Accidentally in Code

Tag: ghc

  • #GHC15 – Brian Nosek: Solving Implicit Bias in Gender and STEM

    #GHC15 – Brian Nosek: Solving Implicit Bias in Gender and STEM

    Credit : Flickr / new 1lluminati
    Credit : Flickr / new 1lluminati

    Start far from implicit bias, at the implicit associations of the mind.

    Our understanding is mediated by our sensory systems. The mediation of these and all cognitive architecture, means that reality and our experience of reality, is not the same thing. Lots of inferences our mind makes to help understand reality.

    This gap. First way is illustrated by the McGurk effect. People hear different things depending on whether you watch him. Sound you hear in your head will be different as a function of whether you are looking at him. This ought to be terrifying. Because we live out lives as though the sounds that occur in our minds are the sounds that happen. But they are our minds best guess. Audio of ba ba, video of gaga, da da is what gets inferred. Reasonable inference – half way between the two.

    Limited consciousness, want to be as efficient as possible, delegate as much as possible to unconscious.

    Picture flashes – horse or frog? Hard to see the other one. As soon as your mind has a first impression. To see the other have to undo the work already done, mind doesn’t want to do that, wants to be efficient. Very hard to go back. Like defaults.

    Image with two shades of grey. In perception care a lot about edges – edges help us know where objects are. Even though know, still see them as different. “Perception is not subject to reason.” What we get to decide is what we do.

    Squares can be experienced differently because of the things around them. Important analogy in social perception. Baby and the jack in the box, asked q’s about video. “What were the emotions?” randomly assigned participants baby as Joan / John. Joan, likely to interpret as fear. John, more likely to say angry.

    Same experience on the outside, same information. Very different internal experiences. Asked if used gender? Said no. Weren’t deliberately using gender. But getting in, because expectations.

    Been looking at what kinds of associations do people have in their memories? One is the Implicit Association Test.

    Word association test. Good / Bad, Female / Male. Then Bad+Female / Good+Male. Then Bad+Male / Good+Female.

    Men and women both show a stronger association with good and women, women about 3x as much. Putting things together should be easier if they go together in our mind.

    Project implicit – people do these tasks, and get individualised feedback. Data on responses. Most men AND women show stronger association with men and career. Effect of experience: women in careers tend to show a weaker association, but doesn’t suddenly reverse. So much association, regardless of whether we believe it or not.

    If we know when this occurs this also occurs, then we can start to predict the future. We construct expectations about what the world is, which translates into beliefs about what the world should be.

    Variety of kinds of biases. Can go online and try it out.

    Some of these associations, have investigated implications on our behaviour. Replace career+family with STEM and arts. Men+Stem / Arts+Female. Both men and women show on average, individuals different.

    Where am I welcome? Where do I belong? These things are inferred by the environment. They aren’t culturally free, they are culturally bounded. Association is effected by what happens to them in their careers.

    “Estimated probability of majoring in Science as a function of sex and gender and implicit gender science stereotype” – paper — graph.

    Suggests that stereotypes are linked to important behavioral outcomes.

    Look at whether linked to behavioural decisions by others. E.g. faculty assessment of resumes.

    Women: judged less competent, less hireable, offered 4K less.

    Contested result. Another recent study found advantage. A lot of debate about under what conditions advantage occurs.

    Looked at data from a number of nations. Different across countries. Correlates with gender difference in science performance. Stronger stereotypes, bigger gap in performance. Suggests these things are culturally linked.

    Centre for Open Science. Mission driven non-profit. Primary tech. All free, OSS. No monetization.

    Mission: improve openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. Belonging best predictor of whether people stay.

  • #GHC15 – CRA-W Leadership Workshop: Gaining Recognition

    #GHC15 – CRA-W Leadership Workshop: Gaining Recognition

    My notes from the session from Deb Agarwal (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and Mary Jane Irwin (Pennsylvania State University) at GHC.

    "I Come In Peace, Take Me To Your Leader!"
    Credit: Flickr / Andy Miccone
    • Submit “leadership style” proposals.
    • Submit “early career” LDRD and “Genius” grants.
    • Create tools/systems that other use to do their research
      • OSS
    • TED talks
      • Forces you to learn how to give a good talk, on time.

    Research teamwork

    • Build your research network.
      • Be interested in other peoples work.
      • Find people who were interesting.
    • Actively contribute on teams.
      • Deliver on your component and team deliverables.
      • Contribute ideas to the overall team.
      • Respect and recognize others’ talents
      • Help others to succeed
      • Alternate lead author roles on papers and patents as well as presenter opportunities.
      • Work with leaders who recognize contributers.

    Take the appraoch “it it my job to make the team successful”. Work with people who people who lead it share recogniton.

    Your reputation rises higher when other people speak well of you than when you speak well of you.

    Being successful as a PhD student. If part of a research group, hopefully have research meetings and team projects. You’ll be on a team – sometimes the lead, sometimes the member. Make sure you contribute in both of those. Other PhD students are part of your network.

    Easy to have suggested an idea, ignored, then a guy says it. Couple of strategies:

    • Positive it’ll happen – go to the team lead before, float idea to them. Say will work in the meeting to get the idea to come out. Then the lead knows this was YOUR idea, regardless of who wins in the room. If they know, good chance you’ll be in charge. Otherwise it’ll be the loudest person in the room. Back channels are phenomenal.

    How do you work the backchannels?

    • Have to know who is good.

    Move up too soon? Cut off some of your options. Too soon: before you’ve made your research show, before you have made full professor. In labs that translates to a scientist level.

    If you’re a lead people will ask “what did you do”, have to have something.

    People are shocked at her work, at every job has refused twice, still considered to be one of the fastest moving managers. Doesn’t hurt to say no, but have to say no for a good reason. If there’s a job they are pressuring you to take, ask for stuff.

    Professional recognition:

    In the best of worlds you do great work and it is recognised, but in the real world you have to be proactive. So:

    • Be a good (but not an obnoxious) self promoter.
    • Beware of the load you are placing on your colleagues. Know the “rules”.
    • Develop research highlight slides for managers.
    • Have your elevator pitch always at the ready.

    A lot of promotions and awards require a bunch of your colleagues to do things for you. Don’t wait for it to happen magically, be pro-active about it. Even if it happened out of the blue, someone spent a whole lot of time on it. Find out who it was and thank them.

    Leading teams. A lot of the advice given about how to be in a team applies almost the opposite as the lead. Finding a good team, criteria: find the best team can of people who will work well in the team, who will be willing to be part of the greater good, aren’t purely out for themselves. If you want to lead the team, the best thing to do is let the team have separate roles and be responsible for the different pieces of that. If you can do that, over time everyone wants to start joining your teams. If they know they can make a difference, they’ll follow.

