Celebrating the Success and Value of D&I

Can you talk about any specific instance where you notice that it has really made a difference and created that power that you just talked about, having a diverse team?

Absolutely, I’ve seen it in my own staff, as I’ve improved the diversity of my own team, I still have a lot more to do. But we’ve also done a similar sort of thing in our Board of Directors. The last three Board of Directors hires that we made were women. And I can absolutely see that the dynamics in our Board of Directors, how we engage, how we build trust with one another, how we solve problems together, has improved. So, I view those as absolutely great data points of the power diversity.

But building a diverse team on the flip side isn’t always easy. There are lots of challenges. What would you say is the most difficult challenge of building a diverse team? And how do you navigate that?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think some would certainly say that the pipeline is a big challenge. And certainly, the pipeline is a challenge. But I think there’s a much bigger challenge, and that’s just, it’s the mindset. I think there are still skeptics that are out there that need to be convinced; skeptics that don’t necessarily believe that the value of D&I is high enough that it’s worth putting in the effort and the work. And we just have to hunt that down, hunt that mentality down and defeat it, quite frankly.
What do you do about it? You set an example, you look for pockets of where progress and success has been made and you recognize it, you celebrate it, you put it on the stage with you, at the company all-hands meeting to show just how much you care about it. And you openly talk about just the success and the value that D&I brings to any organization, especially a high-tech organization that’s out to be an innovative company, a disruptive company in the valley.