Episode 16: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Tech

Frances Donegan-Ryan, Chief People and Community Officer at Indicio, joins Digital Clinic this week to discuss the critical importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the tech industry. Frances shares her experiences implementing DEI initiatives in startups and large corporations alike, highlighting the evolution of these practices and their impact on company culture. She emphasizes the importance of creating inclusive work environments, particularly in remote settings, and discusses innovative approaches to fostering connection and belonging among diverse teams. 

The conversation also explores the challenges of implementing meaningful DEI practices, including the need to compensate DEI efforts and integrate these values into core business operations. Throughout the episode, Frances offers valuable insights into the future of workplace diversity and how organizations can enhance their DEI efforts to drive better engagement, innovation, and business outcomes. 

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Revolutionizing Digital Identity and Verifiable Credentials

Aaron: Welcome to the Digital Clinic, the podcast that goes deep on critical digital marketing trends, strategies and tactics for the healthcare and medical device industries. Each episode brings you expert guests sharing the knowledge, insights and advice that healthcare marketers need to be successful in this complex and rapidly evolving digital landscape. I’m Aaron Burnett, CEO of Wheelhouse Digital Marketing Group, and with me today is Frances Donegan-Ryan. Frances is Chief People and Community Officer for Indicio, the market leader in open source trusted digital ecosystems for sharing verifiable data and developing trusted, secure relationships. At Indicio, Frances oversees the company’s growth planning, talent recruitment and onboarding, along with human resource processes, policies and team culture. She has held global positions at Microsoft and Amazon, launched a marketing agency and worked with tech startups from seed stage to unicorn stage. In addition to her day job, her passion and commitment to diversity and equity led to the co-founding of Janes of Digital and to her current role as board president for the Center for Women in Democracy. Really excited to talk with Frances. We had a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Well, I’m really excited to talk to you. It was so fun to read your bio and to see how long it’s been since we’ve worked together and everything that you’ve done since then. 

Frances: Well, thank you. 

Aaron: Which is a lot. You obviously are still a dynamo when you’re involved in so many different things. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Aaron: Well, so let’s start here. Can you tell me a little bit about Indicio? 

Frances: Yeah. So myself and five other people co-founded Indicio right at the beginning of the pandemic, April of 2020. 

Aaron: Well timed. 

Frances: Yes, and we make a technology that allows companies, organizations, governments, to have verifiable credentials and digital credentials, digital identification, and also verifiable data, which means, instead of everything being on paper and memorizing ridiculous passwords, everything would be stored on a distributed ledger, on blockchain, and you would have a credential, and that credential can be used, really, in a myriad of ways. And the great thing about it is that you don’t actually show your PII. You don’t show your private information. So a very simple example would be buying a bottle of wine at the supermarket. You get carded, right now they scan it, or they see all – they see your address, your driver’s license number, your height, your weight, your eye color, all sorts of things that can be used to nefariously identify you as well. 

Aaron: Sure. 

Frances: And this credential would just, you know, you might scan a QR code, and it would just say, check that’s it. She’s allowed to buy the wine. Companies are using this in a lot of different ways. I would say our largest client and most prominent case study is with a company called CETA and the government of Aruba. So they have now shifted to digital borderless crossing. So you don’t show your passport. When you buy your ticket, you get a digital travel certification. You board the plane to get to Aruba. You walk off the plane, you walk right out of the airport, you get into your car or your taxi, you go right to the beach. There is no customs checks anymore. It is all by- 

Aaron: No picture? No picture when you arrive, no picture when you depart? All taken care of in advance. How does that work from a security perspective? 

Frances: So they are using biometrics. 

Aaron: Okay, yes. 

Frances: Yeah. So you would just walk down a hallway, it would scan and say, Frances has a digital credential. It’s been verified by the government, because it’s a passport. It’s been verified by the passport authority. But you don’t have to stop, right? And it reduces fraud, it reduces wait times, which is, you know, what drives travelers crazy and- 

Aaron: Sure. 