    As the lead doesn’t matter if you have the coolest ideas, what matters is if you help the team execute to get to the end goal.

    Women are much better at making everyone successful around them and letting them have the recognition for that.

    Having a diverse team helps.

    How do you push back and say no without having people think you’re incapable?

    Being able to say no and give a reasonable explanation is one of the most important skills of a leader. If you’re always going to say yes, you are not a leader.

    What is it that we have the resources and the time to do? The team is going to expect you to protect them. If the team fails, don’t blame them. “You do not throw your team under the bus. That will be the last team you lead.” If the team fails that is also your failure as a lead. And you own it.

    Recognition in Volunteerism

    Before agreeing to take on a role / assignment, know why you are doing it and what you (and your group / organization) are going to get out of it.

    Make sure you have the knowledge / time to do the job. Saying no is better than being a “no show” participant / contributor.

    Sometimes you can take on a much bigger role with more visibility as a volunteer than you can in your organization.

    But the flip side is: don’t volunteer if you don’t have time. Know when to say no.

    Advice for people who don’t want to self promote. What if you can’t get a word in edgeways? If your lead is not making sure everyone is staying on track, go talk to them. Find those times you’ve done something major, and take the floor and talk about it. Don’t do it often, but do it just often enough to prove that you can do it. Take the space unoccupied. Because if you don’t take the space unoccupied, they will.

    If being a “fixer” ask for what you want: “I’ve done this, and now I want to run a team from the start.” “If you let them, they will use you, until they say no.”

  • My GHC Survival Strategy

    My GHC Survival Strategy

    "Tiny Raccoon visits the @CapitalOne booth at #ghc15"
    “Tiny Raccoon visits the @CapitalOne booth at #ghc15”

    I don’t always manage all of these but I typically regret the ones I miss…

    1. If coming from any distance, arrive Monday.
    2. Stay until Sunday – and don’t make any plans for Saturday.
    3. Stock up on snacks – the keynotes start so early (830) and if you want a decent seat you won’t have time for breakfast.
    4. Ditto water. You will return every evening dehydrated.
    5. Get a hotel as close as possible. Adding a 10-25 min commute is tough.
    6. Do try and catch the keynotes, they are usually worth getting up early for.
    7. Be picky about sessions, skip the academic tracks, and go to the ones you are really excited about. Prefer invited sessions.
    8. If there is a bathroom without a queue take the opportunity (ladies!)
    9. Walk 5-10 minutes for food and you will often escape the worst of the queues.
    10. Have a data plan, wifi is often hit or miss.
    Pro-Networking
    1. On the Tuesday, hang in the lobby by the main conference hotel (the one connected to the convention centre). Lots of people will be passing through, picking up badges etc. Schedule as many things as possible for that day.
    2. Skip the careers fair if you are not a new grad, focus on meeting people rather than companies.
    3. Connect with people online before hand (I used Twitter and a slack group for this), and try and meet 1-2 new people (IRL) every day. If there are speakers you are particularly excited about, follow them on twitter before-hand. Another good way to find people is searching the hashtag on Twitter.
    4. Have something to connect with people on, that can be a reason for people to find you – I had a lot of fun with technically speaking stickers!
    5. Introduce people! 5 of us did dinner before the party which was lovely.

    Thanks to Capital One for hosting me as a blogger this year! I had an awesome time.

  • The Sixth Time

    The Sixth Time

    Grace Hopper badge reads "Cate Huston Google", modified to read "Xoogler"
    My badge from last year – I improved it

    I’m heading to Houston, Texas this week to go to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It’ll be my sixth time attending, and over the years I’ve gone in various guises. As a grad student, a Google employee, in disguise (I de-branded myself and refused to do any recruiting activities), as an independent. This year I’ll be there as a blogger.

    The first time I went, tight connection times had me running through Toronto Airport with no shoes on. Stopped by U.S. border control, I found myself explaining that there was a conference for technical women, because there are so few of us. He said to me, “What do you care? You’ve got a job, you’re OK! Why do you care about other people?”

    Luckily he had stamped my passport by then so I didn’t need to come up with a good answer. I made it to my plane, put my shoes back on, and went and had a great time. Met lots of amazing people, accidentally interviewed for a job in California. The usual. One year I danced with my friend Sri and Maria Klawe. I met engineers from Australia who became my friends when I moved there. My friend Sabrina was on Women of Silicon Valley recently, so now more people know how awesome she is. But I knew already, because we met at GHC. I met Anne-Marie (amongst other things, founder of Stemettes) as I was giving out tshirts at the party. When I moved to London we got to hang out, properly, and I became a “Godmother Stemette”.

    Last year was disappointing because men were front and centre. For four years I’d gotten my dose of women-inspiration there. I’m not sold on Lean In as a philosphy, but seeing Sheryl Sandberg give that talk live… that was pretty awesome. Nora Denzel was probably one of my favourites though. She gave a piece of advice about not expressing all your doubts when you get good feedback that I try to keep in mind, still.

    But instead there was a Q&A with Satya Nadella, and a male allies plenary panel. I was more worried by, and disappointed in the panel. My friend Leigh made a bingo card, and we sat next to each other – her running that Twitter and me live-tweeting on my own account. Satya Nadella made the headlines, in part because his mistake was much more tweetable; Maria Klawe shutting him down though – that was a highlight of the conference in my opinion (I actually did a press interview where someone asked if the women there were angry and I was like “not really because Maria Klawe disagreed on the spot and gave some great advice and that was awesome” – that quote never got printed…)

    This year my friend Hilary is keynoting and I know it’s going to be awesome! One of the men from the panel is back to give a plenary, and well that seems weird. There were some issues with registration forms and trans people. And some women have been coming out to say they won’t be there, and why. Randi wrote about not speaking for free – and I don’t speak if my travel and accommodation costs aren’t covered either, I also think this is an inclusion issue. Academic conferences run on a different model, pay to play, which I kinda get but… well I just choose not to play.

    Most importantly, Erica wrote about “Colorless Diversity”, about not feeling included as a black woman because where are all the black women?

    I understand starting with women, we are fully 50% of the population, but if you end there you’re doing it wrong. Since reading Whistling Vivaldi (Amazon), I have also tried to push that rock up that hill at times, make this event open, include this other group, use the women-only event as a test, not the end goal. I’ve watched things that I started get less inclusive because I left and the people who took over had different motivations. We ran one event on interview prep that I wanted to open up to PoC, and low-income, and instead… it became women from one specific university. At that point… what are we even doing? It’s not “inclusion” it’s “diversity” and what they actually mean by “diversity” is “recruiting”.

    This is the kind of thing that drove me to quit corporate feminism.

