with a number of educators, K-16 educators, to pilot a new gold standard course in computing called CS Principles. There’s a website up about it. And the way that works, of course, is that, if it’s an AP course, then the universities have to say they’re going to accept it as introductory credit. And there have been some piloting. I think 20… Who knows? 20 pilots so far? I think so. 20 pilots really testing out the concepts of CS Principles and making sure that it’s rigorous, relevant, and inclusive. So, that has to happen first. And then the College Board will eventually move that into a new AP course. So, we think AP is the leverage point here. Now, but that’s not the only thing, because we don’t have… If you were to look at the state of computer science education in K-12 today, it’s pretty depressing at times. I mean, it’s taught as an elective, if it’s taught at all. Sometimes it’s taught as a literacy class and not as a fluency, creative kind of a class. So, we have our work to do to get into the local level, into the schools. And something that Jan Kooney has called CS 10K teachers. We need 10,000 teachers teaching computer science. That’s a goal. And it is an audacious goal of this community. And I’m really proud to be working with that effort, as we all are. And as everybody in this room will need to do as we take this to the local level, ’cause you’ll hear at the DC update, and I think you know it’s true, we can’t solve this issue at the federal level. We have to get more teachers. We have to be out there. We have to advocate in our school districts. We really have to work. And there are some corporations considering putting some major money into this effort, which is great. But we have a lot more work to do. But what’s exciting about it is we’re all pulling the same wagon. It’s great. And so, I’m optimistic. It’s gonna be hard work. But I’m optimistic. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In terms of the 10K teachers program, would this work without any state certification for CS teachers?

LUCY SANDERS: Well, now you’re asking a question that’s a little out of my place. I don’t know if we’ve got our CSTA… Is Joe back here? Do I see… No. Do you wanna mention something about that or…

JOE: The certification issues. They’re individual to states. There’s only about 1/3 of states that have any kind of certification at all. There’s all kinds of issues where, in our state, for example, in Wisconsin, we’re trying to adopt the Exploring Computer Science curriculum. And we’re having… I think we’ve passed it finally. But we’re having some major debates on who can even teach the course. Even though there is excellent professional development for that curriculum. There’s people in the DPI that are saying that if it’s gonna be offered in current technical ed, then only business teachers can teach it. Even though, for example, I have a computer science background, I wouldn’t be able to teach that course, potentially, if that thinking were to continue. I think there’s gonna need to be, in each of our states, some kind of a grassroots movement, if you will, to deal with each state’s Department of Public Instruction to rethink that whole notion of certification. At least in relation to computer science. Also to help them understand what computer science really is. That it’s really more than Word and PowerPoint and stuff, which are important skills, but that’s not computer science. So, there’s certification issues that are really a state by state issue. And it is a huge problem.

LUCY SANDERS: Well, I wanna say, again, that we don’t have all the answers for this yet. I mean, there are people who are really… This is their full time job and they’re here. We’ll be talking more about it as we move through this and you’ll continue to hear more. This should be, I think, a project for all of us moving ahead. And there’ll be a lot of moving parts. And there’ll be a lot of things that need to be defined and a lot of hard work. But I feel good that the direction is emerging. And we will definitely have to do it with local advocacy. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Does NCWIT have any current data about attrition among academic women in computing and IT? And if there are any programs to address that? The drain, the shrinking pipeline.

LUCY SANDERS: Are you thinking about faculty?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Faculty.

LUCY SANDERS: Faculty. Is Joanne here? I don’t know if she’s here yet. The data. I’m gonna misrepresent this. So, does anybody actually have the facts? ‘Cause I remember that the data is actually not as bad. Is that right? Who knows? Hi Kitty. Good, phew.

KITTY: So, the National Academy did a study a couple years ago called Gender Differences. And we looked at several fields. Computer science specifically wasn’t. But we looked at mathematics and several engineering fields, which have similar patterns, and physics. And what we actually found, in the tenured track and tenured levels, the women who are in those pools actually do quite well. I think the challenge is a lot of those who are in academia are not in those pools. Particularly in R1 institutions. So, you have a lot of contingent faculty. You have a lot of people in other situations. But, for those who are actually in the pipeline for tenure track and tenure, the women are doing actually very well.

LUCY SANDERS: And people have asked us, too, about teaching faculty, as well. So, great question. Who else? Back here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don’t know if this is too out of the box for this organization.

LUCY SANDERS: Probably not.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Being the mother of a teenage daughter, have you thought about approaching the entertainment industry and the magazine industry for the messages that our girls are getting?

LUCY SANDERS: Great question. And you’ll hear me later today when we open the summit to really give a big thank you to Turner Broadcasting, who’s our newest partner, who’s streaming this session live. So, I mean, there are some things that the entertainment industry can do and can’t do. And this is probably a longer conversation. But yes. The entertainment industry’s catching onto this. And I think it’s something that we’ve talked about a long time as a community. But I think it’s happening. They seem to… We’ve been getting calls from the entertainment industry guild and other people. And we’re starting to see that they do care about this. So, yes, the answer’s yes. And please thank Turner Broadcasting people when you see them. Because enlarging our footprint and being able to stream and put this information out more broadly and having them advise us on social media footprint. Very important for us. Very, very important. Anybody have anything else? Yes, please.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who foots the bill for all of this?

LUCY SANDERS: Well, you do.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And how much influence do they have that we wish they didn’t?

LUCY SANDERS: Who foots the bill? Who foots the bill? So, we are, at the moment, funded about half through grants with the National Science Foundation. And the other half through corporate sponsorships. And how much influence do they have that I wish they didn’t? I have to honestly say we have really been fortunate in being able to drive our own boat, by and large. And I think it’s because of the fine work of all of our members. And all of the things that we’re doing that I don’t feel constrained. I feel totally empowered to go do the right thing. Doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna make mistakes. But I do feel like we’ve been really fortunate to have that kind of encouragement and support. And I think it’s because people know we’re building this big community. A movement. And we’re gonna be unstoppable. We’re gonna take over the world. There’s a theme here. Anybody have anything else? Did I answer your question? Good, okay, wonderful. Anything else? Alright, oh, one more? Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, hi. I understand the meaning of the organization to try and recruit more women into the computer field. That is correct, right? And what about people who are deaf people like me? We’re an even smaller interest group. We’re women and we’re deaf. And so, because deaf women is one of the smallest factions in this whole group of women. And I really want to be able to encourage more girls or women who are deaf to go into the computing field. But what I don’t know is how to deal with the discrimination that men pose on people. Can you explain a little something about that?

LUCY SANDERS: Well, there are a couple of things in response to that. Yes, in fact, we are working for all women in computing. At all levels of the pipeline. And so, this means women who are deaf and other disabilities. I won’t claim that we’re doing a perfect job there. There are other alliances that we partner with, Access Computing, which also works in this space. And we need to do more. But it is part of our mission and part of our charter to work on that. So, we care about all women. And we need to keep vigilant in that space. So, I don’t know what else to say yet about practice and so on and so forth. We did have a joint meeting with Access Computing a few years ago. And it reminds me that, perhaps, we should do something again. So, let’s talk about that. Maybe you have some ideas about what we can be doing that would make sense. That’s a perfect question for why we need our members to come in and say “These are some of the things that I see that you can do as NCWIT that would really be helpful and impactful.” So, we will have some speakers at the summit today talking about the intersection between race and gender. Which is a new conversation for us. So, we’re continuing to move that way, as well. Anybody have anything else? Okay, we have 15 minutes. And then we start the summit. So, thank you for coming. And I look forward to all your joining. [applause] Thank you.

Vimeo ID 45873135


NCWIT 2012 Summit – DC Update

Ed Lazowska: Great, thank you for joining us this morning. I’m Ed Lazowska, I’m from the University of Washington, and I have to say it’s a real honor and pleasure to once again be back at NCWIT. This is one of the best events in the country every year and I really enjoy being here. What we’re here to do today is talk to you about what’s going on in Washington, DC, and the goal is to be interactive. We want you to ask us some questions as we move along. I’ll start with mine, but we’ll transition to yours, and what we wanna do is expose you to things going on in Washington, DC that affect you and that you can affect. There are lots of things going on there that are not directly related to the theme of NCWIT and computing and there are lots of things that are but we are powerless to influence them. On the other hand, there’s this important overlap area of things going on that really make a difference to us and we can all play in an effective way. So that’s what we wanna discuss with you today. We’ve got three great panelists. On the far end is Russlynn Ali, who’s assistant secretary for civil rights at the US Department of Education. She was appointed by President Obama in 2009, and before that was vice president of the Education Trust in Washington, DC and the founding director of Education Trust West. So she will give us the Department of Education and federal view, and has been deeply engaged in these issues for a long time. Next, Rob Atkinson, who’s been a friend of mine for many years. Rob’s the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which is a think tank and really a leading spokesperson for the technology and innovation-based economy. Before founding that organization, Rob was vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, which many of you are familiar with. And finally, the person who needs the least introduction, Lucy Sanders, who, as you know, is Ms. NCWIT and before that was at Bell Labs for many years, winding up as Bell Labs technical fellow. So that’s the group, and what I’m gonna do is ask each of these folks just to talk to you for three or four or five minutes about what they think the big issues are, then we’ll explore a few questions of our own, and then I hope you have questions. Otherwise, you’ll listen to mine for the remainder of the hour. But please be thinking about what you ask these folks that will illuminate the things you’re most interested in. So Russlynn, can we begin with you, please, if you’re willing?

Russlynn Ali: Sure. It is really my pleasure to be here today, talking about this hugely important issue. I mostly want to listen to these two because we have so much to learn from their expertise, from what they’re doing so well and what you all are doing so well and how we can help replicate those practices across the country. Clearly the need to focus on STEM is evident, not just in the data, in research, and in projections about emerging economies in what skills our students need to have in order to compete in this new global economy. There are lots of ways that the federal government is using its levers in order to effect some real change. Happy to go into much more detail about that during the question and answer period, but you would see it on everything from funding, wherein things like race to the top, the focus on STEM for underrepresented students, namely, women and girls, was the only competitive absolute priority in that competition, and we’ve some real change as a result of that over the last couple of years in particular there. We’re talking $4.3 billion devoted to states really willing and able to take on these massive challenges and produce some real action plans and results for the better. You would see it in interagency collaboration and certainly in the president and first lady’s focus on STEM careers, students that are excelling in STEM, everything from fellows that come to the administration and highlight their work to interagency mentoring programs and a real focus by all agencies on getting the data out there about where we are relative to women and girls in the STEM fields. For our part in the Department of Education, it is certainly about linking money to getting folks to act on this. We are also about ensuring real transparency on where there continue to be gaps in access to STEM courses and fields, and also where we have made great progress. So again, we can talk about this a little bit more, but you might have recently seen the Civil Rights Data Collection, which is the first of its kind analysis and collection of data on things like gender access to rigorous courses and success in math and other resources that matter when it comes to student achievement. There you will see great progress. In fact, the gender gap is closing in lots of ways at lots of levels. Where we see emerging problems, though, and I wrestle with this, is why progress has been made when it comes to access and success in higher order classes, but when you get to the highest order, when you get to things like AP classes and AP access, you begin to see the gap increase and obviously you all know better than most the gap that we see at the post-secondary level. So while there is great progress, there are still some big problems. We don’t see, for example, a lot of complaints on this issue, though we have in the Office for Civil Rights launched a couple of really aggressive compliance reviews that get at everything from community college graduation rates for girls to access to the rigorous courses students will need to succeed in this economy, especially in the STEM fields for girls. So, happy to get into as much detail as possible. I do, though, hope that during the exchange, I and we can learn from you about the kinds of levers that we should use to showcase the progress, but at the same time, continue to push hard on closing the access gaps and the wage gaps that we see, especially in this field over time. The truth is, we will not get to the president’s goal that by 2020 we will once again lead the world in percentage of college graduates unless we ensure access for all. Lastly, the issue of the gender gap progress is a little bit masked and hidden when we look at race tied to gender. So while we are seeing great progress overall for women and girls, that progress is lagging for African-American and Latino girls in particular, and in lots of instances, the gap is in fact increasing.

Ed Lazowska: I have to say that one of the most impressive news photographs I’ve seen in the past few years was the president at a science fair, perhaps nine months ago. Many of you probably saw this. He was standing beside a kid who had built a marshmallow cannon, and the president had a look of absolute astonishment on his face. His jaw was open. It was like the Scream painting or something like that, and there’s someone in the White House now who really appreciates science and appreciates kids learning, and you see this as evident in many ways. So thank you very much for being here. Rob?

Rob Atkinson: Yeah, so thank you, Ed and Lucy, for having me here. I think you had asked me to talk about a couple things, and I think sort of the general frame of IT policy in Washington, and let me just frame it a couple ways. One is I think there’s a general view in Washington that IT is sort of this thing that isn’t really a big growing part of our economy. Believe it or not, I think a lot of people took the experience of the 2000, there’s really a long memory in Washington. People took the experience of the 2000 dot com collapse, and then the offshoring trend in the mid-2000s, to interpret it, essentially as saying, well, IT jobs are A, they’re programmer jobs, and B, we’re not doing ’em here anymore. And so it kinda doesn’t have the same level of urgency as it might have had. I think when you look at that, that’s actually quite an incorrect analysis. We did a report about three years ago. I think it was called Looking for Jobs, Look to IT, or something. Ed and I were talking about this earlier. If you really look at where most of the IT jobs are, they’re not in the IT industry. They’re not in the IT industries like software and computing, they’re in the users of IT, the banks, the insurance companies, the logistics companies, all these other organizations, government that use IT and if you look at those jobs, if you look at overall IT jobs, they’ve grown four times faster than overall US employment. So it’s this really big dynamic part of our economy, and I don’t think policymakers in Washington really fully understand that. The second big problem is that when we look at STEM education, I don’t know what T stands for. It’s this bizarre thing. I know what science is, I know what engineering is, I know what math is, but T is sort of, no one ever talks about T. ‘Cause I think it’s a meaningless letter. Technology. Maybe we should use SCEM instead of STEM. SCEM is a much better term. [audience laughter] If anybody can come up with a better acronym using those four letters, let me know. ‘Cause the point is, computing is an afterthought. Computer science is an afterthought. It’s not really serious. So my colleague, Merrilea Mayo, and I did a report about a year and a half ago called Refueling the Innovation Economy, something about STEM reform. The point we made was that 80% of the jobs in STEM are not really taught in high school in a serious way. That’s engineering and computer science. We teach biology, we teach physics, we teach chemistry. We don’t really teach computer science in high school in any kind of serious way. So I think there’s a lot of education that needs to go on in Washington. Now, in the second–

Ed Lazowska: Let me interject for a second,

Rob Atkinson: Yeah.

Ed Lazowska: State an extreme view of this, which is that STEM is S and M, alright? The fact is that science policy in this country is firmly in the hands of the physicists, biologists, chemists, and astronomers. There was a recent National Academy report on STEM that included computing only as educational technology. So there’s a real serious perception issue, and as Rob said, if you look at the Bureau of Labor statistics, employment projections for 2010 to 2020 across all STEM fields, that’s computing, engineering, the physical sciences, the life sciences, and the social sciences, more than 70% of all newly created jobs over that decade and more than 60% of all available jobs, both newly created and refilled due to retirements, are in computing. So it’s just really important to drive this point home. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has finally piped up and at least put a graph of this in a report. But that message needs to get out, and it’s not that all of STEM isn’t a necessary foundation, but it is the case that people in science policy circles have to understand that the E and the T are essential parts of STEM. Sorry, continue.

Rob Atkinson: Yeah, no, no, exactly. I mean, they only let engineers into NFS by making ’em into scientists, so if you think about that… [audience laughter] National Science Foundation, it’s not the National Science, Engineering, and Computing Foundation. No offense to any engineer NFS colleagues here. [audience laughter] But we really need to change how we think about science at the federal level, continue to incorporate this, and we don’t. But the other thing is, there’s an awful lot of policy questions being debated, and actually, perhaps, even bizarrely, moved and passed. I know that sounds strange, given the way Washington is, but we actually could pass some legislation in the next year. No, the reason I say that, and I sound a little tongue in cheek, is there a bill introduced this week, actually I think it was yesterday, called the Startup America Act, and it was a very interesting bill. It’s Senator Rubio and Senator Moran, who are Republicans of Florida and Kansas, and Senator Mark Warner from Virginia and Senator Chris Coons from Delaware, Democrats. And they’ve both gotten together to draft this Startup America Act. But anyway, one of the interesting things in the Startup America Act is it carves off the Visa problem and creates a very interesting and accessible Visa. Essentially, if you’re a student here and you get a graduate degree in STEM, including SCEM, you would get a, I coined that now. You would get an automatic green card and you’d have time to go find a job. It’s very flexible. Given the buzz on Washington, it sounds like there’s some possibility that that could actually move. We saw a similar bill called the Jobs Act that the president signed recently, a similar kind of model. So we have things like that. The other, I think, interesting thing, if anybody saw yesterday’s announcement by the White House, the president’s CIO had put out a new plan, a new document on e-government which was very, very bold, very interesting. One of the things that I think is interesting about that is a commitment by the administration now to really push mobile as the platform, or a platform, by which one accesses e-government. So there’s a commitment to put many, many more parts of government into the mobile app space. So there’s certainly people, both in the administration and on the Hill, who are thinking about important ICT IT policy issues. I’ll stop there.

Ed Lazowska: Great. Lucy.

Lucy Sanders: Well, [clears throat] excuse me. I just wanted to spend a few minutes and connect this community to the types of things that happen in Washington and bring it back to NCWIT a little bit and give you a little bit of history about why we’re in DC, what we do when we’re in DC, what I hope some of you will start doing when you’re in DC. So, from the earliest days, from 2004 with NCWIT, we decided we needed a presence in DC, a voice in DC. And I remember sitting down with Bobby Schnabel and he says, “We have to be in DC. “We have to be in DC.” We figured out a way to do that by connecting with Paula Stern, who is just a wonderful advocate for us in Washington, and that’s one of our earliest decisions, was to be in DC. So you might say, well, why? What’s up with that? And it’s to be part of shaping this national dialogue. It’s part of being the conversation, to sort of get in this, and kind of, for me, anyway, waddle around DC and try to figure out what’s going on and what are the right conversations and who do we talk to. And we talk to people like Russlynn, we talk to people like Rob. We’re really trying to be part of that national conversation and really making these points that both Russlynn and Rob made, that STEM, people don’t really equate computing with STEM. They really don’t. So here’s a typical conversation when we go around DC, what we talk about. We say, number one, computer science or computing is the most important STEM discipline. We’re very bold, we’re very bold. Sometimes we’ll cede a little ground and say, oh, well the other ones are important, too. But we generally, and you know how I feel about this, right? We are just right off the mark with the computing, computing, computing is very important, number one. Number two, computing, computing sciences is not educational technology. We struggle with that all the time. They’re not the same thing. We also talk about diversity of thought and the importance of diversity of thought to innovation and competitiveness, because that conversation is also not very active in Washington. That whole thing that we’ve been learning about, collective intelligence, and all of that is so important to our nation, and could very well be one of our most important competitive advantages as a country, is the inclusion of diversity of thought in the products and services that we create. So those are kind of our messages. We have goals like this: let’s get an Aspirations in Computing Award winner to the White House, and I’m happy to say in February we did just that. Yay! [applause] Okay? It’s like our way of getting computer science in the door and really making a point again that computer science is one of the most, the most important SCEM discipline, should we say? You know, so that’s what we do, that’s why we do it. We know, for example, that we’re not going to attract more girls and women to computing if we don’t teach computer science in this country in our public school system and we don’t teach it well. And so we’re part of that larger conversation. We work with lots of wonderful partners in DC. This is not something we do alone. So for example, ACM, CRA, SWE, CSTA, we’re all in this together, we’re all pushing. We’re all pulling the same wagon and taking that message out there. So that’s what we do, that’s why we do it, and I wanna thank all of you. You’re all my role models. When we first started going to DC, like Bobby and Ed, you guys have been so active for so long, and ACM and CRA, Cameron Wilson, John White, Peter Harsha, they’re all here. Paula’s here. So if you have any questions after, please do talk to them and see how you can connect to this community.

