This is part 2 in a 4 part series of my thoughts on diversity in tech.
My company, Packback, works in higher education building “smart” discussion forums that improve critical thinking and support curiosity. In the EdTech space, I believe it is an ethical necessity for us to work to build a diverse and representative team, to help us better consider the needs of our diverse audience of students with a wide range of educational backgrounds and educational needs.
Education, at its best, is a pathway for unlocking human potential; for exposing students to the ideas and experiences of people far different from their own experience; for not only sharing knowledge, but the wisdom necessary to effectively navigate that knowledge and turn it into action that makes the world a better place than we found it. At its best, education should promote empathy.
However, that vision of education is oftentimes not what happens in practice. Due to socio-economic barriers, geographic barriers, “legacy” admissions, and a lack of truly inclusive practices and technology for students...the institution of education can lead to a deepening of divides as often as it leads to a crossing of chasms.
As a college-founded EdTech startup, many of our current employees learned about us and joined our team from sharing our alma mater. That means we are very attuned to the needs of students at good midwestern state schools, but we likely have blind spots for students that are getting their education in a very different way from how we attained our own.
A more diverse team is a more empathetic team; a more empathetic team is better suited to recognizing opportunities for innovation and building truly thoughtful, inclusive user experiences.
As an example, I am immensely proud that one of our past engineers helped initiate a focus on web content accessibility within our engineering team during her two years at Packback. We have invested the last 8 months in improving our platform’s user experience for students using assistive technologies. Without having hired someone who researched and gained insight and empathy into the needs of students with disabilities, we might not have recognized this opportunity to deliver a better learning experience for ALL of our students until much later.
Most people’s networks are full of people with a relatively similar background to their own, and we were (and are) no exception. And most companies hire people that they know directly or through referrals. If we don’t make an effort to expand our network, it would make sense that many of the people at Packback would continue to share a similar background to our own.
To change that takes effort. And our team at Packback still has a long way to go.
To reflect on this, I will be publishing a 2017 Packback Diversity and Inclusion Retrospective this month as part 4 of this series.
Industries where Diversity Can Be Life or Death
Diversity is a competitive advantage in all industries. However, for those of us working in industries on which people rely for their safety, health, or future well-being, it is an ethical necessity.
In addition to education, I believe that healthcare and medical research, finance, insurance, and policy-making top the list of industries where diverse representation at the decision-making level is critical.
One does not have to dig too deeply to uncover examples where lack of representation in medical studies, research, and care affect our understanding of diseases and the way we treat them.
Brigham and Women's Hospital released a report on the need for sex-specific healthcare and research. In it, they delve into how the causes, symptoms, and treatments for common diseases differ based on gender, age, and race.
As an example, " We now know that cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of women in the United States, affects women and men differently at every level, including prevalence, underlying physiology, risk factors, presenting symptoms, and outcomes. Racial and ethnic disparities also exist, with black women more likely than their white peers to experience the disease and to die from it. Yet only one-third of cardiovascular clinical trial subjects are female and fewer than one-third (31 percent) of cardiovascular clinical trials that include women report outcomes by sex." (From Sex-Specific Medical Research Why Women’s Health Can’t Wait)
It is no overdramatization to say that diversity and representation in critical industries like healthcare can be a matter of life and death.
Read Part 3: Prioritizing Diversity Doesn’t Just Apply When Companies Are Hiring
