Fifteen teenage girls sit before a Nigerian-born American resident who oversees marketing, communications, education and community experience at a company worth more than $2B.
Questions readied, hands raised, inspiration pending.
They are inside Carbon’s headquarters in Redwood City, Silicon Valley, for a free two-week Kode With Klossy boot camp at the height of summer. Dara Treseder is the woman stood before them, the woman who had used her contacts to get them here, the woman who left her family at the age of 15 to complete her A-Levels in the UK, who went on to become an undergraduate at Harvard University, pick up an MBA degree at Stanford, and work for Apple, Goldman Sachs, GE Business Innovations, then Carbon.
That, in hurried fashion, is the answer to the first question: “How did you get here?” asked by one girl on behalf of the 15, and, probably, her entire peer group. That questions like this are put to Treseder by a group of schoolchildren is an indictment of, not only the struggle in a society tilted in favour of people of a certain gender and a certain race but an awareness of that struggle before even entering the world of work. A lot of young women, or people from ethnic minority backgrounds, or both, don’t see a clear pathway to success in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) careers and haven’t been encouraged into these industries in the first instance. Treseder stands before them as someone who wants to change that, working for and with companies that want to, too.
“One of our core values is embracing difference and inspiring people to challenge what’s acceptable,” Treseder tells TCT. “We know for that to happen you have to see and experience in order for you to reimagine, redefine, what’s possible, re-write the rules of how you make things. And for us, in addition to doing this in our everyday work, and doing this across different industries, it’s so important that we’re helping the next generation, and specifically thinking about underrepresented minorities.”
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Kode With Klossy scholars on a Facetime call with founder Karlie Kloss.
The young women are here primarily to undertake the Kode With Klossy custom curriculum which includes a Web Applications module, where the children focus on building web-based software with JavaScript, HTML and CSS, and a Mobile Applications Development module, which does what it says on the tin with Apple’s Swift programming language. Scholars to complete both modules leave with all the tools required to begin developing apps. Each Kode With Klossy camp – there are dozens in the States every year – has a female instructor involved, 84% of participants have reported an increased interest in STEAM education, careers and other opportunities, and 89% have left more confident in their technical abilities. The scholarship has been set up to inspire confidence and give young women the platform to pursue careers and other interests in the area of science or technology or engineering or arts or maths.
Right up Treseder’s street. She is a key driving force behind Carbon’s commitment to embracing diversity and was responsible for getting the Kode With Klossy camp to Carbon HQ. As a result, in addition to the standard teachings offered nationwide, the group tour Carbon’s facility, have hands-on access to its Digital Light Synthesis technology, at the end of the fortnight are gifted 3D printed bracelets, and throughout get to engage with a host of women who work in tech, have an inspiring story to tell, and quite often both.
“What’s the point of pouring water into a leaky bucket?”
The weekly #CarbonTalks presentation is one such occasion, as the group gather to hear a story. Hanging off Margaret Nyamumbo’s every word, it’s probably the perfect one.
Nyamumbo is a Kenyan who grew up on one of the thousands and thousands of coffee farms in the country. Just 1% of these farms are owned by women, yet they provide 89% of farm labour, much of which is unpaid. The farm she was brought up on was owned by her grandfather, one of the first natives to begin growing coffee as Kenya gained independence from Britain, who had handed most of the business to white settlers during the preceding four decades. Nyamumbo was there until the age of 18, when she moved to the United States for college, later found work at the World Bank, and in 2017 set up her own coffee business, Kahawa 1893. Kahawa 1893 sells Kenyan coffee and dedicates 25% of its profits to support access to credit for female coffee farmers back in the East African country. The business also uses blockchain technology to give absolute transparency per its fair-trade commitments – consumers know what they’re drinking and, more importantly, where their money is going.
Supplementing the inspiration offered by Nyamumbo, Treseder, and a cohort of her female Carbon colleagues across the two weeks is insight. Treseder wants to convey three things during her time with the group. First is the importance of taking opportunities that create opportunities, pursuing your passions and not settling for the safe option. Second is channelling a ‘venture futurist’ mindset, building a portfolio of ideas and embracing curiosity. And third is taking calculated risks, ‘if you’re not going to risk anything, you’re not going to have the dream career you wanted.’