Frances: Have happy travelers. And in fact, Aruba’s whole motto is happy travelers, happy people, right? And so it was a really big deal for them. And so that’s one way we’re implementing it. A way that I’m super passionate about is allowing people to have digital identity, particularly refugees. Often when you have to flee your home country or you’re removed, you either don’t have the time to take all your paperwork with you or know where it is, or there’s been a fire or a bomb, or it’s dangerous for you to carry that paperwork and be associated as one group or another, so you destroy it. And if you had a digital credential when you arrived at another country or a refugee camp, they could just immediately verify that you are a person, because when you don’t have that paper documentation, you’re not considered a person. 

Aaron: Yeah. 

Frances: And it would allow you, it would allow aid organizations, the UN to be able to immediately give aid. It would allow host countries to immediately set them up in their systems, get a cell phone, get housing and so it really will change the way we hold our identification, but it’ll change the way we operate online as well. 

Aaron: Have you been able to implement in contexts that are helping people who are in a refugee context? 

Frances: We are in conversations with the UN and other organizations. There’s a lot of working groups around the world. We’re looking at this technology and thinking about how to build it and how to implement it. Most of what we’re building is built on open source as well, so it will be usable by organizations, um, if they want to configure and build on their own, or they can buy our ready-made product. 

Aaron: Sure. 

Frances: And do it. 

Frances’s Career Journey and Advocacy Work

Aaron: Tell me about your history. Your background. Because, as I said, you’ve been a dynamo. You’ve had a professional trajectory. You also, you currently lead the Center for Women in Democracy, and you founded Janes of Digital. I think all three of those things, maybe simultaneously with what you’re doing professionally. So I’d love to hear about that. 

Frances: I started in my working life in youth nonprofit that I was part of at university and then worked for them after college, and that really fed into my passion around leadership development, representation, inclusion and understanding other cultures and ensuring that it wasn’t just stereotypes of other cultures, but the real people, the real lives that they live, and the real experiences they have. Then I went and worked what was sort of before DEI came around, was corporate social responsibility, right? So I did that for Cadbury, the chocolate company, and on their actually, on their beverage side here in the US. And it was really interesting. I learned a ton. It was very at the time, human resource focused, so there were a lot of federal regulations you had to meet. And I decided that that wasn’t really what I was into at the time. And that’s when I shifted to marketing. Got really into search right at the beginning of paid search and SEO, which led me to work with a lot of startups in Seattle, and then eventually here at Wheelhouse, and then I went off to work for Bing at Microsoft, so still in the search world, but my role really evolved there to be much more focused on community building, influencer programs, advocacy programs. I had a short stint at Amazon, but then founded this company, and once we had enough money to have me mostly paid, then I left Amazon. I think I really realized that my true joy and career sense is startup life. 

Aaron: In your role in the current company, what’s your purview and what things do you use? The word sacred. So what things are you holding sacred? What are you protecting? 

Frances: Startups and smaller businesses wait to sort of year three or four, year five, to look at culture, to write leadership principles, for example. And I wanted our culture to start off the way we wanted it on week one. So we wrote our values. We put there were only five of us, so we just all had to shake hands and agree that that was how we were going to operate this. And every single team meeting, we start with the leadership principle, and I just, I call it one that I’m feeling passionate about that week, or with reflecting what’s going on in the company, and then we talk about it as a group. And we have lots of ways- We have things like anonymous forms if you feel like a leadership principle isn’t being followed effectively, and we have Slack channels that talk about it, and we do celebrations that reward and encourage people to live and operate by those values and principles. So it’s very much our day to day work. You know, it’s a startup, so I wear about a million different hats, but my main purview is our people, and then our strat, our internal strategy, which includes community, which includes our growth strategy as a business, operating procedures, everything from payroll and benefits to customer and community supports, which was very cool to have a totally new career probably about halfway through my working life, and then I got to leverage and carry over the lessons and experiences I’ve had before. To build community, to build culture. 

Aaron: I mentioned a couple of other very impressive things, interesting things that you’ve done. You’re currently president for the Center for Women in Democracy. Yes, and you founded Janes of Digital as well. Can you tell me about those two initiatives? 