Ed Lazowska: Let’s say on that topic a couple words about CS Principles and CS10K. I’m sure 98% of you are familiar with these, but maybe you could say just a word for the two people in the audience who are not. This seems critically important to me, right? And that is making upper school computer science, computing, something more than skills that is Word and PowerPoint, and also, honestly, something more than programming and coupling it to what we do and coupling it to the change-the-world potential of the field and really preparing teachers to do this is terribly important. So tell us a bit about this.

Lucy Sanders: Certainly, and there’s great experts also in the audience around this, Jan Cuny being one from the National Science Foundation. Some years ago, Jan and others in the audience had this dream for a new AP computing course at the high school level called CS Principles, and that course is rigorous, relevant, inclusive. Computing from just a really inspirational point of view. The curriculum has been worked on by a number of people in this room with the committee with college board and others, and it’s been trial piloted in I think 20 locations. We’re continuing to really get that honed and moving along the way so that we can assure that all high school students have access to this type of curriculum before they leave high school. Personally, I’d like to see a requirement for high school graduation. So there’s also that conversation in the mix as well, that every student should have a computer science course before they leave high school. It’s absolutely foundational to, really, a well-rounded 21st century workforce. And so that, CS Principles, we can’t do this job unless we have more teachers, computer science teachers, so that’s what CS10K is, 10,000 teachers teaching CS Principles. And our goal is very aggressive. Jan and others here, Chris Stevenson, others, have a lot to say about this, and I’m very inspired by it. I think we’re really gonna move on it. And so inspirational to see our community, computing professionals, are mobilizing and moving on this very important project. So we need all of you to really work on that as well.

Ed Lazowska: And one thing “work on that” means is have your institutions step up to help prepare teachers. This is gonna be a massive national effort over the next few years, and all of us are gonna have to put teacher preparation programs into play. Schools of education are not gonna do this alone. Computer science departments are not gonna do it alone. Professional training organizations aren’t gonna do it alone. We’re gonna all have to do it together, and each of us in our regions are gonna have to step up and participate in this if it’s gonna happen. It’s just critically important. So let’s go back to Russlynn for a minute and I think data grounding is important, as with where the jobs are, so maybe you could talk a little bit about what you’ve learned from the Civil Rights Data Collection. This has been a tremendous effort to expose people to where the gaps are and where the strengths are. What are some of the most interesting things you’ve discovered?

Russlynn Ali: Thank you. We are actually in the process of really mining that data. We made a decision to make it transparent upon receipt. So we, like lots of other researchers in the field, are really digging into this. A couple of things stand out, as I mentioned earlier. Where we once saw quite big gaps in terms of who was taking what classes between girls and boys, with especially high school male students taking much more rigorous classes at a higher rate and succeeding in them than we did for girls, that gap has actually flipped in many places. So while boys and girls represent about half of the population respectively in our nation’s high schools, they are also now at about equally proportionate to taking classes like algebra early on in the eighth grade and all the way up through physics on the sciences and statistics and algebra II and calculus on the math side. Now, our collection reflects the bias that was talked about here, right? Our collection looks at rigorous math courses and rigorous science courses. Part of that is because we had to make a real choice in deciding what data would be collected this go-round. The Civil Rights Data Collection has been transformed. I’ve heard from many that it had not undergone this kind of transformation since it was conceived of in 1698. So lots of these data are indicators that folks have never reported before. We also, though, see things like when students take algebra early, they succeed greatly. So girls, for example, that are taking algebra in the eighth grade are passing at in fact higher rates, only about two percentage points higher, than our boys. Again, what becomes most troubling, though, is while we see this equal access through the higher order, what we now call college and career-ready courses, that stops when we look at AP courses and AP access. So for example, girls are underrepresented dramatically in those taking AP physics. They are underrepresented in taking AP math. We want to study why that is. Obviously there’s a kind of recruitment that happens on AP. There’s a kind of counseling that happens on AP. And there remains a big access question on whether the same AP courses are provided across school systems. Additionally, where there remains some grave concern is the racial and language gap within the access that we’re getting overall across for girls. So while you will see that great progress for girls writ large, you will still see that girls are not outperforming in access or in success. Black girls and Latino girls in particular are not outperforming boys on any of the indicators where we see girls overall outperforming boys. We also witness within the racial categories continued large gaps between girls and boys, black boys and Latino boys, with girls on top, though. So by that, I mean you’ll see African-American girls succeeding much more greatly in terms of access and success in these courses than you will their male peers. So how we talk about that as a united front without dividing, as we’re entering this 40th anniversary of Title IX, folks that weren’t paying attention to these issues now are. 40th anniversary, as I’m sure you know, is June 23rd. Though Title IX says nothing in those 36 words, those 36 words that personally I feel have been one of, if not the, most important civil rights successes in our nation’s history, nowhere in that language is the word athletics or sports. Yet for so many years now, going on 40, it is often seen as a statute that is about equal access to athletics. Hugely important, but if we don’t begin using that law as we have in this administration to address other issues that are reflective of what could be gender and sex-based discrimination, then we aren’t doing our job very well. So the kinds of compliance reviews that we have launched, 14 across the country, dealing just with access to STEM courses, not just for girls but for underrepresented groups across the board, are hugely important. One comes to mind in Colorado, which is about access for girls. You’ll see in that district lots of concerns we’re still investigating, and we’ll see where we come out on this, but lots of concerns, not the least of which is girls represent about 49% of that district in the enrollment in those high schools, but only 7% of students enrolled in physics. So we really wanna get underneath those numbers, obviously the data alone don’t mean any disparity, and find out the root cause of why and really work to ensure that our resolutions are robust and sustainable and promises made are promises kept so that we ensure there’s access across the board. Additionally, we are using the data recently collected to look at things like community college success rates and other. So enforcement is tied to the transparency behind these numbers, but enforcement’s not enough.

Ed Lazowska: So for those of you who are tweeting, sports is not a word, not one of the 36 words in Title IX, I think is something important I’m taking away here. That’s really interesting. So let’s talk about what the White House is doing and can do. Clearly there is data, first of all, and having things be fact-based is pretty important here. There’s the bully pulpit, right? It’s extremely symbolic to have the president at science fairs actually paying attention and acting like he’s amazed at what’s happening.

Russlynn Ali: He’s amazed at what’s happening.

Ed Lazowska: He is amazed, right. There are specific programs and there are enforcement actions. Those are at least four things that you can do from your position, and I’m sure you’re doing all of those. Are there others? Is there a balance among them? Have there been interesting enforcement actions, for example, or is that the tool of last resort, in some sense?

Russlynn Ali: I mean, the truth is, if the Office for Civil Rights is involved on an enforcement side, it’s too late. Damage has been done. What I do worry about, though, is that we’re not getting the complaints. Over the last four years we have received one complaint dealing with STEM under Title IX. Out of more complaints than received ever before in the office’s history. So we are at about 8,000 a year now. That is 22% higher than before our administration started. Over 2,000 dealing with Title IX, but none dealing with Title IX on STEM. The onus, though, is not persons that have been aggrieved. The onus is on us to suss out and look for where there are problems and launch these systemic investigations. But it’s also about money. I do think tying the resources and the capacity and the support as we’ve been doing, both on things like Title II to ensure that professional development dollars are used and targeted in this way is hugely important. You will also see… I won’t comment on Rob’s comment about Congress’ stagnation. That said, you would have seen in our proposal for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act about two and a half years ago, had it been reauthorized, a $300 million fund really devoted to STEM access. All in all, though, I do think, look, if it weren’t for Lucy, I would not have realized, quite frankly coming in in the very early days, and they’re dogged. So if I was confirmed on May 1st, I was probably meeting you by May 15th. [audience and Lucy laugh] That all STEM is not alike. So really honing in on this computer science access in AP. Now that we have the data, we are digging in and trying to do analyses on that to see who is giving it in the first place outside of the pilot and what those courses look like. It is also about studying to ensure that we don’t have a say in curriculum. Both through the Constitution and past practice, we don’t get involved in what is taught. We can, though, ensure that what is taught is fair and what is taught is not selective to certain groups of students. And we do that, I hope, as vigorously as the law allows. There, though, is a very big problem when we begin in these investigations looking at some of the courses. One comes to mind where as a rebuttal to the idea that girls were not getting equal access to courses, we were presented with a course called Algebra III. I still don’t know what Algebra III is. So how we ensure that, we used to call it orange juice, orange drink, that classes labeled computer science or higher order math and science, actually teach the same thing to the same groups of students. Otherwise, we’ll paper over the problem, and I worry about that with the data.

Ed Lazowska: This is, by the way, a significant issue for our field. Many of you know, back to sports, that the NCAA a number of years ago disallowed computer science as an academic credit course for student athletes for college credit. And that’s because that label is applied for everything from keyboarding at one extreme to skills training in the middle, I can make PowerPoint presentations, to what I’ll call CS Principles and advanced placement computer science at the high end. And the NCAA, as I understand it, roughly said, “Hey, we just don’t wanna deal with this, “so no,” and that’s a really significant negative message about a field that’s more important to students than any other, not because they’re gonna enter the computing industry, but because they need computational thinking and the way they’re gonna get it is from a computer science principles course. So it’s a serious issue we have to tackle. Rob and I were talking over breakfast with a couple of folks from, I guess, banks. Is that right? And they were talking about the need for students to combine technical skills with business and management skills in the line of work they’re in. I spent time last evening with an alum of ours who’s in town here actually working for the Obama reelection campaign, and she was a program manager at Google and then at Zynga, and then took an 80% pay cut to go work on the campaign a couple of months ago, and she was talking about program management as a phenomenal part of the field that we in my academic department tremendously underemphasize. It’s an aspect of computer science that requires deep technical knowledge. She’s arguing with engineers all the time. She’s using her architecture design skills all the time, even though she hasn’t written a line of code in probably five years. So it’s one of those aspects of the field that requires a strong technical grounding, but a strong grounding in lots of other discipline as well and could potentially make our field much more attractive to a broader range of people than it currently is. Somehow getting those messages out is really important, and as Rob points out, the stats from a number of years ago, and I don’t have any reason to believe they’ve changed, is it’s 70% of the jobs in our field are in fact jobs in what are called the IT consumers as opposed to the IT producers. The producers are the Microsofts and Amazons and Googles and Facebooks, and consumers are banks and insurance companies and aerospace and energy labs, lots of people doing very interesting things and very interesting computing. For all of us, recognizing the breadth of the field I think is important. Let’s see. I’m gonna turn this for a second, I’m gonna turn this over to you in just a minute, but let’s talk a little bit about privacy aspects. Rob, if I could call on you for a sec, I’ve noticed in the newspapers in the past six months or so many more actions, for example, by the Federal Trade Commission are relative to privacy protection. What’s going on? What do you think this has to do with our field? Where do you think it’s headed and what’s behind it?

Rob Atkinson: Well, I think what’s behind it is… That you have an administration that’s more oriented to doing that than the last administration. I think that’s really fundamentally what’s behind it.

[Russlynn chuckles]

Ed Lazowska: We are in Chicago.

Rob Atkinson: Depends what side you’re on on this, so let me just say what our view is on it. I actually think that… And the other thing that’s behind it is there have been some notable privacy mistakes. Whether they’re intentional or not is sort of irrelevant, and so those have been kind of in the news. And then the last part, I think, is people just are seeing, there’s been this emergence of what’s called behavioral targeting. There’s been this emergence in mobile apps and things like that where there’s more use of information. Now depending upon what side of the argument you’re on, that use is nefarious and bad, or it’s actually making the use of these applications more effective and more user-friendly. And so I think the huge debate in Washington is really whether we’re gonna go down a path of essentially the European path or something different. Actually, I’m more on the other side. I actually think there’s a huge risk of us going down the path on privacy that could really harm the Internet ecosystem. And the reason I say that is a colleague of ours, Catherine Tucker, who’s at MIT, I think she’s in the business school there or in management school, she’s done a study, a very interesting study with a colleague at University of Toronto where they looked at the impact of the European privacy directive on ad effectiveness. And what they found was that ad effectiveness, in other words when someone’s on a website, the likelihood they’re gonna click on the ad or do something declined by as much as 60% because of the European privacy. The European privacy basically means if you’re serving up ads on a website, you are blind to who that user is. Now in the US, where companies are not blind, they may not know that it’s Ed Lazowska, but they know that somebody on Ed’s computer happens to like football, so they’ll serve up a football ad.

Ed Lazowska: Wrong computer. [audience chuckles]

Rob Atkinson: Tennis, I don’t know. [audience laughter] Outdoor hiking in the Cascades. So I think there’s a risk that we will overreach and really shut down some of this innovation. So I think the real key is to find this sweet spot. The administration just came out with a white paper on privacy that the commerce department led, Cam Kerry in particular there, and I think they pretty much got the balance right. One of the things that they’re proposing is what they’re calling this multi-stakeholder process where they’ll bring stakeholders together to see if they can identify and come up with industry codes of conduct. And I think that’s the best way to go. The FTC, on the other hand, is a little bit more on the regulatory side. If the FTC had their druthers, which they’re not gonna, but if they did, it would be really much more serious, maybe not draconian, but much more serious a regulation. The reason I say they’re not gonna have their druthers is I don’t see any way we’re gonna pass a really serious, heavily regulatory privacy bill given the makeup of Congress and particularly the House. And unless they were to flip and become really Democratic, and again, you can pick which side you like on this, I’m not trying to be partisan, I’m just trying to be realistic about this, I think, given that environment, we’re not gonna see that. Which is actually why the administration has gone down this path of this more self-regulatory, these user groups, stakeholder groups, because they realize that the odds of getting comprehensive privacy legislation are not in the cards, at least for the next 18 months.

Ed Lazowska: Are there questions from some of you folks? Please shout it out and we’ll repeat it for the audience too. Oh, a microphone is coming. Hang on a sec.

Audience Member: Thank you. Thanks, I wanna go back earlier, when Ed was talking about the Bureau of Labor statistics pie chart that came out just recently with the 70% of future jobs in computing, and then the comment about how STEM is really science and math, and it would be great if it was SCEM, but we’re at a critical time we unfortunately missed the boat when the math Common Core standards came out, where computing was pretty much not involved, and the next generation science standards are out now for review, due really soon, and computing is, again, almost nonexistent.

Ed Lazowska: Right, they butchered that very badly.

Audience Member: Is there a way to somehow say, get the right people to acknowledge, here’s the data, we need computing? Is there a way within the next week or so to try to get those standards [audience laughter] quickly changed miraculously? I know it’s a lot, but it’s almost like, if there’s something that could be done, is this is gonna help us at least just a little bit to get computing in the Core?

Ed Lazowska: Yeah, this is very distressing. A number of people commented on the proposals that you’re referring to that are now in final revision again on the first draft, and the modifications that were made were trivial and really didn’t address the issue. So this is one of a number of standards and documents that have come out of the academies and the government in recent years that essentially ignore computing as part of STEM. I don’t have a good answer. Lucy, you’re the person who’s always in there wheedling. What do you suggest?

Lucy Sanders: I don’t have a good answer either, although I’ll ask Cameron, since he’s feet on the street on this. Right here in front. Cameron, can you stand up and answer this question? [Lucy and audience laugh]

Ed Lazowska: Cameron is ACM’s wonderful public policy person.

Cameron Wilson: Thanks, Lucy, I really appreciate it.

Lucy Sanders: You’re very welcome, yeah.

Ed Lazowska: How are we doing, Cameron?

Cameron Wilson: So there’s actually been a bunch of people working on the next generation science standards for a while. ACM and the Computer Science Teachers Association were part of the review team that have been working on it, and there actually is… I haven’t reviewed the standards in depth, I have other people that are doing those things, but there are actually big chunks of computational thinking that are spread throughout the standards. And we’re trying to strengthen those as much as we can. I know CSTA’s been working over the weekend in all of Chris’ spare time to try to get comments pulled together, and there’s another larger advocacy coalition called Computing in the Core that’s a 13-stakeholder group with NCWIT and CSTA and CRA and ACM and a whole bunch of organizations that are part of this, including four corporate members that are pushing on, Achieve, who’s in charge of these standards politically, to try to get it on the standards. And then an interesting idea that just came from the Massachusetts folks I talked to yesterday was getting state pressure put back on them, so they’re gonna try to take some of the discussion that’s been happening at the state level around Massachusetts and seeing if they can get it back to their department of education to say, this is really a big problem. But you know, I think from a community perspective, we need to figure out as many spots in these standards where we think we can instantiate courses like Exploring Computer Science and AP CS Principles and say, look, you can implement parts of these standards by taking these courses and putting them into place, but then again, they also do need to come for core academic subjects. And those are sort of the key things that we see moving forward in this debate.

Ed Lazowska: I just want to emphasize that there are at least two legs to this wobbly stool. One is what I’m gonna call computational thinking, and that is that every discipline is changing. It’s using computational thinking even if it’s not using computing. If you’re a biologist today and you’re not thinking mathematically and computationally, then you’re collecting tadpoles in some swamp. You’re totally out of the field. It’s no longer about phyla classification, things like that. I was an undergraduate, God help me, many decades ago, and as an undergrad, took some graduate linguistics courses. That was the time when linguistics was flipping from people who spoke multiple languages to people who did grammars. And it used to be that the qualifications for being a graduate student in linguistics was you spoke multiple languages, and suddenly you had to deal with abstraction and models. And so every discipline is changing, and it’s important that we infuse ourselves into all those disciplines and make sure they change, and at the same time there is a discipline of computing that needs to be represented. And these documents that we’re referring to still do not reflect computing as a discipline. That is, there are a set of thrusts and those thrusts are the traditional sciences. So that really needs to be addressed as well.