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Carbon Kode With Klossy.
Treseder’s resume is concrete proof of that, and she not only has advice for up and coming individuals in her locker but enterprises too. Back in her GE Business Innovation days, she, and Jessica Strauss, an entrepreneur resident at GE Ventures at the time, came up with a framework they call R2P2: Recruit, Retain, Promote, Protect.
“How do you get underrepresented minorities into tech, but keep them in tech? Many women will go through periods where they want to have children. Do you have policy to enable them to feel like they can be mothers as well as continue to contribute to work?” asks Treseder of employers.
“What are you doing to promote the women that you have? Are you only looking at people who look like you, feel like you, sound like you, who you get along with better? Or are you looking across the board to say, ‘who do we think is going to be best for the company, is going to be best for the customers?’
“If women aren’t getting promoted and they’re already feeling ‘mom guilt’ they might be more likely to say, ‘you know what, this isn’t worth it’, or if you can’t see any other women [in senior positions] then it’s a demotivator.
“And protection is key. This is something that occurred to me when I was going on maternity leave. I was scared that, while I was out, I was going to come back in a smaller role. I was a relatively senior person and it was crazy the fear that went into me and I started to realise if I feel this way how many more women who don’t have the seat at the table I do [feel this way]?”
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Carbon KWK Hug
The increasing social pressure around these issues is certain to drive awareness of the concerns women have in pursuit of their career goals. It’s likely to encourage action too, but Treseder is keen to ensure the response is comprehensive. She says it needs to be a top-down, bottom-up approach, implementing entry-level programmes to attract females and other underrepresented groups into hands-on roles, and representing these people at the top of the organisation to portray a clear path of progress.
“What’s the point of pouring water into a leaky bucket?” Treseder analogises. “You can’t just use diversity initiatives at the lower level, it has to be throughout. And anybody who says they have pipeline issues; they can give me a call. I have a long list of names. There is no pipeline issue, what we have is an opportunity issue.”
She goes on to compare inclusivity to an organ transplant. You don’t just implant the organ, sew the patient up and send them home, you make sure the body is an environment that can accept and work cohesively with the organ in the first place. There’s a duty of aftercare too. “When we bring diverse people in, we’ve got to create the culture, we’ve got to work with the people that are there to know how to receive and interact and fully engage,” Treseder continues. “We have to do the hard work of inclusion to cultivate a space in which diverse talent can thrive.”
Treseder is in such a space. Just weeks earlier, she was among four Carbon figures to go from #CarbonTalks spectator/organiser to #CarbonTalks presenter as the company ‘Shared the Pride’ and spotlighted the LGBTQ community. To her left was Amanda Villa, Manager of People & Culture, then Augustine Alvarez, Special Projects Manager, and bookending the panel was CEO & co-founder Joseph DeSimone.
“The fabric of innovation is made so much richer when we value inclusiveness and different perspectives,” DeSimone said.
“How we show up and stand up for inclusivity, not only in public but in private, is what matters,” Treseder emphasised.
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'Share the Pride' panel session at #CarbonTalks.
“It’s so important,” she later tells TCT, “that we continue to push for greater equality, greater inclusion. I think this is what’s going to grow the industry, grow the market, deliver better returns to shareholders and, most importantly, better products for customers that end up improving their lives. The more we do, the better the outcomes for us all.
“This isn’t something HR can own. We all have to be guardians of this.”
And with good reason. Research generally points towards more diverse teams outperforming less diverse ones, with a greater number of communities being identified with and considered in decision-making processes, and just think if the entire population thought a career in STEAM industries was viable, if they thought they would receive ample support and opportunity in their pursuit of a successful career, would there be such shortages of skills in some regions?
Programmes like Kode With Klossy, stories like that of Nyamumbo and Treseder, and attitudes like that of Carbon, are all about lighting a spark, paving the way, giving the underrepresented the confidence to apply attributes they’ve likely always had, while pulling heads out of the sand, making organisations and industries aware of subconscious oversights.
Inspiration harnessed, skills in progress, opportunity pending.
