Le let's get started. I'd like to introduce, hi, everyone who joined the session. I'd like to introduce uh our amazing speakers. They are accomplished women, successful women. And let's start with Alexandria Butler. She's also known as Lexi B. Alexander and Noel Butler.Affectionately known as Lex CB, is considered one of the Silicon Valley canon and most prominent voices. Her thought provoking advice and opinion on how to create a more equitable work and environment stem from her own experiences working in some of the most popular tech companies in April 2017, Lex CB, founded Sister Circle black women and tech, a community that supports black women and tech companies and related professions. 

Lexi's main mission is to inspire people to create their desired journey by understanding the purpose and life goals. In her own words, people deserve to live the life of dedicator to their strengths and passions and some facts about Lexi since she, she doesn't like chocolate. 

Her favorite cookie is chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips. Ros is simple, make a chocolate chip cookie dough. And right before you add your chocolate chip, set aside some dough for Lexi. It is the best butter cookie ever. I love that. So great, so great. Awesome. Our next Panelist is Diane Kenya Diane actually pays it forward by career coaching individuals in transition, mentoring, participating in the Austin technology and nonprofit communities. Diane is a manager director in project services at Charles Schwab, where she's also strengthened, strength and uh strength coach, advisor to employee resource group chair of the Public Affairs Committee and sponsors several nonprofit relationships and volunteer events for Schwab. 

I actually want to take this moment to thank Schwab, Charles Schwab for supporting Mi Mantech Network conferences. I really, I'm, I'm really grateful for this opportunity. Fun fact about Diane with COVID-19 and shelter in place. She misses her commute time activities, normally 10 to 15 hours per week. 

She normally talks to her friends and family, listens to her favorite podcast, holds career coaching calls and listens to her to, to books. She doesn't miss traffic though. And I do understand because I don't miss the traffic either. Hi, Diane, we can't see you but can we hear you? Can you say hi? Oh, 

absolutely. Um 

OK. Thank you. Um Ana, we're excited to be here. Schwab is so blessed to be able to participate and see um have such um breadth of exposure with your conference today and all the women and the technology professionals. Why we're an investment company over almost our it department, our technology, our technologist is almost 9000 people. So we're excited to participate and hope to uh feel 

some more people should know about that. We are glad to have you. Thanks for your support. Meet Lauren Nura mckenzie co-founder, a Stanford. We and we women's leadership innovation lab le lead strategies, diversity, equity and inclusion at Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Laurie brings 20 years of marketing strategy and business management experience at companies INC including Procter and Gamble, Apple, ebay and Pal Pay. She's a board member of the Alliance for Girls and Water. Mike and an advisor to the Women's Start Up lab. Fun fact about Laurie, her two COVID office mates are Hares dogs, one named Poo after the Miyazaki film and one named Pippin after the Hobbit. Where are they? 

They are living in their own office? Oh, 

wow. Look at dogs that have their own office. That's cool. That's cool. Awesome 

bedroom. 

I see they occupied your bedroom not to prevent you from, from the panel. Ok. Awesome. Welcome, Laurie. Very excited to have you with us. Thank you and meet Siri Shila. Sir. Life's work is to advance gender equality in the workplace through research and research translation. 

As a scholar, Siri studies, what works to the level playing in the field and close gender gaps in organization as an advisor and speaker. She brings research insights to prac practitioners and organization ranging from start ups to multinational corporations through speaking training and workshop. 

Fun fact about Laurie in addition to being a full time gender researcher. She's also a fitness instructor. She's been in the fitness industry for 14 years and teaches various formats from Pilates to cardio yoga to step aerobics and high intensity interval training. Wow, that's awesome. Uh OK. 

Next time we do a conference, I should invite you to do some workout in the morning for us or something like that. What do you think 

I can be on the agenda of every conference 

anywhere? Wow, that's awesome. I love that. That was very surprising for me to discover. So, thank you a lot, ladies. I'm super excited. You come from so many different diverse backgrounds and your experience is impressive. And I want to start our conversation with a question that is how did your life change during the COVID-19? Who want to be the first to answer this question? Maybe sir, you want to start? Sure, I'll 

go first. Um The good news that I spend a lot of time, more time at home with my wonderful husband. Um And also the other good thing about COVID for me has been that I've gotten a had a lot more time to spend on research and writing. Uh since there's no distractions in, in the form of fewer meetings and less 

trouble. 