Rob Atkinson: I don’t disagree with any of the, well, maybe I actually do disagree with it. I’m just not a big fan of Core standards because I think they basically are, they disrespect children’s interests. Why does every kid need four years of English? Some kids like English, some kids hate English. So I really think Core standards are the wrong path. But as long as everybody else is doing Core, you might as well try to get in and get your thing as the Core, ’cause otherwise… [audience laughter] Otherwise, you’re just shut out. That is the real problem, I think, with CS, is they’ve crammed so much else in that there’s no space for CS. And that was my son’s problem when he was in high school. You can’t do it. But leaving that aside, I think we also have to go down another path, not an exclusive other path, but another path, and that’s institutional innovation. If you look at what PCAST did, I don’t think you were on this subcommittee, Ed, the PCAST one, but there was a President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors report on STEM education, and they actually picked up on an idea that we’ve proposed, which is expanding math and science or computing in high schools. So there’s a hundred high schools in the country where they’re specialized in math and science, and I always remember talking to this principal of the Arkansas math and science academy, Janet Hugo, and we were chatting about this as we were writing our report. Janet said that one of the great things about these high schools is the girls do so much better than in them because, first of all, there are more girls, they recruit more girls for them, but the environment in there is just set up so girls don’t have to worry about being smart, essentially. But the point is, that’s an institutional innovation, and the White House proposed creating 200 more of these. But why can’t we go out and create 25 charter high schools where it’s designed around computational thinking? Why wait for this long process of are we ever gonna get there? Let’s create some new models out there, and then have them infuse the rest of the system.

Ed Lazowska: This seems really right to me, and I do think that CS10K and CS Principles is the lever we’re gonna have that teachers and parents and kids will understand that this matters and in the fullness of time policymakers will get it as well, although it may not be in our lifetime. I think to this PCAST report Rob is referring to, two weeks before that report was issued, the word computer appeared in that report 13 times. This is a PCAST report on STEM education, and each of those 13 times it was part of a phrase related to educational technology, okay? So this report was fixed in the last instance by my colleague, David Shaw, who reached in and did a remarkable job. But the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology came very close to issuing a report on STEM education that, again, relegated computing to educational technology. Russlynn, you want to say something?

Russlynn Ali: Yes, think if I could just parse the conversation about standards from course to access, because they’re different. So the idea that the Common Core standards are reflective of a couple of major disciplines, math and science, they are not intended to be exclusively the standards taught, but the basis for at least this. The reasoning for them, as we’ve talked to the National Governors Association, Achieve under Mike Cohen and others, because it really is a state-led effort, these are not national standards, is not about regulating how many students, how many courses a student needs to take. What it is about ensuring, though, is that what you learn is not dependent on your zip code, as we’ve seen over the last decade, where students could be called proficient in Mississippi on state standards and pale in comparison to students that are proficient right here in Chicago. So leveling that playing field is the spirit behind the creation of a kind of Common Core. That you see computation embedded throughout, not called out, but embedded, I think is the lever to ensure that a course follows suit. Because the courses students take, part of the struggle with Common Core is, we can say that 46 states have adopted this Common Core, but if algebra is their only graduation requirement, which we’re also seeing across the lots of these states, chances are the standards become standards on a wall, given the way our high schools are set up with Carnegie units. You’re never in a class called Algebra II. Unless you’re in a class called Algebra II, you’re not learning the standards of Algebra II. So it is very much, I think, a state action to ensure at the state board level or the governor’s level who decides the graduation requirements, thereby the courses students have to take, that this idea of computer and computation as a discipline, really needs to be pushed aggressively. When it comes to things like the creation of charter schools, there are lots of them that we’ve seen in part as a result of states removing their cap around charter schools, but more than 25, in fact, devoted to the idea of careers in this field and discipline. And certainly, the promotion of at least 200 more of them to create very different learning environments at the high school level is something that we’re pushing.

Ed Lazowska: Yes, Cameron and Russlynn have both observed that there’s something here that we can do, which is this begins at home. We’re all in a state and we can work in that state to move this forward. Lucy.

Lucy Sanders: And I just wanna follow up on that, because I wanna give you a specific example of when you join us in Washington and you’re gonna go around and speak to people about computer science and all the great things that we talk about, we visited John Holdren not long ago, President Obama’s science advisor, and we sat down and talked with him and his staff for 45 minutes about the importance of computing, computer science, all the things that we’ve been talking about here, and he was very open to it. He says, “What can I do?” So we said, “Can you please say computer science “every time you say STEM?” And he goes, “I think we can do that.” Okay, so this is like, you know, okay, great, this is progress. And then he said something really phenomenal. He said, “I want you to write me a letter “complaining to me,” which is something I do really well, complaining, okay? [audience laughter] “Complaining to me about all the PCAST reports “that have been issued “that have mentioned computing education “that have gone unfulfilled. “Because the president wants to know “when things that are recommended to him “are not implemented.” So of course we wrote this letter complaining to him, and we sent it to him. Those are the kinds of things that we can all do. People really wanna hear from us, so that’s my appeal. Yes, we can do these things. One visit.

Ed Lazowska: Be a whiner.

Lucy Sanders: Be a whiner, yes.

Ed Lazowska: Okay, there’s a question back here. Can someone get a microphone, a couple of them, back in here? Oh, and there’s one right here. Excuse me, I didn’t mean to preempt you. Go ahead, please.

Audience Member (Paula Stern): Oh, okay, thank you. Well, Lucy preempted me. I’m Paula Stern, and Lucy made exactly the point about Dr. Holdren and in effect, asking Secretary Ali and others what we can do more to get what has been a wonderfully responsive and leading edge administration in this area to think computational thinking, computer science, information technology, computing, how we continue to try to insinuate ourselves, given these problems that we get this pushback all the time. So that question is still out there, if there are things more you think we can do to try to leverage our message. But I really just wanted to encourage anybody to come and talk to me, and I want to point out to everyone that’s part of the NCWIT community that we have this map. It’s called the United States of America, and it’s on the NCWIT website, and it shows the disconnect between the jobs that are going, begging to be filled, and the lack of training, whether it’s at the school level, community college level, or high school and all the way through to the university level, where people are just not being trained in these computing sciences. And that will empower this community to take that information and talk to your school superintendents, talk to your governor and your congressman and your mayor. Because this is, as Secretary Ali said, it’s a state-level thing here. We can’t from DC dictate curriculum. So it’s an effort to just empower all of y’all to do this at the local level, as well.

Ed Lazowska: Great, thanks. There were a couple of questions back here.

Audience Member: Hi, my name is Leigh Ann Sudol, and I’m transitioning to a role in New York City with the Academy for Software Engineering, which is a public high school focused on computer science education. Anybody interested, come find me. But as I was sitting here thinking, I’ve had a number of conversations with people on the education policy council and Cameron, I’m one of the co-authors of the Running on Empty report, about computer science is the calculus of T. And being a learning scientist, I was thinking that maybe our policymakers need a better analogy for this. Throughout the last century we talked about algebra being the new kind of math that was required as our jobs and our industries changed in the United States, and maybe we need to talk about computer science being like the algebra of the T. As the jobs change, as the economy changes, just as we had to reformat our education system to fit algebra into the high school and eventually down to the middle school level, now we also need to think about fitting computer science, a more rigorous version of the computing and technology that our parents grew up with, and that they don’t think is important because they never had to learn it in order to be successful in their lives, as being the new algebra in our generation.

Ed Lazowska: Very interesting, thanks. Another question right back here. [applause]

Audience Member: Hi, I’m Wendy Boling, and no one should ever come to me for any help like the the rest of you people are asking people to do. I’m a mom of a 13-year-old girl, and I’ve been high tech for 26 years, and I want to run and scream to my superintendent and say something about what we should be doing differently about giving our daughters this access. But I don’t know what to say. What would you do as a parent, other than, it’s not as big as what you did, in write the letter complaining, because I’m a good complainer, too, Lucy. You know this. How can I ask for this? I saw that fabulous Seth guy, teacher, that’s getting these computer science, girls into these computer science AP courses, and I want the Tapestry workshop mandatory at our local school district. How do I do that? How do I go and bitch really well? Sorry. [audience laughter]

Russlynn Ali: As a first step, as we’ve been talking about the Civil Rights Data Collection, we have now made this data available at the school level, and with a few clicks of the mouse and keyboard you can print out a school-level snapshot, disaggregated by gender. You would be able to see in every school in your district and your daughter’s school what classes are offered and what aren’t. Using that as ammunition to say that all of our kids need these courses that are offered elsewhere in the district but not here, for example, is hugely important. And then the research that I think Lucy and the team here have done better than most: identifying that all STEM isn’t alike and the kinds of access gaps we have. The truth is, yes, algebra, for the last 40 years we’ve worked hard on ensuring that algebra is a right. Many of you might remember Bob Moses coining the term algebra as the civil rights and algebra as the gatekeeper. The access question here, 30 and 40 years later, is still whopping. So at the same time that we need to talk about this new requirement that all of our kids know more than us in order to succeed in this world, we have to ensure that the access and excellence conversation go hand in hand. If nothing else, if the moral imperative doesn’t drive us, if the fundamental fairness and the demographic imperative doesn’t drive us, the economic imperative has to. We cannot get to excellence, given who we are as a country, unless we deal with the equity piece first. So in my mind… Civil rights, so I’m a little biased, right? But in my mind, we have to, we have to get at that first, the pushing all of us in the federal government really does need to be about access and equity simultaneously. It also needs to be about supporting some of the mentoring programs that we have, everything from NASA and its MOU with Girl Scouts, and external partners to internal as well, and the president bringing the Google Scholars, or the mentor, where we now have recognition for those STEM mentors that are producing the biggest gains. But it is as much, I think, building a community appetite for this work as it is ensuring the federal government drive states and local entities to support it.

Lucy Sanders: Well, and I wanna say one thing, too. We do have a talking points card about why your school should teach computer science that CSTA and ACM and NCWIT, and I hope I’m not forgetting somebody else, put together, and it’s very short and succinct and it’s on our website and you should go use it. Take it and say, here, this is why you should be teaching computer science. We do have a resource to help you, as well as the data, so that’s what we’ve been talking about, and there’s also a report from Computing in the Core and ACM, CSTA, Running on Empty, which is also available. So check them out. There’s plenty of data to go and whine, and yes, Wendy, I do know you’re really an expert at this, and so do it. Tell us what happens.

Ed Lazowska: I really feel that there is momentum now. Between ACM and CSTA and NCWIT and the National Science Foundation, things are moving in the right direction, much more rapidly now than at any time in recent years. Are there one or two more questions, and then we’re gonna have to wrap up. There’s one right here. Thank you all for your participation.

Audience Member: Part of the access question goes to Internet access, and I work in an area where we serve a lot of rural students and urban students who, even though they’re majoring in computer science, they don’t have high-speed Internet access. They don’t even have a computer in their house. And so those students don’t do as well because all the other students can use the Internet and use their computer all day and all night. And so I’m wondering if there’s initiatives at the federal level to get high-speed Internet access into rural areas, and I guess programs set up in urban areas where people who can’t have those things in their homes will be able to get those. Because that goes to, not only computer science education, but also doing research for the other sciences, getting all the online tutoring that many of the other students have access to.

Ed Lazowska: I’d comment that a lot of progress was made under the Recovery Act, but much of that is not visible yet. Very significant awards were made across the nation largely for equitable access, that is, rural access. But those funds were given to telecommunications companies that are in the process of deploying now. So I think you will see progress. It’s important to know, though, that our nation does lag the world in broadband. That’s not just in the breadth of dissemination, but also in the speed available in our core areas. If you look at lists of the 100 best-connected cities, last I knew the highest-ranked American city was number 73 on the worldwide list. So as with healthcare, as with education, in broadband there’s this myth that we’re leading the world, and the reality is very different. Back to the data collection that you hear about, having these facts available is important, because sort of the first step to cure is recognition that there’s a problem. And there is a problem, but I think really through the BTOP program and others a few years ago, we’ve laid the groundwork to make a lot of progress on this.

Rob Atkinson: Just a couple things on that. I sort of agree and maybe slightly disagree with Ed, respectively. There’s a couple things that I don’t think a lot of people know. At least three years ago, maybe the data are a little different now. Three years ago the US led the world in the percentage of classrooms connected to the Internet. We were the best country in the world. And we did that largely because of the E-rate program. We had the E-rate program earlier than any other country. So we at least have a couple things to be proud of. That’s not to say that every classroom is connected, but we’re doing better than others. The reason why we lag behind on broadband, and it’s really the principal reason that very few people understand because they haven’t looked at the data, and that’s not their job, but is not because we don’t have broadband to a lot of places. There actually are no data on this. There are no data that the OECD or other people collect on the number of homes available to broadband home. What we do have data on are the subscribers, and that doesn’t tell you whether you have broadband or you don’t have a computer. In fact, the US is probably one of the worst countries among the major OECD countries in the percentage of households owning a computer. If we had the same level of computer ownership as the top five countries in the world, and then you assume the same rate of broadband to computer, we would be in the number six in broadband connectivity in the world, not number 17 or 16 or whatever. So that really is a big, big problem in the US. We’ve got a big set of people, largely poor, but some old, who don’t have broadband, who don’t have computers. Now, I think, finally, finally we have an FCC who has acknowledged this, and it’s taken a while to get around to that it’s not just a supply question, it’s a demand question. Chairman Genachowski of the FCC has launched a new initiative in the last year. In fact, they just announced something a couple weeks ago with what’s called the E-rate program to have a pilot program for how do we use that program to get computers. E-rate is about phones. What’s a phone, you know? So anyway, so the old notion, and the FCC has switched the E-rate support to a label broadband connectivity, so we’re moving in the right direction on this. So I think we’re gonna see progress. I agree with Ed that the Recovery Act has some stuff out there, but we’ve also modified the E-rate program so we’re gonna be able to allow direct funding of broadband by telecom companies. And there’s also a lot of problems in how they’re, and by the way, the other reason a lot of countries lead, not the only reason, they tend to have higher densities. Even our urban areas are much less dense than other countries. And the other reality is, a lot of other countries subsidize this. The Japanese have massive subsidies for this, which is why they have fiber in all the homes. They just gave NTT a big subsidy–

Ed Lazowska: My version of this would be that they have telecom policies that our telecom industry won’t let us put into place.

Rob Atkinson: We could have a debate on the next panel about that.

Russlynn Ali: I just want to add to that really briefly, is how we can do this investment and preempt technology outpacing the investment. As we’ve seen with E-rates, the monies, for example, in schools in California, those monies that were distributed, and it’s certainly the ARRA, the Recovery dollars under our administration put a whole lot more in, but we can’t take credit alone from this. This has been across administrations, and beginning in the late ’80s throughout, the kind of E-rate monies that went into schools, you started seeing infrastructure as a result. Problem is now I could go to some of those same schools that used E-rate dollars in LA, as we’ve done recently, and hear those teachers say that their education software packages for innovative learning, say, for English language learner students to both learn language and math simultaneously, can’t be used because that software doesn’t fit with the operating system for the computers that they built with the E-rate dollars when finally we invested E-rate dollars in those schools that had nothing. So how we ensure that when we do this building and the investment that technology’s not gonna outpace us, or we make it flexible enough where we don’t have to rip buildings down to rebuild wiring. And y’all can do to help us with that one.

Ed Lazowska: Reached the end of our session and then some, so let me just thank you for your participation and thank all three panelists. [applause]

Vimeo ID 46258678


NCWIT 2012 Summit – Workshop, Dr. Aaron Kay

DR. AARON KAY: I’m gonna talk to you about some recent research that I was invited to discuss, that I think you’ll find relevant to the kinds of issues that you’re concerned with. So, I’m a psychologist. My PhD is in social psychology. I got that at Stanford University. But since then I’ve been working in both psychology departments and business schools, and now I’m joint appointed at Duke University both in the psychology department and the business school, because my research really is about, my research focuses on the psychological processes that lead social inequality to be perpetuated and maintained, and people to be uninterested in redressing social inequality, and so business schools find that issue interesting, even though it’s really actually ultimately a psychological question, or at least the way I address it is ultimately psychological. So, I’m gonna share some research with you, and I’m gonna start off with an observation that I think is not that surprising to most people here, and so in the business world at least upper management levels tend to be very male dominated, so these are actually just the first nine pictures that come up if you put into Google Image board of directors, and so [group laughs] what you can see is that there’s not very equitable distribution. There is one company on the right who has actually a perfectly equitable board. Anyone wanna guess what industry that is?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Education.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Health care.

