Tim Gasper [00:00:31.748] Hello, everyone. Welcome. It's time once again for Catalog and Cocktails. It's your honest, no BS, non-salesy conversation about enterprise data management with tasty beverages in hand. And I'm Tim Gasper, longtime data nerd, product guy, customer guy at data.world, joined by Juan Sequeda. Hey, Juan.
Juan Sequeda [00:00:48.028] Hey, Tim. How are you doing? I'm Juan Sequeda, the principal scientist here at data.world. And as always, it's Wednesday, middle of the week, end of your day. And here we are to have a fantastic conversation about data. And I'm always excited about our guests. But look, Dawn Carter today, who's our enterprise data architect, is somebody super special. because it's one of those things when you go to conferences, like remember, you go to conferences, not just only for the content, but it's the hallway conversations and not just the hallway conversations. It's like the conversations that happen in the evening and then in the late evening. And that's how Tim and I met Dawn, having so many cool conversations at Gartner, like in the late evenings and does all of them crazy stuff. And then during the day too, over hallway conversations. And it's like, we have to have Dawn on the show. Dawn, how are you doing?
Dawn Carter [00:01:36.048] Yeah, I'm good, thank you. It's late o'clock where I am in the UK, but I'm good, thank you.
Juan Sequeda [00:01:40.848] We always love it when folks are in the UK and Europe on the show and they actually do it live and it's late for them because they're really, they probably had a drink or two maybe or something.
Dawn Carter [00:01:48.248] Committing to the cause.
Juan Sequeda [00:01:51.888] There we go. Well, let's kick it off. So, Tell & Toast, what are we drinking and what are we toasting for? Dawn, kick us off.
Dawn Carter [00:01:58.448] So, I am drinking this fantabulous drink. It's a tequila sunrise without the tequila. Yeah. Why, you might ask. Well, because sunrise is the time that comes after dawn, and I'll finish this, and it'll be the end of sunrise.
Tim Gasper [00:02:17.327] I love it. I love it. We have a lot of one-liners and t-shirts.
Juan Sequeda [00:02:20.132] We have a lot of one-liners and t-shirts.
Tim Gasper [00:02:23.127] I know. We asked dawn ahead of time. We want maximum dawn one-liners. This is perfect. We're off to a great start. I love this.
Juan Sequeda [00:02:31.527] Tim, how about you?
Tim Gasper [00:02:35.807] Well, just before I tell you about my cocktail, cocktail uh tequila sunrises are one of my least favorite cocktails because um i have just so many bad memories from college of drinking way too many tequila sunrises and so now i anytime i hear tequila sunrise a part of my soul just kind of jitters a little bit uh so but it has no alcohol in it so maybe that could grow on me yeah.
Dawn Carter [00:02:56.987] But if you if you can still remember your nights when you've had tequila sunrises you've not had enough tequila sunrise that's
Tim Gasper [00:03:03.887] True that's true and that's why it doesn't work for me anymore but in the spirit of a spiritless cocktail actually i'm also having a spiritless cocktail today i am drinking something that is called hayo um it is i'm experimenting with different sort of like uh you know spiritless alcohol kind of substitutes here this one is what's called a functional seltzer it's got some nootropics and other types of things in it. And the flavor is blackberry lemon. So pretty tasty.
Juan Sequeda [00:03:33.847] And then I'm actually, again, I just walked into my bar as always. And I remember I had some cucumber I needed to finish today. So I put some cucumber, I had some gin, and I saw some Aperol in it. And it's an Aperol gin cocktail. It's called like that. And so, yeah, that's what I'm having right here. And what do we want to toast for? What are we toasting for?
Dawn Carter [00:03:53.507] Oh, I'm toasting today. I'm in London Times. Tomorrow I am attending the Carothers and Jack's in graduation summer school. So I'm toasting the end of my summer school.
Juan Sequeda [00:04:05.407] Oh, congrats. I've heard so many things from that summer school. It's one of the epic ones that's been going on for a long time. So cheers. Cheers to summer schools and people who want data. I just want to, one more cheer here, is a call out that we have our Catalog & Cocktails chat. So we also want to kind of like, just cheers to that chat with our podcast. You can be able to go chat with all our past guests and everything, all the content we have, just go to data.world slash podcast and you'll be able to go find a link there. So I want to cheers to that and the team who's been behind that. So here you go. And now let's think about a warm-up question. We're going to be talking about diversity and data, but let's talk about diversity. What needs more diversity in the world? Dawn.
Dawn Carter [00:04:47.447] Lots of things and all of the things. But if I think about a problem that I've got at the moment, I'm stuck in a hotel room and I think that hotel breakfasts need more diversity I am upset with the lack of quality in my hotel breakfast it's very poor,
Tim Gasper [00:05:07.691] I can relate to that. I feel like breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and you really need some more diversity there.
Dawn Carter [00:05:14.971] I mean, other than elevensies and lunch and afternoon tea and dinner time and snack time and snacks and relax, and then, I mean, other than that, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Tim Gasper [00:05:28.091] Yes. Dawn, it sounds like you don't agree with me.
Dawn Carter [00:05:32.671] No, no, no. It's not that I don't agree, Tim. It's just that you could be educated.