Frances: So Janes of Digital came about from a conversation that a group of women were having after a big industry conference, just sharing stories with each other, which women often do about unsafe situations we’d been in or unwanted attention, and the perils of traveling to conferences on your own as a woman in particular or without any colleagues, and the lack of representation on stage. How can we tackle both of those things? You never get selected to speak at a conference if you don’t have speaking experience, and how do you get speaking experience if you’re never accepted for a speaking gig? Right? So we said, well, we’ll literally build a stage and have the panel so that those women on the panel can then apply for other speaking opportunities and say, I have been a speaker. The other element was we wanted a safe space that you could still have a cocktail at, that you could still have the party at that you could still network at, because that’s half the joy of attending a big industry event. I think it was only the first one we did was exclusive to women at the conference. And then we opened it up and and we said, you know, we’d love our male attendees to come and learn from the conversations we’re having. They’ve actually evolved now. It’s called Open Perspectives. We felt that there was an opportunity to just sort of mature it from a very, very specifically women focus group to other underrepresented groups in the tech and particularly digital search marketing industry. 

Leaving Microsoft, I was looking then for what would my next sort of passion project be, and I, I was still at Microsoft when I learned about Center for Women and Democracy, and it’s fabulous organization. I’m actually the board president, but we don’t, we don’t have a staff, so it is a working board that runs the organization. The purpose of the organization is to encourage women and empower them to lead where they land. And when we say that, we mean no matter your scope of influence or your title, or if you are a caregiver versus, you know, maybe have a more traditional style career, or you’re an entrepreneur, you are a leader in your community, and you already have the skill sets you just might not have been given the space to demonstrate them, or you might not have, or you may have been excluded from opportunities. And so we really encourage women to think about their demonstration of leadership in their everyday lives, and then show them and encourage them to look for other opportunities to show that experience. And we very much believe that without a representative democracy, you can’t have a healthy democracy. And so it’s democracy little D we’re a nonpartisan organization, but it’s really looking at in Washington state, what is being done in our state, city, county legislators? What are they working on that may either promote or progress women’s rights or inadvertently harm or directly harm, directly harm or regress the rights. And then we’re not a lobby group, but we will work with legislators to show them how and why things might be not the right way to go, or are the right way to go, and to keep pushing in that direction. 

The Center for Women Democracy, wrote a proposal to have the Women’s Commission at the state level, so that exists now. It’s called the Washington State Women’s Commission. They’re part of the governor’s office, and their role is to very much keep an eye on what’s going on in the government, to educate and inform and teach the governor and their staff about women’s issues and to bring them to light to the public. I don’t know if people know, and people might be surprised to learn that Washington is ranked 48th out of states in our gender wage gap. 

Addressing Gender Pay Gaps in Tech

Aaron: I had no idea. 

Frances: Yeah, there’s lots of reasons why we do have very high tech salaries, right? That can that that influence the numbers, but the majority of women in the state work in caregiving or hourly non-union jobs. And so there’s 3.8 million women in Washington State, and the majority of them are not paid nearly as much as their male counterparts. And some of it is access to labor or union jobs. Some of it is the massive disparity still in tech salaries between men and women still, still and and so that’s their whole focus. They’re working with the State Treasurer. They’re working with union leaders. They’re working with tech leaders in particular, as well as other businesses, other industries. But it’s a really big initiative this year. 

Aaron: How can it still be true that there’s such a massive disparity, in particular in tech salaries, given there have been years long focus, lots of writing, lots of studies highlighting those instances in which there have been disparities. And I feel like any business that even is making an attempt at being fair would benchmark compensation. We’re small, but we benchmark compensation along DEI lines a couple of times a year. Every time we look at comp, we look at it from a DEI perspective as well. 

Frances: I think of what we’re still seeing in a lot of tech in particular is men and women are being hired at the same rate out of university. In fact, more women graduate with third level degrees than men now in the US, and they stay at the same level and about in the same wage bracket until eight years in. And right around that mark, you start to see the difference start to climb, because there’s very low representation of women in middle management. You actually see more women in senior management than you do middle management because they’ve simply been there longer, but because they don’t get those middle management or middle promotion years, they’re always behind then in the salary bracket. 

