Thank you very much uh for joining me today to talk about how we can embed ethics and inclusion in workplaces, products and services. My name is Patricia Gso.I'm head of uh uh customer support and customer o operations for a large engineering and uh in a scientific software company. And since 2015 Apo had several initiatives to uh for uh further diversity and inclusion in tech that were recognized last year with the Women in Tech Changes Award. So, one of my uh proudest moment when was when I launched my uh my personal website about galvanizing diversity and inclusion through technology. I was so proud of it. It had taken me a lot of effort and courage to be out. But what it was less extreme is that six months later, I met somebody specialized in accessibility. And she actually, after looking at my website, asked me, have you thought about accessibility? And I was like access ward. So she point me to this blog in which the author who is blind uh mentions how we actually build so many barriers to uh people that use screen readers and making our web websites unaccessible.

And it's actually she showcased very uh uh 10 very easy ways to make them accessible. So as you can imagine, I was like, in shock, I was like the diversity and inclusion champion in one side. And on the other side, you know, I was having a very exclusive uh website. So that has pro me to actually ask other people, you know, how you feel rejected often by products and services that you cannot access them and actually consistently, a lot more than half people of the population often feel um under uh that there are barriers to them. Uh getting a product or services and among them, I find myself as you will see. So what happened here? I was a bad person. Are those people bad pers people? Actually, the, the, the we have that false belief, that intent is equal to impact. So if we uh uh we um uh we uh we, we believe we are good people. We assume that our impact is positive. The other one that comes often as a false belief is that we don't have expertise again. When I ask this question, people tell me, ah actually Patricia uh I don't have expertise. You know, I I'm not a designer.

I, I'm not an accessible expert and I do challenge that because I'm sure in the last week, you know, most of you have created um a zoom meeting with people maybe in, in different regions. And you have managed to convey different information. So everybody's needs were covered or you have created a great experience for a dinner at your home, taking into account who is allergic to what all that is actually expertise, crafting inclusive experiences. Another one that I come across often is that people say uh says or mostly believe that the composition of the workforce of a business is has is not related with the output with the product or service they create. And I love this example. This is a real example of a E travel company that was very successful selling to millennial and gen seed but really struggle with the market of older people. And they didn't know why they were like, why, why is, you know, we keep CRE creating different packages and they just don't have until having really a deep conversation with their A H A hr partners. They look at the composition of their webs, uh web of their force, what force and what they saw very clearly is that the workforce was composed of only ma and Gen Z stuff.

So then they really embarked into a hiring that was targeting other generations like gen eggs and baby boomers. And guess what magically after that, their offering became more of uh was also able to appeal to other generations. So there is a correlation between workforce and um uh the output we produce. And the other uh very common belief is our narrow impact and I'll be very honest with you. When I discovered about the lack of access of my website, the first thing was to think, wow, this is gonna take care at the end who is gonna notice. But actually, we do have more impact around us that we believe. And I love this example of the alchemist, which is uh a a bar. They uh years ago, they were really struggling by the high uh turnover they had of their staff. Uh They uh and when they look at their stuff, they were mainly gen said staff that were work was uh that were working uh per hour. So they could see that with that turnover, it was impossible for them to actually scale as they wanted. So they really engage with them in co creating uh uh uh uh how they work.

And what they realize is that there is stuff even if they were working for uh uh for the hour, they still were hoping to get training to look at how the uh that could uh that could help into their future career. And what was more important is of course, by uh implementing uh uh uh those ask they were able to retain it. But because they engage with them and gen seed are typically uh very driven by uh everything that is sustainable. Uh They also took into account uh suggest their suggestions about how to on electricity and water. So by uh so they became very, very sustainable as a business. So again, they, at the beginning, they were only thinking about retaining more of this stuff, but actually they got in a much better business. So all that can be summarized as we now have a conception of businesses that is very narrow. We have a business, we have developers in aside customers in the other and then the investors that bring money and we just make, we need to make them fit. And that's all actually, what I hope I demonstrated is that if we look at businesses as contributing to different stakeholders, we are able to capture new markets and serve more people and how other, what other stakeholders we can talk uh look at, we can look at government, we can look at communities, we can look at the planet and, and also we don't need to separate developers or creators if you want and uh from users, you can actually uh you know, they can work to get the solutions and you can also add your suppliers.