    I’ve been getting pickier and pickier about women-based communities that I’m part of. Because I don’t want us to just recreate the same broken power structures. Because I don’t want to see racist language. Because trans or cis, my girlfriends are my girlfriends. Because if other women want to slam other women for not being nice enough to the patriarchy I don’t need to see it.

    But privilege is saying “I see the problems here but I’m going anyway”, because whilst I’ve trained myself to notice I don’t feel it.

    As the border guard said, “what do you care? You’re OK!”

    I care because some of my friends don’t feel welcome at this event where they should be welcome. I’m sad that we won’t get to hang out.

    I care because I don’t believe 50:50 is the goal. If we get to 50% and it’s mostly white women, we’ve just exchanged one kind of brokenness for a different kind of brokenness.

    Inclusion is work, and a women’s community is not automatically inclusive. All this work to include men… what if we worked even half as hard to include trans-women and women of color?

  • Speaker Notes: Burning Down The Patriarchy

    Speaker Notes: Burning Down The Patriarchy

    Edited notes from my talk at UW Oct 15th which was in part a reflection of what had happened at GHC this year. This is the talk I live tweeted.

    collection of tweets from my talk

    I gave a talk on mobile last week at GHC, and I was feeling a little weird about the level of visibility I was experiencing so I started with a joke, “don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about burning down the patriarchy.”

    And I came off stage and saw these tweets that were like, “damn”, and I always want to take feedback on board. So here’s that talk. You’re welcome to tweet it.

    Sexism in Tech: a Problem?

    Who went to GHC this year? Do you know why we have it?

    We have it because women still make up 20% of software engineers (2012 survey, web dev higher), the experiences we use constantly are built by predominantly men: 17% at Google, 15% at Facebook, 11% at Twitter. These numbers encompass more than software engineers, incidentally, including at minimum UX and PM and often more. We have it because 56% of us leave at the mid-career level. Because 63% of women in STEM report being sexually harassed. Because right now multiple women are being sued because they named the man who assaulted them. Because just last week two women and their families were driven from their homes because of threats to themselves and their families. Because Anita Sarkeesian regularly gets bomb threats when she is scheduled to speak, and today has been silenced due to poor security measures in response to a threat of shooting. Because Julie Ann Horvarth got harassed out of her job at GitHub. Because one of my friends just abandoned Twitter because she couldn’t take the amount of online harassment she puts up with anymore.

    We know that the tech industry monoculture makes for poor products. There is a long and proud history of tech companies shipping products that do not work for large portions of the population. Early voice control software did not work for women. Early facial recognition systems did not recognise black people. The Apple Health app just released without period tracking. And the data shows that more diverse teams innovate more, when measured by things like patent filings.

    It turns out you can’t just, as they say, “shrink it and pink it”, you have to actually think about it.

    It’s actually pretty clear that women have a problem in this industry. But we can say some good things about it.

    1. Firstly, the pay gap is lower than other industries, although make no mistake, it still exists, an average of $6,358 a year. Finance is worse, so you can’t escape this by becoming a banker.
    2. Secondly this year we have seen an openness about the data, and a recognition that the data is really bad. That so many powerful men took time out of their schedules to speak at GHC is a recognition of the importance.
    3. And the third thing is that there is in general a recognition amongst women that in this environment we should support each other.

    Pipelining

    I’m going to talk a bit about why people were annoyed at this panel, but first I’m going to explain what Angry Internet Feminists, of which I count myself a proud member, mean when we talk about “Pipelining”.

    Pipelining means that people in industry look at these numbers and they blame the graduation rate. We don’t hear quite as much about this one, but universities can look at their numbers and blame schools. Anyway this completely ignores the attrition rate. They say, well our numbers reflect the graduation rate, and therefore they are as good as we can do.

    Three major problems with this. Firstly, the graduation rates have been declining for the last 20 years and these companies are not made up entirely of new grads. So this comparison is at best ignorant and at worst intellectually dishonest.

    Secondly it’s a complete disavowal of any responsibility. It’s throwing your hands up and blaming other people, and note, these people have less economic resources. I don’t understand how companies can have numbers on par with the graduation rate and claim to be leading in diversity. There are so many places they are not competing with!

    Thirdly, the common answer to the pipeline being the problem is to send out the female engineers you have and have them evangelise your company and the tech industry. Which just adds thankless emotional labour on to their actual job of being an engineer. There’s this joke that when you’re a female in the tech industry that you get 2 jobs. Being an engineer, and being a female. But you only get paid for about 88% of the first one.

    I have heard many stories of managers saying they don’t like to hire women because their wives don’t like it. I have heard stories ranging from the weird things that will make you second guess yourself, through to stories of sexual assault. Every day women in this industry put up with nonsense that men don’t, and then if they dare to discuss it they risk being harassed, sued, and professionally discredited. In this environment the shocking thing is actually that we hear as much as we do.

    So pipelining was the free square in the middle of the bingo card. Because it’s just a joke that that is what it always comes back to. I like to play a game, when important people give talks and mention diversity, I ask them a question that is specifically not about the pipeline and see how long it takes them to get back to it. It’s a comfortable thing for them to talk about, because the pipeline is all external and requires no difficult examination of their own culture.

    Why People Worried About That Panel

    I’m going to cover a couple of things that made people concerned about the panel. 

    1. The time slot. This was a plenary panel and a keynote. Previous years this is when I’ve seen Sheryl Sandberg, Carol Bartz, Megan Smith, Nora Denzel speak. This year Megan Smith, as CTO of the USA gave a 10-15 minute talk. These timeslots elevate listening to men, and replace listening to women.
    2. GoDaddy. Everyone has heard of their ads. And they are now claiming to be rehabilitated but I think we’d like to see more evidence there. They have done a lot of harm. I think Blake (their new CEO) is well intentioned, but intentions aren’t magic and do not eliminate their previous actions. Sexist marketing materials are an incredibly low bar to step over.
    3. The companies in general have pretty poor numbers. Facebook 15%, Google 17%, GoDaddy at 18%, I couldn’t even find Intuit’s. Someone sent me them  on Monday and they are actually at 27%, which is great. Bank of America won the ABI Top Company for women award this year, none of these companies had. Intel won the year before although they completely shamed themselves over GamerGate right before the panel. If we read much of the material about women in tech to come out of these companies, it’s heavily about the pipeline – I don’t think there’s much evidence that they are innovating there.

    What Happened

    I outlined some of these concerns in a blog post, which got shared widely. A large part of the response was “men needed to be involved in the conversation” which completely missed the point of most complaints that I saw (and had). 

    I decided to live tweet it, and ehashd came up with the hashtag “#ghcmanwatch”. As I was collecting people for the shenanigans, I ran into Alan Eustace who seemed pretty chill about it. I told him I would be live tweeting.