Aaron: So are we talking about disparity, male versus female? Same level of experience, same role. Compensation is different. 

Frances: Compensation is different. But then you’re also looking at the male counterpart getting the promotion right, so they move from bracket A then to bracket B faster than the woman. And so even if the woman sort of catches up, they have been earning more salary for a longer period of time. They’ve been investing that for a longer period of time. If you’re in tech, your ISUs, have been investing for a longer period of time, or you’re getting more of them, I should say. And so you’re still seeing disparity there. And you also see quite a big gap between the types of positions men and women have in tech. So you’re still seeing predominantly men in the more technical roles, and women in more of the business functional roles. And Amazon, for example, not to call them out directly, because I’m sure a lot of companies do.  

Aaron: They’re big. They can take it. 

Frances: But they recently, I think it was a couple years ago, increased what could be a baseline salary up to, I think it was $360,000. 

Aaron: That’s right. 

Frances: But because women aren’t in those roles, they are not starting at that base salary because it does not apply to functional roles. It only applies to engineering roles. So you’re, you’re seeing that gap, even if you have, say, the same tenure, or you’re this, you’re both, you know, the same level, in terms of the different levels companies have, you’re not nearly making the same amount of money depending on your function. There is progress being made, but it just it feels like it’s so late when it’s coming in 2024. 

Aaron: It seems surprising, and yet not. 

Frances: The Center for Women in Democracy does a lot of fun things. We do a day down in Olympia where we meet and speak with the Supreme Court justices and what’s happening on the judicial side. We meet with the governor and their staff. We meet with legislators, and we honor the different legislators and state workers who are really helping to make progress in women’s rights and girls rights. We do an international delegation every other year where we go to another democracy and learn about what they’re doing. This year, we’re going to Peru. They just elected their first female president. Well, she took over from the previous president, so technically, it wasn’t an election, but she is in power, and we have a Leadership Institute, and then we do monthly programming. We have an event next week where we talk about and give again, building a stage, giving a spotlight to those underrepresented voices. So we’ve had events like previously incarcerated women, rural women, the rise of black female leadership in our state, missing and murdered indigenous women, the power, the economic power that women have, that we’re not always fully aware of. And so we tackle lots of topics that are important for people to be educated around and have insight into. And then we always have a lot of fun. There’s always wine at our events or cocktails. And it’s about bringing women, creating joy, creating connections and getting inspiration from each other. 

Aaron: What’s the event next week? 

Frances: Next week, it’s called Activate Your Activism. We have three women who are speaking about their their advocacy journeys and how they became advocates in the areas that they are in. So we have a woman who’s worked in our state government for for many years, we have the executive director of the Women’s Commission, and we have the founder and owner of an African art gallery called Teswira, and they’re going to speak to us about the different advocacy work that they do, how they got into it, the lessons they’ve learned, and then we’ll have a lot of time to discuss with each other and help each other say, Okay, well, I’m passionate about this. Let’s work together on that. Or did you know you can, like, for example, any citizen can give testimony on any rule or bill or law that’s being proposed based on your experience. If you go down to Olympia to do that, you get compensated. You get an hourly rate. In case you’ve had to take time off work, you can now do it virtually, thanks to a lot of the progression of virtual things during the pandemic. And I don’t think a lot of people know that, just as a citizen, you can do that. 

Aaron: I had no idea. 

Frances: Yeah. And so it’s, it’s about just exposing people to those things and then getting them excited to get involved. 

Building Effective DEI Programs

Aaron: Let’s talk about DEI. Let’s start with a definition. What does it mean, and how do you incorporate it into what you’re doing at Indicio? 