Right? Awesome. Thank you, Dan. 

I think my life and my thoughts are much calmer now um with no traffic and a lot of filtering of the news and a lot more time outside. So hashtag common. Well, 

also I love that Lexie. 

I think my life has been very crazy. So, um another fun fact of mine is that I actually started. I'm currently at Twitter as the senior program manager for privacy in the legal um department. And my first day of Twitter was actually my last day in the office because it was the day that our CEO decided to close the office down because of COVID. So my life has been very interesting cause I've had to on board a whole new job in the middle of COVID. And that's been a very intriguing winding experience that we can definitely take offline in all those details. Um So there's that and there's also family, I think that um COVID gives you time to reflect on what's important in your life. A lot of people have suffered from COVID. A lot of people have died. And so really making sure that I'm very connected to my family that do not live in ca and really trying to balance out the worry and the anxiety of how can I support people that I love who may be going through? Something that is not as bad as what I'm going through. I always tell tech people, we have to really look at the silver lining, the fact that I can go to work. 

IE just get, get up from my bed and I can log on to a computer and my, and my salary is not affected. My daily life is not affected. Um My benefits and insurance aren't affected. And I say all that to say that we as a tech community really need to come together and see how can we use that privilege to others? Because a lot of people who are not in this privileged position are really being affected by this pandemic. 

All right. Uh I just wanted to also to, to mention that Twitter is one also of our partners that is supporting the conference. So we're super excited to have Twitter with us along with Charles Schwab. Thanks a lot. And yeah, that's interesting what you have mentioned. And II, I do agree that to a certain extent, we are privileged to be able to work from home even though it's challenging at the same time. That's right, Laurie, are you here? We don't see you. Uh You 

don't. Uh 

No, we don't. But if you can turn on your account and that would be great. And uh yeah, maybe you can share with us. How did your life change during the COVID-19? 

You know, this is the first time in modern history where all three major institutions have been under one roof home, right? Family, school, school age, kids at home and work. And what that means for, for me is that I all my work has to consider so court managers and for my own life, you know, I'm taking care of my parents who really we're trying to get them not to go out. I have teenage kids doing zoom high school at home. And so I think the complexity of how to make life work as, as LEXI said, not just for the people in our organizations, but who used to be or are touched in our lives. And so for me, it's been a time of complexity and uh trying to expand my ability to passionate, 

right? Yeah. Compassion. We, we need it and we have to uh we, we need to, to work on that more and to become more compassionate. And COVID-19 is definitely teaching on that. So, Diane, you're an information technologist with 20 plus years of leadership experience in it who lives through not just one crisis. How is this one different? And what have you learned from your previous experience? How did it and how did it help you to respond timely to the crisis caused by COVID-19? 

So I've had a lot of um it management experience and dealt with many hurricanes and that type of natural crisis um that target a geographic region and um and then they die out over very quickly over time in comparison to this, right? With the pa pandemic being global and spreading, it's so much different. And I think of the, the two things that are the most different are there's a lot more unknowns. Um We, we're all still learning a lot about this and what it means. And what it means to be safe and, and, and how to best protect ourselves and our families and, and the, it's just a broader span, you know, it's not a hurricane impacting four states in the USA. Um it's across the entire world. And so it's very different from that perspective, but in many ways, it's the same and those learnings are things that, that apply. Um, when it, when something like this, a hurricane or a pandemic happens, it becomes very much in focus. Everything else is de prioritized. Um You know, when we talk about essential and non-essential, almost everything becomes non-essential when there's an emergency and we treat it like an emergency. Um And so, in addition, um to the focus that we bring, uh um we also need to increase our communication. So the decision makers are having stand ups and they're checking in three or four or five times a day and you're having this ongoing, you know, how are we doing? What should we change? Where do we pivot? What new information do we have? 

That's the same um is spread out over a much longer period of time and then more importantly for our customers and for our employees is um the increased communication and anytime there's a disaster, a hurricane, a pandemic, a major change that's affecting a broad set of people, you know, communicating to them and keeping them in full, even if it's no news different from the last time you talked to him just talking to them and letting them know that, um, if you leave them in a vacuum they're um left to assume that, oh, something's changed and they're still trying to figure it out and they don't know what to do next. 