DR. AARON KAY: Health care, it’s a hospital. Yeah, so in general, you see a serious lack of gender equality. There is one board there of the first nine that come up in Google Image though that is equitable, and this issue obviously is not just relevant to upper management, so in the areas that you’re more interested in, information technology, we also see this large inequity in terms of, or inequality, in terms of the gender breakdown in different areas, and importantly these gender differences across different domains don’t seem arbitrary. In fact, they seem to fall in line generally with sort of the power structure in society, such that the most gender-dominated occupations that are male tend to be the highest paying occupations, and women tend to occupy the lower-paying occupations. So, we have an issue of fairness here, an issue of job opportunities, and an issue not just of people opting into different areas, but people actually being given different opportunities. Now, this problem of diversity obviously one, is a problem of fairness and a problem of social justice. But it’s also an issue with the ability of the technology industry to make the best possible products, so when diversity is lacking, you often get products that are missing certain perspectives. This was the case, you know, in December of last year, there was a lot of publicity about the fact that Siri was really good at finding things that males would ask for, like, you know, escorts and so forth, but couldn’t find any sort of female health option at all, whether with birth control or Planned Parenthood and so forth, and what people noticed about this, or what they remarked was that this wasn’t an issue of Apple disliking women at all. It was an issue of the fact that the people who were programming Siri were missing a certain perspective. They didn’t hate women. They just, these were a bunch of men, and when they visualize who they are programming for, they missed a certain perspective. And so, basically, across lots of different research, it’s very clear, there’s one very clear finding, which is that more diverse groups, and this includes gender in diversity, leads to more creativity, leads to higher collective intelligence, that is to better group decisions, and leads to more effective decisions. So more diverse groups are better, but there tends to be a problem in that even organizations who realize this, and this applies to the IT world, who want diverse groups, and who are interested in fostering diverse groups, still sometimes fail at it. And so, where my interest is in my research, I’m not interested in the CEOs out there, the organizations out there that have these antiquated versions of who is good at certain jobs, and so they have a lot of inequality because they’re just flat-out prejudiced. That’s not that interesting psychologically. To me, what’s interesting are the organizations where they say they value diversity, and they really do mean it, and you have young girls also who at some point wanna go in those areas, but despite both those factors, once you look at the higher-level jobs in that industry, you still see large gender inequality. And so I’m interested in sort of the forces that lead inequality to be maintained, despite the fact people have really good intentions for trying to, whether or not they’re based on fairness or based on effectiveness, trying to fix these problems. So why is there this disjoint between people’s intentions and recruitment efforts? Now, the way my laboratory addresses a lot of these questions is through something that we call system justification theory, but you don’t have to really understand the theory at all to understand what I’m going to talk about today, but the basic idea is that the status quo tends to perpetuate itself, and this is for various structural reasons in society and for also psychological reasons, once people understand what the status quo is like, they engage in processes that tend to reinforce it. And so as an example, if people learn about a specific demographic breakdown in an industry, they’re gonna start engaging in psychological processes that make that demographic seem like that’s the way it should in fact be. And so we have shown in a lot of different studies that this even applies to gender inequality, so when we learn about a gender inequality, people start to think, or come up with ways of viewing that inequality in such a way that it reinforces itself. So let me give you an example. We could take women undergraduate participants and show them this figure, and this figure is showing the percentage of female politicians, the percentage of politicians who are female. This is in Canada, actually, not in the U.S., and if we showed them this figure, the overall percentage is pretty small, it’s increasing, but not at a high rate, and compared to baseline conditions, and we show them this, and then we ask these women, would you like to be a politician. Do you think women should be politicians? Would they be good politicians? They tend to think that they don’t wanna be politicians, and that women actually wouldn’t make good politicians, and both men and women engage in that process, but we can also show, we also randomly show another set of women this figure here. So this is also representing the percentage of politicians who are female, but the change here looks a lot bigger over time. Now actually the numbers are identical in both these figures. All we’ve done is we’ve changed the vertical axis so it looks like there’s a bigger change, or we’re representing the real truth in both situations. And when they see this, they think, wow, there’s a lot of women entering politics now, and compared to baseline conditions, they actually say they’re more interested in politics, and they also say that women will probably be better politicians than if they’d see for example the other figure or just compared to control conditions. So this is in the context of politics, of course, but it’s one example of the way in which once we learn about the status quo, we start making judgments and seeing the world in a way that reinforces that status quo. Now, in the real world, there can be a lot of things that tell us what the status quo is like that are actually very subtle, that we don’t realize that we’re communicating. And what I wanna talk about today is the extent to which in the job ads that we write and that are out there, people sometimes unintentionally communicate an inequality that actually exists in an industry, even if they’re not trying to do it, and that then can lead to that inequality being reinforced. So I’m first gonna start actually giving you some other examples that aren’t from my research on how, within the information technology world, reminders of minority status, whether they’re other people, or they’re stereotypic environments, can actually make people feel like they don’t belong, and this has effects on who enters these areas, and I’m gonna do that mostly just to convince you that in the really blatant ways, these things actually matter, and then I’m gonna shift gears, and for most of the talk, I’m gonna focus on recent research that I was asked to actually come here and talk about, which is how wording in job ads can systematically convey to people even if the authors aren’t aware of it, what kind of gender tends to fit what kind of job. Okay, so when people are looking to apply to work somewhere, they’ll often observe, whether consciously or not, they observe for cues that suggest what kind of person typically works in this environment. In one study, what psychologists did is, this is actually with African Americans. They were looking at African Americans being the minority and not women, but they, at a job fair, had African Americans look at brochures for a company they thought was real, but was actually fictitious. On that brochure they described their philosophy toward diversity, and they describe one of color blindness, which is the idea that we don’t see color in our employees. We just see people for what they do, and that’s all, and then that was paired with pictures of the company, and for half of our participants they saw these pictures, and for the other half they saw these pictures. So the color, everything’s kind of faded in here, but the difference in these two conditions is that in one you have an ethnically diverse group of people, and the other people are seeing basically all white employees, and what happened is that if you learned that this company adopts this colorblind philosophy, but you see these pictures of just straight white people, then African Americans are less interested in working there, and feel like they belong less at that organization then if that colorblind philosophy wasn’t actually espoused at all. If instead you have a philosophy of what they call embracing diversity, where we see everyone as different, but we want these differences, it doesn’t matter so much what kind of cues you give to people visually. This is one example of how these cues can be really explicit, they can be in your brochures. Here’s another example where they have math students. These are in university, university math students learn about a conference on STEM leadership, basically, so the conference is going to be about leading in science, engineering, and math, and for half of them, they all watched a video about last year’s conference, and these were male and female math university students. Half of them, in the video that they watched, there was a three to one ratio of men to women, so they think they’re just watching a video about last year’s conference, but embedded in this video is the fact that for every one woman there’s three men at that conference last year. You’re just noticing it as people were on the screen, and the other condition there’s a one to one ratio of men and women. These pictures aren’t from the actual video. And what they measured after was the extent to which people wanted to attend this conference, felt like they would fit in at this conference, and they also mentioned their physiological morale, the extent to which their heart rate and skin conduction suggests that they felt threatened about who they are. And what they found is that when women saw the three-to-one ratio in this video, they didn’t wanna attend the conference. They felt like it wouldn’t be interesting to them, and they also exhibited these signs of physiological threat, whereas they didn’t show any of this in the one-to-one condition, and men were unmoved by whether or not there was a big gender imbalance or there wasn’t a gender imbalance in the video they watched about this conference. You also get these kinds of effects is not just with other people, but with what sits in your environment, so for example, in studies they’ve had people go into computer science classrooms at Stanford in the Gates Building, which is the computer science building, and they’ve asked, people thought they were doing things on their career aspirations, and in that room, the walls were either adorned with things that pretesting showed were related to the idea that sort of the male geek nerd computer stereotype, or not related to that, so for half of them the walls had things like posters having to do with science fiction, comic books, and video games. For the other half, they were just art posters and neutral images, and then they asked these people if they were interested in computer science or not. And what they find, if you look at that one bar there really is that women become less interested in computer science as a field if the room has images to suggest that it’s a male type environment, so the big deficit there is women in geek poster condition are showing a decreased interest in pursuing computer science. They also get the same effect, so a lot of classrooms now are moving virtual, literally to the extent which you take your classes in a 3D environment which looks like an actual class, and you get the same effect if in these 3D environments posters are of science fiction type related ideas, so the point of telling you about those studies is just trying to convince you that cues to suggest who does and doesn’t belong actually affect people’s interest in a career, but I think that these kinds of cues are very obvious to people. If I said to you, what would make someone think they belong, you might say something like well if there’s more men than women there, then I don’t belong. I can count, and I can figure out where I do and I don’t belong. We can easily remove things like posters from the walls. What I’m interested in, and what I understand wording in job advertisements matters a lot is because compared to these other things, it’s basically invisible. So, people, unless they’re trained to understand what gender wording means in an ad aren’t aware of the fact that their ads are written that way, and people who are being affected by them aren’t really aware that’s why they like a job or do not like it, or that’s one factor that leads to them liking a job or not liking a job. So I’m gonna transition now and talk about the research on this idea of gender stereotypes being reflected in job ads. Now we’ll start with a bit of history. And at first this gender bias in ads was not very visible at all, so this is the New York Times in 1964, and what you’ll see here in a few different ways ads were very explicitly sex segregated, so first you could see that the New York Times itself categorized ads as a function of whether they were in the male category or the female category. That’s independent of what advertisers we’re picking. You’ll also see the jobs the advertisers had a male or female name to it, so salesman, for example, rather than sales person, and then within the ad itself, they would say, we want men or we want women, and they would use pronouns he or she. Now amazingly, once people started becoming concerned this was actually causing some sort of inequality, both the newspaper and the companies insisted that although they put these words in there, they’re just for convenience, and they’re confident that women are not being deterred from any sort of job based on any of this language. So they insisted that this wasn’t having any actual effect. Everyone understands, it’s for convenience, and they can “look past” these convenience-type labels that we put on there, so psychologists at the time disagreed. And they ran studies to show this wasn’t the case, and so for example, this is they found advertisements like this one that were targeted for males, where you know this was for a telephone frame man. “The telephone frame man plays a vital role “in telecommunications,” “skilled craftsman,” and “he also works,” etc., all these male terms, and they also found feminine ones, female ones. These are real ads from the 60s. [mumbles] Behind every man’s telephone call there’s a woman, so this ad’s targeted directly towards women. And they show that if they took these labels off and replaced them with gender-neutral terms like person, frame person, for example, that women became much more interested in the male jobs, and males became more interested in the female jobs, so they were able to prove that AT and T, for example, who there was a law suit against at this time, despite their claim that this wasn’t causing any bias, was in fact causing a bias. It also became the case then that the newspaper said that well, we might need to change the wording in the ads, but we can still keep our categories, because it’s still more convenient for people to be able to search by gender, and so they said what we’ll do is we’ll put this note at the top of the categories that will tell people that jobs are arranged under male and female classifications for the convenience of our readers, but this is done because most jobs generally appeal to more persons of one sex than the other, but you should know that you can apply for any job at all, so the psychologists went back to the lab and said, okay, we’ll put this thing right on the top, and then we’ll just sort our jobs as a function of male and female. Are people able to disregard this? And no they weren’t, so eventually, by the 70s, it became legislated, unconstitutional to have any of these kinds of advertisements. I think it’s interesting that, by the way, in these advertisements, it always said at the bottom, an equal-opportunity employer. So they used the term male or female, but at the bottom they put this equal-opportunity employer classification, and so what happened is eventually these all disappeared, so there was no help wanted male category. There were no gender-specific terms in ads, and for 40 years, from the 60s or 70s through maybe five or six years ago, the assumption was okay, this isn’t a problem anymore. We don’t have to worry about job ads communicating preference for one gender or another. But what my lab started to ask was maybe, although these explicit references to men and women, or he and she have disappeared, maybe these implications are still in there. They’ve just sort of gone underground, so to speak. Specifically what we were interested in was whether or not there is a systematic difference in the type of wording used for occupations that would tend to be male dominated or female dominated, that without saying men or women, use language that was either more male or female, that people were actually able to pick up on and realize that this was a job for a male or a job for a female. Okay, so this is a bit of history. This is where we are today, so what we’ve developed, is this idea of what we call gendered wording, and gendered wording is basically phrasing or vocabulary that subtly conveys gender stereotypes, both masculine and feminine. And so there’s a big literature on things, on words or traits that are associated with men, and words or traits that are associated with women, and you can look across this literature, and you can make lists of words that basically people think apply more to men or apply more to women. And so we essentially did that, and so if you look at words that fit the category of masculine wording, you get these types of words. You can look at them quickly. I can always send these lists to you later if you wanna see them. There’s also lots of words that fit the feminine stereotype. And not all these words you’re gonna find in job ads, but they’re words, and they’re both negative and positive, but the literature suggests these are the kinds of things that people definitely associate with one gender or the other, are you looking at whiny?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [laughs] Yeah, I see that.

DR. AARON KAY: A lot of people look at whiny in there, and find that… What’s the other one?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Nag.

DR. AARON KAY: Nag. There’s positive and negative in both, and like on the male you have stubborn.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Greedy.

DR. AARON KAY: And hostile, and these aren’t words that you ever would find in a job ad, but these are words that are associated with the genders differentially. So what we asked, and this is what I’m gonna tell you about now, is three questions, really, or it’s really two questions that I turned into three bullet points. Does gendered wording exist in real ads? So, is it the case that male-dominated areas for example have more male-type words in them than female-dominated professions, and if so, does this gendered wording actually cause men and women to be differentially interested in these jobs? So just like you putting the word man there or woman there, or he or she, has it now moved to just be implied through words that are associated with men and associated with women? And so men and women actually pick up on these differences? So this is what our research question asked. By the way, I should let you know that feel free to ask questions at any time. I’ve left off a time at the end of the talk for question and answer, but I’m happy to have that happen throughout the talk, or if you have any thoughts or questions, just interrupt me at any time. So, in the first test of this idea, basically what we wanted to see is is it the case that there are systematic differences in the types of words used in advertisements as a function if they’re male or female occupations? And so we looked at 11 different occupations that were clearly differentiated, in the extent to which they are dominated by men or women, and so this just shows you, we have from very strong male-dominated areas like plumbing, so you feel like in IT you have a problem. [audience laughs] Plumbing, you’re really missing the female perspective in plumbing much more intensely, and so we have six male-dominated areas, and five female-dominated areas, and what we did for this first study is we took the first, this is very labor intensive, because for this we found the ads on things like www.monster.com, and so forth, you know, online recruitment sites, and we had to code every single one individually and through this software that we have, and so we took the first 50 or so that came up on a search for each of these professions, and what we did with them is we ran them though a software that was built to sort of code for the percentage of different words used, and it had these dictionaries, and they can tell us the extent to which these ads had more male words or female words, as a function of the list that we’d created based on past research. So here’s an example of what a masculinely-worded ad would look like in computer science, and then I’ll show you a less masculinely worded computer science ad. Does anyone see the words in here that connote the masculine stereotype?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Individual.

DR. AARON KAY: Individual, yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Self starter.

DR. AARON KAY: Anything else?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Statistical.

DR. AARON KAY: The very last sentence has a very common one. We already said individual.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Analyze.

DR. AARON KAY: Analyze, right. So analyze is also very common, so there’s individual in there twice, and analyze. Self starter actually does capture the male stereotype, but I don’t think it’s in our dictionary. We have independent and so forth, but it should be in the dictionary. Then you can see a computer science ad that was very high in the feminine wording, so if you look at the feminine wording, you have things like this, provide, support, service, understanding, and so often one of the big differences in male and female ads is that they’ll ask for the same skill, the ability to analyze something or the ability to understand something. Which really is getting at the exact same idea, the ability to lead versus support, or we want someone who’s aggressive versus someone who’s persistent and vigorous, so they’re often asking for very similar skill, but just doing it through language change that really wouldn’t have any consequence in terms of what kind of person or what they’d expect to do in the job, but actually are differences in terms of whether they convey masculinity or femininity. So, this is an example of a femininely worded ad. These are just two examples I pulled out to show you. If you then take all the advertisements and collapse them together, what you have is the blue is stereotypically male occupations. The red is stereotypically female occupations, and we can look at the percentage of masculine wording, feminine wording in each, so what we saw in this first study was masculine wording is much more likely in stereotypically male occupations than female occupations, whereas feminine wording isn’t actually more prevalent in female occupations than male occupations. So you get this difference in the extent to which these types of words are used in advertisements, and this effect holds within each, what’s really interesting is so if I go back to this, sorry, this slide here, you can see that some of the male-dominated areas are more male dominated, so plumber, then electrician, then mechanic, then engineer, then security guard, then computer programmer. And the percentage of the imbalance between male stereotypic words and female actually follows that trajectory, so the more males are in that area, the bigger the imbalance is. You can even, you don’t have to collapse them into two big groups. You can actually look at the correlations, and there’s a strong, and it actually tends to nicely follow the demographic pattern in the actual world. So let me just skip that, and okay. Before I got to Duke, I was an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, and U of Waterloo is notable in a few ways, so this is in Canada. First of all, it’s like supposed to be sort of the MIT of Canada. It’s just focused on computer science and engineering. That’s one aspect, and the other aspect is that it has North America’s largest coop program. The students spend half a semester in college and half a semester at a job, and half a semester back in classes, and half a semester in a job, so companies actually engineering and computer science companies from everywhere, Reem being one of the large ones ’cause they’re in Waterloo, they recruit right out of the university and they recruit students who are currently in university, and what they do is they send their advertisements and target them to different majors, so as a company I might say, I wanna send this ad, I wanna get a coop student from Waterloo. I’m gonna send this ad to engineering and computer science, or I’m gonna send it to environment and applied math, and so the coop group at Waterloo gave us access to all of their ads, which allowed us to do much larger tests of this idea, with college-age people looking for jobs, than we were able to do just with our online ads, and so what we did here is we categorized people’s target ads, those targeted to the disciplines at Waterloo that were male dominated, engineering, math, computer science, science, physics, economics, and accounting and financial management, and then the ads that were given to people who were targeted to people in the more female-dominated areas, which were applied health, arts and environment. Waterloo as a computer science school doesn’t have things like history and English lit and so forth. And then we just looked to see, and now we had 4,000 ads, rather than 500 ads, are we seeing the same bias in language usage with these ads, and will we get it to replicate the same effect? So, masculine wording is more common in stereotypically male areas than female areas. Feminine wording doesn’t actually vary as a function of what type of domain it is. So this first piece is just that yes it does seem to be the case that systematically there tends to be more advertisements for occupations that are traditionally male dominated like IT, tend to have more words to suggest that fit the male stereotype than have words that fit the female stereotype. Now the question is does this actually make any difference? Do people notice it, and does it affect how much they like these jobs? In the 60s, when they wanted to argue that putting the word frame man versus frame person was having an effect, they had to bring it to the laboratory and show that if they take it out or put it back, men versus women are more or less interested in that job, and so we basically did the same thing. So what we did is we created ads based on the ads that we’d already analyzed, but the beauty of creating ads is that we could keep the job identical in every single way, expect for we could swap out masculine and feminine terms at a few spots in the advertisement, and you could see if people’s interest in a job that has the same pay, the same basic jobs, is in the same place and so forth, changes as a function just of whether or not there’s male or female words in there, and we could see if it differentially affects men and women. So, we did this. We built this ads in six different areas, so we had two in male-dominated areas. We made a male and female version of an engineering job, a male and a female stereotyped word version of a plumbing job. Same with two female-dominated areas, registered nurse and administrative assistant, and then also in gender-neutral areas, real estate agent and retail sales manager, so retail sales is actually very feminine dominated, but retail sales manager is actually pretty gender neutral. So, each participant in our study would see six job ads, and they would either, they would see one from every category, and they would be randomly assigned either to see the job ad that has the male-type words or the female-type words. And we look at seeing if that made any difference in men and women’s interest in these various occupations, so here’s an example of our engineering ad. It had lots of information, but here are the only things that were changed, okay? So, in the more feminine version of the ad, they are told that we are a community of engineers, so the word community, with effective relationships, the word relationship, with many satisfied clients, and in the masculine version, we’re a dominant engineering firm that boasts many leading clients. The feminine version also adds, we’re committed to understanding the engineering sector intimately so you have understand and intimate, versus we’re determined to analyze the competition, so determine, analyze, and competition are very male words, compared to understand and intimate. And then we also have sensitive to clients’ needs, and develop warm client relationships, versus superior ability to satisfy customers and manage company associations with them. So, basically these are all just a bunch of words that aren’t really gonna change, you would think, what kind of job, what you’re actually gonna do on the job, but in one condition, these were embedded, more feminine wording is embedded into the larger ad, in the other more masculine wording, and then after there’s the question, do men and women actually have different interests in these different jobs? So, after each job advertisement, either the male or female version, they rate the extent to which they find it appealing, six different questions on a one to seven scale. And then because we think if there is an effect on their appeal, it’s gonna be driven by the extent to which they feel that they belong there, to which they fit in there. We also asked them the extent to which they anticipate they would belong at that particular place. So, I would fit in well with this company. I am similar to people who work there. My values and this company’s values are similar, etc. Okay, so what we have in this figure, and I like to walk up to the figure usually but apparently I’m not allowed to leave the proximity of this microphone, so I’m just gonna point. We have female and male participants who look at either the masculinely worded advertisement or the femininely worded advertisement for the same jobs, and this is looking at how much appeal they have for the job, so what you see for female participants is that, when the exact same job has the feminine words in there rather than the masculine, they’re more interested. Something interesting to note here is that if that doesn’t look big, it’s significant. But four is the midpoint of the scale. Four basically means neutral, so what’s happening is people are going from neutral on these jobs to moving to the positive side. They’re now, all else equal, positively inclined to work at that job, and if you look at male participants, you see the opposite. They are more interested in these jobs when they have these masculinely worded pieces into it rather than the femininely worded pieces. Now, in the real world, like we’ve shown you, it doesn’t tend to be the case that there ever is fewer male adjectives in an a description than female adjectives, even in femininely dominated occupations, so men would be sensitive to these cues, but they don’t ever have to actually contend with it, but women we’re seeing, not only are these cues out there in the world. When we actually embed them in actual job ads and they say how interested they are, we’re seeing an effect. I should also note that this applies for every single job on our list, so for plumber and for nurse, if we take a plumber ad, and we use more female adjectives in describing that job or what work gets done, women become more interested in becoming a plumber, just like they become more interested in becoming a nurse, or an engineer. It doesn’t seem to depend on what area it is. We can actually make women more interested in becoming a plumber, just by making these little changes to the wording. If we look at anticipated belongingness, you see the same thing. Females feel like they’re gonna belong more there, they’re gonna fit in more, if there are the feminine words compared to the masculine words, and males feel like they’re gonna belong more if we use the masculine wording compared to the feminine wording. And then what you can do in a nuanced statistical analysis, that I don’t have to give you any details about, what we can show is that, so you find that being a female participant makes you less interested in jobs if they’re masculinely worded, and that effect is entirely mediated or driven by their feelings of belongingness, so the reason they have less appeal for the job is because they feel like they’re not gonna fit in, they’re not gonna belong there. So basically what this study has shown, and we have many that replicate this. I’m only gonna show you a couple, is that these subtle wording differences make people feel like they will belong there more or less, and that leads them to claim that they are more or less interested in the job, and what’s important here is that when we ask people why they’re interested in the job afterwards, no one ever says anything like, well, the words used to describe it sort of reflected a male stereotype, and so I feel like I’m not gonna belong there, and so therefore I don’t have any interest in it. No one ever says something like that. They say things like, that feels not really for me. It doesn’t look stimulating. It doesn’t look interesting. They come up with rational reasons, and no one ever notes that they’re being driven to some extent just by these arbitrary changes in the wording. One thing that I, I wanna show you one replication of this, because I think it eliminates an interesting possibility, which is that some have said, so I’m arguing that if we change analyze to understand, for example, in two ads, a male ad and a female ad, they haven’t really changed the nature of the job at all or what they have to do. You’ve just used male versus female wording, or if we change aggressive to persistent and vigorous, same idea, but someone could say, no, you’ve actually changed the skills that are required, and now people, women maybe feel like they’re actually going to be worse at the job, so we looked at this same idea. We basically replicated it where while also asking, do you think you’ll be any good at this job? And what we find is you know we replicate our, these are just female participants, they think they’re gonna like the job more and belong more, in the femininely worded ad, but when we ask them how good they’ll be, and if they have the skill, there’s no effect. So it’s not that the women are saying, I can do that better, or you know, I can analyze but I can’t understand, it’s that those words are just having, are exerting a feeling on if they feel like they’re gonna fit in there, be surrounded by other similar people. Okay, so if you look at the psychological model in a broader sense, what you’re seeing is that masculine wording affects job appeal through feelings of belonging there, not through feelings of I can do it or not. Women feel like they can do it in both conditions, it’s just one they feel like they’re not gonna fit in very well. So, just to summarize so far what we’ve seen, the obvious environmental cues like the graphics, a bunch of men in the room, or posters on the wall, can affect the extent to which men versus women feel like they are gonna fit in at a job, or would be interested in that job. More subtle things like changing the wording of a job ad also have this effect, and what I wanna suggest now is that there’s one other part of job ads that also exerts a similar effect. This one is not invisible, but I think it’s very counterintuitive. So, how many of you actually do hiring? Some people, so do you ever put these things in the bottom of your advertisements? Of your job ads?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s required.