Frances: Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging to me means that you don’t treat employees as a number. They aren’t just a commodity or an asset for your business. A lot of times, larger companies and smaller companies lose sight of that. I’m probably privileged in that I work at a small company and I know every single person, right? So it probably makes my life a little bit easier to implement things when I know the people I’m every person I’m thinking about and including in things. People talk about safe spaces and being your authentic self and showing up to work as who you are. I don’t subscribe to all of those things. I think that the authentic self thing is is a little bit performative, because it’s still not safe to necessarily do that. It’s also not always appropriate, correct, and it’s and it’s not always what someone wants to do, yes, and they should be able to make that choice and not be seen as someone not participating, because maybe they’re not doing it and and it’s not always on the the underrepresented groups to educate those of us who are in the majority or have more privilege, and, and it’s exhausting and and it shouldn’t be on their shoulders to do that. They should have space to express themselves when and if they want. And so I think it’s more about ensuring that there are opportunities for them to do that, if they so wish, but not a pressure, not an expectation. So I think it’s a lot about remembering that we’re people and we’re individuals, and it’s about creating opportunities for them to do their best work. Do you create space and allow people to do that? I think that is really inclusion. It’s not necessarily, how many people have you hired from this group? It’s Have you made your work environment open enough and flexible enough that people can live their life and also contribute to the success of the company? 

So I work really hard. We’re we’re fully remote. We don’t have any office, because we’re all over the US from Hawaii to Florida and but I really actively coach our people, particularly our early career employees, on being intentional. And focus on, how do I do my best work? What is going to make me the most productive, the most happy, feel safe, and then design your day to look like that. Design your role within the scope of your responsibilities to let you do that. And there’s no you must be at your desk from this time to this time, your Slack dot must be green. From this time to this time, I tell everyone you own your calendar, block what you need to block and go from there. And then I again working at a small private company, I probably have more flexibility than maybe a multinational does. But the slate of candidates, for example, that a hiring manager would see in our company, are all underrepresented groups. The first slate that they see, and it’s a forcing function to have them think about people who don’t look and sound like them and went to the same university as them and things like that. It’s it’s a way to, in my eyes leveled the playing field, and I’ve had people say, Well, we only hired the best talent, and then as soon as I find the best talent, like, I don’t take into consideration, like we shouldn’t take into consideration if they’re a woman or a black person or LGBTQ plus. And I was like, No, that’s incorrect. It’s not about being blind to those or putting those to the side because you’re only focused on talent. Focusing on talent alone is not going to give you a diverse group of people, because you have biases in what talent means. Did they go to a four year university, or did they go to a boot camp. I don’t care, but people who who probably have gone to a four year degree are going to look at people who had a four year degree differently than maybe someone who’s self taught or just did a boot camp if you’re in a coding development role. We have people, for example, who majored in physics and are coders. We have people who’ve never been to a third level institution and are running our finances. We you know, we have all different backgrounds, and I think that that helps bring in more diverse candidates. 

Aaron: So you said the first slate is all underrepresented. Why is that not differently biased, and wouldn’t? Wouldn’t it be better? I’ll tell you. The way that we try and go about it is to effectively blind, anonymize everything that we see in the resume. So name, credentials, in terms of their academic credentials, country of origin, information, that sort of thing, so that we’re looking just at work experience and if they can do what we want to do. And I feel like that’s fair. I do also feel in our own experience, like I’ve ended up seeing candidates I don’t think I would have seen if we hadn’t done that. Are you concerned that the way you’re going about it is a different form of bias? 

Frances: I think there’s going to be bias in any approach, and I’m trying to ensure that candidates—especially those who may not have a network in the entrepreneurial, business, or tech world—have a chance to enter those fields. I fully believe that having a role at a technology company can be life-changing. It can be socioeconomic-changing, helping someone move from one socioeconomic level to the next. Stock options, for instance, can be a game-changer. So, the more we can do to get underrepresented groups into tech, the better. 

If a hiring manager has four candidates, all from a represented group, one of them is going to get hired. We don’t go through multiple rounds because there’s talent everywhere. The technology we’re building is brand new, and when they first started having conversations around this technology, our CEO was the only woman in every single working group, and there were no people of color. When she founded this company, she said, “We have the opportunity to change that, and it should be our responsibility to ensure that young people—not just those who’ve worked in tech for 20 years—get into this technology.” People of color, women, LGBTQ+—they all need to be shaping this technology because it will shape how we operate as a society. So, I made it a priority to make that really easy for us. It’s easy to do that when the candidates in front of you are already diverse—not just within our company, but across the industry at large. 

