My journey as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) advocate started in 2015 when I learned two hard lessons
- I got the memo that my tech career had reached a diamond ceiling —appealing from the outside, unbreakable from the inside. Although I was consistently rated as a top performer, my managers were unable to see my professional potential as I was perceived as “too different” to be a tech leader.
Once I realized the systemic nature of those issues, I decided to “fix” them. I aimed to create an employee resource group (ERG) on gender, learn everything I could about the topic, and sort out gender inequality at my workplace by making the business case for management change. Problem solved.
Just writing the paragraph above has made me smile. I feel both compassion and admiration for that younger version of myself who was bold enough to reach out from the UK to our regional and worldwide leadership teams and talk to them about DEI. Some of them didn’t answer. One — based in France — replied to me.
“Diversity and inclusion? Is this an American thing, Patricia?”
Some supported me, like the regional Manager and HR Director for Northern Europe, which included the UK. With their backing, I created the ERG, learned everything I could about DEI, and made the business case for change. But that wasn’t enough to get the business to change its behaviour. So, I kept working.
Nine years later, I’m a proud, award-winning inclusion strategist. My efforts spearheading and supporting countless initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in tech products and workplaces were recognized with the UK 2020 Women in Tech Changemakers award. I’ve also been featured in the 2022 and 2023 longlist of most influential women in UK tech.
But it’s still not enough. I haven’t “solved” homogeneity, exclusion, or inequality at my workplace, and definitively not in tech.
Paradoxically, that apparent “failure” hasn’t decreased my commitment to the DEI cause; it is the opposite. It has strengthened my resolve to make teams, organizations, products, and societies more inclusive.
How have I managed to keep going?
First and foremost, because of my unwavering conviction that harnessing diversity, inclusion, and equity is the key to a flourishing society.
Second, by accepting five uncomfortable truths about my imperfect DEI advocacy.
Let me share them with you.
I Love People Who Don’t Believe in My DEI Values
Somehow, I unconsciously assumed that everybody in my close family circle espoused my DEI values. They are such a lovely and kind group; how could it be different?
About 20 years ago, I had a terrible argument with a family member close to me. The person was visiting my house, and as we were chatting over lunch, they began to disparage Black people.
I dissented. I tried to convince them. It didn’t work. They left the house very upset — I was too — and we didn’t rekindle the relationship until a year later when we met again for a family reunion.
That event was so painful that for years, I tried to sugarcoat it. I’d tell myself that the person was “kind but a little racist,” like racism was spice, where you can have a sprinkle without being too much. It was only one of many situations. Every time, the pattern repeated. They’d blame a group of the population for something, and I’d try to persuade them how that was unfounded. They tried to convince me I was being gullible, and we parted, angry, hurt, and disappointed. I’d rewrite those events in my head with qualifiers minimizing the incident: “This is a one-off,” “They’ve had a hard life,” or “They’ll change their minds.”
As I embarked on my DEI journey, I realized that I was kidding myself. There is no “being a little” racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic.
Moreover, as the world we live in was confronted with extreme events such as terrorism, pandemics, and war, weaponizing other groups — Muslims, disabled people, immigrants — for our misfortunes had become the norm. That meant that those themes would come up over and over… No more pretense that everyone believed that everybody was equal or had the same rights.
I was torn. Should I cut ties with all those I loved who didn’t endorse my values, as other brave people I knew did?
For friends, the choice was obvious — walk away — but I had to make a decision for family.
It was hard. I felt like a traitor. A liar. A coward.
With a heavy heart, I made an imperfect decision: When people within my close family circle are discrediting or belittling somebody only because they are part of an underrepresented group, depending on the situation.
- I’ll state my position and won’t try to convince them.
- If they already know my opinion, I won’t engage in the discussion.
I don’t see this as a “happy medium” or “optimal” solution, far from it. My heart aches every time.
But I discovered that my heart also has its “own” mind, that I love my family, and that I can only hope that something in this “pacifist” resistance spurs some reflection.
I Cannot Understand All Human Experience
Since I can remember, I’ve loved learning. The feeling that I get to understand new concepts, processes, and systems gives me a huge dopamine rush.
And that includes DEI. I thoroughly enjoyed plunging into behavioural science textbooks about how biases work. I sent myself down a rabbit hole to understand the roots of the racial correction and how it operates. And I spent months researching for my systems map of the Factors Accounting for the Low Representation of Women in Leadership Positions in Tech Companies.
It was when I was mentored by a trans woman that I finally grasped that there are limits to what I can understand from others’ experiences.
I remember listening to her describe how, as a small boy, she thought something was amiss and that, as puberty arrived, she felt that “things were going in the wrong direction.” I realized I’d deluded myself into believing that “learning” was the magic bullet toward inclusion. No amount of studying could bridge the “experience gap” between us.
Then, I finally grasped that understanding didn’t always matter. I was not asked to recreate that journey in my head by trying to assimilate it into something I’ve experienced myself. That’d be akin to telling somebody with cancer, “I know what you feel; it reminds me of when I broke my leg,” i.e., combining two unrelated experiences to sound empathic.
Instead, as a DEI advocate, I was asked to believe that somebody can know their gender is different from their assigned sex at birth — even if I never get to experience it myself.