And that's typically not it. The leaders are meeting and communicating. You just need to make sure that that's rolling down um, for, for the staff, a big change for me has, you know, I've, I've dropped a lot of my task and I've made a lot of time for my people um both in group settings and in individual settings and just, you know, seeing where they are and meeting them where they are and understanding their needs and their challenges. 

And as, as some uh Laurie said, you know, three institutions under one roof. I don't have that in my house, but a lot of people do so, you know, just meeting people where they are and being present to support them and communicating with them has been critical. 

Good. Thank you, Dan Lexi. In 2018, you found an unfiltered by lexi an online platform for young professionals to help them succeed in their career by creating the lives they want and deserve. And you also run a youtube channel which is super cool. I must confirm my question is, how did COVID-19 affect young professionals? And are there challenges different from those who are senior? 

Oh my gosh. Yes, I think that um and I think that there are positives and negatives to both sides. Right? So I'm currently in mid career. Um And what I learned is that, for example, for me on boarding, while COVID was very, very difficult, but I also have to take a step back and check my privilege and recognize that because I know my job and I know how to do my job. It was much easier to on board in the midst of all the chaos. I can only imagine being 22 23 24 years old. And you're really just learning who you are as an adult. So you really don't know your job well, and that's totally OK. We've all been there and then having to deal with COVID. And so what I'm hearing from young people in the next generation is they're really looking for more support because they just don't know what's going on, right? Especially interns in new college grads. The thing that happened with COVID was that many companies froze all of their hiring, which makes sense from a business perspective when COVID hit our whole world, nobody knew what was going on. So businesses and corporations in order to protect their assets and also figure out how do we stay alive during COVID? How, how do we figure things out? 

One of the first things to do is to freeze hiring and or either decrease the intern population, stop the intern program decrease the number of opportunities for new college grads. While that does make sense from a business perspective, we also have to understand that we have a lot of undergraduates and a lot of new college graduates who are feeling very weary about their career, right? Uh People who are losing internship opportunities, people who were in the middle of internship interviews, and then things just suddenly stopped. And I think people who are over the new college grad hump, not only have to understand that but how can we mobilize to number one see where we can get them in if we can get them in. But number two continue to compassionately and candidly love on them and, and give it and find them very interesting ways or give them interesting advice on how they will still be. Ok. In 2008, the United States had a huge economic bomb and people still found jobs. And so when you talk to the 2008 new college grads, they always jokingly say, ok, well, I went through economic crisis, y'all are going through a health crisis. Y'all don't figure it out. Well, I'm confident that we will figure it out. 

But I think it's very important for senior leadership and people who are, you know, older than 30 to just recognize the fear and the terrifying uncertainty that these new college grads and these young people have because their whole college career, all of their internships they worked really hard and then all of a sudden the pandemic happens and the dinosaurs come back and everyone's like, so like, can't do that anymore. 

Figure it out, right. So what does that look like? How do we engage with them? How do we give them advice? How do we support them in something? Even, even though we don't even know the answer. But at the very least we have a foundation of saying, OK, I know what I have to do tomorrow to, to get my job done. And I think just having awareness and acknowledgement of that is very important. 

All right, I totally agree. I just want to say a few words to our audience. Whenever something resonates with you, please let us know in our live chat. And if you have some questions to our speakers, please just write them in the chat and I will take the most interesting ones and ask them at the end of our conversation. Let's continue. Laurie. I know on Monday you co co facilitated a campus wide conversation on inclusion and diversity. Would you like to share some something about this conversation with our audience? 

Absolutely. 

So what we did was we asked every school at our university, we asked all the key centers to send people to one conversation. We asked this question, what have been your biggest issues? And then we asked, well, what have you discovered that works well and what we have learned is, you know, as a manager, you might be in your role because you're great at finance or you might be great at technology. But today, what you need to be able to master is an ever-changing climate. One day. It's about does people's internet work at home then it's, oh, they need a chair because now their back hurts and now it's mental health issues. Right? And so how do you as a manager who might be schooled in something else, broaden your ability to take care of people and yet also manage this complex crisis. So what we heard from the managers is that at this time, more than ever, the micro moments matter and the ability to just reach out to people over and over again, we can't underemphasize it. And in terms of some of the bright spots in response to the horrible events against the black community right now, one of the bright spots is because we all have been heightened in our awareness that we have to reach out to each other, that we're not just letting this be another day. 