And even in some, in some cases, you can engage to e even those in the market that are looking to have uh to uh to be competitors. So by now you are telling me, OK, that is started with a website and now we are looking at the planet, this is so huge Patricia, there is no way we can tackle it. I can tell you I have uh as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm I'm head as well of uh customer operations that I've successfully delivered in huge uh projects of acquisition integrations. And how, how that works is by looking at it systematically, you won't achieve it in a day, but we can achieve a lot compounding day by day. And here I want to briefly summarize how we can actually adopt a systematic view when we develop to develop inclusive and ethical products and services. And there are a word for that consisted that I found very useful. And this is to first look at who is impacted by the experience you are created, then look how inclusive it is. And then finally, how ethical and let's see an example. So who is impacted? We usually all the manuals about product development.

Tell us just look at your users, the users are the only important thing. So let's take an example of creating a product for women undergoing the menopause. When we talk about menopause, we think, oh yeah, woman 45 to 5055. And that's it. Actually, if we allow ourselves to dig deeper, what we realize is that uh 25% of uh women that undergo menopause are, are younger than uh 45 years old. Actually, they can, they can be as younger as 20 years old. And not only that we can also expand at the ecosystem of those impacted. For example, what about not only partners but about the child, the Children of those women undergoing menopause. What about the colleagues as you can see by broadening our scopes to non intended users and non users that are also impacted. It opens uh our business to underserved markets. The next is inclusion and usually it comes a little bit to thinking about web accessibility like I showed in my example. So we just focus in physical disability and there is so much more to inclusion, there is mental disability. But for example, one very dear to me is the of personal information. As more than 400 million people on earth, I have two surnames and I always struggling to get in with financial apps because how they handle security only allows for for one surname.

So I'm always locked out. Another thing is that we usually for uh uh forget is the technological requirements. When we design our solutions, we uh at at the technical solutions, we often assume that everybody has the best broadband that they have the last smartphone and that they have incredible um uh data storages. And this is very important because actually when we see to the markets in the in, in, in, in, in in in the planet that are growing, they really usually have very poor internet and data is very expensive and they don't have the last smartphones. The last but not the not the least point is to look at ethics. And I'm not only talking about silver crime here, I'm really looking at this holistically and we need to understand if our product or service is making our customers better or they are actually made worse. For example, I find myself when I've create web apps that sometimes I was asking for too much information, information that it was not required, but I was just copying somebody else that was asking for the same data. The other part is when we have this personal data, do we really take care about it? Do we have it safely in a, in a database or we have them somewhere in a spreadsheet in Google? And then also are we very clear with our uses?

What we do with their data? Are we reselling it for another purpose? So I invite you really to be critical if your service and product are not making your customer more, more vulnerable. If that you think is a mouthful and you would like a little bit more structure. You can go to my website. There is an online free uh survey that you can use and actually it walks you through all the different steps giving you examples. So don't think you need to tick all the boxes. Uh just forget the all or nothing approach. And you know, the the survey allows you to just pick one area and then make improvements and then you can go to the next. So where to apply this, this concrete example? Actually, you can apply at the aviation stage of your product service, doing the user research. Also, it is very important uh to apply it at the testing it. And of course, to the marketing, how many times we have visited uh visited websites that claim to serve to everybody. But actually, when you look at the pictures, everybody looks the same and definitively, they don't look like you. So uh take, I have three takeaways for you the first, let's forget the scarcity and drive with that one. That's, you know, we have a lot of limiting beliefs uh about business. And if we embrace um uh uh you, you know, um an abundance mindset, we can really uh have flourishing businesses that are good for everybody. Also, as I mentioned, broaden your view.

It's not only about business in uh business investors and, and, and customers embrace to be a co-creator with your ecosystem and also to uh to contribute to the planet and the communities around you. And again, this is a marathon, not a spring. So forget about all or nothing and doing everything in a day and embrace a systematic approach where you will be able to build in on your progress. I love to continue the conversation. I'm gonna look at the questions now and uh please do feel free to connect with me. Uh II I uh I very keen in engaging others in this conversation.