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230: Using Tech + Policy For Good with Corey Ponder

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230: Using Tech + Policy For Good with Corey Ponder

Details

01:55 - Corey’s Superpower: Empathy




  • Finding Voice: You Are Not a Statistic

  • What does it mean to support Black lives?

  • Authentic Self

  • Having Conversations Around Allyship

  • Owning Vulnerability



09:06 - Having People Hear Your Stories




  • “How are you doing?”

  • “Me Too” Movement – learned something about self and blind spots in the process and the feedback was helpful



13:01 - Allyship Best Practices





19:04 - Developing Empathy





36:03 - Using Tech + Policy For Good





Reflections:



Arty: Centering around empowerment + asking, “How ARE you?” with the intention of listening.



Chanté: We can’t outsource empathy.



Corey: How the model of technology has shifted away from interest-based to follower-based and influencing.



This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep of DevReps, LLC. To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode



To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps. You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well.



Transcript:



ARTY: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode 230 of Greater Than Code. I am Artemis Starr and I'm here with my fabulous co-host, Chanté Thurmond.



CHANTÉ: Hey, everyone and I had the great pleasure of introducing our guest of honor today, Corey Ponder.



Welcome, Corey.



COREY: Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here.



CHANTÉ: We're so glad to have you. If you don't mind, I'd love to read your bio so everyone knows who you are.



COREY: Sounds great.



CHANTÉ: Corey has over 10 years of work experience, he has had several roles across two industries and has also served in community organizations and nonprofits. At the core of each of these experiences is a passionate commitment to building community and developing people and programs.



Corey most recently worked at Google serving as a senior policy advisor focused on privacy, advising product teams on best practices and approaches to inspire user trust. He also owns and manages his own business, em|PACT Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations build inclusive communities by prioritizing empathy as a skillset. Corey serves on boards of InnovatorsBox, a firm focused on creativity, and Youth Speaks, a nonprofit focused on youth arts and education.



Great background. Corey, did we forget anything else?



COREY: Well, I have to just because I am a lifetime SEC, Southeastern Conference, person, that I have to shout out Vanderbilt University, where I went for undergrad and then also, because I'm in California, I have to shout out University of California, Berkeley, where I went for my Master's in public policy. So those two things I would add.



CHANTÉ: Those are great institutions for education. So good.



Let's start off with the first question that we give everyone and that is: what is your superpower and how did you acquire it?



COREY: Yes. I love this question. It gives me a chance to really nerd out. So I would say the first thing that comes up for me is empathy. When I think about empathy, I think about how superheroes, oftentimes exhibit qualities around being empathetic that we might look at as healing abilities, or the ability to regenerate themselves, or regenerate others, the stamina, or the fortitude, last, or survive in a space where there's a lot of things attacking them mentally and emotionally and able to persevere in spite of all of that.



So I would say empathy is definitely the superpower that I have. I think when I step into spaces, I'm always thinking about what can I do to make other people feel more welcome, or feel more authentically themselves, which I feel like is the healing part. I feel like the regeneration piece is often me putting myself into positions where I don't like conflict, or seek it out, but I definitely feel like I put myself into spaces where I'm like, I want to support you and it might come at some risk to me, but I think I can bounce back from this. And then the stamina piece. I mean, none of this work, showing up for others even is not just a one-time thing and so, the consistency piece, I think, is something that I've really over time become more comfortable with just knowing that things might be protracted. People might need you for long periods of time and I'm here for it.



CHANTÉ: So you said a few things here that really, I think, demonstrate the skillset for somebody who is in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space and I will bet that you probably didn't see that 10 years ago, or whenever you started down this journey.



So if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to know how you got to this space now and I'll also add in, before you answer that question, that a lot of folks, BIPOC folks like us, we know what it's like to be othered. We know what it's like to be excluded. So I know for myself, I'm in the DEI space, but I'm just really curious. I did peek at your background, but just for folks who haven't or who don't have those quick fingers right now, they just want to hear your background, walk us through how you got here.