Another just one more part of the crisis today is actually shut down academia where across the country, units are taking time to consider how we've contributed to the state of the world and to figure out what we can do to move forward. And I I would say that the ability to form a nationwide movement in just a short amount of time is because we've had this time to do this deep reflection and be overwhelmed and yet say we can do this. So I'm I'm hopeful that we will enter the next phase with this heightened awareness and redesign the new normal. So it's more inclusive and that we can hold more space for more people in our lives. 

Interesting. Iii I want to believe that the time we took off to think can really contribute towards making a positive change in the world. Siri, what are some of the repetitive unconscious biases that you are observing in the workplace? And what like are there some that are repeating and how we can recognize them and how we can tackle them also in the in in the conversation of the current COVID-19 and uh the Black 

Movement? Yeah. Well, I'm an eternal optimist and I actually think the silver lining of COVID-19 might be that it allows us to re examine and redesign a lot of the traditional ways of working that did have a lot of unconscious bias embedded into them and that never were really working for everyone in the first place. 

I love to appoint LEXI about how people are now starting to read that new employees and entry level employees and organizations need more support and need more deliberate kind of hand holding. I think they always needed that right? But when they were physically with us in the office, we didn't have to be so thoughtful and deliberate about actually helping them to learn the work and manage the organization because we just thought that would happen automatically since they were there, they were in the office and they were just kind of absorbing it. 

And now we realize that we have to be much more thoughtful and deliberate about old group processes, whether it's hiring and onboarding or whether it's how we evaluate people's performance and how we evaluate people for promotions and how we take into account the different circumstances that they come from, you know, someone's ability to work now who is alone at home or with another adult is very different than someone who has kids at home. 

And they're managing virtual homeschooling and all that stuff. And we need to decide and figure out how that gets factored into things like performance evaluations and promotions. So I actually think that this can be a very good moment as we redefine these processes and work practices to eliminate some of the unconscious biases that have been embedded into them thus far. And I also think that the increase in remote working and just flexibility for people in where and when they do their work is overall a really positive trend, 

right? I I also want to believe so. Thanks a lot, Siri then um I know that Char Schwab is a good example of helping people start their career and thrive at work. I've encountered many inspiring stories when women without prior experience were taught from scratch and uh started and became actually a driving force of the company that was super inspiring. So what are some of the main objectives when it comes to hiring people from diverse backgrounds and how companies actually win when have, when having people from diverse background and um especially supporting them during, during the crisis of COVID-19. Uh and, and, and not cutting them off, of course, if they can afford that financially. 

So that's a loaded question with a lot of parts that um I wanna start first with, with, with Chuck Chuck Schwab is our founder and, you know, he built this company um trying to reach um individuals that weren't able to invest um because there weren't discount brokerages available. 

And so he's always had a focus to um expand what we offer to everyone and everyone equally. And I think as we look at our, how we grew up and, you know, in the eighties in San Francisco when the, the gay movement started, Schwab embraced the um the homosexual folks and we employ a lot of them and we've continued that over our, our history to just really um look for people um that are different, um diversity of thought brings so much value. 

You know, we wanna, we want our company to mirror um what our customers look like and we want our customers to include everyone. And so we look for a wide range of candidates. Um we're always looking for the, the best candidate as a manager. You know, we're, we're encouraged to hire the best person, but we want someone that complements our team, not someone that mirrors our team. And so we're looking for people that have different skills and different views and different thoughts that, that strengthen us because we know we'll be a stronger and a better company. Um As we, um, look at what Schwab's done, we've invested heavily in diversity and inclusion over time. 

Um We recently restructured and hired a VP that's focused on that area. We have 13 different employee resource groups um that allow us to be um to, to create collections of people that, that may not be on the same team. But um that may be more like me or more like one of my employees. And so, you know, a as I look at my team of 24 people, I think I have two African Americans. However, I want them to have more African American friends or connections in the company than what's on my team. And so we have a black professionals group and they have an opportunity to get involved there if that's not their interest and they want to be in the women's networking group, they can join that or the pride group or the um parents and uh boys and parents of people with disabilities. 