DR. AARON KAY: It’s required for some jobs, right? Now, there could be, basically I’m ignoring the fact that the current status quo triggers people where they will and will not belong and it has a big effect on what they feel like they’re interested in. If you put this on the bottom of your job ad, you could imagine two ways in which this might affect people. So, one possibility is that it suggests to people that wow, this place cares about women. They don’t actually just think it’s legal. They think this people care about diversity, and I’m wanted there, so I’m gonna be more likely to apply and feel like I belong. But what’s the alternative hypothesis? What else could happen?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: The implication could be they’re putting that there because they’re lacking in that.

DR. AARON KAY: Right, so if you think about it from the perspective of people sort of rationalizing whatever currently is the case, this might suggest to people that this is there because they don’t have any women or minorities, and as it stands right now, I’m not gonna fit in very well at that company. So the question we ask was, does adding these employment notices actually make women feel like they belong more? Or does it ironically deter them from wanting to work there? So, we tested this in the lab, and we basically gave men and women, lots of them, an engineering ad, and we either just added that equity notice that you just saw on the bottom, and they thought it was a real ad, and we asked them about their interest in the job. What you see is that for female participants, they have more interest in that job when that notice is absent compared to when it’s present. Would anyone have a guess what happens with males if that notice is absent or present?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It goes up when it’s absent.

DR. AARON KAY: It goes up when it’s absent? That would’ve been neat. They don’t really care. [audience laughs] They don’t really care. They’re not moved by it one way or the other. I’ll show you in a subsequent study when they actually do care, but basically females are negatively impacted by the presence of that ad, and again this effect is working through feelings of belongingness, so when the ad is there, women feel like they’re not gonna belong at that position, which in some ways is sort of a rational inference to make. If this company needs to start hiring women and minorities, there must not be very many women and minorities there right now, so I’m not really gonna belong, and I’m gonna show up right now. I’m not gonna show up there in 10 years, when they’re affirmative action has actually yielded some sort of actual change in the demographics. And males aren’t really, again, aren’t affected by the presence or the absence of the notice. So, I don’t wanna imply that I’m against affirmative action, ’cause I’m very pro affirmative action. I think what people have to be careful of is the signal that affirmative action riders basically on these ads send, and how you might wanna write them, so maybe if instead of saying something like, you know, we’re committed to hiring women, something like we’re committed to maintaining our diversity, or we’re committed to maintaining the trajectory we’re on, would be more effective. We start to look at more nuanced ways of framing these employment, the affirmative action equity notices, so within the affirmative action world, there’s sort of two debates on how people are gonna react to affirmative action. Some people think that affirmative action means what’s on the top there. So our company is an equal opportunity employer. We have an affirmative action policy, and we’re committed to broadening the overall talent pool by actively seeking female and minority employees, so in all cases we give primary consideration to women, basically, versus imagine an affirmative action policy which there are some that say this instead. In support of achieving our goal of diversity in the workforce, our selection is gonna be limited to people of these underrepresented groups. So you can have one which is that we’re giving priority to underrepresented groups, or one that just says that we’re hiring only underrepresented groups, and do these actually have any differential effect on men and women, so we ran the study. And so we have three different categories. We have the notice is absent entirely, primary consideration to women, or selection limited to women, and we have belongingness and appeal for women and male participants, so anyone wanna guess what happened, you know, what the comparative data is gonna look like for females? In which case are they gonna be most interested in the job?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Notice absent.

DR. AARON KAY: Notice absent. Is there gonna be any difference between primary consideration or selection limited to women?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Higher…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ah, sorry. [audience laughs]

DR. AARON KAY: The answer is no. So women like the job less, or they like the job the most when the notice is absent. They like it less when there’s any sort of equity, affirmative action rider at the bottom of it. What about men? Any guess for men? And this time we do get an effect, so anybody wanna guess which of these men like the most, or the least?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well, I’d hope they would dislike selection limited.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I hope they can read that. [audience laughs]

DR. AARON KAY: Are they rational at all? Yeah, so that’s what you see. Men don’t care if the notice is absent or if there’s gonna be some policy that gives primary consideration to women. They feel like they’re gonna fit in just fine. They don’t like to work at that place, though, if they’re selection is actually just limited to women. So the only time men are affected is when there’s a very aggressive affirmative action policy. Women, though, any sort of affirmative action policy, even though that’s actually supposed to benefit them, is making them less interested, and it’s because, we think, we’re still working on it. This set of data that I’m showing you now is just brand new. We haven’t published it yet. It suggests to them that right now they don’t fit in very much. Okay, so what you’ve seen then throughout the talk is that there are factors that reinforce the status quo because they suggest a current inequality in the demographics. This can be stereotypic environments, masculine wording in ads, or cues of current diversity problems, which include things like riders about equity, about affirmative action attempts at different organizations. These make women feel like they’re gonna belong less at that job. They anticipate less belongingness, and because they anticipate less belongingness, they come up with reasons why they actually don’t want that job. It’s not interesting to them and so forth. So implications. Gender wording is a problem obviously because of fairness. It prevents a level playing field. It’s obviously a problem in terms of creating the best possible products out there, but I think that gendered wording in particular is very problematic because it’s so subtle and difficult to notice, and this applies both to the people who are reading the ads, to the women or members of minorities reading the ads, and also to people writing the ads. People who are writing these ads, they’re not putting these words in there, I don’t think they’re putting these words in there, because they’re trying to cue what kind of gender fits in here. These are messages of the language used around these kinds of environments over many, many years, and so no one is really aware of these problems. What’s so nice about it, though, is that, there’s nothing nice about it per say. The good news is that, compared to trying to change the actual demographic makeup of a company, changing the wording in job ads is actually a very simple intervention, so whereas you need to get a lot of buy in from your CEO if you say, okay, I want an aggressive affirmative action policy, where we’re gonna change the numbers at our company, you don’t need a lot of buy in for them to change something that they probably think isn’t gonna make any difference anyways. You say, I wanna change every time we use the word analyze to use the word understand, in our job ads for example, or I wanna change lead to be about support, so it’s a change that can be enacted relatively easily, even though it’s one that I think is particularly insidious, because people don’t notice it. They think that as long as we’re not saying he, or men in our ad, it seems really open to both genders. And so I think, I prefer the term careless language use, rather than sort of malevolent or sexist language use, because I don’t think people are trying to discourage a specific gender. It’s that they don’t actually pay any attention to these kinds of male versus female words, and this can cause them to miss out basically on a lot of the best applicants for their jobs. And so the question is, can we write better ads. This morning in the Entrepreneurial Alliance, we discussed with everyone who brought their job ads, ways in which we could change their ads. There’s lots of things you can do, and I said to them that I’d be more than happy if anyone wanted to discuss their specific ad their company uses to run them through our program, so we have this program that’ll tell you the percentage of words that are male versus female, and we’d be happy to give feedback, and so forth, and we’re looking into putting something on the NCWIT website that shows just easy things that you can change in your ads and not really change the content and so forth, but that’s where we stand. So, would be happy to open it up for discussion, or any thoughts you might have, or anything like that, ’cause we do have time, right?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mm-hmm. 15 minutes. [audience applauds] Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You may have said this, but when you’ve done these specific studies, how many ads are you pulling in? What’s your…

DR. AARON KAY: So, in the second study I showed you, it was 5,000, every single ad that came to our coop pool of applicants. In the first one, it was 50 per occupation. And randomly, so the first 50 that would come up when you put a search term into the job search website. Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I remember you saying you used online job ads, and I’m curious if you took into account the nature of the online site. So for instance Dice, being so technical is more male driven than something like Monster, and if that was factored in.

DR. AARON KAY: Well, no. Do you have any thoughts on how it could make a difference? No.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don’t know. I mean I know just from personal experience that I feel like when I go to a site as a technical woman, like Dice, it just feels more heady and tech and male based versus Monster is a little more…

DR. AARON KAY: Even if you find that an ad for the same industry on Monster.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mm-hmm.

DR. AARON KAY: Yeah, that’s interesting.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And it’s more of the high-level environment of that website. It’s not even the wording of that specific ad. It could be the same ad on both sites, word for word, but it’s something about…

DR. AARON KAY: And a lot of these job ads now people are just finding on the employer’s website, right? So you can go to any of the websites of the companies attached to NCWIT and they have their job ads listed right there. You know, you can look at those employment opportunities, and when I look at them I cringe, because they fail this test in almost all ways, and so, I think that even regardless of what website you find, the ones they post internally on websites are the same, and this effect’s really robust, so we’ve started looking at it with university mission statements, for example, going through our software, and you can sort universities as a function of ranking, for example, or private versus public, and we find that, now we’re not looking at gender differences, but SES, so how people are sort of wealthier, or wealth perpetuated, and we find that the higher the rank of the university, the more male adjectives there are in their mission statements, and also private universities have more male language than public universities in their recruiting statements. So you see this across all kinds of areas. Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is kind of a follow up to that, but first a comment. I’m a historian. I write about the history of computer programming, and particularly the kind of period in the late 50s and 60s where it becomes gendered male, so it’s actually fairly gender neutral or feminized prior to that, and job advertisements are a big part of what I look at. I can’t do that empirical stuff, kind of research you’re doing, but you do see different kinds of languages and visual tropes emerge.

DR. AARON KAY: Over time, yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And clearly shifting the perception of who belongs in this field. That was just a comment. The question is about other associations that those words have, so for example, one of the arguments historically about professionalization is that it’s also masculinization, so as a field achieves greater status, it also becomes male, so in your university case, have you done something where you’ve taken words like analyze and not tracked it via gender, or relative to gender associations, but status associations, right? So is Harvard using this language, and achieving as high rank, and becoming masculinized, but are they really thinking about status rather than gender?

DR. AARON KAY: Right, yeah, I mean so a lot of the research shows that stereotypes associated with high SES and low SES status, economic status, match on quite well to stereotypes associated with masculine versus feminine. And so it’s not necessarily that one is masculine and one is feminine, one is status. It’s just the same, so people in high status are thought of as individualistic and driven and achievement oriented, aggressive, and low status people are thought of as communal and group oriented, and worried more about interpersonal, interdependent things, and so they just tend to covary, but your profession, it’s an interesting idea, so this idea, as an industry becomes more feminine, it becomes less professional, which is a typical argument that’s happening with medicine now, so as medicine’s becoming more equal in terms of women, it’s actually becoming slightly imbalanced with more women, it’s becoming seen as less prestigious is the argument, and it’d be interesting to see if over time it also happens that the description of that job becomes from one of deep level individual analysis to one of care and independence and so forth.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, and so is that a source of resistance if you go to your CEO for example and say we wanna change the language of this ad from analyze to understand, and here’s the reason that has to do with gender diversity, does that provoke resistance, to say well, but understand is less…

DR. AARON KAY: Yeah, I wonder, and you know…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Effective than understand.

DR. AARON KAY: Right, and I don’t know the answer. Maybe you could tell me, if you came to your CEOs and you said, I wanna change my ad just like this, would they resist it or not? I really don’t know, or if they want to change the lead to support, for example. You know, I teach leadership at Duke School of Business, and we teach that leadership really is just supporting from above. I mean that’s all it basically is, but will there be resistance, because they’re afraid that they were gonna get a wimpier type of candidate? That’s a good question. I don’t know if anyone has any idea about that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That’s definitely a concern of mine, and I was sharing with you this morning that even though we have a woman CEO, I work with primarily male PhD geoscientists and geologists. So I am concerned that I’m going to get some pushback and resistance to that.

DR. AARON KAY: Right. I mean the one nice part is that if you have a company that has the intention, they understand that a diverse workforce is a more effective workforce, if they want it but they can’t achieve it, they’re more likely to want to make these small little steps, but if you have one where they’ve been doing it only because it suggests that they’re a fair, equitable place, it might be harder, even though I’d be very convinced that if you changed analyze to understand, throughout all your ads, your applicant pool is not gonna get any worse in terms of talent. I mean, it doesn’t seem feasible to think people are thinking about it at that level. But it is, it’s an interesting question. Will there be resistance just because at some level they feel the association with feminine, and there’s a fear of that or something. Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have to say that even though I’m a woman, if I was reading an ad which said support, I would be less inclined to apply, than I would be if I saw direct, lead, and maybe it’s because, as a woman in IT, I have associated those kinds of words, maybe I’ve associated the field with I have to be more like males, more leadership and strong and those kinds of things.

DR. AARON KAY: Yeah, it’s interesting. I got some of that feedback this morning, so clearly when we run these studies, with women who are college age, who are the ones who we ultimately care about, ’cause they’re the ones who are making these decisions, right now. It’s not, your intuition isn’t the case with them, so they prefer it when we replace lead with support, and don’t forget we’re not saying we want someone to support others. The idea is that we’re saying something like, you’re just embedding the word support in there, like, we need to support other customers’ infrastructure, right? So it’s just choosing to embed that word, not saying we want a supportive person, using it as a trait word, but just embedding it through the ad, but maybe it’s the case that if you look at women now who’ve been in IT for awhile, they are acting somewhat similarly to the male participants, but if you look at the women who aren’t there yet, they are resonating more with the female language compared to the male language, but your comment is interesting, ’cause I heard that this morning too, from some people. Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s unbelievably striking to me that the word that’s coming out in this is analyze, ’cause that’s my work, statistics and math, and in fact I’ve just written a piece pointing out that women’s participation in statistics and mathematics is equal to men’s, and it’s the highest level of participation in any of the STEM fields, so it’s remarkable to me that this particular word comes out. I’m very interested in the kind of work that he mentioned over here, and have been reading about that, but then I back up and I think, all right, you got that list of feminine words, masculine words. Did that come out purely with regard to your research, or was that somehow more fundamental?

DR. AARON KAY: The list?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I mean, ’cause you said they weren’t necessarily words that showed up in job ads. Is that?

DR. AARON KAY: That list was generated not by my research at all, but by going through past research that has showed that there are traits that are clearly associated with one gender or the other, and we just put in that list only the ones there that there’s really good data already to suggest it’s either a male word or a female word, and we didn’t pay any attention to whether or not it was relevant to the work force, you know, to job ads at all. We just generate these two lists, and then run them through the software, yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And did any of that research ever go beyond English? Is that an English language, or an American thing? Or is it somehow broader?

DR. AARON KAY: Well, certainly, I can’t speak to words, but the general stereotypes of women being more collective, interdependent, communal, and men being more agentic, individualistic, achievement oriented, they tend to exist pretty much everywhere where there’s a hierarchy in which men are more powerful than women. There’s a few small little cultures, pockets you can find of small cultures where there isn’t that hierarchy, that traditional power difference, but everywhere that there is, you tend to see that, yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Interesting, thank you.