COREY: Yeah, absolutely. So there are two inflection points. The first is I am a Black man so there are moments that I think about as a part of my growth as a Black boy and feeling like I had to grow up very fast to be taken seriously in whatever space that I was interested in to see the world from a perspective of hey, you really have to make sure that you're showing up and representing the person that you want to be because people will quickly ascribe something to you.



This was a conversation that was permeating all around me so that when I got to college, there was an inflection point. The first one where I remember I was like, “I want to be a biologist and I might also go to medical school.” When I took lab for the first time, it was a moment where I realized like, oh man, despite all of the things that I have done, all of the things that are within my control, I studied hard. I was getting great grades.



I was just woefully unprepared for that space of even just being in a lab and doing a titration. I was like, “What the heck is a titration? What is an Erlenmeyer flask?” I realized that in a lot of ways it was because I didn't have access to the resources, or the conversations, or nobody had even told me that I could do those things. I wasn't seen as somebody that could do those things and so it's like, I didn't know what I didn't know and I think that I really started doubting in many ways from that moment who I could be, what I felt like I needed to thrive in the spaces, what I felt like I was capable of in these spaces.



It took me throughout college—great relationships and friendships, but also investment and resources around me to really find that voice that said, “Hey, actually, here's your story,” You're not this other narrative, this person that can't do it and you're not a statistic in a sense of a Black man that is x as opposed to a successful Black man. That was the first inflection point for me.



Then I think the second was just having been at this point, maybe like 6, or 7 years working. I was at a moment at Facebook actually, where there was an increased conversation around what does it mean to support Black lives? Why are people talking about Black Lives Matter? In particular, during 2015, 2016, I forget specifically when, but Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were two Black men who were killed by police officers in different instances, in different cities, in different places, but within the same week. It was one of the first times that from a technology perspective, we were discussing this in an international way because it had been captured on Facebook Live.



So there was this conversation around who are we as a part of this broader conversation? It was the second inflection point because it reminded me that was man, I am a Black man so even as I've done all of these things, I've been in careers, I've had these jobs and these opportunities where I've done things that I can be proud of, I'm still walking into this space the next day, after hearing about these instances and really feeling like I'm carrying something that I don't know how to speak to. I don't know how – I've never really talked to anybody about how it impacts the way that I am showing up in this space.



So from there, I just made the commitment where I said, “I'm going to start trying to be more authentically myself. I'm going to start talking about all the parts of me that make me who I am.” I didn't have a plan for it; I just knew that I wanted to have those conversations. The interesting thing was I started having those conversations and people naturally, after I would talk to people, would say, “Well, what's next? What can I do to support you?” It really just made me think about the broader conversation around allyship.



There's a broader conversation around what does it actually mean to show up for somebody and then I realized retroactively that there have been many examples, not only in my life, that people who have shown up for me that now I can pinpoint and look at as case studies, as data points, but also that I have naturally gravitated to doing that because of what I said earlier about the superpower of empathy. It has been something that I had always valued, even if I didn't know what it was, or what I was doing, or what it meant, but it was really important for me to see other people's stories because I knew how important it was for people to see mine.



So those two inflection points really shaped how I viewed diversity, equity, and inclusion in my role, in the broader conversation. One, my own vulnerability with myself, but also two, how valuable it is to have people hear your story and validate who you are and your experience and how it's a part of a whole and how they see you.



CHANTÉ: Yeah.



ARTY: With stories like you mentioned being able to have this experience where you really understood what it meant to show up for someone.



COREY: Yeah, absolutely. I'll give two stories.



One was actually when someone showed up for me and I remember it was my boss actually shortly after the conversations, or at least what I mentioned earlier about Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. I just was having a really rough, it was a rough day. I mean, I was trying to show up business as usual was very much like, well, I have a job, I have meetings I have to go, and my boss asked me, “How are you doing?” That's a question you hear maybe a hundred times a day and it's also a question that feels like a rhetorical. I mean, you're supposed to say, “Good,” and keep it moving. I said that, but she really stopped me, told me like, “Hey, I'm asking because I really want to know and I have time. How are you doing?”