I mean, we have a, a veterans group and so we try to create connection opportunities within the company um for whatever what people are looking for. Um And we share that with our new employees, we share that on our website. Um We share that publicly because we want to attract people that are different, that don't mirror us, but that, that bring incredible strengths that complement us. Um I think as we shifted to the COVID thing, um you know, it, that doesn't change. Um We're still looking for very diverse candidates. We have not changed our, our stance yet that we're really a brick and mortar kind of employer. And so we're not looking for telecommuters from all over. We're still looking for people that work in our locations. Um And so, um I think with the volume of layoffs and furloughs that have happened, we've got much stronger candidate pools to choose from, which gives us more diversity as 

well. Well, thanks a lot then love. That's what you're doing at church. Well, lexi in your current role as a senior program manager at Twitter, how do you support women in tech and underrepresented groups? And how do you help ensure that everyone is treated equally? 

So I wanna actually take a step back and not necessarily talk about Twitter, but just talk about New York and Freedom fight like it's just, just in my career, I always tell people I was born a black woman, I'm gonna die a black woman. So that's one subject matter of expertise that regardless of where I work. That that's what it is, right? And what I always tell companies is that I'm personally really tired of this narrative of diversity and inclusion. It's cute that you have um business, business resource groups or employee resource groups. I'm looking for retention. An employee resource group is fantastic as a black woman, I definitely need a safe space. But a few thoughts to that one, the women employee resource groups seem to be very intersectional and throughout the history, especially of this country, feminism has been white women centric, white straight women centric. And until women come together and really identify that and say that the word woman is an intersectional word then to be very transparent with you. A lot of these employee resource groups and the women's groups are gonna be white straight women centric two. I think it's important that while we have employee resource groups that there are, there is actually funding for people to fuel these groups and to create, to make these groups as fantastic as they can be. 

Right now, we have many people at multiple companies, tech and non tech that are leading these organizations with a charge. But it's actually taking a toll on other parts of their life because this basically is a day job. So what happens when an organization actually puts in place program management positions or whatever title you'd like to call it under the DN I wing and say this is your responsibility, taking it away from a volunteer transaction, but actually putting money towards it and saying this is so important we're gonna hire someone to, to facilitate this work for our community. 

And then pretty high level, I think it's very important to talk about retention, right? I always tell people I am a black woman who happens to work in the tech industry and I've worked at some of the most promising tech industries that we've seen in the past 12 years. And I'm always looking at who is in leadership. Do I have an opportunity to be promoted? I really do think that now in 2020 there is definitely systemic overt racism. I am from Saint Louis Missouri. I remember when I was in second grade and a kid came to school in a clan outfit like that is very overt racism. I currently live in California and while I haven't seen a KKK outfit walking down the street in the San Francisco Bay area, I am a victim of micro, aggressive racism and micro aggressive, anti feminism. And so the real question is, is what is mid-level management doing to retain diversity, talent to, to retain people of color, to retain queer people because people do not leave jobs, they leave managers and until middle management especially really understands that and they are sponsoring and promoting and uplifting this amazing talent that they already have. 

Then you hiring more people that look like me or more people of another employee resource group is really not gonna do anything because now we still have a caste system, right? So if everyone who looks like me or looks of a marginalized group is at the bottom, then we still have a cast system and that's still actually not. Ok. So we can applaud you and give you a pat on the back for now hiring diverse talent. But I'm also not gonna applaud you and give you a trophy for not retaining them and treating them the way they should be treated because they are human and because they have the talent to run the world. And so I think that when you look at Black Lives Matter and you look at what's going out in the, going all over the world right now. This is the first time in the world's history that every single state in this country has come together and protested on something so profound. And the first time in the world's history where multiple countries have also said yes. And to me, it's bigger than Black lives. It is people coming together and saying whether they are black, whether they are marching for black people, which I completely support and love or whether they're marching for themselves in their own equality. They're saying that this is not OK. The microaggression behavior is not OK. 