DR. AARON KAY: So it’s very cross cultural. In fact, it’s smaller in the U.S. than most places. So you know where there’s less mobility for women in certain countries, the stereotypes or them being you know more apt to the child care thing, which is what communal stereotype is about, are even much stronger. Okay, well thank you everyone.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. [audience claps]

DR. AARON KAY: And feel free to get in touch if you want to talk to me. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or anything.

Vimeo ID 46501265


NCWIT 2012 Summit – Workshop, Brenda Allen: Intersectionality/Double Minority

BRENDA ALLEN: Good afternoon.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.

BENDA ALLEN: Oh good, you all knew it wasn’t rhetorical. [laughing] So take a look. Is that what a nerd or geek looks like? Yeah, because I am one. And I’m also very pleased to be here to talk with you about Difference Matters: Why Intersections of Identity Are Important for Technology and Technology Organizations. And what I hope during this session is to inspire and inform you and to help you understand why this message is especially important for NCWIT’s mission to increase participation of girls and women in computing and IT, in particular, thinking about educational institutional reform. Now as we move forward I’m going to elaborate regarding definitions of difference and intersectionality. This has been billed as a workshop and whenever I do workshops I really like to reframe them as play shops. So are you all ready to play? [speaking foreign language] Okay. So there will be a question and answer period at the end. And also before then I have… Toward the end I have a list of implications of our time together. But before I list those I’m going to ask you what you think implications are so [speaking foreign language] to find implications? Okay. So let’s get started. Take a look at that picture and as you gaze upon that particular person, I invite you to begin by making a list of words you would describe that person to someone who does not see the photograph. You understand the assignment? Okay. So make a list, begin to make a list within your mind or write it down. I’ll give you just a few seconds. As long a list as possible and it’s okay to speculate somewhat. You have some words in mind? Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

BRENDA ALLEN: I need feedback. Alright, so now I want you to find a partner and take about a minute with your partner to share the words that you came up with. Find a partner. Okay please pause. Again these are the kinds of things that I love to do in workshops or play shops, but we have just a limited amount of time together and I wanted to begin with this to ask you to think and feel about how we tend to view ourselves and others. So let me hear from you some of the words that you came up with to describe the person in this photo. Anyone. Yes, here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Serious.

BRENDA ALLEN: Serious.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: No nonsense.

BRENDA ALLEN: No nonsense.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Introverted.

BRENDA ALLEN: Introverted.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Smart.

BRENDA ALLEN: Smart.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thinker.

BRENDA ALLEN: Thinker. Hmm?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Confident.

BRENDA ALLEN: Confident.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thoughtful.

BRENDA ALLEN: Thoughtful.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Pensive.

BRENDA ALLEN: Hmm?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Pensive.

BRENDA ALLEN: Pensive. So these are words if someone didn’t see this photo, you would say there this is a photo of a person, pensive, thoughtful, all of those things. Did no one…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: African American.

BRENDA ALLEN: Okay. Let me hear it again.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have African American girl.

BRENDA ALLEN: African American girl.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have teenager.

BRENDA ALLEN: Young teenager. Hmm?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Teenager, 12 to 15.

BRENDA ALLEN: Okay, 12 to 15. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I somehow getting struggle.

BRENDA ALLEN: Struggle, okay.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m getting middle class.

BRENDA ALLEN: Middle class.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Not struggle.

BRENDA ALLEN: Not struggle.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That’s what I got.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yeah, yeah. So really fascinating that first of all for whatever reason and perhaps it has to do with the first person who said a word. Then people used descriptors that weren’t so much about the person’s embodiment, but more about maybe personality characteristics. Also interesting is then in terms of the particular categories of identity, the words that you use, African American, girl, I think someone said young and also some sense of class based upon the cues that you receive. Well you probably guessed. Same-wa, same-wa. And I was in junior high school around 1962 or 1963. I can’t remember when they took class photos. And at that point I was the only colored girl in all of my classes because we had been tested and tracked according to IQ and according to those exams, of all of the 50% African American, mainly African American students of color and 50% mainly white and those were mainly Jewish kids, there was one colored girl, Brenda J. Allen and one colored boy, Tom Luden. And so I was the eldest of three children. My mom raised us on her own in the projects in Youngstown, Ohio. Projects are low income housing. And as you heard earlier, I loved math, I loved to learn. If you saw I believe it was one of the presenters yesterday, talked about spacial reasoning. I used to love and I still do love taking those tests and I always did extremely well. I also really loved math and I loved learning in general. In addition, I remember very clearly desperately wanting a chemistry set and in fact I called Ma the other day to say do you remember that? I really wanted a chemistry set. She said no, I don’t remember that. I said well why didn’t you get it for me and she said well probably because… In a very serious answer she said probably because I couldn’t figure out why you would want that. And so it was interesting then across my life that I got feedback that I was smart and gifted and some of you for some reason thought you saw it in my photo, but I never really in terms of being in advanced placement, in terms of being in the math classes ahead of time so taking calculus I think and it may not be so unusual nowadays, but back then in terms of seventh and eighth grade doing advanced math. And the main messages that I got in terms of what I should aspire for in terms of a career, can anyone guess?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Nurse.

BRENDA ALLEN: Nurse, teacher, secretary. Okay. And these are probably very similar for many girls, particularly from my social class regardless of race and especially I think the messages that I received with the first one being teacher and by the way teacher for elementary schools students, nothing wrong and bad about that, but interesting in terms of potential for careers. And so I had no role models, no mentors and this was throughout my education in K through 12 as well as even once I finally went to college. And by the way I’m sharing my stories and I’ll be pulling this through our time this afternoon and I’m sharing this not to say woe is me or not to say look what I did, but to point out how some of these issues remain in our society today for a variety of girls and women. And also to invite you to think about how have these issues and how do these issues operate in your life, in your personal life, but also begin to think about or for those of you who are already doing this work, continue to think about how does this matter in terms of the work that you do, in particular thinking about gender reform. So the words that you used actually are pivotal to, most of the words that you use are pivotal to the work that I do on difference and just to be very clear to you, I define difference in a very generic everyday way with difference meaning quite simply ways that human beings vary from one another. And this is different than how some people who study difference view it where oftentimes difference is thought of and written about and people conduct studies of thinking about how people vary from the dominant groups. Okay. But in my case and as well as how I use, I teach difference matters, I have a book. Second edition of my book was recently published on difference matters. And I invite everybody to think about how do these aspects of identity, ways we differ from one another, matter to each and every one of us. So just wanted to clarify that for you. And more specifically, as you’ve heard me begin to use the term, I think of difference in terms of social identity. With social identity… There it is. With the idea of difference equaling specifically social identity. And social identity I define and I’m not the only one who does it. I don’t wanna say it as if it’s just my world. Although in some ways it is. Hmm, I like that. Difference equals social identity. Social identity is one’s sense of one’s self based on being a member of a group. It also refers to one’s sense of another person based on membership in a group. And there are certain characteristics of social identity. For one, as the definition already implied, it’s group oriented. So you think back to some of the ways that you described that darling precocious sweetie pie in the picture as serious, smart, et cetera. Those are characteristics for the most part of individual identity. And social identity is more about being members of particular groups. In addition, the notion of membership is key in thinking about social identity and the notion of membership again perceptual. Either others perceive you’re a member of particular groups and/or you perceive that you are. It’s meaningful to yourself and/or others. Identifiable through labels so the idea of African American for example is a label. Girl is a label. Learned. We made all of these up. We made all of these notions of social identity, particularly the ones we’re talking about, we being human beings in society across time. Certainly they are based on material real things like skin color, like other phenotypes, this wonderful Allen nose, this gorgeous kinky hair. Those are phenotypes in terms of race upon which people put categories and labels and hung lots of other things across time and we learned them and we teach them to one another based on those particular cues. For instance, going back to my photograph, the cues that you used to say I was African American were what?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Skin color.

BRENDA ALLEN: Skin color.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hair.

BRENDA ALLEN: Hair. So we look for those kinds of cues and in fact it’s interesting that how we construct these because what happens for many people for whom people can’t readily make some kind of decision and by the way they sometimes make incorrect decisions based on those cues. But then it becomes a matter of people saying to them, what are you because they can’t quite fit that schema I think some of the speakers have spoken about. And we also assign these to one another sometimes with the person who’s being or the groups who are being assigned being willing and sort of agreeing with that and other times not so much. So some of you may know for some persons of Latin descent or persons who identify as Chicano or Chicana that the notion of Hispanic is really not that appealing because that was something that the United States government created as an ethnicity category. So they’re assigned and they’re very much related to the context. So notice I refer to myself as colored. When I was born, on my birth certificate was an N which stood for? No, new being, thank you very much. [laughing] Come on, now. So it was N for Negro and eventually for the most part we referred to ourselves as colored and then there became Afro American, African American, black so it’s very context related in terms of what those labels are and what they mean, who’s assigning them. Finally, these notions of difference are laden with power dynamics and when I talk about power I refer specifically to Foucault’s notion of power which is reciprocal relationships of influencing one another. And I also take a critical approach in terms of power of thinking about oppression, domination, but also thinking about complicity and resistance. And I think most of those are fairly straightforward in terms of understanding them. Just in case this is not part of your repertoire, then what I mean specifically about resistance is ways that people push against power dynamics. What I mean by complicity is ways that people go along and by these I also try not to have any value judgment because many times that’s a way to survive. Many times people don’t know any better in terms of even having an idea that they could resist or how might they resist. So it’s very power laden. More specifically, the difference that matter that I look in terms of social identity because if I go back to that definition of one’s sense of one’s self based on group membership, if I said to you that I am a Miami Heats fan, is that a social identity? Learned, assigned, identifiable label, group membership. Sure it is. That’s a social identity as a fan and with all of these social identities we learn how to perform them. So let’s say go back to me showing a photo of myself, what might I have in a photo of myself that you look at and say whoa, she’s a Miami Heats fan?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Jersey.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: T-shirt.

BRENDA ALLEN: Jersey, T-shirt and so forth so these similar kind of dynamics operate in terms of when we encounter one another, we infer through a variety of cues our sense of social identity, but what I’m saying now is that there are certain differences that matter more than others because if I asked each of you to make an exhaust… To try to make an exhaustive list of your social identities, be a pretty long list, wouldn’t it? Yeah, it’d be a very long list if you think expansively. But I’m inviting you, in fact I’m telling you. No, I’m inviting you, no I’m telling. I’m inviting you. I’m encouraging you to think about the differences that are particularly salient in the United States and many of them are also salient in the world and I’m doing this so that we can, to really contextualize our time and really think about what NCWIT is trying to accomplish. So these are gender, race, social class, ability, sexuality, age, nationality and religion. And for each of these categories, you think back to the definition of social identity, one’s sense of one’s self or others based on membership, learned, assigned, power laden, context related, then you can see… And also the idea of power dynamics. Then I want you think about how for each of those categories, for one every single one of us in this room could probably readily indicate for each on the list, how we self-identity. So if I asked you what is your social class status, what would you say, Kathryn?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Middle.

BRENDA ALLEN: Middle class and most of us have ideas of what the options are under each of these categories. Moreover, if you think about where you would be in each of these categories, historically and currently, each category tends to have people who are members of dominant groups and people who are members of non-dominant. What I mean by dominant and non-dominant is those groups whose values, beliefs, expectations and so forth dominate, their way or the highway kind of thing. And then then non-dominate are the ones who tend not to have those kinds of privileges. And again for those of you familiar with critical work understand that this idea of privilege and power is pivotal in thinking about social identity categories. Also interesting however, when you look at all of those social identity categories, most people simultaneously occupy dominant and non-dominant categories. Would you agree?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yeah, so that very few people are the ideal in terms of going down that list and they are members of every single dominant group. Also importantly, very few people would go down that list are members of all of the non-dominant groups. So this speaks to the complexity so when I do this, what does it mean? Complexity. Well that’s one thing it means. It also can mean context. Also can mean communication. These are some of my big ideas. I love that talk. Earlier if you were in the flash talks and I’m pretty sure that most of my students would be able to share with you what my big ideas are. Now that really was a brag moment. I said some of the other wasn’t, but anyway. So understanding that for each of these categories, there’s dominant and non-dominant and also understanding some of the other characteristics of social identity which means they vary across contexts and those contexts can be time, they can be places in the country because at the same time I was that little colored girl in the north, as I grew older and met other little colored girls, we were the same age who came from the south, we could compare notes and have both similar and different experiences from our sense of being now black women. And again as I’m sharing this I invite you to think about how these operate in your lives as well. These then are differences that tend to matter in the United States and as I’ve said, I invite you to think about how what your list would be and also to think about ways that these kinds of things can and do change. So I’ve already talked about how notions of race change across my lifetime and again if you’ve studied this at all, you know that even notions of race in the U.S. Census have changed across time. Those of you fortunate enough to have been on this planet over half a century as I have and if you know census at all, know that some of the early census, first of all it was based on the enumerators, looking at you and checking something off so they got to say who they thought you were in terms of race. And then we fast forward and also at different times there were very few categories. Do you know how many categories there were in the most recent census? To be specific, a gazillion. [laughing] So lots of choices in terms of that. Now does that mean that there weren’t all these potential categories that are now in the census way back then? It does not mean that. It means again it’s back to the point of how these categories get constructed, but also can vary across time and place. Ability status is something that in a blink of an eye can change for every one of us in this room. Age as we move across the life span, the sense of being dominant or non-dominant, belief systems and the world being designed to privilege you or dis-privilege you also can vary. So those are differences that matter that I trust help to explain the whole idea of social identities and how they operate. Now have any of you ever seen a Wordle like this before? Raise your hands, okay. So maybe you know, Wordle is a computer program where you take a group of words and it actually makes this wonderful collage that’s based upon the salient sea and how many times a word has been used. So this is my artificial construction of a Wordle in which I reflected on my sense of myself back at that time, back in the junior high and what things I was aware of in terms of my own identity and looking at those salient social identity categories, gender, race, class, age, ability, nationality, sexuality and religion, this is what I came up with. And so for me the idea… And also as you look at this, notice my point that most of us simultaneously occupy privilege and dis-privileged positions. And I also invite you to think about when you were a teenager, what would your Wordle have looked like along these lines. But if you look closely at mine you can see the idea that heterosexual’s relatively small and I didn’t… Of course I didn’t have the language heterosexual at that time, but it was very clear in terms of some of the things that I was hearing, more in contrast to sexuality as well as expectations about I should be liking boys, et cetera, et cetera as well as a little. Not a little, but some what I now know as homophobic or anti-gay language so I was clear in terms of heterosexuality. In terms of social class, poor or working class. Teenager, student, girl, black and in particular what I wanna highlight for me as a distinction between me and my other colored girlfriends is the notion of being gifted. And also to highlight that as being pivotal to why I’m here today in terms of the kind of career that I’ve had that I’m now a PhD, move through the tenure track to become a full professor, et cetera, et cetera. That it’s because I got messages repeatedly throughout my life that I was gifted and that those kind of messages made me dare to agree to teach a course in Pascal when I never even seen Pascal before to say well I’m smart, I can figure it out. Having had those messages has been pivotal for me. Now why do these notions of difference matter? I suspect that most of you understand it already, but I think it’s and in fact I know it’s really important to specify some of these ideas of persistent inequities. And these inequities matter in general and they matter across all sectors of life in employment, education, housing, healthcare and so forth. They matter to the extent if we go back to that first list or that list of social identity categories, the more you can identify as being a member of a non-dominant group, however many of those you check off from cradle to grave, your life expectancy, your health as well as your quality of life period decrease and these are statistically proven so this is not something that I just made up and so these differences matter. And these notion of these persistent inequities that are based upon ways we are taught to see ourselves and if you’re a member of a non-dominant group, that’s known as internalized oppression or in some ways you believe that the negative things that are said about your particular non-dominant group membership as well as the kind of privileged position that comes from being a member of a dominant group. So various inequities exist and that’s why we should be thinking about different because… And you all have to know this already if you’re here at NCWIT, even if it’s thinking about gender inequities, then you already understand this. So I’m not gonna belabor that particular point. Difference also matters because of population trends and projections. And I know you’ve heard and seen these and yet I want to highlight some of those that again I hope will help to make the point in terms of why we should be looking at intersections and I’m gonna get to intersections in just a moment. Can you all read that? Kinda? So if you take a look at this, these are data that show current, well past, current and projected statistics in the United States in terms of race and ethnicity identity. The first, the darkest bar is 1980, then 2005, then 2050 projected and notice that in terms of white, Hispanic, black and Asian, they didn’t include Native American here, but notice and again you’ve heard it, but I think seeing it graphically really helps to make the point in terms of the differences that already exist and that are predicted across those racial and ethnic groups. In addition, differences in terms of child population and I’m focusing on child population momentarily because think about implications for education, for K through 12 education. This is what the child population was, is and will be in terms of race. In addition, working age population. You see the trend here in terms of the kinds of things I’m hoping to clarify and again you see what is predicted to happen. Now if you combine this racial ethnic data and by the way I struggle to find data like this because of how the United States Census and therefore the government or the government and therefore the Census. I guess it could go either way. But how they designate race and ethnicity differently that in some ways can be confusing because you can be Hispanic non-white, Hispanic white, Hispanic et cetera so they’re blending race and ethnicity in a particular way. Fortunately the Pew Research Hispanic Center has put the data together in a way that we can readily see what these numbers look like and it’s important to see what numbers look like and this is an issue actually in terms of implications that I think is key as we move forward in this work. But looking at those three… Looking at population, children, child age and working age and blending, if you combine these data, these projections with what happens in terms of sex in the United States and by sex I mean biological identity. What happens is historically and currently the trends show the ratio of males to females is about 97% to one and you probably know then that and across the lifespan from infant mortality all the way to senior citizen elderly then there tend to be more women than men period. Now there are some fluctuations within racial and ethnic groups, but I don’t wanna fine tune it just that much. But I just wanna make the point if we look at these statistics in terms of what’s going on across races and ethnicities, we blend those in terms of highlighting girls and women. Then you see in terms of women of color as well as contrasted with white women in terms of the available, the population, the pool, whatever we wanna call it, in terms of IT. And again I trust that you understand these issues already, but I hope seeing this really depicts how significant it is to really begin or continue to try to understand some of the differences, some of the concerns in terms of girls and women of color for intersectionality. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I don’t often see and I wish I saw more mixed race representative in these charts.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mixed race children. It’s constantly a problem in school at the moment. I have to think that these called black, are these called Asian, are these called Hispanic are not truly, purely black and Hispanic.

