Um by way of introduction, I'm Samira Khan. I'm a director at Microsoft and previously was working in the Tech for Social Impact Space at Salesforce as well. So the topic of today's conversation is really around empathy and empathy in technology and the technology sector.So before we get started, I wanted to share that I'll spend about 10 minutes with my initial remarks and then would really love to invite questions in, I'm new to the platform. So let's see if I'll be able to see the questions and hopefully that'll generate some dialogue in the spirit of, of empathy and listening. So as I mentioned, you know, the conversation is around technology and empathy and it's for a reason because if you think about the heart of technology being used for good, if you think about mitigating the negative harms of technology to culture and society, if you think about supporting a more connected world, so that we can solve problems together, you know, whether it's about advancing livelihoods or health or education, we need to clearly be able to identify what the root problem is and the root challenges at the individual level at the community level.

And that requires deliberate listening and reaching out into the community and empathy. And that's why when I talk about purpose or corporate purpose, I try to root the conversation as much as possible in listening and in empathy. Now that begins with just, you know, our day to day jobs and who we interact with on a daily basis in our work setting. And then it extends beyond that to our communities, our families and even beyond that to the broader global context. So I often hear in my work, people leap to very important causes and excluded communities. Like will women Children in conflict zones, refugees, um the bop population in the US. But they fail to note that there's an entire journey that needs to take place on the part of the individual to really open yourself up for the type of empathy and listening. It requires to move the needle and to help some of these most excluded populations because the further removed a person or a community is from you. I think the harder it becomes to understand the challenges that they are facing, the more onus is upon you to educate yourself on the challenges that they're facing and the harder it may be for you to connect.

So it really does start with the individual in our day to day lives and change practices just like we have changed practices around our health and exercise and the way we orient ourselves across family and the workplace. Very similarly, we need those tools as individuals to change the work that we're doing inwardly around empathy and listening so that we are showing up in the community in a different way, in a way that is ready, in the way that is open and in the way that can accept the feedback we're receiving and then apply it productively toward innovation in the workplace.

So I know a lot of you here are from the tech sector. So before we go too far down the path of empathy and purpose, I just wanted to share with you from my experience why I found empathy to be so important and instrumental to the technology sector today as well as where we want to go tomorrow in terms of the intersection of tech and society.

So if we look at the pandemic, we are coming out of a crisis situation these days, we are also facing a crisis around climate change, climate action, humanitarian crises. And we are at the brink of a global economic sort of crisis or recession possibly as well. So employees have been instrumental to really keeping businesses afloat to make, to make sure that the tech sector is running and able to deliver on the needs of society, but also in other sectors as well. So technology companies have really had to think about how can they drive employee purpose while also trying to make sure they have the programs and guard rails in place to ensure employee well being employee health. So it's a conversation, not just about recruiting, retaining talent and productivity, it's a conversation about holistic well being and looking at the employee from the perspective of their personal and professional lives and any overlap there. So I think companies especially in the tech sector are truly thinking about how to empower the individual. They're thinking about integrated work life balance, flexibility, upward mobility. For some populations who feel like their voices are not heard in the workplace enough, how can you drive inclusion to really elevate collaboration and elevate innovation all very sort of easy things to talk about conceptually but hard things to put in place in practice.

And that's where some of the norms and tools become important, whether it be executive listening tours or anonymous tools and forums that exist to engage in person or over technology, to share narratives and insights. And then that human component I spoke about that discusses corporate culture and just changing individual behavior so that you're taking the time and you're pausing to engage more with your team, you're having the time to have more personal high touch conversations and you're building it into your sort of work life.

So that that space is carved out and it's sacred. So it's really about moving the needle around creating a workplace that honors each individual for the unique strengths that they're bringing to the table that views challenges not as impediments, but as shared problems that we are trying to solve together to really allow people to be more vulnerable and to create a workplace that is non punitive, nonjudgmental, that is truly proactive in terms of listening.

So I think there's a huge role for the tech sector to play both as an example and in terms of enablement with tools and practices throughout the organization, to truly create a listening function that is oriented toward employees. And that's certainly a part of the empathy conversation.

But there's also a broader conversation which is in the space that I work in on how to use technology for good and how to ensure that the right guard rails are in place. So that technology is being designed in an inclusive way so that it is being designed with the security and the foundational building blocks that allow it to be a trustworthy platform. And I think that really requires technology companies to think about not only their ethical tech principles and their social good agenda, but to really get into communities and understand where the root causes are of some of these problems around breakdown of trust, around climate change, around humanitarian issues and to commit themselves to developing solutions that address those root causes.

I think that type of learning, that type of agenda setting needs to be made transparent with partners and with start ups and with external think tanks and academics alike so that we're co creating our future. I think previously, if you look at businesses, they were oriented toward keeping some of their intellectual property for good reason for market driven reasons to themselves and keeping some of their journey to themselves. But it is very clear that all of these solutions to some of the hardest to reach communities will not come ho come about through in house efforts only they have to be collaborative. Because in order to understand the systems change problems, you have to be getting out into the marketplace and the solutions don't only lie with the big companies, but in many cases, the solutions lie with start ups who are at the cutting edge, who understand those communities, they lie with academics who have spent years thinking about these challenges and problems.

