For an industry that prides itself on innovation and change, tech sure seems to be stuck in a rut when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

Over the years, theCUBE has spoken to hundreds of minority engineers, developers, marketers and executives working for a wide variety of companies, from Accenture LLP to CryptoChicks, in the public and private sectors. Yet, despite the constant coverage and calls for change, the industry remains predominately white and male.

As the question of equal rights and opportunity hits global headlines, theCUBE spoke with Dr. Tiffany Jana (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of TMI Consulting Inc.,  the largest company under the TMI Portfolio banner, with a collection of companies aimed at advancing diversity, inclusivity, and equality in the workplace. As an Inc.com Top 100 speaker, TEDx speaker, diversity innovator, and author of four books on overcoming exclusion and bias in the workplace, Jana is a thought leader on how to turn the tide of systemic bias in technology, and across culture as a whole.

“Racism in our country reminds me of senior skip day,” Jana said. “You’re not supposed to skip school … but they’re seniors, and we give them a pass. Racism works the same way. Good people know that if they slip up and not hire the black person, they get a pass. They’re not going to be held accountable.”

Reframing privilege

Getting pregnant and married in her teens, surviving domestic violence, and becoming a single mom wasn’t the ideal start to Jana’s career path. The obstacles she faced were formidable. But the biggest one was that society didn’t believe she could succeed; and she subconsciously absorbed that message.

“One of the problems with privilege is when society tells you that you are worth less than somebody else, it’s easy to start believing that,” she said in her TEDx talk. That belief kept her from seeing the assets she had, and instead she “was fixated on all of the injustice” in life and society.    

Reframing her perspective to view the privileges in her life rather than the negatives, Jana was able to overcome challenges that have kept many chained in place. “The first thing I had to shift was the way I looked at myself and my life,” she said, describing how she had the strength to break free from an abusive relationship and start on the path to the position of respect and success she now holds.

“If you’re in the mindset of the downside of privilege, it’s an energy suck,” she told theCUBE. “Focus on an asset-based approach. When you focus energy into the gifts, the talents, into personal passions, it frees you for creation.”

She describes the problem of accepting yourself as underprivileged as being like the victim of a bully in the schoolyard. Much like a bully is encouraged by the fear reaction to his dominance, “if you’re focused on being disadvantaged, you’re giving away your power,” Jana said. “Your mindset is as much a powerful variable as anything else. The person that lifts their mind into a different place — it’s not a panacea, not a silver bullet.  But it’s the best starting place you can give yourself to eke your way out.”

Overcoming unconscious bias: An anti-racist education

Just as Jana had to change her perspective to break free from the restraints caused by injustice, society as a whole needs to reframe how it views minorities before equality can be achieved.

“It’s important how we think about people,” Jana said. “We internalize messages that blacks are less than. If you really believe blacks are less than, your unintentional bias feeds into an energy that informs their performance, or at least your perception of their performance.”

But overcoming internal and unconscious bias requires more than the awareness that it exists. In her article “Your White Education,” Jana states: “It is becoming increasingly important for ethical white folks to educate themselves about their whiteness and its impact on [people of color].”

Bias is a natural human trait and is not limited to racism against those with darker skin. But “even though all people can hold bias against a group different than their own, the power white people hold is what makes these oppressive acts a dangerous liability to the cause,” Jana wrote.

Unconscious racism is all around us and is often absorbed in childhood without us even realizing it. “The dominant narratives of our time are racist narratives. They are racist, they are elitist, they are problematic on so many levels,” Jana said in a YouTube video. “[Children] are being exposed to racist ideas, to sexist ideas, to problematic value structures that have nothing to do with how you want your child raised.”

That bias is reinforced throughout life and leads to both conscious and unconscious actions of white privilege that impact the black population’s ability to succeed professionally.

