In May I had the honor of sitting on a diversity panel at Kubecon EU with an awesome group of folks from Heptio, Google, Redhat and StorageOS.
When I first started telling people that I was going to be on a diversity panel, I got a few different reactions. The most surprising were people telling me I shouldn’t do it, that they themselves wouldn’t want to be considered the “token” diversity advocate, that it is too hard to be the person speaking publicly about diversity. People don’t even want to talk about diversity among their families or co-workers, much less speak publicly about the issue. This got me thinking about my own experiences.
My father is a retired military veteran so I moved about every three years my entire life. I have lived in several countries and several different states. Living on a military base was always a multi-cultural experience full of families of all shapes and sizes and made up of people from all over the world. At some point, everyone was the new kid, so being supportive and open to meeting new people was a natural part of surviving. To me, diversity and inclusion were part of my life and seemed like the way things worked everywhere. As I grew up and lived on my own I started to pull my head up, look around and realize how far from the truth my assumptions had been.
I started to notice the problem once I moved into more senior roles and experienced first-hand many examples of sexist, bigoted, and otherwise non-inclusive behavior in companies. I suddenly had a broader view of the organization and could see these issues more clearly. I was running up against real problems affecting not just me but others on my teams. I realized I really did need to be part of the change and part of the conversation. I realized I needed to be a person that advocated for diversity and for a workplace that allowed everyone to succeed.
The problem is, a lot of people are afraid to talk about diversity. Not just publicly but even privately. This point makes it really hard to make change and to keep educating people. It also makes it really difficult to feel like we can have truly open dialogue.
We are never going to learn from each other if we don’t start talking to each other; and when I say talking to each other, I really mean listening to each other. We have to start having more open dialogue about issues in a way that ensures we are educating. We have to do that in a way that is open to listening and void of our tendencies to lecture or shame. A true human connection can set the stage for real change.
I want to encourage everyone to get involved, educate, listen, and work hard not to make assumptions about others. We don’t always know how someone identifies in relation to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, geographical representation, political beliefs and more, and we need to take the time to learn about others and understand who they are so we can really start to understand how to create change.
I want to see real companies making real change and I want to be involved in the conversation and I want to make real change. I want to continue to evolve my ideas and my thinking and I want to ensure I share those ideas and this mission with my children in hopes things are better when they start their careers. Taking the time to truly understand others will make this much more possible.
The goal of the Kubecon diversity panel was to encourage action. Here are some actions you can take to encourage more conversation.
The next time someone asks you to be in a panel or write a blog post about diversity, consider it an opportunity to share your personal journey. I can guarantee at least one other person will relate to your journey and feel inspired and supported by you sharing it.
The next time you see someone sharing their personal story about diversity in a panel or blog, let them know you appreciate it. It can be lonely to put your words out there so hearing that someone enjoyed it will encourage that person to speak out more.
Thanks to everyone who attended the panel and reached out after. If you missed it you can check out the panel here.
We would love to have more people joining the discussion so please join the diversity slack channel in the Kubernetes slack.