Diversity is on a lot of people’s minds lately. And it’s certainly top of mind for us at Zuora as we continually work to bring this conversation into the forefront.
As part of our efforts around this critical topic, it’s become one of our most treasured Subscribed traditions to host a breakfast panel on diversity and inclusion.
At this year’s recent Subscribed conference in San Francisco, we launched a new theme for our breakfast discussion: #SubscribeToDiversity.
To subscribe means to accept, believe, endorse, support, and champion.
When we #SubscribeToDiversity, we champion prioritizing diversity and driving meaningful change.
Diversity is not an easy topic. It requires a lot of conversations. This year we were really strategic about selecting a panel that wasn’t afraid to go deep and have candid dialogue about diversity.
We were delighted to host Emily Chang, Anchor, Bloomberg Technology and author of BROTOPIA: Breaking up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley; Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, Founder & CEO Build.org; Jennifer Tejada, CEO PagerDuty & Board Director Estee Lauder; and Tariq Meyers, Global Head of Belonging & Inclusion at Coinbase and prior Head of Diversity at Lyft.
Here are just a few highlights from this eye-opening and inspirational discussion:
“Diversity is being asked to the dance, but inclusion is being asked to dance.” – Suzanne McKechnie Klahr @SMKlahr @BUILDNational
“Bring the center to the margins and bear witness to the experiences of those who have been most left out.” – Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“My job as a CEO is to find the best people and bring out the best in those people in service to our customers and our stakeholders.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“I am going to prove through my own business that you can impact inclusion and belonging and have balance in the workplace and build a culture that brings out the best in everybody, that gives every person in your business an equal opportunity to kill it, every person in your community to have the career opportunity of a lifetime. Why does this matter to me? Because my 13 year daughter deserves the same opportunities as everyone sitting around or beside her, above or below her.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“This is an industry filled with the smartest people in the world. and the most money in the world. If we can get to Mars and build self-driving cars, and rides at the push of a button, we can hire more women, and pay them fairly, and fund their ideas. That is not too hard for Silicon Valley to do.” – Emily Chang @emilychangtv @technology
“It’s one thing to say you want to be a diverse organization, but what’s your goal? Do you have operationalized processes to get to that goal? Do you have the support and sponsorship of everyone from your board to your CEO to executive sponsorship? Are you actually going to do the work to measure your progress, which means exposing when things don’t go to plan and having conversations about why aren’t these things working?” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“My goal is to make sure we’re not only expanding our breadth and depth in the consumer base but that we’re also reflecting the world that we’re trying to build the system for.” – Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“In 1984 women hit the high point of degrees in computer science. They were earning 37% of computer science degrees. That has since plummeted to 18%, where it’s been completely flat for the last 10 years. The tech industry created the pipeline problem but today the tech industry is reinforcing the pipeline problem. You can’t be what you can’t see.” – Emily Chang @emilychangtv @technology
“Under-represented communities are a real talent power. They have the ability to choose now more than ever because companies are competing for their talent. So that’s a signal to focus less on trying to create the best D&I report using rigid metrics that are only really focused on moving the needle for certain demographics and instead double down on the employee experience to create a culture that will thrive.”- Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“My favorite poem is ‘The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. The flower blossoms and the bee comes.’ And in my mind, instead of companies constantly dreaming about finding under-represented talent, diverse talent in the industry, instead, let’s make sure that our company is the best place to work. That we have the safeguards and policies and practices to really encapsulate the employee experience, and by that very nature, folks who have been historically left out will be attracted to your business.” – Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“I think it’s really difficult to have inclusion without diversity, so the numbers need to substantially change for culture to really shift.” – Emily Chang @emilychangtv @technology
“Do you see employees of all types turning up together to try to solve challenges. That’s one of the best leading indicators that you’re onto something.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“What’s the intent? How are you improving your commitment and investment to diversity? Where is the money coming from? We won’t work with a recruiter who can’t deliver diverse candidates. I”m not going to partner with a firm that doesn’t demonstrate commitment to this change. That’s how you start an ecosystem of change.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“When we start having conversations about equality, we get really concerned about what we’re going to have to ‘give up’ to broaden the opportunity landscape. I understand that equality is a threat to privilege.” – Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“We’re talking about unconscious bias training and everyone’s excited about it, checking the box. But we’re not actually talking about how to go a step further to stand with the communities that need us.” – Tariq Meyers @thetariqmeyers @coinbase
“Raising awareness about bias isn’t necessarily going to have a huge impact. It’s not enough to just say to someone ‘Change the way you think about women.’ You actually have to give people the tools to combat their bias.” – Emily Chang @emilychangtv @technology
“Everyone is measuring diversity now. People are feeling pressure to do this. But how do you measure inclusion – how do you measure if you feel like you belong, or you have sponsorship?” – Suzanne McKechnie Klahr @SMKlahr @BUILDNational
“Play the long game and follow intent with money. I invest a lot of time with our initiatives. I am asking and demanding that our team gives personal time. We’ve chosen to take on the risk of a long recruitment cycle to make sure that every panel is half underrepresented communities.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
“Speaking the language of diversity and inclusion is learning a new language. It’s clumsy, your grammar is bad, you’ll possibly sound stupid and offend people. So people sometimes prefer not to speak it. But you just need to get out there and try and demonstrate that it’s okay to fail.” – Jennifer Tejada @jenntejada @pagerduty
Join us as we #SubscribeToDiversity!