    Then I picked up one of my badass friends and discovered she had bingo cards.

    Then… the live tweeting began. And we made #ghcmanwatch trend. ABI had set another hashtag, I’m not even sure what it was, I think maybe #MaleAllies. Whatever. We took over. We made them come to us.

    The intro to the panel actually mentioned my blog post, which was pretty incredible. If the guys on stage had read it they might have made our game of bingo harder.

    I’m not going to go too much into what was said, because if you’re interested you can read the storify. It was very pipeline. It was very Lean In. They talked a lot about unconscious bias training, but not about evidence that UB training actually works.

    The next day, so random, I get this tweet from Alan Eustace. Who at that point has 40 followers. And he’s organising a reverse “you talk and I listen” panel, and Schrep from Facebook chimes in and says he will be there too. So I amplify it, share it with friends, and show up. I have to rush there because I was giving an interview to ThinkProgress right before it. Blake from GoDaddy is there too. By the time it’s over, the room is full.

    Alan opened by saying that he’d got some feedback and realised he had made a mistake, that the format hadn’t been right, and that it had kept him awake at night. It seemed like a lot of people (women!) who knew him had been in touch to let him know where he had gone wrong. And so they had come to listen.

    So for the next hour, they said next to nothing. As women after woman commented on their experiences in the tech industry. We covered the effects of going to HR, which is not there to protect the individual but the company, the prevalence of bad managers, intent not being magic, the despair felt by the phrase “just work harder”, the words that get used about women, and only women. This was me, trying to recreate the what for me has been a powerful experience I think every year at GHC – where almost every woman in the room admits to being described as aggressive, or abrasive, or some other gendered word that means she tried to stand up for herself and was discouraged from ever doing that again. Hands stayed up when I asked who had been called a bitch. And who had been called the C word by a guy who should have treated them with professional respect. A friend of mine talked about how hard it is for her to keep doing pipeline work, she feels morally conflicted about it.

    And then it was over. After, I had a brief chat with the panelists about online harassment. The economic disparity is a big issue. Men, especially prominent ones, do not get how much they are protected by their status. Women benefit from this, too, I started getting harassed more once I removed “google” from my twitter profile, a month or so before I left.

    Schrep, the Facebook guy, said it had been one of the most useful sessions of the conference, which was really gratifying. I find it funny that he gave me credit for organising, I did a lot of thankless emotional labour in my time in the tech industry that went unnoticed by men in power, and Alan really did the organising. I did (some of!) the hell raising.

    What Should You Do (University Students)?

    1. Take full advantage of the pipelining. It benefits university students and will discontinue once you are in the workforce.
    2. Believe and amplify other women. Men on Twitter have more followers, get amplified more. If you look at your own behaviour you will probably find that you are perpetuating this.
    3. Focus on your own message. I got told – by women! – that I was too angry last week, and also that I wasn’t angry enough. This is in no way a productive discussion. If you think someone’s message could be improved, go ahead and make that your message and try it. Let me know how you get on.
    4. Check your privilege. We talk about how bad women have it in this industry, and we do. But other minorities, trans people, people of color have it much worse. The best thing I did for my thinking on this was read the book Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele (Amazon). We have enormous privilege. UW is a very good school. The coop program means you can earn throughout your university degree and graduate with low or no student debt. We live in countries where we can fight for our rights to equal pay, when some women are just fighting for the right to work at all. Other, less noticeable things – how many of you have a parent in STEM? My mom is a doctor, so I grew up with the expectation that I would have a job, that I might earn more than my partner, and that that would be OK. That has tremendous impact.

    What Should Men Do?

    1. I would actually advise men in general not to speak on panels of only men. Don’t speak at conferences with no women on the lineup. My speaker coach who writes The Eloquent Woman blog has a post about evaluating speaking gigs for bias. There is no reason why men can’t use that too. Don’t attend conferences where there are no women on the lineup. Demand that the organizers do better. You can also take the Code of Conduct pledge.
    2. Don’t be a bystander. We hear all the time, I heard this last week, that it’s a small minority of men who do things that actively hurt women. Maybe so, but it’s a large majority that stand by and let it happen. Men need to speak up when they see things happen in front of them, whether it’s shameless objectification of women, offensive words which get used about women and only about women. They need to start speaking up and saying, “yeah great idea bro but I liked it when Susan said it earlier too.” Especially when it’s offensive. There’s this fear of white-knighting, which I think is completely over-stated, but one way to mitigate that is for men to make it about their own feelings. Like, “hey I don’t like it when you use that word to talk about women”. You don’t have to be female to be offended when a man refers to women using gendered expletives.
    3. Look for ways to amplify and sponsor women. Anil Dash challenged himself to only retweet women for a year, which I thought was great. This applies to your team projects, I remember when I was at uni, which wasn’t exactly that long ago, we did this group project. One “girl” was doled out to each team. Along with one AI student, and one business student. At the end of the semester, we presented, and everyone had their role on the team. A shocking number of the women had the title “token girl”. You can shape a better environment for the women around you.
    4. When hiring or promoting, insist that there are women on the committee. This is how you get female speakers at conferences, and how you get women into positions of power.
    5. Be mindful about thankless emotional labour. Offer to take notes. Offer to organise the team event. Never, ever assume that a woman will do it, never assume she’s happy to do it, and never assume she is being appreciated by her manager or other people. Again and again I hear that is not the case. And, if you call out something like that follow up and make sure it is addressed.

     

    We all suffer in a world where we are constrained to behaving in gender- and race- “appropriate” ways and punished when we do not. Some of us more than others, admittedly. But, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, and Beyonce sampled, “we should all be feminists”. So let’s burn the patriarchy down. Or at least, tweet our dissent until the men in power listen.

  • Tweeting Shit That Men Say

    Tweeting Shit That Men Say

    Background: Last week was GHC, it included a Male Allies panel (live streamed) and a male keynote event (available to watch online). I tweeted a lot (with others) and wrote a couple of things. The Male Allies panel was followed by a reverse “you talk we listen” event. There was also a Male Allies Focus group which I did not attend.

    I often, in conversation with friends, coworkers, strangers, utter the words “I have to tweet that.” Sometimes people know what that means and sometimes they don’t, but they usually agree anyway, and are sometimes surprised by the response.

    Sometimes I don’ t ask. Earlier this year I live tweeted a date with a misogynist. I didn’t ask him for permission, or for forgiveness. I tweeted an unfortunate comment a guy made advertising a conference (“beautiful women” as an incentive on par with “international airport”, who knew?!). And last week I tweeted things that men said at a conference for technical women using the hashtag #ghcmanwatch, some of which were good, and some of which were… not.