I think just in that simple moment of making the space, creating an avenue for me to actually express a real truth, it just made me feel like wow, you didn't have to listen to my story. You didn't have to consider that I was something more than this a meeting I had to go to, or that I was more than this deliverable, or this project that I was working on. And you did. That meeting was, I, even years later, still to think about it because it was just like, wow, that meeting didn't have to happen that way. But I felt like this wasn't just my burden to bear after that question, or that conversation. The question that she asked and the conversation that followed.



I think for me, showing up for others actually has been in this work—working through impact strategies and thinking through how do you actually show up as an ally. I've had a number of experiences. But in particular, there was one right around the decree, I would say the resurfacing of the Me Too movement and that conversation around sexual harassment in the workplace.



There was an event, or a town hall, or an opportunity where I had a chance to really show up. I initially—and this is also a part of the failures piece—showed up to that very equally with the best of intentions and said, “Hey, what can I do to move this conversation forward?” Along the way, I remember realizing that oh man, in all of my eagerness to show up to this, I actually have silenced, or not included the voices that were probably most important to actually have this conversation. Women in particular, but also just thinking about in general, people who are survivors, or have been a victim of assault.



So it was one of those moments where I took on feedback from people, some of my coworkers, colleagues, friends, I figured out a way to revamp the event, postponed the event so that I could do it the right way. And then I remember in the aftermath of that, seeing I learned something through that process about myself and also, the feedback that I received about the event afterwards was like, all right, this was a conversation where it really prompted people to think about a story that they haven’t thought about before—people who showed up to the event. Because I was helping organize it, showed up, and got something else out of it because I wasn't the only voice in the room.



It was another moment where it was like, wow, this isn't necessarily my story, but I leaned in a little bit, or leaned in a lot in the beginning, learned a lot in the process about myself and even where my blind spots were within that entire process of learning in some ways helped tell a story that other people realized like, oh, wow, thanks for helping me see this narrative.



CHANTÉ: That is so helpful. I feel like the times where I've had to show up as an ally and lean in to something that I didn't necessarily understand, really helped me to better articulate the needs I had as a Black identified woman, or as a Latino woman to say, “Hey, friend or colleague, you want to show up and help me. This is how you can help me,” Because I've learned from my own ouch moments like, oops, I shouldn't have done that and thankfully, somebody was gracious enough to share feedback in that moment, but many times, they're not.



Do you have any best practices in terms of folks who want to show up, especially right now in this year, as an ally, they're very well-intentioned, well-meaning people, but they don't necessarily have somebody like an insider to give them the lay of the land, or to tell them where the real pain points are?



COREY: Yeah, absolutely. Two things. The first thing is that to your point about the feedback, I think feedback is so critical and also, we have to recognize that for many communities, like you said, we're in the intersect. We are at the intersection of a lot of identities.



I recognize that even though I am underrepresented as a Black person in many spaces, I also am in a privileged position because I'm a man. So I'm having to constantly examine those different nuances and intersections of my identity. Yet that also helps me understand that there's a lot of emotional labor in just showing up to be Black every day so, then sometimes, I might not have the energy, or might not have the capacity to give that feedback to somebody who was looking to be on their journey as an ally.



The first thing that I would say is showing up for others is really, there's got to be a hunger, or a desire to actually grow and change. This idea of a growth mindset and it has to be separate from passively taking on the information, or the stories of others.



I think once you have that, really having said, “I want to do this and I am motivated to do it.” Then I think the second thing is to go back to the superpower question from earlier, is I like to think about showing up for others as a trusted sidekick. So this model of thinking about you're not showing up to save the day, because that's also a lot of labor. Expecting to be the person to in the movie on a high note and be the person that walks down the aisle to get an award, or reward is not really the goal. But what it really is about is really understanding the stories of the people that you're playing in the same universe with and then figuring out what ways you can augment their journey.



I think about three things that are a part of that, which is really those everyday moments. When I've had conversations through my work, oftentimes people are like, “Black lives matter. We need to March,” or “Gender equity. We need to dismantle capitalism.” It’s like, that is probably true and there are scholars out there that are speaking more deeply than I can ever speak to on that, but what about those moments that are outside of that?



