4 Male Allies Share What They’re Doing to Support Women in Their Careers
Featuring leaders at Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Western Governors University
It takes guts for a man to genuinely speak up on behalf of women. It takes even more guts to spur action in an organization and lead a change for the better.
Recently, I had the honor of moderating a Grace Hopper panel discussion featuring four men who’ve spent many years doing precisely that. All four think of themselves as “male allies,” and they came together in this discussion to open up about personal experiences, and to share their strategies to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. The guests and I all really enjoyed this conversation, so I decided to write a summary of the takeaways for a wider audience. Please enjoy!
Jeremiah Chan of Facebook: “Use Technology to Build Empathy”
Jeremiah Chan leads the patent team at Facebook. He believes DEI is important in his field because the best innovation happens in a diverse environment; however, in the patent space, there’s a lot of underrepresentation. For instance, in 2019, 12.8% of USA patent inventors were women, and that number has grown by only 2 percentage points in 16 years. At that rate, it’ll take 100 years to reach gender parity in this area.
“The key is empathy,” Jeremiah said, “and we need to be creative in how we find that. I would love to see us use technology to build that empathy.”
For example, Jeremiah explained, “Facebook ran a pilot training program that did inclusion training in a VR environment. Through this program, you could step into the shoes of a woman, or a woman of color, in a salary negotiation or a team meeting.”
Jeremiah described his own experience of doing this VR diversity experiment:
“I was in this meeting, and I kept getting cut off, and I kept getting mansplained!” he said. “Then, when I said that to my female colleagues, they were like, ‘Okay, yeah.’ Even though they had all told me their stories, I had no idea how bad it really was.”
I appreciated Jeremy’s point here so deeply, because I myself had experienced what he saw in that VR setting. Early on in my career, I was offered a job, then challenged extremely aggressively and rudely during the salary negotiation. The CEO, after selecting me as the right person for the job, started calling my qualifications into question. It was a breach of professional decorum that I seriously doubt would have happened if I were a man. This incident was one of the reasons I became passionate about doing the work to promote inclusivity in the professional world.
Jeremiah also described an “empathy mapping” exercise that helped his team better understand the obstacles URMs and women face as inventors.
“First, we listed what we thought the problems were,” Jeremiah said. “Then, we had an expert interview the female inventors at Facebook to discover the real problems. That person then went to the whiteboard and started crossing out all the assumptions we had. That led us to re-think our whole program with a better sense of what the obstacles actually are.”
David Graham of Amazon: “Keep Making Sure People Feel Okay to Talk”
David Graham is a Director and General Manager at Amazon, where his team supports local Amazon sellers around the world. Amazon has made a large-scale concerted effort to increase diversity in Amazon’s hiring process, and also to support the broader network of people who use Amazon to make a living.
“I really got passionate about this topic before my time at Amazon,” David said. “I had watched a video, a TED talk in particular, about female presence in the boardroom. It really hit me. And then, I saw something at work: I noticed a very talented leader staying really, really quiet. I knew that person knew what to do. I knew this was the person who knew the answers to the questions being asked — but they didn’t come forward. And I was wondering, why did they not come forward? Why did they not speak? And I went and talked to this person and asked this question, why did you not speak?
I thought this person was quiet and introverted, but the truth was that they didn’t feel comfortable, and as men in that room, we weren’t creating the space to be heard. This story made me come out and say, ‘Hey, this has to stop.’”
At Amazon, company-wide events, particularly panel discussions, have become “a force multiplier for DEI.” Every quarter, David and his team bring well-known speakers around the world to talk about things like unconscious bias, how Covid has affected minorities, LGBTQIA issues, and so on.
“At these panels, speakers and attendees can share their stories in a place where it feels good to talk, and people who have had these experiences are encouraged to step forward. It provides people who don’t feel comfortable in large settings, or who don’t feel comfortable talking about something on their own, the ability to hear the message, ‘You’re not alone.’”
“That’s the big message of this, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it,” said David. “These panels have shown that even the most senior executives struggle with these issues, and in this environment, it’s okay for people to bring up these experiences. It’s so important to keep making sure that people feel OK to talk.”
Jason Thompson of Western Governors University: “Pay at the Top of the Band”
Jason Thompson has worked in the diversity field for most of his career. He brings more than 20 years of experience to his current role as the Vice President for DE&I at Western Governors University (WGU). He is also the developer of the initial DEI program for the United States Olympic Committee, which led the USOC to become the first large sports organization in the US to release their diversity data.
“There’s so many things we can do individually to change the world,” Jason said. “For example, whenever you make a hire, most companies give you a window — this is the ‘pay band’ in which you can pay that person. Immediately pay women at the top of that pay band, because we know women are paid less. If we did that, it would immediately level out the pay gap. And it’s the right thing to do: we know women only apply for jobs when they’re 100% qualified for every single piece of the job, and this is a very simple and practical thing we can do. Pay at the top of the band.”
Jason is also adamant about finding ways to measure the impact of DEI problems and interventions.
“Most people don’t know what data to collect,” said Jason. “But there are ways to measure these things. You need to know who’s being promoted, where they’re being promoted, and who’s being terminated. And whenever we have new learnings, we have to create a tool to help us measure that.
For instance, we know that in the VC space, women get different questions. Women get questions about risk, while men get questions about opportunity — and VCs invest in opportunity. But because it’s unconscious, you don’t know you’re doing it, and if you don’t know you’re doing it, you’re not going to change your behavior. That’s why data is so important.”
Glenn Block of Microsoft: “You Need Policy and Accountability”
Glenn Block is a product leader at Microsoft, where his team is responsible for Microsoft Graph and several services in M365. He’s passionate about creating a more inclusive and safe environment in tech, especially by building better accountability structures for managers.
“I’ve been in the tech industry my whole career,” said Glenn. “When I joined Microsoft back in 2006, in the tech industry, there was almost a mini Me Too movement that happened before the bigger Me Too movement. I started to see a lot of women starting to come out and talk about what their experiences were like in technology: going to job interviews and immediately feeling discounted because they were women, sexual harassment that was happening across the board, and so on. And I started to soak it in. Around that time, we had an internship program, and I had an intern who was a woman of color, who started to share her stories with me. Stories are so important. That really struck something in me — and at that point, I really started to pay attention to the specific challenges, not only of women, but of women of color, and I started finding ways to use my privilege to help them.”
To solve these problems, Glenn offers practical and down-to-earth advice: “There needs to be policy. If there’s not policy in place, behaviors are not going to change. Training is not just a certificate that you get and then you’re done; training is also about changing hearts and minds. And it’s great when people change their hearts and minds and start looking at people in a new way, but for the person being harmed, what matters is that the harm stops — and without policy in place, that’s not going to happen.”
I hope these stories and ideas inspired you! If you’re doing this important work and you want to partner in some way, get in touch any time via ha@spero.vc.