Aaron: I would assume it seems to be working 

Frances: As you know, when you found a company, you recruit your friends and family because they’re the only ones who trust you at that stage. That’s why your first seed rounds are friends and family as well. So, we ended up with a lot of people who looked the same. As we hit year two and started hiring outside our immediate communities, we needed to ensure we balanced that out. Another benefit we have is that we’re not limited to one geographical location, so we can pull from diverse backgrounds, races, and groups, which gives us more flexibility. 

Aaron: You sort of answered one question that I had, which is: How soon should you start when you found a company? I assume, based on what we’ve talked about so far, your answer is day three. Day four, maybe day one. What are the core components of an effective DEI program? 

Frances: Having someone or someones available to come and speak to in a very judgment-free, repercussion-free space or opportunity is one of the ingredients. So anyone at our company can come to me at any time, and I worked really hard to make sure that everybody knew that. It didn’t matter if it was personal, if it was professional, if it was issues with a colleague or a manager, or issues with the way your tech setup is at home – literally any topic was on the table. 

As people got used to talking to me about maybe something that was a bit more mundane or a regular business thing, they were able to then open up about something else that came up. It has been eye-opening to me that when you do that, the things that people come to you with are so moving, so personal, and they don’t have to be left out of your work experience. Because if you are lost or struggling in your personal area, there is no way it doesn’t bleed over into work, right? 

I myself am neurodivergent. I’m very open about my mental health and the medications I’m on and the therapy I do. I’ve spoken about it publicly, and I talk about it very openly at work as well, so that people know they’re not the only ones who might be struggling, or they’re not alone. Even if they don’t want to share with me that they’re also on Adderall, they know that someone else is, and so it makes them feel a little safer, a little less other, a little less different. 

So I do think having someone or a group that you can go to and feel like you can talk about anything has been a magic ingredient for us. I never felt that way at big companies. I had very poor experiences with human resources at the big companies I was with, and so when I got the opportunity to have a sort of HR role, I made a promise that I was going to be fundamentally different to the experiences I had had. It was so clear they were there to protect and represent the company and not the employees. 

There are elements, right? You’re looking at salaries, you’re looking at what benefits you can offer. There certainly are times where you have to take in the budget and the capacity, but that can be very separate from how you actually work with the humans in your business, too. 

I think other things around DEI is exposure to experiences that could change your perspective on things or open your eyes to things you weren’t aware of. So super simple things like we have a Slack channel called “Our Lives,” and people share their photos, experiences, what they did on the weekend. I think it made our team realize that there was more diversity than maybe they thought. 

Aaron: It’s such a more interesting work experience when you know those things about one another and you can share more openly. 

Frances: Yeah, and particularly being a remote and virtual company, right? We had to, or I was very focused on, what are all the things I could do virtually that could make us feel like a group. So I’m Irish. On St. Patrick’s Day, we had a virtual party, and we have another Irish person on the team who’s actually based in Dublin. He and I gave a little history of the country, talked about our lives growing up there, and then we all baked my grandmother’s scone recipe, all with our laptops in our kitchens. 

We’ve done other things like that. We’ve done trivia competitions where you’re put on a team with people from other groups in the company, so you can get to know them and share the random stuff you end up knowing, even if you don’t realize you know it. 

We do things we call “You Done Goods” where it’s anonymous praise and love letters and thank-yous and celebrations of our colleagues. We try and have as many celebrations as possible just to make people happy. Because if you’re happy, you feel safe; if you feel safe, you’ll share; if you share, you’ll teach other people. And I think bringing that joy into work has helped us in DEI. 

Avoiding Pitfalls in DEI: Authenticity, Compensation, and Integration

Aaron: DEI has been such a big focus for the last few years. There are stories of the value of DEI. There are also stories of DEI programs gone awry, problems with them. There also has been pushback. How have you seen DEI go awry? And what are the ingredients there? Do you think there’s any commonality in the wrong way to approach it that makes it net negative rather than positive? 

