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companies develop an inclusive workplace culture — her experience as interim CEO of Reddit and the memoir she’s writing. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What are the biggest things VC firms and tech companies continue to struggle with when it comes to inclusion? I think there’s a desire for it to be easier. Whether it’s bringing in a diversity consultant or sharing metrics, trying to find these really easy solutions when it’s actually something that has to be comprehensive. Talk about Project Include. What do you and your co-founders hope to achieve? Our goal is to give everyone a fair chance to succeed in tech. And our goal is to get more companies to build inclusive environments where everyone can succeed — regardless of your background, regardless of the environment you grew up in, regardless of your demographics — but you get this fair shot to work your hardest, to contribute as much as you can and to be rewarded for it. How are you doing that? When we started it was very informal. We met for dinner a few times and we were trying to brainstorm, ‘What is that silver bullet? What should we be telling companies to do?’ And our quick realization was there is no silver bullet. And (the key) really is these 87 recommendations we ended up putting down and sharing with people on our website. We launched it in May and we got a tremendous response. Over 1,500 people signed up wanting to be involved, and 100 of those were tech CEOs.
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Education: Position: Previous jobs: Q What progress has the project made so far? A I think our measure will end up being how many companies do we get to a level that we consider to be diverse and inclusive. And we’re still working to figure that out. We have nine companies that we’re working closely with right now (including Periscope Data and Upserve). What prompted you to write a memoir?
QA I’m not really talking about the book these days — we’re still in the early days of getting it together. Part of why I was excited to write a book was to just set the record straight. The trial was kind of a zoo — there was a team of PR people from the other side that was driving conversation. We just didn’t have the resources and the time to share our perspective, and I would love to kind of set the record straight on a few things. About your time at Reddit — how did you handle being the target of abuse on the platform, and what lessons did you take away from your work there? The Reddit stuff, I think it’s an example of how women and people of color are targeted not just online but also in tech companies, and how tech companies need to think about how to be inclusive on their platforms. And I think being inclusive on your teams helps with that. If you’re a startup and you’re homogeneous, you’re not going to be able to solve all of the problems or predict some of the problems that are going to come up with your
QAproducts over time. What can the average tech employee at one of these companies do to help? It’s interesting because I’ve been speaking to a lot of different companies over the past year, and there’s usually somebody who comes up and asks a question around being asked to do menial tasks. Whether it’s a woman or a person of color, they often get asked to do the grunt work, which I experienced myself. They don’t want to complain about it and not be seen as a team player, but it really isn’t fair that they’ve been singled out to do some of these menial tasks time and time again. And then often somebody else will ask later in the
Q Adiscussion, ‘I’m a white man. I really want to be helpful. What can I do?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, go help that person who’s stuck doing the menial tasks by speaking up for him or her.’ What is the toughest thing for these companies to change? It’s having these really hard conversations. (For example) I need to talk about some really embarrassing thing that somebody did, and I’m the manager of the person who did it, and the person they did it to is on my team. How do I talk about it? How do I tell the rest of my team what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable? And those conversations are really hard, really uncomfortable — there’s no easy road map. I think there are 20 blog posts about how to fire an employee, which is one of the hardest things to do, but there isn’t that much about what do you do when your star engineer is saying inappropriate things, or doing inappropriate things, or touching in an inappropriate way. You made headlines around the world last year in your trial against Kleiner Perkins. What was it like for you going from a relatively anonymous figure in Silicon Valley to a household name practically overnight? It was a big change. It wasn’t something I was really prepared for or that I sought out. And it wasn’t something that was very comfortable for me. And I think over the past year I’ve realized that it’s an opportunity to really build something and to really take that connection that many people feel with parts of my story, or my experiences, or my message, and fold that into something productive.
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