So you might say that Black lives matter,” and you might have the t-shirt, or you might step up in a forum and say, “Hey, I'm declaring that I believe in this cause,” but are you then actually including your coworker who was Black in the team lunches that happen every day that y'all just get together organically, but somehow that person is never on the organic chain? Or if you're thinking about gender equity and pay discrimination, that is a big thing, but also, are you actually making space and not taking up the room when you're in a meeting everyday being the person that has to get the last word, or are you making sure that everybody's opinions are on the table, including your women colleagues, or female colleagues are heard in the room? I think these are the everyday moments where we can show up as an ally.



I think the second piece is thinking about these things that we have to confront about ourselves. It might be ugly or scary, but are necessary. We all have biases. We all are a product of certain privileges because we have identities that confer some amount of power to us and some type of favoritism to us. So if we're thinking about that, we have to really examine that how those show up and affect us.



Peggy McIntosh wrote Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, where she did a lot of research in this space, where the idea is that we carry this around and even if we don't acknowledge it, it's still there. This idea of it might be invisible to us, but you can imagine walking into a room with a big knapsack on not realizing that every time you turn left or right, you're hitting somebody with your privilege. So I think it's important to acknowledge that we have that backpack on whether we realize it, or not and it's affecting people whether we accept it, or not.



And then the third thing is taking that next step of we have the positionality. So if you're talking about supporting from your identity, or from your perspective, you have some ability to influence change. Again, even if it's at a micro level. Because I'm a man, I have some privilege in the communities and spaces that I hold. Because of I’m a man, people are going to see me a certain way so then what I talk about what I represent, what I say, what I'm willing to advocate for is going to hold a different weight, whether that's right or wrong, it's going to hold a different weight than if a woman were to ask, or advocate for the same thing. So then what can I do to use that privilege in support of what that community might actually be asking for, or want? That might take a little discomfort on my part, but I guarantee it is way less uncomfortable than underrepresented groups having to advocate for their right to be seen, or heard, or validated in spaces.



So those would be three things, I think you could do in that journey.



CHANTÉ: Those are awesome things. The one that really resonates for me, too is just the empathy part because I feel like that is a core skill that we're going to need for the future of work. Oftentimes, when I say that people ask me, “Well, how do I develop empathy?” I have my own answer there, but I'd love to hear yours.



How do you think people can get better at working on that empathy muscle and if you have anything that's worked for you personally, or that you recommend more professionally that you've seen in the workplace? That'd be helpful.



COREY: Yeah, absolutely. Two things. The first thing that came up for me is Hamilton. I feel like everybody has seen it now. If you haven't seen it, spoiler alert, there's a theme that goes throughout Hamilton where Ehrenberg says, “Talk less, listen more.” There's this idea that I feel like with empathy, we often think of it as just like, ”I have to be in touch with my feelings,” but actually what I think it is, is actually a skill, a tangible skill of can I actually listen to someone and I think there's a difference between being able to hear and being able to listen.



So I think the first thing that I have done is like, how can I actually actively listen more effectively to the people around me? There's actually this research, I think 2014, 2015, it was focused on can we use empathy? Like, actually measure the effect of empathy on reducing, in this case, anti-trans gender opinions? I think the research was called “Durably reducing transphobia,” but essentially, what they did was it was an exercise around active listening.



They used the political tool called deep canvassing to essentially equip these researchers to go into a home where people expressed, or had been exposed to anti-transgender views and they literally just listened to them. They processed actively with this person about why they believe what they believe and then through that process, they didn't actually rebut with facts, or say, “But actually, that's not true,” or “Did you know that that's actually not true?”



What actually happened was people realized through their own act of processing that you know what, this is not actually about transgender. It's actually about safety. I can relate now. I can empathize because now that I've come full circle and have been able to tell my story about why I'm processed out loud, I realized that I do have something in common with the transgender community. They want to feel safe. This law makes them feel unsafe. I want to feel safe in bathrooms, but those two things don't have to compete with each other. We're all people that want to be safe. That that research for me really sticks out whenever I think of active listening.