And companies standing by a stance of diversity and inclusion without looking at the retention without saying we do not have people in the c we, we do not have those board members. Why is it every single marginalized person gets a month to celebrate them? But every other month, we don't want to talk about how I'm marginalized. That's an issue. And that's what I really hope. If anything that all of this marching and all of this call to action that my community has started and has led brings to the table professionally. 

Wow, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Lexi III, I really felt what you're feeling and our audience also reacted to that many people agreed on so many points that you mentioned. And I, I think it's, it's, it's, it's so fundamental and we need to change and work a lot to towards, towards saying that this company is diverse and inclusive enough. And I know Laura that you're working with managers to help them become effective leaders. Maybe there is something that you'd like to share that and comment on what Lexi shared and how we can actually help them because she also mentioned that we do employees don't leave companies, they leave managers, right? Because we work with people first of all, company, right? 

But then it's like this free people factor, right? That we treat each other. Do we treat each other equal? How we can, you know, maybe recognize that unconscious biases that sir, we talked earlier with you and maybe Laura, you want to share something more on that 

one. Yeah, I, I loved everything you said, Lexi. And I think if that was said more often that this world wouldn't look the way it is right now. And here's the thing about managers, people have a misperception. They think tensions translate into equity. They think that if I come to a meeting really being open that I don't have to do additional work to see who got left out. So when I speak with managers, what I try to help them see is that it's a myth of meritocracy that we're blind to who's not in the room. And once managers start to have a little bit of what I call a a lens or diversity inclusion lens and they start to be e who's missing whose comment got overlooked, who got criticized for being aggressive when they behaved exactly like the person over there. And that person was told that they're, that they have executive presence when managers can start to question the fact that their good intentions will not deliver on equity. That's when we can start to go to work. And there are two ways I often help them to block the microaggressions that lexi talked about called Teflon, which is someone says a comment. Wow, she's really aggressive. You don't address. Why are you saying that? You just say, oh, what has you say that? 

Because I think she's speaking in a powerful way and not pressing the bias and deflecting it the second response is act to address it. You know, in our organization, we agree not to about people's personalities, you talk about their business skills, we know when we talk about personality that bias puts into it. So when I work with managers, I first debunk the myth that good intentions translate into equity. 

And then I talk about the different ways to act when by this deflecting and catching and preventing bias from seeping into our decision making. And the second one is to go straight to the way we make decisions and radically change them so that we're no longer relying on things like first impressions or gut reactions. But we're using criteria thoughtfully to make decisions because as you said, Lexi, we are not doing enough work in our organizations to make sure that we're delivering on, on our good intentions. And I hope out of COVID that we will start to see that we can't ignore the way society is and hope that it gets better. We have to take action and that's my biggest hope out of what we're going through right now. 

Right? Thanks Laurie, sir. Is there something you'd like to add on to the discussion? And how do you think we can make the situation better? Yeah. 

Current circumstances. These have been amazing points and I'll kind of pick up on what all three of you have been saying there was a question in the chat a couple of moments ago. About how do we advance diversity? And it's a really big question because it speaks to all everything that we've just done, I'll offer one answer which is firmly rooted in the evidence as to what works. And that is using data to drive the change that we need to see. So to Lexi's point, retention, hiring promotion, performance evaluation, these are all measurable things that you can actually analyze and track over time and see. Are there gender gaps? Are there gaps by ethnicity? How many black women do we have in leadership? How many Asian men do we have in leadership? These are all measurable things. Step one is to actually do the measurements and figure out where you are today. But then step two is to see the gap between today's reality and tomorrow's aspiration and where you actually know you want to be and need to be and then set goals and make those goals public. I think the US tech industry is a good example of what happens when you just release numbers without having goals attached to them because our biggest tech firms since 2014 have been releasing annual diversity reports. 

And if you take a quick look at them, you'll see that the representation of women of underrepresented ethnic, racial minorities really has moved marginally in the last six years. And what's been missing is a public commitment where companies actually stay. Here's what I'm gonna do in the next three years. Or five years, this 20% is gonna move to 30%. Now, you've created a mechanism of accountability and we don't want to fail when we set goal. Research shows we're much more likely to achieve them precisely because we don't want to fail in the eyes of others. So to organizations, I say step one is collect your data and know exactly where your gender racial gaps are. And then step two make set public goals to address them, to hold yourself accountable and to actually see some change. There's a lot of um great examples of, of places where this approach of using data as an engine for change has worked phenomenally well, 

using data as an engine for change. I love that. I think the more managers need to know that and the companies and when you have data, when you have numbers, it's very hard to prove that they are not real if they are real. So, thanks a lot for this. Very good point, sir. Uh Do you have any questions? Ok. We have a question from, from Paula Paula Hall. Can networking and outside mentors help support minorities and women in tech Diane. Would you like to change to take this question? I know you do lots of uh mentoring and support and follow mentorship. So what do you think about this? 