BRENDA ALLEN: I think that’s an excellent point and it also speaks to the complexities of thinking about social identities. To that I would add however that for many of those persons that society will tend to categorize and treat them and respond to them in terms of expectations and so the whiter a person looks regardless of how they self-identity, the more colored if you will a person looks, they will tend to experience, people will tend to experience and respond to them in particular ways. In actuality, I don’t think there’s any pure anything left on earth. Well maybe somewhere on earth in terms of someone being 100% Caucasian or 100% whatever these categories are. So I agree with you and that’s also something that sometimes confounds trying to get data, trying to justify funding or focusing so yeah, complex. So one approach to thinking about these issues of and again I’m highlighting race and sex or race and gender just as an example as well as something that clearly there’s enough data, there’s enough concern, there’s enough precedent in IT to think about intersections of race and gender. And one approach to trying to study, one approach of trying to develop practices, policy and so forth is through intersectionality theory that I just wanna talk with you very briefly about and by the way most of these concepts are concepts that actually trying to cover them in about 45 minutes in order to have time for a discussion is a phenomenal challenge and I trust that and I also have a bibliography and these slides will, I can make them available to you. But anyway, intersectionality is a really fascinating concept that attempts to address the kind of issues we’re talking about today. Intersectionality is a feminist sociological theory that was first highlighted by critical legal scholar Kimberly Crenshaw. And in particular what intersectionality strives to do is examine how axes of identity interact with one another. So looking at how gender, race, class, ability and so forth, how do these interact on multiple and sometimes simultaneous levels and that how they contribute to systematic inequality. So the point here is that singling out gender or singling out race does not allow for the compound kinds of potential effects of gender and race at the same time. This notion of intersectionality as Crenshaw conceived it and by the way she was not the first person to think and talk about and call for more research on race and gender. Feminist scholars of color and many of their white allies had begun to challenge these issues long before in terms of how early feminist studies really seemed to be focusing primarily on middle class white women and early work on race and civil rights really tended to focus primarily on black men’s issues. And so there was the notion then of the potential for an African American woman or any woman of color to be counted if you will among women and to be counted among people of color, but never or very rarely seeming to be foregrounded, for someone to be seeming to be concerned about particular issues. So it was based on this lawsuit that was brought before General Motors by a group of black women who contended that they had experienced sex and race discrimination at the same time. And they drew the lawsuit based on title seven which is a civil rights which says you can’t discriminate against somebody because of and then it lists categories and it says or race, gender or. So the court basically denied these women’s complaints and they said specifically, this is actually worth reading the summary judgment of DeGraffenreid versus GM. Summary judgment, the court dismissed on the merits of the sex discrimination claims and dismissed without prejudice the claim charging racial discrimination. Ruling that a complaint such as this one under title seven might state either a causive action for race discrimination, sex discrimination or alternatively either, but not a combination of both. The plaintiffs are clearly entitled to a remedy if they have been discriminated against. However they should not be allowed to combine statutory remedies to create a new “super remedy” which would give them relief beyond what the drafters of relevant statutes intended. And by the way some of these legal battles persist because what was going on at GM was they were hiring women, white women. They were hiring men, black men. Excuse me, they were hiring people of color, black men. And interesting there is research and statistics on occupational segregation. So you might begin to imagine where the black men were working and where the white women were working, but they were working so those charges from the black women were ruled null and void. However this notion of intersectionality is not limited just to black women. That indeed and I was fortunate to be at a presentation by Dr. Crenshaw recently in which she said that looking at notions of intersections of identity it’s important to think about what you’re interested in and what you’re seeking to accomplish so that you might want to look at ability, how ability status intersects with gender. Or you might wanna look at how sexuality or sexual orientation. So it just depends on what you’re seeking to understand so it’s not limited to black women and yet it’s significant that it initiated from this particular kind of case as well as comparable concerns about gender equity from the feminist movement and from the civil rights movement in the United States. There are multiple depictions of this notion of intersectionality and I’m sure you’ve seen some of them. So there may be the two overlapping circles and so with those it’s sort of like this in between is the intersecting of the race and gender. That just doesn’t feel adequate for me because it’s like so what’s going on over here and what’s going on in this one. There’s also the idea of an actual intersection, a street intersection that Dr. Crenshaw depicts as imagine that this is race discrimination street and this is gender discrimination street and a black woman is crossing that intersection and she gets hit by something and the race ambulance rushes to the scene to say okay, oh, wait a minute, this is right here. I can’t tell if it’s a race thing so that ambulance says no, I can’t help you. Then the sex ambulance in terms of A comes to the scene and says uh, not so sure, you’re right here in this, in the intersection so I’m not sure, especially if she says it was both. So I think that’s a pretty vivid if not violent kind of depiction of this notion of intersections. However I recently found one. And also language is used for thinking about women, in particular thinking about women who occupy non-dominant racial positions so the words like double jeopardy evolved into multiple jeopardy and also when I was recruited to the University of Colorado Boulder and I was a twofer. Anyone know that one? So they could check off that they hired a woman and they hired a person of color and interestingly enough we’re back to that idea of and yet where am I in any of these kinds of things to try to identity myself with women’s issues, to identity myself with race issues, to be subjected to this notion of do I really belong, do I really have allegiance to either group has been an interesting challenge throughout my life. Specific while I was at CU Boulder, a black student athlete was accused of raping a white female student and some women’s groups and by the way some of those women’s groups were diverse in terms of racial composition, but some of the women’s groups wanted me to rally with them. Some of the black student groups wanted me to rally with them. And I just sat that one out because it was too challenging to figure out how to align. And that just gives you one example the kinds of complexities that can happen to any of us at the intersections of race and gender. I found something in the literature that I think depicts these pretty nicely. So if we begin with the idea that often happens with separate axes and we see it so much in so much of the literature in information technology which talks about the need to look at and to have reform for women and for underrepresented minorities. So it’s separating the two in a particular way and if we look at the notion of race as the green circle and gender as the yellow, what I find as an interesting depiction is one that actually and it’s called gReAnCdEer. No, actually what this does is the yellow and the blue become a green and so it still maintains some of the qualities and it’s still the race and the gender is there intersecting with one another so it’s the same and yet it’s different if that makes any sense. So understanding then and I wanna stress this point that this operates for every single one of us. So everyone in the room, you identity your race, you identity your gender. You have been socialized whether explicitly or not of how to enact that combination, how to perform that particular combination and certainly there are others, but I would be… And with that I believe that many of us who identity as women, there are probably similar messages we’ve gotten as women as a whole and there are also probably different messages that you could point to because you are a blank, fill in the blank race woman. So intersectionality and IT, interestingly there’s a wonderful precedent within intersectionality studies for IT that some of you may be aware of which a scholar named Shirley Malcolm and… Shirley Malcolm. I have the other names. Malcolm, Hall and Brown actually wrote a report for NSF in which they looked at… In 1976 and they looked at for the American Association for the Advancement of Science called the Double Bind, the price of being a minority woman in science because they were aware that struggles for scientists were greater for women of color than for white women or for men of color at the graduate level. And that also women of color severely underrepresented across all sites of the career path which that persists and that female minority graduate students were outpaced by their minority male counterparts. So and statistics also showed then and now that many women of color have been and continue to be stuck at junior level positions, not advancing to leadership positions at the same pace as their male and white female counterparts. More specifically data from the U.S. labor department from 2009 show that among women in IT professions, 1.5% are Hispanic women, 2% are black or African American women, 4% are Asian women and 18% are white women. And as I share these statistics and also talk about this issue in general, please be very clear that this is not meant to pit anyone against one another even as those are the kind of dynamics that often occur and I’ll share it a little bit later in terms of implications of this talk. We need to avoid diversity olympics. You know what those are? We’re sort of like we win the gold medal for being the most oppressed because that can tend to divide even more. But it’s important to look at these statistics and begin to think about if we really do want to advance girls and women in IT, then we’ve got to try to understand better some of these dynamics. We’ve got to have practices and policies and even quite simply ways of interacting with one another that speak to these and respect these kinds of differences and also begin to look for similarities rather than assuming that we’re all heterogeneous. I’m going to pass on this one for now just because of time, but I’ll say very briefly that this is from a study called the Tilted Playing Field written by the Level Playing Field Institute. Fascinating, wonderful study if you haven’t seen it which looks at the notion of underrepresented people of color, non-underrepresented interesting people of color. Males, females, but it looks at them in separate categories as you can see on those bars and yet all of their statistics… And what they did was some extensive survey in IT companies and asked these people about their attitudes towards such things as diversity as recruiting and retaining for diversity, of how well they thought the culture of their organizations were diverse, et cetera, et cetera. And many of the differences that they found because they separated them in terms of these categories were somewhat frustrating for me because for instance the idea of thinking that they’re exclusionary cliques, statistically significant for women, statistically significant for people of color or what I wanted to know is what does that look like and I think it would be helpful to know how does that work in particular let’s say for Latinas or certainly just for underrepresented women of color who wanna just take it to that level. But frequently this is how data are displayed and one has to kind of assume or infer from them. Other research, the good news is there’s a wealth of research in IT that has looked at these issues and that occasionally is very explicit about thinking about intersectionality and thinking about intersectionality usually from the standpoint of how does this work in terms of women of color. So I talked earlier about the Double Bind. There’s also the Tilted Playing Field that I mentioned. Jane Margolis’s book on Stuck in the Shallow End if you’re not familiar with that, excellent resource in terms of looking at students in high school, three high schools in L.A., in particular looking at racial issues, but combining those with sex and social class. In addition, women dominate CS in Malaysia. Fascinating study if you don’t know about what’s going on in Malaysia in terms of the high numbers of women who go into IT and those authors argue for a cross-cultural look at these issues as well as intersection. And they decry the western bias of most of the research on gender in IT. Another one is that Roli Varma did and I’m pleased that some of these are my colleagues in the social science advisory board here at NCWIT. So she looked at college students attitudes toward it. Why are there so few women in computer science? And she actually looked to see what’s some of the differences where she had hypotheses based on gender, race and gender/race combinations and she found that in terms of attitudes toward or rationale, why do students think there’s so few women in computer science. It turns out that among women there were significant differences among women by race so white women felt differently than Latinas that felt differently. You get what I’m saying. And yet among all males they were basically in agreement. There were no statistically significant differences. Now I am not trying to… These are just some little snapshots. Don’t have time to go in depth with any of these. Not necessarily saying that these are it. I hope that there are more, but just to make the point that we have some research that’s already been done that’s begun to look at these issues and that actually could be places for beginning. And finally, Double Bind: The Next Generation is the foreword to a special issue of Harvard Educational Review in which Shirley Malcolm and her daughter are reflect upon from the 30 years. Is that right, 30 years from 197… 35 years. 30, yes. I said I was good at math. I need to demonstrate it, right? From 1976 to 2011 is what kind of progress have we made and they make some fascinating conclusions in terms of figuring that there’s some progress in terms of K12 and how girls are socialized. They think there’s some, but they think they also point to persistent inequities, systemic issues in too many places in higher education, in industry and so forth. People will nod and say this is something we should be working on, but have not. That does no justice at all to the argument that they make in some of the phenomenal articles that are also in that issue that talk about Double Bind: The Next Generation. There are some promising practices that I don’t even wanna tell you one or two because it doesn’t do justice. You may see me later or perhaps what I’ll do is elaborate for this particular slide and if you ask me for slides and I’ll have the references there. So we’re to implications. Or as I like to say in my class so what. So what with all of this stuff and what if anything should we or could we do. What do any of you see, especially whether from your particular position in terms of what you’re doing and why you’re here at NCWIT or from your own personal experiences or both of them? Yes, ma’am?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think IT in particular is a gilded profession and all this research is… I know it’s NCWIT.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: But one out of three people in this world is either Indian or Chinese.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And of all the professions, IT is one where you really have to think globally.

BRENDA ALLEN: Excellent, I agree. And I think that… I referenced that notion of Malaysia and of course they talk about some complexities there, but at least someone has thought about it and they critique the tendency for this kind of western, in particular U.S. approach and your point as well taken, if we look at statistics, we look globally, to just think about how these issues operate. Thank you. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I just wanted to add.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes, please.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We tend to just look at racial barriers in the U.S., but what Africans in Africa. That’s a huge economy that’s about Africa.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just became a resident a few months ago. Before that I was an alien, I had an alien card. It is in some sense the modern day… Indentured servant.

BRENDA ALLEN: Yes, yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I really think people should be able to move around. People that aren’t… Or have the inclination should be able to move around the world to pursue opportunities just as easily as people with opportunities can move cattle around to pursue people with our opportunities in order to get cheap labor or outsource. Why if people are companies and companies are people, why can’t they move around the world equally well?

BRENDA ALLEN: I agree, I agree, thank you. That’s such an important perspective that expands as well as deepens and invites us always to think about who are we trying to serve and why and what really matters to us ultimately and those are decisions we have to make individually, but also in organizations that are about reform. Thank you. Other implications? Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Something you said earlier made me think about thinking about how we vary from each other, not from a dominant group and continuing that line of reasoning into our research is I think a key place where this needs to go.

BRENDA ALLEN: Excellent, thank you very much. And because we’re coming close to time, I may not have much for Q&A. I just wanna quickly roll through these. Basically the point especially for those of us who are doing work in terms of gender is to really think, be thoughtful and heartfelt about these different intersections of identity across the ones that I mentioned as well as to be mindful of our own biases along these lines and in particular in addition to the notion of global perspectives. In addition to the notion of thinking about post colonial concerns, of also thinking about other kinds of biases that our research tends to be class biased, tends to be looking primarily at leadership positions for instance, tends to come from more of a middle class position in terms of thinking about IT, encompasses lots of different kinds of potential occupations and jobs and so forth. And also mindful of our biases about other bodies, other people regardless of who we are. As you heard from the research and you probably already knew, all of us are biased against other people and sometimes we harbor those biases about ourselves. Widen the scope of our analysis and I’ve made that point. Foster and model alliances. I think this is so key as especially in our workplaces whatever those might be as we work with girls and women is to really foster alliances that in addition to having particular programs and so forth that are designed with let’s say in terms of intersections looking at girls and women of color, I think those are important and we should be looking at alliances that involve members of all racial ethnic groups if we’re looking just at race and gender for now and thinking about modeling those. Report relevant data. Minimally give me some numbers. It doesn’t even have to necessarily have to be some sophisticated analysis, but to help to begin to tease out these issues as we’re doing variety of research, to look at the numbers. So it’s not just here are people of color and here are women and even dividing those in kind of predictable ways. Getting a little more complex along those. Consulting sister disciplines. A lot of this work in other disciplines has been done. We don’t have to start at the beginning so occupational psychology for example, some women studies programs, some programs in international studies and so forth, law. Critical race theory provides a lot of resources. Collaborate across disciplines. I was intrigued to see how much of, how much I could contribute based on my work in organizational communication in identities to this conversation. I hadn’t really thought about it before. And learn from one another. Invite, I would love to have a conversation with you. What is your name?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Palivi.

BRENDA ALLEN: Palivi, have a conversation with you about what it’s been like for you so that I can learn more about these issues for as I continue to do work, as I continue to think about these issues. And what often happens is especially in a majority, it’s called a co-cultural conversation in my discipline, across a non-dominant and a dominant group member is a non-dominant woman will say well this kinda thing happened to me and a dominant group woman will say oh, it happened to me too. It’s not a big deal. But rather to try to understand that there may be something you don’t quite understand. And as we think about these implications, I think it’s important to reflect upon then the whole premise of this talk and to go back to what I shared with you about being that little girl who was so inquisitive and cared about math and… Actually I’m a geek. Anytime there’s a new technology I’m one of the early adopters. I’ve done other things related to computers with no training and so forth. And again not to brag on myself, but I can’t help but reflect as I think about the kinds of policies, practices, programs and ways of being in the world that I would love to see us implement where we began or we continue to think about intersectionality, if I’d had the advantage of some of those kinds of experiences, I might not be standing here before you talking about intersectionalities. Rather I might have been the CEO and founder of a software engineering company that in my fantasy world is called Sapphware and consequently would also be standing before you. Oh, promising practice. [laughing] Thank you. [laughing] [applauds]

Vimeo ID 46258677


NCWIT 2012 Summit – Turner Presentation with Lisa Chang

[audience applauding]

LISA CHANG: Thank you Lucy, good afternoon everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. This is Turner’s first active year in participation of NCWIT, and we’re delighted to be here. And just excited to join this community of very passionate women and men supporting women in computing and IT. It is definitely a mission and a passion that we want to invoke at Turner, and certainly within the media industry. As a mother of a teenage daughter, that is headed toward a hopeful career in STEM, I’m very excited about the mission that NCWIT has all through the lifecycle of young girls, women, and future technology leaders. So we look forward to that partnership. It’s my great pleasure today to share in Lucy’s announcement that Turner is making a significant investment in NCWIT for the next couple of years, and building this long and productive relationship. Turner as hopefully you guys know is one of the world’s most recognized media brands, with CNN, Turner’s other networks TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and although our business is primarily in television, we definitely have expanded our portfolio into the digital space with the onset of all the websites that support our properties, as well as all the various apps that now support our networks. So content might be at the heart of our business, but technology is the core of how we get our content out. Our affiliation with NCWIT provides us with a valuable opportunity to extend that footprint into the technology space, and hopefully align our efforts with increasing women in technology. We deeply value NCWIT’s mission to increase women in IT and computing, and we also agree that more women in the space will make it a more productive and competitive environment. Our investment as Lucy said is multifaceted. As she also mentioned, we have been streaming live the summit for the past few days, and I just wanna take a minute to thank the folks from Turner Studios that we have here, David Kennerly, Marty Beeson, Dennis Besar, as well as a local crew based here Angel Hawthorne, Aaron Britton and Dan Sellers, so thanks guys for all your work. [audience applauding] The content that’s streamed is also being archived, and I think it’s gonna be available on the website, which hopefully again will make the content available even greater to folks that could not be here and will live on for a little bit longer. So as she also mentioned, we are trying to use our media expertise to expand the footprint, and we’re proud to partner on the production of a new NCWIT video, which we are debuting here today. It was created by our in-house Turner Studios group, and this video is really in recognition of NCWIT’s efforts and passion, and it was created to visually and creatively evangelize the very important message that NCWIT is trying to get out. So we’re excited to be part of this revolution, and we hope you’ll join us. Thank you, so can we roll the video?

[VIDEO]

I believe this is another generation of products yet to be birthed, when women contribute.

We want to have people in the workplace that look like the world.

I love technology because there’s so many opportunities. [upbeat rock music]

We want to have people in the workplace that look like the world. And the world isn’t just one gender.

What’s cool about technology is that it’s always changing. Technology is never the same.

I think it’s cool that you can take something complicated, and just one person can make it easier for everyone else.

I love technology because there’s so many opportunities.

I believe this is another generation of products yet to be birthed, when women contribute to the ideas, the solutions, that can solve some of the world’s problems.

As the world has become more complex, diversity becomes more important.

One of the things that’s so powerful about having women and men involved in working on things together is that you get very different perspectives that cross over gender boundaries, and cross over style matters.

It is really critical that we get more people worldwide, and particularly in the United States, into technical fields, and more women.