I think the second thing is I've talked a couple of times about storytelling; there's a part of this for me, that really is seeing people as these amazing figures in a story you just haven't read yet. I think when I practice empathy, it often is just me really taking an interest more deeply in the why somebody does what they do as opposed to what they are doing. This hearkens back to Simon Sinek, who was a leadership consultant, or coach, but he had that phrase in a TED Talk where he said, “People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” I think for me, that boils down to the core, how I think about if you want to cultivate empathy as a muscle, or a skill, it's really asking that question, “Why did they do that?”



An actual tool that I often use in my work is something called empathy mapping, which is often used in UX design actually, in tech, to really think about human centered approaches to product design. But it lays out all of these ways about how do you think they would feel? How do you think they would see this? How do you think they would hear, or receive this message? And then it really gets you to ask this question about why would they react this way to what you're about to present, or why would they react to these set of circumstances in a certain way?



CHANTÉ: One of the things that you're talking about here is the empathy mapping. I actually do this course, or this workshop with some collaborators around designing for inclusion and that is something that we really focus on. Have you seen that in practice well somewhere that you could illustrate, or show? I guess, we could provide an example, or a case study so folks know what you're talking about.



COREY: Yeah. One of the things that this makes me think of is Google Assistant space, which is also a space that I spent some time in. But within the Google's Trust and Safety team, there was a focus on thinking about digital assistants and whether they had an inclusive voice when it came to gender, because there is a lot of research now that exists about voices and people perceive assistants to be female, but because of the voices.



Companies are really doing a lot of that work now to think through what the implications are around that. But at the time, I remember in this work very early on, what I thought was interesting about this was just the steps that the Trust and Safety team went through to actually figure out if there was an issue here because you design a product, the product is meant to respond to queries.



But soon, what they started finding was that maybe some of the queries that the digital assistant was getting were actually maybe more vulgar, or maybe more derogatory. So how does that break down? Does that break down like, is it just objectively that's how people talk to digital assistants? Well, no, and actually doing work and trying to reduce those offensive, or shocking, or risky experiences, what they found was that maybe this is actually offensive, or derogatory on the Google Assistant voices that present, or sound feminine.



So now that we have done this research, how can we actually address that in the broader product? I think the Google Assistant then did things to try to make the voices more gender neutral, to provide more options so that there were a range of voices and then also, not necessarily default to the feminine voice, or not even call them feminine. I think they started calling them like Voice 1, Voice 2.



So I think that that's one example of that I know, that I am aware of where when you're thinking about inclusion as it could be an objective truth that you're here to provide an answer to a problem. But often, that problem that you're solving might actually have many other subproblems within it.



But the idea of inclusive design is important. It's an important lens for everybody to have honestly, on the product, because there are a range of things that might be happening that we're just not aware of. But certainly, the power of doing extensive UX research, or a deep dive on some of those things, I think is what helps augment and move us away from those types of snafus happening in our technologies.



CHANTÉ: That was a beautiful example. Thank you. That sounds like a really cool project that you got to be a part of. Was there anything else that you learned from being on that project team that you can share?



COREY: Yeah. Well, I should say, first off, this happened before I came into the team, but I think it was one of the things that I found very powerful about the team itself, doing the work and also, where they were centering people. I think that was one of the reasons why I've also been very interested in policy within tech, because it very much it's about centering and advocating for best practices for people and defining what users actually are.



But I think for me, the lesson that I took from that just was again, that we all really have to be our advocates for this type of work and this type of change in the products and also, that a lot of this is sometimes not as complicated as we make it out to be. I think that it's really about priorities and what we value. What I appreciated about this team was just this idea of wow, you actually value not just the objective user, but the user in a sense of what context would they use this and how would this impact this community that we're trying to build this ecosystem?



ARTY: So there's something you said earlier that really struck me when you were talking about this example with empathizing for these people that had been exposed to anti-transgender ideas and sitting down and listening.