Absolutely. I mean, that's 11 avenue and one resource available to us. Um You know, I love the hashtag like I've got a girl and that's who, that's who we are to each other is, I've, hashtag I've got a girl, I've got somebody in my network. Um And, you know, so, you know, reaching out to me is, is an option and people often do or they refer people to me, they're like uh this person's looking for a mentor and, and I think he might be good. And so we try to help each other and connect with each other. And um you know, we only know our experience and, and our circle of influence and, and, and getting a mentor and leveraging your network and having those conversations about how do I improve how I show up? How do I, how do I change my relationship with my boss? I mean, how do I advance in my career? There's tons of opportunities to leverage um networking groups, leverage um any professional organizations, meet people there, ask them to have coffee. I um we were talking about onboarding and how hard it is and one thing we didn't touch on is the relationship building. 

So, like, you know, I've had to be very intentional about keeping my relationships um with the people in my, in my network and in my groups through COVID. And then I had to sit back and say I'm on boarded 12 new people since March 15th and, and they're new to the firm. I have to help them with their networking just within the firm and making their connections and building those relationships. And, you know, if, if you reach out and ask someone in your ne work for 30 minutes for a virtual coffee, 90% of the time they're going to say yes. Um So o Schwab's hashtag is on your tomorrow and, and I say, own your experience, own your own, your career, own your, on your coffee schedule, guys, you know, girls reach out, you know, um I ask somebody to be a mentor, know what you're looking for. Um Because reaching out to me and asking me to perfect your resume, that's not my skill. Um But if you're looking for a lot of other things I can help you and, and other women in your network can help you. If you don't ask, you're assuming the answer is no and shame on your own. Your tomorrow on your experience, reach out, ask for a mentor, get involved in a networking group. The, the great thing right now with COVID is almost all of the networking. Thanks for meeting online. 

So if you want to join my group, the women in tech technology, Austin women in technology, you can join from anywhere in the world and, and attend our meeting. So, you know, figure out where you wanna connect, get on linkedin, look at the events, look on Facebook, go to, you know, Eventbrite, uh meet up, there's a ton of places to find connections and meet new people and ask to have coffee and then a week, a month later, ask to have coffee again and pretty soon you can ask them to help you with your 

career. Can I add on to that? Yeah. 

Sure. Sure. Go ahead. I think what Diane said was brilliant and to add on to it, I also want to make it clear the definition of, am I always tell people there's a difference between an elder and a mentor and a sponsor and we need all three. OK. An elder is someone who is wiser than you may not be older than you. I use the term elder because that's deep rooted community. It is someone who's wider than your career, who you can go to and say things like my boss is getting on my nerves who you can go to and say, I don't think my pain is right? So we I'm gonna get better pay, right? You can talk about all these things because you've developed this relationship with this person. This person sees you more than just an employee. They see all these assets from you. You feel comfortable talking about all these assets in your life, right? They're like a mentor. 

Plus a mentor is someone you go to very strategically. And you say, hey, Diane, can we talk about upward mobility at Schwab? That's a mentor question. You are very specific about your intention. Remember everybody and their mom is calling Diane Diane is the bee's knees. We don't have time to have an elder conversation with every single person who contacts us. And I say that compassionately, right? And then a sponsor is someone you go to and say, hey, so I really wanna do that speaking engagement next week. And I know that, you know, the producer and they're like, that's a text message. No big deal, right? And so I think it's also very important as you grow your career just to know the differences is that a mentor can be someone that you go months for coffee. I'm currently because of COVID like knee deep in master class, which by the way, I recommend everybody getting a subscription. And during Anna Wintour's Master class, she like specifically said, she said, I'm not your mom, I'm a mentor that you call every four months. And when you call me, make it a good question and this is Anna Wintour. So she was very direct, but it very I i it very much resonated with my spirit because what she was saying is, is that if there's something that you think I can directly help with, because I'm the editor in chief of Vogue, come to me. 