I look at NCWIT members as revolutionaries. As real change agents. Every day, they’re thinking about ways to increase girls’ participation in computing. [upbeat rock music] [audience applauding]

Vimeo ID 46334171


NCWIT 2012 Summit – Flash Talks Introduction, Jeff Forbes

JEFFREY FORBES: Thank you. So I’m Jeff Forbes. I’m going to be the emcee for the Flash Talks. I’m from the National Science Foundation. And NCWIT is really excited to bring you something new and different this afternoon. Something they’ve never tried before and they’re calling them Flash Talks. So just to give you a little bit of background about the Flash Talks. So these Flash Talks are short, thought-provoking presentations which are designed to inspire, teach, or just make you think about something in a different way. Flash Talks are modeled after the popular IGNITE presentations that you may have seen around the country, but, unfortunately, without all the beer. [audience laughter] So unlike most other presentations, where the speaker is in full control and advances the slides and determines how many slides they’re going to have, in this case, the speakers are, you know, very pioneering people and they are going to cede control in a very fixed format. You’re going to… For each talk, there will be 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. So, 20 times 15, that gives you 300 seconds, or five total minutes, and that’s it. It’s going to move regardless of what they do. [audience laughter] So prior to the Summit, NCWIT put the call out to the community to submit a talk about your passions, interests, experience, or research, and related to NCWIT’s broader mission to increase diversity in computing. And some great topics were submitted. And then you, the community members, were asked to vote on them. The talks you’re about to see reflect the winners of your votes as well as a few talks that were selected by NCWIT. Speaking in a format like this, in front of an audience like you, is frankly pretty challenging. You know, about as challenging as publishing research in a big peer-reviewed venue, but unfortunately, again, without getting all the academic credit, so… [audience laughter] You really need to give these speakers a lot of credit, because they’ve put an incredible amount of work into their presentations. I can tell you that having to set aside, you know, and just watch the slides move, is a really tough thing to do. So we really hope that you appreciate what they’ve done, and I want you to get ready to open your minds.

Vimeo ID 46559760


NCWIT 2012 Summit – State of NCWIT

[audience chatting]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: Let’s see, good morning. Good morning so we’re going to get started. I’m Bobby Schnabel. I’m one of the three cofounders of NCWIT along with Lucy Sanders and Telle Whitney and the three of us continue to be the executive team for NCWIT. I’m gonna start with a piece of good news which is although the program may give you this impression, I am absolutely not speaking at you for 30 minutes. My main job is to introduce three people in the front row who are much more interesting than I am. So I’m just going to make a few comments before I do that. And the first one is to reflect a little bit on the number of people in this room and how that contrasts to the first NCWIT planning meeting where we were around four little tables, didn’t need any microphones, all could get to know each other in a few minutes. Here we’re a lot bigger than that which is great and therefore we need to find ways to get to know each other. So we’re gonna do one right now. Would everybody who is at their first NCWIT meeting, so you may be a new member, or visitor, a new representative please stand up for a moment, wow [audience applauding] Okay well that’s most of you. Will the people who aren’t standing up please make a vow to talk to at least one of the people who is during the meeting. [audience laughing] No, that’s serious, we want to get to know people. So thank you very much. So I’m just going to do a couple of slides to talk about what NCWIT is and then get to our speakers. All right, as Lucy said yesterday, the mission of NCWIT is to significantly increase girls’ and womens’ meaningful participation in computing. And the way we do that is depicted on this graphic. Now this graphic is a little bit like a face. Not just that it looks like one. I’m not sure if it does or not. But what I meant by that is a person’s face can change in various ways over their lifetime. The hairstyle, the color, the quantity, the shape; but, it’s still the same person. And similarly for those of you who’ve tracked NCWIT, the way we depict this tends to change over time, the shapes that we use, the colors, even the words in those three. But it’s always been the same strategy and it’s a three-part strategy, all right. The first then, part that you really embody is about the community. NCWIT is a combination of learning communities. There may be some organizations where you can go to a meeting once a year, hear all the great things the organization is doing, then go home and come back the next year and expect the organization made progress. In this organization, you are the progress. The communities are the way that things get done as change and action communities all through the year. So that’s the first of the circles. The second one is the evidence. One of the things that NCWIT does is provide a wide variety of resources that are based upon research to help those communities take action, advocate to other groups and in some cases send information to other people who are working on that. And you’re familiar with those. There’s a lot of those resources outside on the table. There’s some new ones there. So, I encourage everyone to take a look at that and see what has really become known for the high quality resources that it produces. And the third one, what we referred to there is action is the fact that NCWIT is part of a larger community where it both advocates and creates programs that help in many ways. So, that includes not only enhancing the visibility of women in IT but being a partner in activities that enhance all represented, underrepresented communities in IT. It’s increasingly played a major role in the national conversation about technology and information technology computing at the K-12 level on both the policy side and the curricular and content side. It’s playing an increasing role in the entrepreneurship level and increasing the talent pool including the diversity of that talent pool. And I think one of the pleasing things that NCWIT has become a really sought after and valuable partner in many of these national conversations. Now, that was probably not the intended results, okay that button. As we said, the way that NCWIT does this is largely through the six alliances that are depicted here. And let me just say a couple words about those. The one that’s been the longest standing is the one on the bottom right, the Social Science Advisory Board. Even before we officially formed NCWIT, we had a group that has advised us and has continued to on research practices and on evaluation and assessment practices and has been very important to NCWIT. The two other long-standing ones or longest are the Academic Alliance and the Workforce Alliance. The Academic Alliance works on change within higher education. The Workforce Alliance works on change and advocacy in the corporate sphere. The one that’s been in existence for a number of years by now is the K-12 Alliance which is an organization or many organizations which by themselves have a reach to over half of the girls in the United States and work both on the image and on programs in the K-12 sphere. And then there’s two alliances that have just gotten started recently and you may not be as familiar with. The Entrepreneurial Alliance which was announced at the Startup America event at the White House is one that works on growing the talent pool and particularly the diversity and the participation of women in the talent pool of entrepreneurial activities and startup companies. It’ll be meeting here for the first time and then the Affinity Alliance is one that was only announced in January and it is the alliance of the many affinity groups and you can see it on the website. These are affinity groups and professional societies, incorporations and so on about women in technical organizations or women in IT and it’s providing both community and resources to those organizations. So what we’re gonna be doing in this session if I go backwards for a moment, is there is one speaker representing each of the three circles that is there. And so the first of those speakers, Dr. Pat Morreale, from the Department of Computers Science at Kean University in New Jersey is representing the alliances and particularly talking about the Academic Alliance and research experience for undergraduates, so Pat [audience applauding]

DR. PAT MORREALE: Thank you and good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here. Last year, I’m part of the Academic Alliance Research Experience for Undergraduates Project and last year we wrote the book or more specifically the program in a box on research experiences for undergraduates. This material which is available on the website has details about faculty and student approaches and strategies for conducting NCWIT’s renowned best practices undergraduate research experiences in computer science. And this year, we’ve decided to celebrate it and I’m happy to announce that we have the 2012 REU Faculty Recognition Award. We’re trying to identify faculty who are encouraging, supporting and advancing undergraduate women in computer science research. Now the individuals that are designated to receive this award this year have been nominated by their faculty peers and endorsed by students because a student recommendation was required. And we have four individuals that have been recognized through the nomination process and peer review and will be receiving this year’s 2012 REU Faculty Recognition Award. If you see these individuals here at the summit, please encourage them and congratulate them, Dr. Juan Gilbert of Clemson University, Dr. Scott McCrickard of Virginia Tech, Dr. Mingrui Zhang of Winona State University and Dr. Diana Franklin, University of California, Santa Barbara. If the individuals are here and if you could stand up please. We’d be happy to recognize you for your accomplishments. [audience applauding] And again if you see them in the small on the outside please do speak to them and tomorrow morning, Thursday we’ll be formally awarding the awards and giving more details about their expertise that they’ve shared with our undergraduate students. Thank you again. [audience applauding]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: Thank you Pat. What we’re going to switch to next is talking about NCWIT resources as I said a few minutes ago and I think you know NCWIT provides a really wide array of resources. And it’s actually become quite known for doing that. In fact we’ve had organizations come to us and ask if we would make their resources and we resisted so far becoming a marketing company as opposed to a women in IT company. But, there is a really impressive array of resources. There’s just two examples, the Workforce Alliance has been producing a number of really interesting top-10 lists, including ways to retain technical women, ways to increase the visibility of technical women and the most recent one are the top-10 ways to be a male advocate for women in organizations. And so do take a look at that. To show you another type of resource, one of the things NCWIT research did in the last year or two is produce an analysis by each congressional district of essentially the supply and demand for IT in that district. And this has turned out to be a really valuable resource as people have discussions; because, in politics and in many programs it’s all local. And being able to point to that locally has really been a valuable thing to do. So those are just two examples of NCWIT’s resources and now Barbara Ericson is going to talk about a third in the K-12 space. Barb is very well known for her contributions in bringing computing education to K-12. She serves as Director of Computing Outreach in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, so Barb [audience applauding]

BARBARA ERICSON: Good morning I’m pleased to talk to you about an upcoming new report out of the K-12 Alliance. the Girls In IT: The Facts. This is a report that’s gonna be similar to the women IT but more focused on the K-12 space. Oop, I hit the wrong button, ah that way. So the goals of our report were to have everything in research in computing or in technology about girls and gather it in one place. It’s a lot of research in different areas. We want to make it more accessible by gathering and summarizing the research. We want to find out what are the key barriers to girls’ participation in technology and we wanna help people that are advocates for change as Bobby said. We are a group that are advocating for change. So by having access to the research and promising practices for overcoming those barriers, we hope to help you enable the change. We also want to identify areas for future research. So the report, an overview of the report, what we’re going to have in it is the current state of affairs. So for example, I’ve been looking at one of the drafts of it and AP Computer Science has the lowest participation percentage of women of any of the APA exams, there’s 37 AP exams. There are more men taking studio art than there are women taking AP Computer Science. So that’s one of the interesting facts. Oh, identifying the barriers. What are the overview of the key barriers for a girl’s participation and certainly one of them is a lack of access to computer science. Many girls have already made up their mind what they’re going to major in by high school. So if they don’t have any experience in computer science that’s dismissed as a possibility. So we’d like to get them more access earlier. And addressing the barriers. What are the promising practices? What are ways that we can improve girls’ participation in IT. One of the interesting findings there is that the gender of the leaders doesn’t necessarily matter as much as what kind of leaders are they, role models that you have. We’ve been running summer camps at Georgia Tech and we found that sometimes male role models that are very excited about computing are better than female role models that are a little nervous about how well they do in computing. So stay tuned, that report will, we have a draft available now and that report will be out by the end of the summer, thank you. [audience applauding]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: Thank you Barb. So if you walk into the dean’s office at the School of Informatics at Indiana University where I work; the first thing you see is one of these red chairs. And in fact, then if you are a visitor there my very gregarious assistant will engage you in a conversation and say something about what that red chair is about. Which is exactly why this exists. And the company and the person behind this campaign is Mitch Maranowski who’s the Chief Creative Officer and cofounder of BBMG and Mitch is going to talk to us about that. [audience applauding]

MITCH MARANOWSKI: Thanks Bobby, it’s a privilege to be here and to share an update on this campaign that we have dubbed, Sit With Me. I will try my hand at this nefarious control. So right, so our firm, BBMG, is a branding and marketing firm. We’re a little unique in the sense that we only work on projects that benefit society. So we work on a range of cause marketing and sustainability and social responsibility projects. And you know it’s interesting, I mean we gathered a year ago in New York to kick off a sneak peek at this campaign concept after we had work shopped it together in Atlanta and it really is a co-created effort and that’s very rare and very precious and I think we should all take real pride it that. It is, of course, the organization’s first major advocacy campaign and it really is designed to spur this dialogue about women in IT. They’re an important role today. They’re a role in the future and it’s a very inclusive campaign by design. It’s moving and gaining traction which is really nice to see and very rare and very precious as well. And we had you know sort of a sneak peek a year ago and then we’ve been slowly rolling this thing out to members and now we’re getting ready for a more public facing launch in the fall and this will only continue. A part of the design of this effort has been to cocreate a lot of content early on and many of you in this room have helped by sitting in the chair and sharing your stories and that’s so critically important because we want, at the end of the day, these stories to raise the right questions and the right opportunities and the right challenges and advance the dialogue. One of the neat things about this terrain is that it’s very rich and fertile; but, it’s also very abstract. And when you look at unifying this content, all of these narratives, you need a strong signifier. And that’s what this red chair, this iconic chair really represents. It’s this concrete symbol of this small but symbolic action, sitting to take a stand. And all of us can play that role. Already members, academic and corporate, have been rolling this thing out nationally and globally. There have been dozens of events, whether around International Women’s Day or Father-Daughter days or the Aspirations Awards. It’s really gaining great traction and we’re really proud to see that happening. The IBM research lab in Austin, Facebook did an internal launch, Microsoft, the NERD Center in Boston held a big event. Even programs like Murray State are sitting in the red chair. It’s awesome to see such variety. And we’re here today to announce a couple of new developments. So one of the new developments is that we’ve been hard at work on a new campaign tool kit. This is a very robust interactive tool kit that has a number of creative assets attached to it. It’s now on the sitwithme.org microsite and so you can go there to download it and it’s really meant to empower you and your organizations to work with the campaign on your own terms. And you’ll find a number of creative assets attached to the tool kit from the logos and the fact sheets to the PowerPoint templates to the photo releases and legal forms, posters and post cards, QR codes and other fun stuff. As you know too, there’s also really fun merchandise you can buy and have around and use as awards or recognition. And finally, we wanted to continue the momentum. Last year we just sort of did a sneak peek video, really leaned on our academic partners. And this year we’re really leaning on our corporate partners to help show this campaign’s really coming to life and taking a foothold if you will, getting momentum. So here it is, we have a short two-minute video that is sort of the next, show you an update of this campaign rolling out and I guess we can go to the tape. Thank you very much. [upbeat music]

LUCY SANDERS: Sit With Me is based around an iconic red chair. And there’s so many things that a chair really embodies. It’s about sitting for the future technology. It’s about not standing for anything less than womens’ full participation in computing and I hope this campaign really helps us understand that. We need more women in the workforce. We need their creativity. We need their skills.

ALAN MCCONNELL: We’ve learned over time that you can’t build great products if you don’t have a team that improvises with and understands the audience that the product is for.

LUCY SANDERS: We’re doing a Sit With Me campaign because we want the world to know that women are great technical thinkers. And it’s time to do it now.

MATTHEW MCTEE: I think the world needs a campaign like Sit With Me in order to ignite a commitment towards really driving more women into careers in technology.

SHERYL SANDBERG: You know the women that are dedicated in computer science, you go into math, you go into other technical areas; they’re great And it starts with believing they can do it.

COLLEEN BLAKE: As a mother. I want to break the stereotype to show my daughters that, hey you can go to that engineering class. So it’s part of telling that story that’s important for me.

LUCY SANDERS: We want women helping to solve the problems that the world faces. That’s what we hope this campaign provides a catalyst for.

JESSICA MURRILO: We sent out an email a couple of weeks ago about our International Women’s Day event and wouldn’t it be a great idea to have this red chair.

LEAH BRUNSON: The campaign is getting lots of great buzz here at Microsoft we had about a hundred people here to talk about the powerful contributions of women in tech. The wanna hear more, they wanna get involved.

LUCY SANDERS: We want you to have a Sit With Me event or host a photo shoot or use the chair as an award program or have a stealth campaign.

WOMAN: Just do it, it’s not hard. You can request a red chair. You get some people together. You take some pictures and you upload at the site. It’s just easy.

LEAH BRUNSON: I think about the community. How can we get the community involved?

LUCY SANDERS: They’re going to take this iconic red chair places that we could have never imagined and that is the creativity of this campaign.

ANDREW BOSWORTH: People who aren’t necessarily part of the process that’s a loss for not just the rest of us who don’t get that perspective; but, also for them they don’t get to shape the future that is gonna come to exist.

COLLEEN BLAKE: This isn’t just a company versus company issue, it’s a societal issue that we’re trying to change.

LUCY SANDERS: At the end of the day we’ll know Sit With Me is successful if we have created a conversation around the importance of womens’ participation in computing and not just amongst technologists; but, everywhere. [audience applauding]

BOBBY SCHNABEL: Awesome, thanks to BBMG and everybody who’s part of that including the movie star in the first row. [audience chuckles] So let’s see. Okay just a few final remarks before we go into our Alliance meetings. A few comments about what’s coming in the year ahead. Of course an organization this large there’s many things; but, I’m going to just focus on three. In the Academical Alliance we’re seeing really great activity and momentum and growth and it’s a good time. To use a water analogy, it’s a lot easier to catch a wave and get ahead that way, than to paddle upstream. And this is a time when the whole field is growing. And to be able to grow and grow womens’ participation even more in higher ed enrollments and graduations at that time is a really great opportunity and we’re seeing a lot of people doing that. In the Workforce Alliance one of the things that’s become painfully clear, as one looks at the data is that there’s a big attrition of women at mid career, far more than men. And so one of the main things that our corporations are working on are ways to address and solve that problem. And then finally I’ll mention the K-12 space. It really feels like this is a pivotal time for computing in the K-12 space. There’ve been movements for awhile now about reforming CSAP, about getting more, many more K-12 teachers into the computing field and there’s a lot of energy building around that. And that’s a movement that’s far bigger than NCWIT; but, NCWIT us turning out to be an important partner in that movement. So those are just three of the things that are coming. Of course, a reminder again that this is not about a team that is an NCWIT headquarters or somewhere else, it’s about every person in this room and many people who are not able to be in this room today. And then finally a few things on the housekeeping side. First of all, as you know the next in many ways core feature of this meeting are the Alliance meetings which will commence in a few minutes. And it says check your program for a location near you. So, it’ll say what locations those are each in. There’ll be lunch after that and then a new feature of the NCWIT meetings, we’re having flash talks to kick off the afternoon sessions. If you haven’t seen flash talks before, these are five-minute talks where the slides advance by themselves. Somebody else controls your life and so it can be a very interesting process to be a part of so you’ll wanna be here for that. And then finally I think you all know what the organization is this evening. There are two options there. You can either sign up and there’s sign up sheets right out there for the birds and the feather dinners and like any good birds you have to figure out how they’re gonna flock together and get to where you’re going and birds also have to pay for their own dinners. [audience laughter] Somehow we lost that one. Or there is the Innovator Award. For the first time we’re presenting this award which is organized by the Entrepreneurial Alliance at the national summit. It’s being presented this year to a Jessica Jackley who is the cofounder of Kiva. It’s an award that goes to a woman who has played a leadership role in founding an organization or corporation in the technical space and it’ll be held at the Broadcast Communications Museum which is just a couple blocks from here and there’s a map there. And my favorite part of the little script that I was handed is, I’ll blame Lucy, that Lucy wrote me and it says here, drinks and apps provided. [audience laughter] So for all of you who think you’re gonna get something really neat for your phone, I think that actually meant appetizers and not apps. [audience laughter] So with that you have your schedule for the Alliance meetings and I hope everybody has great meetings, thank you. [audience applauding]

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