One thing that strikes me about that is just that as opposed to these people being a certain way, you framed things as these people were exposed to a certain kind of content that then they had this fear that came up in resonant to something that they were exposed to. I see those sorts of dynamics in other contexts. Would you mind elaborating a little more on that thought?



COREY: Yeah. I definitely think that we are in – not that 2020, or certainly, the last 4 years since 2016 with President Trump, I don't think that that is unique. I think that it feels exacerbated because on top of that technology has been a lens through which we've seen almost an exponential growth in access to information. It may have outpaced the way in which we also keep up with the ways in which you are skeptically dissecting this information and analyzing it for truth and veracity. So I think that there's been a confluence of forces that have made it so that things like misinformation and disinformation are permeating and now, it is easily accessible.



One of the things that I think about a lot in this space, as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion and why I think empathy is so important is that I feel like it can become very easy to go down this path because we're always looking for ways to validate our own experiences. So if there's one thing that we – an easy way to do it that is harmful, or damaging to others, is to validate by saying that, “Well, it can't be that over there.” I'm invalidating that to bolster the way that I see the world, or my experiences.



What I really focus on from my work and why I think the empathy piece has been so powerful is that it's a reminder as we move through that cycle of how can you be more empathetic, that at the core of our human experience is this idea that we all do not like the feeling of being othered, or unseen. Even if for someone who feels like they are, whether you agree or disagree with this idea, I'm disaffected.



I think this election cycle is a great example. A lot of people felt disaffected on both sides like, you're white middle-class, or you're Black and in poverty, or you're white and in poverty. You have all these sects of people that are like, “Ah, nobody's listening to me,” and that's reinforced because you're like, “Nobody has the experience that I have and nobody knows what it's like to feel othered like this.”



But actually, the reality is, regardless of whether you understand what it means to be grow up white and poor, or Black and affluent, or Black and poor, or white and affluent, you all have this common experience where you have been othered at some point.



Empathy says at the core of that human experience is something we all should be able to understand. So we're not necessarily focusing on what you went through so much as why did you have to go through it? I think that this disinformation, this misinformation feeds the –



If we had more empathy, I think that would be the thing that would combat this because it would allow us to ask the right questions around maybe this is true, maybe this is not true. If I don't have the tools to actually assess whether it's true or real, what I can say is that I need to really think about the community that is centered in this story and understand how this would make them feel if this were true, how does it make them feel if this were not true.



I think that that's where empathy and developing that as a skill could do a lot more work in this space where we're probably only going to see more honestly, content, or information where we have to vet where it comes from, whether it's real, who’s saying it and why they're saying it.



ARTY: Yeah. I was thinking about how powerful it is just that even in listening to this context, as opposed to trying to correct it, what you did find was this commonality of, “Oh, we both have a desire to feel safe, it is part of the human experience,” and then with this disinformation, you've got this dynamic that really plays on fear. A lot of this information that's associated with fear reminds me of this TED Talk by Daryl Davis that I think Chanté, you're the one who actually had me listen to that. But specifically, that ignorance breeds fear breeds hate and then if we can go about empathizing and listening and building those connections and tackling the ignorance, that it can have a chain reaction effect on all of these other things.



COREY: Yeah. This has made me randomly think of a song lyric by Nas, street prophet that he is, but his song with Puff Daddy, or P. Diddy, or whoever he was calling himself at the time called Hate Me Now. He said that line: people “fear what they don't understand, hate what they can't conquer. I guess, that's just a theory of man.” I was like, ah, this is making me think about that because I think so often, we are pushed into those lanes where the idea is to think that you have to conquer something. So it's like your safety, your capacity to do what you want to do in this world is won by subjugating, or by conquering something else, someone else and that's the only way that it can happen.



And then also that fear piece; if I don't understand it, then it's not safe. So if I can't wrap my head around it, then I need to assume the worst and fear it. I think why empathy has been so powerful for me is one, because we don't often talk about it as something that we can actually cultivate. We often talk about it in a you either have it, or you don't, or it's a natural gift, or it isn't. I think it actually is something that can be cultivated and brought to bear, like in that research, where it’s like this was a community.