Don't call me once a week, don't, I'm not gonna answer right? And then what's gonna happen is is that when you call me every week, the time that you actually need me, right? So I think we need to make some like some differences and some different definitions of like elder mentor sponsor. And you need to have a collection of all of them, of all genders, of all races, of all different walks of life. But really make that distinction, do not treat your mentor as an elder unless that relationship has stepped up into elder ship, right? And just, and make it clear and the fun fact is your mentor will let you know when they become an elder cause they're gonna reach out to you, right? And that's the difference when they start reaching out to you and saying point, right? Like, oh we've now moved into a different tax bracket. This is wonderful, right? Um I just want to put that out here. 

Well, these are good points. I love that elder mentor sponsor and you need them. All right. So ladies, one final piece of advice from each of you. One sentence, Siri, oh, we don't hear you, we can't hear you. Oh OK, we hear you. OK. There we go. OK. Now we can hear you. Sorry about that. I was gonna say it's so hard to 

follow all these great comments in one sentence. I noticed in the chat there's a lot of questions about if I'm looking for a job right now or if I'm early in my career, what's your advice? Um Distilling a lot of the things that have already been said is you are in the driver's seat of your own career. Ask, 

you shall receive. If you don't ask, you will 

not. So reach out, ask questions, ask for a promotion, ask for an opportunity to present uh in front of senior people, ask for an opportunity to take on an extra project. You have the bandwidth, you have to ask, ask, ask, ask and manage your own trajectory and you'll get there. 

Thanks a lot, sir. Then 

don't wait. So many people think COVID is a period of time and we're going back to normal. There's no going back. We're going forward, girl and we got each other and we're gonna support each other as we do this. And if you wait for your next opportunity for your next act, you're just, you're just uh sitting on your laurels, you know, you're just coasting and um this is a great opportunity to grow, leverage your extra time. Um Don't wait, do what you need to do now, figure it out. Move forward. We got this 

Glorie final piece of advice from you. 

You know, things that I think I'm really good at and things that I would say. Gosh, I've never done that before. And I think right now is the time to build tools in your tool belt to figure out what, what am I have? I not explored. I've been reading different books. I've been trying different things. Zoom is pretty low cost to try like different expressions of myself. And I, I hope I leave this period. Bolder and I hope every single person in at this conference leaves a little bolder with more expressions and more tools in your tool belt. Um We need them now because it's really complex, but it'll help you in the long term to have a lot at your fingertips. So uh be bold. 

All right. Thanks Laurie Lexi. 

Final advice is virtual coffee 101. So when I started on boarding to Twitter, because remember I joined Twitter when the apocalypse started, what I did was that about 6% after really getting to know my, my manager and my team and the expectations of me, I contacted a few people that I knew before I joined Twitter who worked at Twitter. 

And I said I need four names of people that I need to connect with and they gave me names. And then I went on our message channel and I said so and so said that I should connect with you. Let's do a coffee. And so I've actually, I've been at Twitter for 98 days. Now, my claim of fame and I've actually had over 30 virtual coffees with people because every time I talk to them, I say, like who else I meet, who's the most transformative thing that I've ever done in my career? So since COVID has completely changed our world, and this whole idea of working from home is getting more and more real every single day, if I can relay one thing to you is be, be virtual coffee consistent. The people that you meet, you have no clue who they know and who knows. You may end up talking to the CEO of the company because this random person who you talk to knows the CEO of the company and I cannot trust that to you. Um Enough. Yeah, 

this is so true. Use and leverage your network and the network of the people you know. Right. 

Exactly. Exactly. 

I love that ladies. That was super interesting and insightful, Siri Dan Lexi Laurie. Thank you very much for this interesting energizing energetic conversation. Thanks for being honest and out authentic with our audience. I think everyone just loaded so many practical advice. People are sharing very inspiring. 

Thanks a lot for tuning in for this panel. I'm wishing you all lots of help. Uh Stay curious of advice that our experts shared with you and enjoy the rest of the conference. Bye bye. 

Thank you, Ana. Thank you.