    Tone

    I have this rule, that I don’t criticise women or (by extension) women’s organisations. I make exceptions for this, I might vent to a close friend, and if I think something is actively harmful. But it makes me think twice. I thought the Male Allies panel had the potential to be actively harmful, which is why a week before the Male Allies panel I was tweeting and wrote my thoughts up long form in a (widely read, so much so that the panel introduction mentioned it) blog post.

    But, I err on the side of saying nothing. I know, that the things where I feel the very mildest levels of disagreement, where I look at a situation that I have incomplete knowledge of and like to think I would have made a different choice – and note, this is all theory, we don’t know how we would actually react to that situation, are the kind of things that end in death and rape threats.

    No one deserves to be threatened with rape. No one deserves to be threatened with death.

    Not in Afganistan. Not in places where we send soldiers and declare war. Not in America. Not in the UK.

    This should not be the price that women pay for having an opinion. And whilst it is, I just refuse to participate.

    As an aside, and not to diminish being on the receiving end, but looking at the behaviour of harassers… Harassment seems to be a time consuming hobby. I wonder if there needs to be some kind of rehabilitation program that will find these people better things to do. Like… Knitting. Or golf. Things that don’t require an internet connection. I’d say for their own good but I don’t really care about their well being… just think of the social benefit.

    When all this was happening, my mentions on Twitter were completely blowing up, and there was so much engagement. Which is gratifying, but also in this context a little scary. And repeatedly, I noticed, and was pleased, that I didn’t get harassed. I also gave a talk at GHC – about mobile, not burning the patriarchy – and right before I had more notifications and I choose not to read them before getting on stage, on the basis that if there was something that would really throw me. That day I also didn’t moderate blog comments, remembering a particularly vicious one recently, just in case.

    I want to make two suggestions around dialog. The first is a strong suggestion, I wish we could make it a rule:

    Don’t threaten people.

    Put that in your pipe and set yourself on fire (OK), put that in your pipe and I will set you on fire (no)

    The second is to focus on our own voice in the dialog, and our own message.

    Good Feminist / Bad Feminist

    I got critique, and critique is different from threats and harassment, from both sides last week.

    Some people thought I wasn’t angry enough. I don’t know, I think we have a right to be angry. Personally, though, I have heard so much shit from men in this industry that there is little they can say that elicits more than mild surprise and disappointment. I choose to laugh, as much and as often as I can, because it’s a survival mechanism and because I believe in the power of humour to raise awareness.

    Some people thought I was being too angry and mean. These are the people who will say some version of, “You’ll catch more flies with honey.” I don’t honestly know what catching flies has to do with dialog but if someone wants to try that all I can say is good luck, let me know how you get on (sincerely).

    And some people would say, or insinuate, that I was being a good hell raiser, compare me favourably to those other, more “angry” feminists.

    Don’t do that. I might say “fuck” less than Shanley (who seems to continually lambasted as the “bad feminist; I abhor this), but I still want to burn this shit down. I support her right to be angry. I think we benefit from her delivery. I know we benefit from her insight. Whether I agree, disagree or just choose a different way to express it, I always think that she has a point.

    Most people just amplified and thanked me. And I really appreciated their support.

    #GHCManHate?

    The hashtag wasn’t #ghcmanhate. It was #ghcmanwatch. Watch. We have concerns, but we see you. We are watching what is happening, and we are witnessing, and commenting on it.

    The Satya Nadella comments were so ignorant and unfortunate, I was horrified by them, but the rest of the session he had made some good points, declined to blame the pipeline and had taken a significant amount of time out of his schedule to come and experience GHC. He told a story of failing one of his Microsoft interviews, aged 23, because his interviewer deemed him “lacking empathy” in response to the question “a baby falls in the street, what do you do?” I was surprised by his honesty there, and I liked it. And yes, terrible remark about compensation, however Maria Klawe’s calling him out and telling all the women in the audience how and why to get paid what they are worth, and her honesty about her own experiences was amazing. I’m glad her comments happened.

    What a man says in that context is less damaging that what bad managers are saying in 1:1s everywhere, all the time.

    (What he does is another story, I especially feel for every woman at Microsoft who has reported up into him and not felt they were paid equitably. I hope they are working to address this.)

    I was deeply unimpressed by many of the things said by men at GHC. But I have more respect for the man who shows up and says something stupid than the man who never said anything stupid because he wasn’t there.

    Talking to women who are, or were at Google, we shook our head over some of Alan’s comments but we also give him a break because he has been doing this for a long time, because he has done a lot of good internally that we can point to, and because we know because he tells these stories about stupid things that he has said and being called out on it and learning.

    I hope he never gets on stage and tells women just to work hard again. But I hope he does keep on this dialog, and next time makes a different mistake.

    Glass Pedestals

    A different mistake because none of us are perfect advocates, and perfect allies. Some (predominantly white) men said some deeply flawed things to women. But white women at GHC have used that same platform and been deeply flawed with respect to women of colour (one of my favourite sessions in recent years included Brenda Laural deconstructing the promotion materials for that year and how the women of colour were represented), and also to trans women.

    Because my fear is not that men opt out of this conversation, but that they get so PR’d in response to these gaffes that we don’t hear what they really think anymore. Agree, or disagree (and there was much to disagree with!) it’s illuminating [I liked Jocelyn Goldfien’s post on this topic].

    The Red Carpet

    One thing that comes up a lot when I talk with women about the tech industry is that the grief we get almost invariably comes from men who are… not actually competent. I do not fear brilliant men in the tech industry. They have better things to do than screw me over. I fear incompetent men.

    If we say that there are two major factors: being good, and being lucky. The men we heard from at GHC are both good, and lucky. There’s a smooth red carpet laid out and they are storming along it. But what if you’re only good? Edging along the gap between the red carpet, and the abyss. What if you are only lucky? Those people have time (and incentive!) to try and stop people edging past on the outside.

    So when a man says that he doesn’t think people (MEN!) mean to be unwelcoming and don’t actively try to remove women, what he means is that it would never occur to him to do this. He has never needed to. The good and the lucky are often moving too fast to see that that is what is going on.

    And when a man says that it’s mostly “unconscious bias” and not “major issues” they don’t know how much doesn’t get reported, and, I think, negate the long term effects of “major issues” which can send a very strong message to a marginalised employee that they are not safe, they were never safe, they will never feel safe again.

    And what exactly is major here? Because these things have compound effects. Two equally talented and hardworking female new grads join the industry. One of them has a good manager, who mentors, develops, encourages and challenges her. One has a bad manager who gaslights, ignores, and undermines her. While each thing they do might be “unintentional” and due to “unconscious bias” make no mistake there will not be a minor difference between the experiences of these two women, nor between their career trajectories.