I think the first time I did it, it was in South Florida, or maybe somewhere outside of Miami. I'm not actually sure of the specific locale, but this community had been subjected to all sorts of messaging around the transgender community, because it was meant to drive a particular position, or opinion on a bill around bathrooms and whether bathrooms could be used by people of the multiple genders, or you had to have separate men and women bathrooms. They were able to do through this research, they were able to find that not only were they able to shift people's perception around those issues—actually shift them positively in the direction of saying like, “Oh, actually I do support transgender rights in this conversation.” But that it was a statistically significant shift and it lasted for three months after that conversation when they did a check-in.



So I think that it just really speaks to we don't have to fear what we don't understand. If you really just take the time to let people really work out their own narrative for themselves, they will often figure out that their own narratives are incongruent with how they actually are showing up in the space and it's not about telling them, “Your narrative is off,” like, “You're wrong.”



I think that there's value in that, but if you're going to make the real change over time, in psychology, they call it act of processing. There's value in actually getting people to their own whatever it is, whatever reason they have for fearing what they don't understand to process that out loud in a way where they can actually be like, “I was heard and are realized that hearing myself is incongruent with how I actually like what I actually value.” So maybe coming to my own conclusions, I don't have to fear this, even though I don't understand all the parts of that experience



CHANTÉ: That was really helpful, Corey and one of the thought bubbles—well, one of the many that popped up as you were responding to Arty's question was how do we then, because it sounds like there's a lot of value in anticipating, or using tech and policy for good in those moments. I'm just wondering, I know that you consult around this.



So maybe take us down that avenue, because I think we're at this place where we've seen coming off of this last election, the power of the misinformation strategies and how we've partnered that with let's say, the Cambridge Analytica situation where they used data to underpin those fears and then really influenced a community, or a country to the space that they wanted them to be. How do we get ahead of that? What are some things we can do? Or what are some things maybe you're working on that are worth mentioning here today?



COREY: Yeah. So those are very, very good questions, or good thoughts. I think that one thing that just thinking about even as you were saying with Cambridge Analytica, my first thought was just that we have existed in the technological space, in this information age where empowering people online, I feel like it has been separate from the using the data, or giving the data up in a way that, or using the data or giving the data up.



By that I mean, essentially, we're using these products and tools, wouldn't have never really thought about it as a platform for change, or a platform to see the world we want to sees except for these little blips, or these moments where there are revolutions around like Arab Spring. That was driven, I believe on Facebook and then conversations again, around Black Lives Matter because of live video that we now have, we're able to capture the experiences in real time.



So I think that the first thing that I would say is how can we actually educate people around being empowered online? You have a voice, but it's not just the voice to repeat what you have heard, but really to lend your own voice, your own vulnerability, your own story to what's happening in these forms.



I think the second thing really is it comes down to the companies. I think that a lot of my conversations, when it comes to disinformation and misinformation, really comes back to values. Many companies, particularly ones that are community-focused and saying that our users are a part of an ecosystem, have to really ask themselves about what ecosystem are you actually trying to build? Because at a certain point, particularly if you are a private company, there are good ecosystems and there are destructive ecosystems.



So it can't be a libertarian view of the technology is just a tool and it will all sort itself out. It actually has to be maybe more curated than that and that might not have been the initial approach of technology. Certainly, wasn't the approach to the world wide web either when it first started out. It was just like, anybody could create a geo site, anybody could do anything on the internet, but in some ways, I think that view of technology maybe has to change. It helps lends itself very well to innovation, but the challenge is that it creates a lot of loopholes for abuse.



So then I think companies, as they start curating their experiences more, it has to be centered on very clear community values. What is your ideal world and your ideal state that you want to be contributing to as a part of this broader conversation around information and sharing data for the benefit of others? Most of these companies have that in their mission somewhere. They believe that they're doing a public good, even if they're also profiting in the process. Well, if that's true, then what values get you there and keep you there?