Frances: When it feels performative, it is going to explode in your face, not just backfire. 

Aaron: Yeah, I totally agree. The language, the performative language, is like, to me, that close to toxic. 

Frances: Yeah, I think so. And I think putting the burden of educating people on DEI only on the people who may fall into an underrepresented group is tiresome for them, and it’s a whole other job that they’re not paid for. And so I think if you’re expecting colleagues to, let’s say, perform DEI duties, whatever they may be, they should be compensated for that. It should not be volunteer work for the company to look good, to be better, for colleagues to be happier. Those should be paid initiatives. 

When I was at Microsoft, I did have a colleague who was working towards that, who said, “I’m not going to be the president of an ERG unless I’m getting financial compensation for that. You can’t expect me to have job number two, to make your company better and not get paid for it.” And I think that that is really important. It has to be compensated. It can’t be just expected because I’m a woman that I would do something. If you want me to do that, you compensate me. 

Aaron: Do you think that’s true if, let’s say, at different times we’ve had DEI committees? Sometimes that’s worked well and sometimes it hasn’t worked well. The committee time is in the middle of the work day. It’s people taking a couple of hours every month. Do you think that the same is true if what we’re asking or what’s being done is taking time out of the work day? 

Frances: I think it’s things like, it doesn’t necessarily mean a higher salary, but it could be, listen, you get a bonus every year if you’re part of the committee, or you get a gift card for 500 bucks. Like, it can be operationalized in different ways, but I have seen a lot of expectation that this work just be for free, and I don’t think that that’s fair. 

Aaron: I think I’ve probably been guilty of that. 

Frances: Yeah, because we’re like, “Oh, wouldn’t it be awesome if I gave X person this great opportunity to talk about this or to share or to have the spotlight or to have the stage” without really thinking what that might be for them. 

So for example, at Center for Women & Democracy, we generally don’t pay our speakers, but if it is particularly – obviously, if they’re an elected official, they can’t be paid. But if it is a person that is sharing a lived experience that might be difficult for them to share, or is them being vulnerable, we do pay them. We give them a stipend, or we give them compensation for that time and for that energy that they’ve spent. And I think you can come up with creative ways to do that for people. 

I think other – like, I’ve been at one of the GEEKs of Digital – I was sexually harassed at it. And I just right after it, we were still in the building, the event had kind of wrapped up, and I just thought, “You’ve been here for two hours, and nothing has sunk in. Your behavior has not changed. It didn’t make you think.” And so I think that a lot of times, programs don’t make impact if people are not showing up with a commitment to change, with a commitment to share their privilege, with a commitment to open space for more people to be involved. 

I’ve been to DEI things where there’s a bunch of white dudes on the panel, and I’m just like, did you even try? And everyone has different experiences to share, of course – we’re all individuals – but if there’s a lack of thought, and I think that’s where you run into the problems. 

Aaron: How should company leaders ensure that DEI is more than an initiative or department? It’s operationalized. It’s part of the fabric of a company. What does that look like? 

Frances: I don’t know if I have the answers to that. 

Aaron: It seems to me that that’s actually critical. Because otherwise it becomes a thing you focus on occasionally, you do an employee survey and you realize, “Oh, we lapsed in this area.” You need to really focus. And then you just go through the same cycle again. It has to be baked in. 

Frances: I think it’s the thinking, right? It’s the recognition that, even though I’m a woman, I have, you know, so I fall into an underrepresented category in tech, but I have massive privilege. I’m white. English is my first language. I’m a US citizen. I have four passports. I can live and work and travel anywhere without any issues. I carry massive privilege in the way that I move through the world in the way that my career has gone. 

If I’m not willing to give some of that up and to share that with someone else, then my words become performative because I’m not actually changing things and making someone else get more privilege, right? I have to pay it back so they can get it. And I think there is a lot of, you know, some performative talk around privilege as well. But I do think that if you can’t see it yourself, and then you’re not willing to say, “I will take less so someone else can have more because they haven’t had any, or they’ve had little.” I think that that’s where you see actual, real change. 