    Bearing Witness

    I was expressing my surprise at the amount of attention I’d got to my amazing friend Leigh, because it at times felt a bit surreal. I felt like I barely commented, I just shared, mostly verbatim, what was being said. She told me, “I think there is power in bearing witness”.

    And I thought about this comment in a broader context. Of what the guy from Facebook (Schrep) talked about, watching what his wife had experienced on her way to being a CTO and noting that he hadn’t had to put up with a lot of that stuff on his way to being CTO. One of the most powerful things men can do is bear witness to what happens to the women around them. One of my male friends, he could storm the Red Carpet but prefers to mosey along. And he observed, and commented to me on the difference between the way a guy was treating me (let’s summarise: badly) and how he treating him (weirdly, saying “it’s like he wants us to go on a date”, because he was so intent on leaving me out).

    Empathy

    I just left my corporate tech job which is pretty cool because I’m building something exciting and now I can say what I really think for the first time in years (my friend Olivia’s observation on #ghcmanwatch, “you have really broken free of your corporate shackles”). Although I confess to worrying that #ghcmanwatch had become a career limiting move and that should I want another corporate job I’d probably need to retrain as an accountant or something.

    Anyway, I’d got very tired of the industry, and we have a certain capacity and energy for empathy, and I felt that mine was being used up. Nerdy boys had become interchangeable to me, I could discern very little difference between them other than perceived threat level. And this was a very weird place to be in, emotionally. I do have nerdy boy friends who I am very fond of, and I did build some strong relationships with nerdy boys during this period but it was much, much harder than it used to be.

    So lately I’ve kinda been recharging my capacity for empathy. (aside: Kronda and Adria Richards have been inspiring on the topic of empathy recently).

    No matter how rich and powerful you are, it can be hard to get up on stage in front of an audience of thousands. It can be hard to hear how badly you screwed up and how much you upset people you are well intentioned to help. I have empathy for that. Someone asked me to tell Alan in the #ghcmanwatch take 2 panel that his “just be great” comment had “incited women to despair” and it was frankly horrible to say that to a man that I like and respect. And I saw that it wasn’t nice to hear it, but he thanked me for passing it on. I have empathy for both of us, there.

    There are many men who will never say anything stupid about women in tech. Because they will never say anything about women in tech.

    But I also empathise with women who have not been paid what they are worth. With women who have been given truly appalling career advice. With women who have faced repercussions for speaking up on issues ranging from the weird to the horrifying. For the women who have tried so incredibly hard to “be great” only to be continually stymied by the System.

    We do need to burn this shit down. There are plenty of men who are not listening to the critique, who refuse to acknowledge the suffering of women and other marginalised people. They haven’t noticed, or they are even actively pursuing a different outcome. The men who are actually tuning in, maybe they don’t deserve the very strongest levels of criticism and it will be hard for them to hear. But I believe in their capacity for empathy. I think they can hear the hard truth, and say thank you, and apologise, and make different, better mistakes, next time.

    Social Media and Power

    I think one of the funny things about the #ghcmanwatch series of events was that it was very much a grass roots storm on Twitter, and it took by surprise people who really don’t use Twitter much or at all. Apparently someone asked “Where do we find this Cate?” and got a response of: “Twitter” (I don’t know if the person looking for me found that helpful).

    And I think it must have been interesting, when Alan pulled together the second session, was as a powerful white man, he needed to attract the attention of women in order to get that dialog going. He had to come to where we were, and find us on Twitter. I’m glad he did, and that the second session was packed despite the last-minute nature if it, and people were mostly there from word of mouth.

    It’s a change of pace and a shift in power. Sure, stand on stage, tell us what you think. But we will comment, we will engage, and we will have our own conversation. We raised concerns about the panel, and frankly many of us felt ignored. But once #ghcmanwatch was trending, it was clear that something was going on that they needed to engage with.

    (in)visible

    Personally, my experience at GHC this year was very weird. My interactions were much more online than in person, far, far more so than other years. I felt like when I was walking around I was mostly invisible whereas almost everything I said online was noticed.

    This year I made as many sessions as I could, and saw a total of 9 men on stage, 2 of them men of colour. I saw far more women speak, but less than 30 (including introductions). Which is a lot, but that ratio of 3:1 women : men is much lower than in previous years where it was more like 10:1. I congratulate ABI on getting 483 male attendees, but was the only way to do that to get so many of them on stage?

    I am speaking at a lot of conferences this year. I’ve heard some fantastic talks, learned a lot, met many wonderful people. Given that this is in the tech industry, many of these people were male. Men dominate the conversation in tech, just by numbers, even when they aren’t interrupting or refusing to hand over the microphone. So GHC had been this respite, where I would get to hear what women had to say. But it wasn’t this year, or not in person anyway, even if it was online.

    Now What?

    Shanley’s book, “Your Startup is Broken” is a fantastic read in it’s entirety and includes particularly relevant essays including “What Men Can Do” and “Fuck You Got Mine”. Buy it and read it.

    Julie’s Ally Series is fantastic and useful, including helpful pointers on “Ally Smells”.

    A really good summary by A. V. Flox of what happened with #ghcmanwatch.

    In depth ThinkProgress article, particularly focused on the reverse panel.

  • Male Allies and GHC

    Male Allies and GHC

    strings of a broken heart
    Credit: DeviantArt / DubiousOrchid

    This year will be my 5th year at GHC (Grace Hopper Celebration, the annual conference for technical women from the Anita Borg Institute), my first speaking, and my first in my new post-corporate-job life. It’s been blocked on my calendar since last year, and there has been a long lead time, which means I made the transition from corporate job to independent knowing that GHC was going to be expensive as a result, but deciding that it was worthwhile and not worth delaying the rest of my life over.

    There are a few things that have irritated me about the process for speakers. Mostly, I think, around ensuring that people are prepared. You have to send your slides in advance, and use their slide template, etc. Speakers don’t get free, or even discounted, tickets. Which is fine when you work for Big Tech Company, but as an independent is pricey. Students speaking have loads of scholarships available to them, and universities to sponsor them.

    A common thread I hear from friends is that GHC is for students, or for really senior women (I managed to get into the Senior Women’s forum once, and the women I met were amazing). What if you’re in between? And it’s aimed at companies, because it’s a recruiting machine for women and most tech companies throw money at recruiting more women to the pipeline full of acid rather than actually doing anything about the acid.

    I’ve sympathised, and defended, explained my approach to being pickier about what talks I attend, and making the most of the women that I meet up with every year. I quit corporate feminism over a year ago, so last year I went incognito – I wore nothing branded with the company I worked for, I did not interview, I did not spend time at the booth. This was a different experience than previous years and one that I needed, but I know women at other tech companies where recruiting and being constantly branded is the price you pay for the ticket.