So I think that that's how the disinformation and misinformation is allowed to persist, because there's just questions that you have to ask around are some things allowable within this ecosystem? Are we willing to take a hard line on some things for the benefit of the greater good?



Then it’s also acknowledging that it is hard being in technology and now it's like, even if you're 99% effective at something, if you have a billion users, that's still millions of people, or millions of cases. You have to then also acknowledge that you're always working and it never will be good enough, but you can try to close that gap and be consistent on what you actually value and believe and that at least shows a bit of sincerity over time around what you're trying to do.



CHANTÉ: I appreciate your take on that.



One thing I might imagine to be true, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think from what I've seen is that the tech policy space is not Black enough. It is not; I don't see enough BIPOC folks. I don't see people really, outside of cis able-bodied white guys in that space. Is there anything that you recommend in terms of trying to change that so that in the future where we're going to have, for sure, undoubtedly more mixed-race people, just given the trends that we're on, how do we address that, or how do we curate for that?



COREY: Yeah. I mean, so much of – it reminds me of the story I was telling about biology and going into lab is that I think so much of it is about really understanding the possibilities of what is actually out there and having someone tell you, or exposing you to what those possibilities are. Some of that is pipeline development.



So I think we're many of these companies and also, just not even tech companies, but policy in general. This base is about how do you invest back in these communities, knowing that it might pay dividends in 10, or 15 years down the road to have this more diverse ecosystem of policy people, or practitioners, or technologists. Even if you're not developing them particularly for a job today, but down the road. I mean, I think some of that is pipeline investment and actually just telling people at a young age, “I see you, here's the three things you need to get started,” and then the sky's the limit.



I know there are some programs around coding that have taken off where people go into the community and do that. It will be interesting to see how, if we were to look over time, whether that's really changing the overall dynamics of actual Black engineers, or BIPOC engineers, or a diverse representation of engineers. But I think that that would be the same for policy and the other thing that I would say is it would seem that many companies, in the tech space in particular, did not actually have – whether they should have, or shouldn’t have, they didn't necessarily have to focus on these types of questions for their growth and success in the early stages.



So I think that that also meant that there just wasn't an investment in the broader, we need a policy team. Maybe there were people there to focus on policy and ask these questions. But I think as we continue to see the growth and the impact of companies on just everything like our economic systems, the way we behave, and the way we think about different issues.



Now, it is really important to think not just about whether building this product is going to net an additional 100,000 users, at the expense of so many other things, will it affect the political conversation happening in this country? Will it affect the access to resources in this place?



Now we're seeing the investment in those communities and spaces, for companies that are growing, or building now, I think it's about really investing in there early and make sure you have the right team and the right representation of the team to address the issues that you could foresee being a challenge, or being a space that your product will exist in.



But I think policy is certainly one of many professional spaces where you do see underrepresentation really because of access, or knowledge about the opportunity.



I'll just say, because this is a long, long way of saying, but I want to end with a personal story where it's just even for myself going into the technology space, I was always interested in policy, but really from the lens of how you can go directly into government as a civil servant and I try to push the machine, or move through the bureaucracy to actually make effective rules, or regulations that mattered, or meant something to different communities and I think government can still be that thing. There's a lot of challenges there, but it still can be that force.



What I didn't realize was that this existed in the tech world, that these were conversations that were happening, that companies were having an influence on the way we legislate, or the way we behave, or the way we think about all sorts of issues that would “fit squarely” in the policy world.



It was only through my kind of exploration, but also, connecting with people who had gone over to these companies, in these spaces and the privilege that I had of being able to go to different institutions, where I had access to people who could have these conversations with me, where I realized hey, I could be in this space. But it was something that I didn't even realize was a thing and would never have explored, otherwise. So I think that that also for me, recognizing that I had access to resources and tools that helped me even see it as a possibility and so, I think that has to be the thing that we're in the companies that anybody who has the privilege, or capacity to do so should be investing in.



CHANTÉ: Yeah.



ARTY: I feel like there's some things that we could do in terms of new precedent setting, that we could do as a broader tech community, that could help drive change of adopting cultural practices within the context of org