And it can be little things, like “You’re gonna lead this meeting, because we want to hear your voice” all the way up to, you know, bigger decisions. And I think it’s not being scared to try things – not everything is going to work. Apologize, like actually, truly apologize when it doesn’t work, or when you do something that you realize later was not the right thing to do or had detrimental consequences, or you just didn’t think about your words. Real apologies and real intentional thinking. 

I think about it every day, and that means that it’s always top of mind for me when I’m making decisions for the company, when I’m deciding how we’re going to grow, when I’m deciding what we’re going to do next as a business, when we’re looking at operations, when I’m looking at healthcare. Don’t always be so concerned with equality, because equity is more important. 

The Role of Grace in DEI: Learning, Growth, and Daily Practice

Aaron: I think you said something very important earlier, which is that we need to see everyone as individuals and understand them as individuals. Alright, so I have maybe a final question: What role do you think grace plays in DEI? 

Frances: I think it comes into play, sort of when I mentioned previously about being apologetic and aware that you don’t have – you’re not always going to do the right thing. I certainly am not always going to do the right thing. Maybe I’m doing the wrong thing with some of the initiatives I’m putting in, but if I’m willing to recognize that and then willing to say, “You know what, I tried this, it didn’t work. It impacted you or hurt you or ignored you in a certain way, and I truly apologize for that.” 

I think that that allows grace to come into the conversation and the feelings, and I think that then people will give you grace in return and say, “I can recognize that this company is trying. I can recognize that they are doing their utmost, and they’re not always going to get it right, but I’m going to participate and be a part of this change.” 

I don’t always say the right things, even in like my social life, or the shows you watch, or you know, the words you use at times, or the jokes you tell, or you know, and then you catch yourself, and you have to give yourself grace, and then you have to be open enough to say you made a mistake to get grace in return. 

And I’ve learned a lot from my friends of color, my friends who are part of the queer community, that I might have thought, “Oh, I know all this, like I’m super advanced in this area.” Or “Since I was little, I’ve known that it’s not okay to do that or treat someone like this.” You are going to learn every single day, and you’re going to have the wrong assumptions based either on unconscious bias or maybe the way you were raised, or the influence you’ve had from media. 

And I think if you’re not willing to learn and change your mind, and if you’re not willing to say you’re sorry when you messed up, people shouldn’t give you grace in return. It would be inappropriate for you to expect it if you yourself are not going to put yourself in a vulnerable situation and just expect everyone else to do that. 

Admit when you mess up, try and make decisions that allow you to live a life that reflects your beliefs. So when you do your reading or your research and you decide, “I’m going to spend my social time at a restaurant that’s owned by a black person or someone in the queer community. That’s the restaurant I’ll choose to go to. That’s the film I’ll choose to watch. That’s the shop I’ll spend my money at.” Those are all things that I think are just daily behaviors that anyone can do, but it keeps these topics front of mind, because every single day I’m thinking, “Oh, could I do that this way or this way?” 

And it’s not burdensome, and it’s not every time I’m making a decision, I have to stop, you know, hold on to the table and be like, “Oh, my God, what if I do it the wrong way? What if I do it the right way? Let’s think this through 10,000 times before I do it.” It’s just daily practices, daily thoughts. And you’ll find that when you have it front of mind, it will start to become more natural. It will start to become more second nature, and that you’ll just actively think more about it, be more intentional with your thoughts, your decisions, your language. 

I think language is incredibly important. I know that there’s a lot of debate about whether it is or isn’t. As an English major and business major and those coming together, I do think that the language we choose is important, and the history of those sayings is important, and pronouns are important. I’m she/her, and I do ask and make an effort to use the correct ones. I know that it’s a very English language only practice, because in other languages, there isn’t necessarily male, female, or it’s the way the word itself has a gender, not the gender pronoun. So, you know, it’s a very English-centric behavior, but if it makes someone feel better and safer, why not do it? 

Aaron: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to summarize things. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. 

Frances: You too. Lovely to be back. Delighted to see the growth of Wheelhouse and where you are.  

Aaron: It’s exciting to see everything that you’ve done and you’re doing.Thank you for spending the time.