    It’s become harder and harder to defend. And now, there’s going to be a male allies panel, this is the last thing – it is about companies, not about the women who suffer in them. And I’ve been tweeting about this, so here’s my long form take.

    There’s a lot of discussion about women in tech, and there’s this constant refrain of “what about the men” and I am tired of hearing it. It’s not about the men. It’s about women, and other minorities (who have it far worse). The fact that (some) men have made this, like everything, about them is illustrative of the problem.

    The men who get it need to talk to the ones that don’t, and you don’t find many that don’t get it at at a conference of 99% women. Last year, as part of “the Australian contingent”, there were 3 guys with us. They came to listen. And for once, they were the minority.

    I actually agree with Shanley, (I paraphrase), the system is broken and what we need to do is burn the system down.

    But if we’re not ready to burn yet (and with men in charge, will that ever come?) maybe we can keep pushing on the system to make it a little less broken, but this is how we survive, and stay – for now. Within this, there are two separate things: how do we make the line between being a bitch and a pushover wider, and how do we walk it more effectively. Lean In (Amazon) is mostly about walking that line more effectively. There’s space for that, and people who may find it useful, but it’s not the whole story.

    There are different classes of problems in Diversity. Easy is fixing your marketing materials. Easy is throwing money at recruiting.

    Moderate is throwing money internally (training, minority groups), because (some) men will complain “it’s not fair”. Moderate is handling egregiously gendered interactions, sexual harassment, words use to and about women, and only women. The more blatant versions of “get back in the kitchen”, usually served with a side of poor understanding of biology.

    Hard is promoting the qualified woman when there is also a qualified man. Hard is dealing with the more subtle gendered interactions – when he repeats everything she says in a meeting, for example. When she doesn’t get to say anything in the meeting, because he answers everything for her. When he publicly undermines her. Gendered performance feedback.

    Extra hard is taking the woman whose belief in herself has been stamped out of her by all the things that were never dealt with, because they were too hard, finding her a good manager, a good project, and helping her rebuild her self-confidence. Extra hard is being a sponsor, believing in someone who The System has told so loudly she doesn’t belong that she has come to believe it.

    Within this, there are different levels. It’s easy to deal with egregiously gendered things, but do you have to have them pointed out to you or do you notice? The same within the subtle ones.

    Some people are still stuck on the easy problems, but at GHC I’d like to think that we could focus on the hard problems. And the thing about the companies represented on the male allies panel, is there is little evidence to suggest they have moved past the easy ones, and one of them only managed that in the last year.

    Two of them have not released diversity data (although I did get some info in response to this tweet). The other two have 15 and 17% women in tech roles respectively, and do not clarify the definition of tech so it may well be broader than the Eng/UX/PM that has been decried elsewhere.

    Alan Eustace is from Google, and I used to work there so I know that he is a fantastic ally. He’s the only man who I have ever taken advice from on dealing with the emotional toll of women in tech stuff, which is because he is the only man who has ever offered advice on the topic that wasn’t just telling me how to feel.

    But. Even with that, the numbers are terrible. If the experience for women was better, the numbers would be.

    So what is this panel going to be? Is it going to be discussing how you can care so much, and work so hard, and achieve so very little because the entrenched problems are too great?

    Or is it just going to be a celebration of managing the easy things. Of crawling over that exceptionally low bar of sexist marketing materials. Of focusing on the pipeline rather than the women who are already here. Or I should say, at the expense of the women who are already here, because it takes up their time, and corporate feminism takes it’s toll.

    GHC could do better. GHC could do the hard things.

     

    Edited October 2nd to clarify what GHC is.

  • #GHC13: Panel on Entrpreneurship

    #GHC13: Panel on Entrpreneurship

    baby duck
    Credit: PixaBay / PublicDomainPictures

    One of the things I really liked about this session was that it was three older women, and not all of them lived in the Valley (sadly I can’t find the description of the panel or the panelists). So much of what I read and hear about tech startups is SV based, that it’s extremely refreshing to hear an outside perspective!

    Advice from Founder.

    • Don’t start with an exit strategy.
    • 5m users and no money is not a business, it’s a hobby.
    • Aim for happy users and customers.
    • Doing a startup is like sprinting a marathon.
    • Can’t have work life balance at a startup. It’s not 9-5, but nor is it 8 hours a day. It’s not for the faint of heart.
    • It will suck you in and take over who you are.
    • When you hire someone you own their pay check. You don’t want to be responsible for them starving.
    • When you hire a board, it’s like a marriage where they can divorce you but you can’t divorce them.
    • Board can kick out founders at any time. It’s really hard for founders to buy out a board.
    • You think you are ready to launch – make sure you have a great idea. Get buy-in from your family. Gives the example of making her son a cofounder.
    • Build a strong team around you, you don’t want to be alone.
    • Objections to having a cofounder is splitting equity, but remember 100% of nothing is nothing.
    • Cofounder needs to be someone you will listen to. Sometimes you’ll be wrong.
    • Almost everything in tech can be built to some approximation, but not everything should be – because no-one will pay for it.
    • In enterprise, have to consider if it is 10x faster. The advantage has to be an order of magnitude better, otherwise not worth the switch.
    • Some things should be built, but not at that time. Gives example of first company, cloud. Timing was a big ingredient (she was too early).
    • Enterprise space, need 10-20 customers. Consumer products, need hundreds.
    • Raise seed money and experiment a lot. No real money until a few million customers, experience with engagement, retention.
    • If you don’t get negative feedback, either you are not listening or someone is being nice to you.
    • Good ideas fail big or win super big.
    • Get intelligence about what other companies are doing. Worry about competing with big companies.
    • Avoid the drive to zero (e.g. cloud). Need to be so differentiated that it won’t be commoditised soon.
    • Don’t wait for the moment where you just know; this is mostly not what happens.
    • If when frustrated, instead of complaining, you take action; you’re an entrepreneur. You can do this even if you have a job. It’s more of an attitude than DNA.
    • To start a company you need an idea.

    Advice from VC.

    • Look for secrets.
    • Big companies are already working on the obvious ideas. Not a good idea for a startup company.
    • Secrets may look like bad ideas.
    • Look for founders who know the tech better than anyone, understand the environment really well. Had a personal experience, e.g. Lyft came from founder experience in Zimbabwe [story].
    • Believe something that none else believes. E.g. of Salesforce, really hard to get funding because regular VCs didn’t believe that anyone would store that kind of information with anyone else.
    • Look for idea that upsets the norms and challenges convention, e.g. AirBnB creates experience around travel different from staying at the DoubleTree. The pitch sounds ridiculous.
    • VCs are sometimes too old for new ideas. You wouldn’t do that, but would others? New York AirBnB stats are incredible [AirBnB stats page].