In the five years between 2014 and 2018, the number of black employees at the top tech firms remained static or dropped, according to a Wired report. Blacks and African Americans represent 13.4% of the U.S. population, yet out of the four firms analyzed, Apple Inc. topped the list at 6% black employees, with the others reporting 4% or less. Facebook Inc. went backward in the diversity ranks, reporting fewer black employees in 2018 than in 2014.

Diversity initiatives often fail because of hiring attrition. Changing this requires the culture to become inclusive, making the workplace welcoming to minorities. This requires leaders to pay attention to how their organization may be failing its employees, according to Jana.

“Just like privilege in its other apparitions, we’re so focused on what we can extract from the earth, from the economy, from the people, we’re not taking into serious consideration how we as leaders can give back and create real change,” she said. “If you have the benefit of diversity in your organization, listen to the people, and create the invitation. Many of the companies that have diversity and inclusion don’t want to actually hear about those matters. They just want the brown people to show up and be there.”

Supporting Jana’s statement is a Kapor Center study of workplace attrition in the tech industry, which shows that black and Latinx employees leave at 3.5 times the rate of white or Asian hires. “Workplace culture drives turnover, significantly affects the retention of underrepresented groups, and costs the industry more than $16 billion each year,” the report said.

Loom provides a data-centric perspective on diversity and inclusion

Hiring diversity and inclusion officers is one step toward redressing this imbalance. But the role is a new one, and the responsibilities and methods are not yet clearly defined. Aiming to resolve this, Jana recently launched Loom Technologies under the TMI Portfolio’s umbrella. The company’s flagship product, Loom The Culture Map, is a turn-key, enclosed software-as-a-service platform that uses machine learning to interpret data from proprietary tests that the TMI Portfolio has been conducting over the past two decades.

“Instead of diversity being five questions in a work-culture analysis … we’re digitizing that process, assessing, quantifying work culture across a massive scale: 80 competencies across 11 categories,” Jana said.

This information enables diversity and inclusion officers to define the inclusion gaps in their organization and establish actionable strategies to eliminate them. This links in with Jana’s passion: identifying and quantifying unintentional bias.

“I’m extremely obsessed with having a really wide base of coders, analysts and scientists because our bias is built into the way we code,” she said.

The Loom workforce is one that mirrors the wider population so that code is created from a representational point of view that accurately reflects the diversity of the global population.

“We have queer coders, lady coders, old coders, young coders, black coders,” Jana said.

Changing the culture requires personal effort

Ending the impact of unintentional bias in the workplace starts at the individual level. Right now, inequality lived daily by the black population of America has been brought to the forefront. It is a reminder that regardless of good intentions, we all hold unconscious bigotries that affect our behaviors in the workplace — and that it is time to stop handing out “skip-day passes” to ourselves and others.

“Systemic bias has been baked into institutions around the world, and although the current generation in power did not create it, we are complicit if we fail to dismantle bias by starting with our own,” Jana said in her book “Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences.”

One concrete action that Jana recommends is to educate yourself so you can recognize prejudiced behaviors when they occur. Reading books by antiracist authors, such as  Ibram X. Kendi, Ta Nehisi Coates, and Robin Diangelo is a good step. Another is to pay attention to feelings of unease or negative or defensive reactions to situations and people.

“Emotions are markers designed to help us see where we need to grow. Examine those raw places, interrogate them, and grow through your discomfort,” Jana said.

Trending right now is the hashtag #blacktech4blacklives, a movement driven by the combination of COVID-19 and the overt police brutality toward the black community in America. The group’s website states that “tech is complicit,” and the coalition of technology executives, entrepreneurs and employees are demanding accountability and systematic change in the system.

The upswell of attention to the negative bias in society offers a “massive opportunity” to rebuild equitable institutions and systems with intention and purpose, according to Jana.

“As business leaders, we’re doing so much to make the economy go,” she said. “If we band together and say we’re not going to stand for blatant discrimination anymore and demand change and accountability, it would stop. It would stop.”

Image: Tiffany Jana