So I think technology companies have to play almost a backbone role in bringing the right players together to the table to have these conversations around driving purpose and empathy through the tools and the culture they're building together. And if you look at the makeup of the tech sector, it is often not reflective of the population they are trying to serve. So the onus is upon them to also be more inclusive from that perspective. So that's another piece of it just creating or solutions around positive impact and purpose. And then the final piece I wanted to address is more about sort of philanthropic investment and impact investment and programs that that span the value chain that the technology sector touches.

So obviously, there are the employees and the consumers um that are key and very, very important. But also as a technology company operates, they are touching many other stakeholders in the community that are working with their suppliers that are working um with NGO S with whom they work to implement some of these programs. The grant making strategy is very important. So the extent to which impact can be taken into consideration in some of these decisions, the better. So there truly needs to be a shared framework that is trying to support a culture around empathy and listening and then social innovation at large that is directed towards smarter impact investments that are really looking at the outcomes, smarter sort of philanthropic investments and then ensuring that you're taking care of not just your employees and your consumers, but your entire value chain as technology becomes critical and almost a human right for communities across the globe and an equalizer.

Because if you don't have, you know, access to certain technologies in the future, you will be shut out of education, health care services, et cetera. So there's that global conversation around global equity and technology that needs to take place as well. And you know, we'd be remiss if we didn't address the sort of most important or very important piece of it around CEO S and executives. So in many cases, in technology companies, CEO S are really setting the tone around corporate culture and where investments are made for social impact and where the guardrails are being set. Because legislation takes so long to come about the A ceo's approach, a ceo's approach to listening to employees yet keeping, you know, a certain sort of distance, but being close enough to understand employee problems. A CEO S ability to really engage with the market and not just engage with C suite executives across industries, but to truly engage with consumers across certain lines and excluded groups is so important. So I think if we look at the CEO or leader of the future, we're going to be looking for a different type of a leader that conscious, that is empathetic, that embodies kindness and that truly embodies sort of the heart and soul of empathy.

And that leads with both the heart and mind. And I think aspiring to have those kind of leaders at the helm of tech, which is one of the most important industries going into the future is going to be critical in fu in the future. So I definitely want to unpackage the leadership tone and the leadership conversation bit and I will say what I have seen to address the leadership piece is leaders becoming more conscious of their own personal purpose, the impact they would like to make toward their families, to their communities.

And that type of cause alignment, whether it be around homelessness or hunger or education is really driving some real time commitments and some real innovation as they're organizing employees and stakeholders in their community around those causes and making both personal as well as corporate investments.

So, you know, I'm going to sort of try to wrap this conversation by saying, you know, for me, empathy is really about trying to ignite in somebody sort of their true motivation and helping them better connect to their purpose and helping them better connect to what is important to them.

It is a conversation and an exercise of the heart and the mind. It is a daily practice and it involves being able to see your personal and professional life in an integrated way and to truly understand those around you from not only the perspective of their career vision, but also from the perspective of the personal factors that drive them, whether it be their family or something that they've experienced in their childhood or something that really drives them going into the future where they would like to spend the next 5 to 10 years of their lives.

And that type of learning about another individual comes through intimacy and intimate forms and interactions, the kind that we see in our personal life that need to be there professionally and institutionalized, whether it's going out into nature or having those one on one conversations.

And ironically, although tech has created this separation or this divide or is making us more digital at the same rate, the number of ways and number of people we can connect with has increased. So that really drives home this need and this conversation that needs to take place in the tech sector in partnership with other stakeholders to create an empathy driven ecosystem that is around space from technology around cultural change to really allow people to have those in person intimate interactions that then enable them to see others differently, that limit and kind of put boundaries around this other of communities far away.

And that gets us out of some of the tribes that have been created through digital technology and socio-economic differences. So I really think that, you know, if we look at the challenges of the future, it'll be two fold, you know, individuals such as you and I thinking about how we can work cultural change and empathy into our daily lives. What are the small things we can do to talk to somebody who sits on the other side of a polarizing conversation who sits in maybe a part of the country we haven't visited. How can we engage in forums that may make us feel a little bit un comfortable? And I think that onus and that inward journey and that proactive outreach lies with us. And then the onus is upon the tech sector to really enable some of those conversations to drive social innovation. And that's really where I wanted to leave the discussion today and to see if there's any sort of, with the minute we have left any sort of questions that have come up um from others. So I'm going to quickly check that otherwise just wanted to wrap. And if you'd like to reach out to me, you know, you can certainly email me at samira.com at gmail or connect with me on linkedin and would love to core some solutions at the intersection of empathy and tech um in the interest of well being.

So always open to that conversation. So I've taken a real quick look and I only see one comment in the chat which is to connect and there's nothing else in there so would like to leave it at that. And thank you so much for joining today.