    Joanna on Entrepreneur Qualities

    • Brimming in confidence.
    • Loves to be out the box, “not sure how many of you think you are in a box”.
    • Passionate.
    • Risk-taker.
    • Perpetually interested in everything.
    • People-oriented problem solver.
    • Great storyteller.
    • Leads by example.
    • Knows when you get expert experience.
    • Tolerates failure well.

    Paula on Entrepreneur Qualities

    • You get as much joy out of the idea as you do in bringing it to life.
    • “Everyone has fabulous ideas, not many people act on them”. It’s not just about the idea, but also about the discipline to act on it.
    • How to get joy out of using the things you build.
    • You cannot imagine sitting on a good idea and not taking action.
    • You reserve the right to get smarter and learn.
    • You cannot stop yourself thinking about how things could be better, and then work on making them better.
    • Product genius is something that cannot be taught. Tech founder is best suited to track those trends and follow accordingly.
  • Brenda Chapman at GHC 2013

    Brenda Chapman at GHC 2013

    Brenda Chapman at GHC13

    This talk – by the woman behind Brave (Amazon) was absolutely on of my favourite ever GHC talks. Warm, and funny, and inspiring. Talked about some difficult things, but overall positive.

    Scared to come to GHC, because she’s a technological dinosaur. Pixar was full of smart people, but kids. She was in the kids group. It hasn’t been easy but it has been fun.

    Passion is an intense desire and enthusiasm for something. Brave was a passion project.

    Storytelling is her passion, but she had worked on other people’s passion. Brave combined 3 loves – fairytales, scotland, and her daughter. Her daughter inspired the character (she’s 14 now). Also loved working with Billy Connolly.

    What if you don’t have passion? Talks about working on the Prince of Egypt – someone else’s passion project. Was nervous because it’s got god in it, and this is Hollywood. But dug deep and searched for the human side of the story – it’s a story about two brothers.

    The screen freezes and she asks “is there a technical person here” – so funny (of course a man goes to help). Takes questions whilst things are being resolved.

    The relationship in the Prince of Egypt is between two brothers. Play on tragedy.

    Perseverance – keep going no matter what, despite setbacks.

    Tells story of getting into Cal Arts. Devastated when she was rejected, but her mom pulled her out of it. Said have another year and try again. She tried again a year later and was accepted. One of five women in a class of 34. Three glorious years, and put together portfolio with story real and note saying she wanted to do story eventually. Her film was nothing like the others. It was about an old lady who was alone on her birthday. She was nervous about submitting it, but Disney liked it and she got hired as a story trainee. She was happy for about three seconds, until she was told she was hired because she was a woman.

    “I want to be hired because of my talent and my abilities, not because of my genetalia”. They had been getting flak for poor diversity in story, and she was the right price. They could send her away after six months and get another token.

    Didn’t like it, but had a foot in the door. Worked hard to prove to them, and herself, that she deserved it.

    The men were very inclusive, wanted to see what she could offer. They were supportive, she was very lucky. The first scene she did by herself was part of your world reprise in the Little Mermaid.

    Got so into it, Ariel is a bit anorexic – kept drawing her neck. She’s singing and singing. Showed the scene and people were howling with laughter, saw it objectively, had neck like a giraffe. When they saw it again, had to laugh, they had just chopped the neck and taped it. Liked the expression, worries that they wouldn’t get it with another person drawing.

    Showed the scene where the guy was washed up on the beach.

    Got promoted to journeyman story artist. Still at the bottom of the totem pole, but not because of being a woman, but because of having the least experience.

    Shows the scene with the eagle worried about the eggs (with the tiny boy – not sure what movie?) It’s beautiful.

    Worked on Beauty and the Beast. Had a mentor, Roger, who went on to direct the Lion King. Belle in Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney princess that had yelled at her prince.

    Showed us the original storyboard.

    Wanted to trying being head of story, was feeling more confident, was going to do Swan Lake but it got canned because another company did Swan Princess.

    Went to work on King of the Jungle. Got head of story, Roger was directing. Reworked the story, found passion for it, and it became the Lion King. Lion King was the B project, the A project was Pocahontas. It was a very green team, but they worked really hard, gave extra because it was their first gig.

    The procession of animals at the beginning was saved by the music.

    That took her to opportunities. Opportunities come from choices and luck, take them as the come. If you’re not sure, are you willing to never have that opportunity again? If you’re OK with that, pass.

    Went to Dreamworks, starting on the ground floor. After someone left, she wasn’t sure. Got the opportunity to direct. Went to start story department, but he had other plans.

    Started looking for other opportunities when projects started to feel the same. Universal, Sony, eventually Pixar, where she got to work on her passion project (Brave).

    Change often comes when you don’t want it. Sometimes happy, sometimes lousy. But have to be open to it. The cliches are true, if she hadn’t been open to change, wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work on films. The ups and downs are worth it.

    Brave was incredible. Her first computer graphics project. But it had a rough ending – change when she didn’t want it. Painful.

    Opened up opportunities. Working for herself, a book, writing, speaking. Also developing a new project.

    Change is important, accept it. You don’t have to accept how you’re treated, but accept change and move on.

    Passion helps get through other sones. Helps lead other people. Has passion in leadership – make people feel like they are contributing. Know other people have better ideas, make what we have theirs. Make them feel ownership, feel proud of it.

    Talked about Passion, Perseverance, Opportunity, and Change.

    Passion comes through. The consumer will feel it, it’s a pure thing.

    The fifth element is Resilience. Come through hard times. Women have to have it. Insecure people will be mean, backstabbing. handle it in a positive way. Handle it by standing up for ourselves – and others. Whether we fail or succeed, this gives us self respect. Responsibility to show young girls that, examples of failures as well as of successes.

    Tells the story of her mother – this is lovely – reluctantly raised by her grandparents. Met a teacher who saw potential no-one else had ever looked for. Wanted to teach her. Grandparents though she was putting ideas in her head, and had the teacher fired. She was allowed to finish the year, and taught with grace, dignity, and compassion. Left the impression of resilience, and saw her as someone special. Her mom got a college education at age 60, after her husband (Brenda’s father) died. Cooking was her art, profession and passion. She had resilience, and taught it to Brenda, too.

    Responses to Questions

    As the only woman in the room, it’s hard to champion a non-traditional princess. Difficult in some places, but stuck to her guns – this got her taken off the movie after a while. A comment from a male exec, “How are we going to sell a movie about two women arguing”.

    (I bet no man said that about 12 men arguing).

    Look at what you’re doing and what you’re enjoying the most. She realised what she really loved was creating the story.

    On getting kicked off the movie: “I wouldn’t do anything different”.

    It’s harder to do independent animation. People trying not to work on standard fare, want to do something different for kids.