In summary, I may not be able to understand all human experience, but I can still believe it.
I’ll Always be Uncomfortable with my Past
As I progress in my journey, I sometimes feel uncomfortable — and even ashamed — of things I thought, said, or wrote in the past.
For example, it’s hard to believe that years ago I thought of myself as well-informed about feminism but didn’t know what intersectionality was. Or that six months after launching my website about the intersection of tech and diversity I discovered that my website was inaccessible to people using screen readers. Or that I thought unconscious bias training was the one-size-fits-all solution to all DEI challenges.
Moreover, I now know that bias is inherent to human brains, so there is no cure other than being vigilant and experimenting with processes to mitigate that bias.
For example, I’ve developed a structured hiring approach involving individual interviews, hard and soft skill grid assessments, and pushing for diverse candidate slates. While this is a considerable improvement compared to how I hired people 15 years ago, I’ll never be done improving it.
I now provide alt text to the images in my posts and use nest headings to organize the content I write, all intending to make my writing more accessible to disabled people. However, I’m sure there is plenty of room for improvement, and that’ll continue to uncover ways in which my website, my processes, and my language unknowingly exclude groups I want to include.
But shouldn’t I be given a pass at some point? Don’t I have the right to slack a bit? After all, they say, “Ignorance is bliss.”
My answer: I don’t think that applies to DEI.
When discussing diversity and inclusion, ignorance is often presented as an alibi to justify discrimination and prejudice, “They didn’t know” or “They haven’t had that lived experience.”
In my book, my ignorance is my responsibility. And with that, I don’t mean the disempowering and humiliating responsibility.
Instead, I see it as a responsibility that encourages me to search for answers, question the status quo, and share what I’m learning with others.
I Must Embrace the Cassandra in Me
Cassandra in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread to Europe, people told me
“Patricia, your work advocating for women in tech is done. Now women can work from home — problem solved.”
I was convinced that the problem was not fixed but rather amplified — confinement meant that women had to do their paid jobs, perform their household chores, school their children, and care for their elders 24/7. To prove it, I surveyed over 1,300 professional women worldwide to assess the impact of the pandemic on their unpaid work and published a report confirming my worst fears.
In 2021, I warned about hybrid work as the “cure” to the lack of women in tech.
I’ve also denounced how my own sector, tech, focuses on an “ ideal” user — white, able, wealthy, cisgender, male — and considers everybody else as an “edge” case not worth designing for.
Moreover, when I successfully contributed to lobbying for increasing the maternity leave benefits for employees in the UK in my organisation, rather than resting on my laurels, I went to support extended paternity leave for workers in our Dutch offices. Since then, each time we talk about our company’s gender pay gap, I’ve made the point that we need to go far beyond the statutory 2 weeks of paternity leave for our UK employees if we’re serious about making a dent in this problem.
Looking at all the evidence above, it’s not surprising that people—myself included—have wondered if I’m wired to be a contrarian, see only the gaps, or simply unable to celebrate the wins.
There may be some truth in all those assertions. It continues to be a struggle for me to balance savouring progress with pushing for change.
I May Not Be Doing Enough
I often get accolades when I share my DEI advocacy work with others. They praise how my articles and keynotes have touched them or how amazed they are that I devote time to be a trustee of a charity focused on people affected by homelessness, volunteer as a coach for female leaders in Manchester who cannot afford coaching, lead UK partnerships for European Women on Boards; and contribute to We and AI, a British NGO working to encourage, enable, and empower critical thinking about AI.
This feeling of accomplishment is compounded by receiving awards recognizing my efforts to make tech workplaces more inclusive and being featured among amazing women in tech.
What’s not to like?
But the reality is that I live in a world where a series of random facts have automatically given me outstanding privileges over other people. For example
- I’m white, able, heterosexual, and cisgender. I also have a family that cared for me when I was a child and has repeatedly shown me how much they love me.
- Whilst I’m an immigrant, I have a Spanish passport — one of the most powerful in the world — and although I carry two genetic diseases, we have a free National Health Service in the UK and I have access to private healthcare too.
I’ve also benefited from the advocacy done by incredible women before me. As I consequence, I’ve been able to vote, access contraception, open a bank account in my own name, and go to the university where I earned a BSc and MSc in Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Chemistry.
And then, there are incredible DEI role models with less privilege and means than me who are smashing it. They
- Publish inspiring books — I’m still searching for a publisher for my book about “How Women Succeed in Tech Worldwide.”
- Have a thoughtful weekly newsletter — this year I started publishing a new article every weekend and now the cadence has decreased to one every three weeks.
- Have created thriving communities of thousands of members — I struggle to get 15 people to attend our gender ERG bimonthly meetings.
So I wonder at what point I’ll feel I’m doing “enough.” Will I ever get there?
I don’t know. Maybe that’s the way is supposed to be.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Audre Lorde
What about you?
As I’m finishing this article, I’m beginning to second-guess my decision to share this less inspirational part of my DEI journey.
Should I keep these reflections for myself and hope somebody else voices them so I can learn from them?
My brain also catastrophises about who will retort back, unsubscribe, or even be hurt by this piece.
But in the end, a question makes me finally press the “Publish” button
Am I the only one grappling with those issues?
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