Juan Sequeda [00:05:40.191] All right let's let's just dive in yes what does it mean that we need more diversity in data.
Dawn Carter [00:05:48.971] So so tim and i had a really good conversation about this earlier on this year didn't we tim and, i think we came at it from a couple of different angles so yes we need more diversity in terms of people who work in data and analytics not not just because it's nice it's a good thing right but actually because it's really important to have diverse opinions diverse thoughts and thinking about problems from different viewpoints so that actually collectively we get a better answer than if we were just to think about something ourselves and I guess that's probably true of you guys right you both co-host the podcast I'm sure it's infinitely better with both of you being on it than if it was just one of you that was doing it and so how do we make sure that we translate diversity of thought into everything else that we do question mark. And also the other side to that is not just around diversity in terms of people who work in data and trying to get good outcomes from an analytics perspective, but how do we make sure that we remove some biases that might be there from from some of our data because history has taught us that sometimes data can go a bit awry. Juan and I were laughing about it before when he asked AI to come up with a funky name for his cocktail and it failed miserably for him. And that was just a cocktail. Imagine what it's doing around, you know, some of the biases that we might have in our data. So we had some of that chat too. So I will talk all things diversity to all people anytime they give me a podium. Let's go.
Tim Gasper [00:07:25.984] No, I love that. I love that. When you're approaching this topic of diversity, that you're, you're talking about it, not just from a perspective of, you know, is it is it fair? Is it just, you know, it's just the right thing to do, because all of those things are true, right? Right. But you're also coming at it from the angle of this actually is a way for us to drive better business results, better answers to questions, better data, better AI. Right. Is the more diversity we bring, we're actually going to result in a better outcome. And I think that's an important perspective around all of this. And I and I think something probably we should talk more about. I feel like people don't talk enough about that.
Dawn Carter [00:08:10.824] Yeah and I think I think sometimes people don't talk about it because they're nervous or they feel like they're not educated in the subject or they don't want to say the wrong thing and well what if I get it a little bit wrong okay well if it doesn't come from a place of malice and you're coming from an educational perspective that's okay like we can we can have conversations and be open about different experiences um and that's all right and I think as well if we look from some of the angles in which I'm most particularly fond of talking about is around women and data in particular. I'm a massive advocate of women and data. I think women are really, really bloody good at data and analytics. We just don't tell them that, right? And so some of the examples that I use with women who tell me that data is not for them is, well, in your your household do you plan your food for the week and you know where to go and get everything, yeah of course I do and do you know that as a as a mother that it's world book day or your kid got an event coming up and they have to be at such and such a place and it's a birthday party in three weeks time and you have to get a gift from this place not that place because they've got a sale on or you have to be at this place at a certain time which means you have to leave at this time because of the traffic that day and all of that stuff is using information in context which is all analytics really is it's making informed decisions using the information that you've got in front of you we expect women to do that all the time they're really logical they're great in a crisis they're really bloody good at data we just don't pitch it to them like that and I think that if we dispel some of the myths around what data and analytics actually is and it's not I'm in a basement coding with my hoodie on in the dark and I need to learn the in-depth python and you know who cares about that really there are some people that will do that but that's not every career and it's definitely not what I've experienced from my career and data and I think that we just need to get out there and tell people that message differently to the message that they've been hearing I think.
Juan Sequeda [00:10:22.365] Yeah, well said. Let's dive into kind of examples. I'd love for you kind of in your experience what you've gone through about how kind of a before situation and what have you done or what are the recommendations to make a shift? And you can see it in the outcomes for your organization, also personally.
Dawn Carter [00:10:42.185] Yeah, so there's a few things. So if I think about from an organizational perspective, I can give you a couple of little hints and tips and stuff. Um so i was previously in my organization the co-chair of our gender equity network so striving to get more gender equity in our organization in general so so let's take women who want to work in tech and data and add into the fact that we're a defense company and all of a sudden there's less people that want to come and apply for those jobs but why we do really cool stuff with data and analytics some of the coolest stuff actually and the coolest stuff we can't talk about publicly so So I'll just leave you wondering what that might be. And so from a gender perspective, we had a lot of challenges around, you know, what does it mean to be a woman in this organisation and what does it feel like? And let's actually see what people are saying on the ground. And I stood down from that role earlier on this year to focus more on what we could do from a data and analytics perspective. Perspective and so i created um a data analytics women's network now for the eagle-eyed people amongst us will realize that a data analytics women's network as an acronym is the dawn so i called it after myself and and it was a it was a little bit of a joke to start with um but my boss didn't realize it his boss didn't realize it the motion carried and now we have a network called the dawn and so my legacy will forever live on
Tim [00:12:12.665] Your legacy lives on absolutely
Dawn Carter [00:12:17.165] It's hilarious but but the real the real important part that that was behind that was was the message signaling that there was a place for women at be systems and they could thrive and they could do great things and they could be involved in the conversation and it was a lot about that role modeling and so if i give you a real specific. I attended the Women in Data conference last year of which there were probably a handful of us from our organisation that went and none of us were joined up to each other. We didn't know each other was going and there was no sort of camaraderie just happened to bump into people that were there. This year we took about 80 different people there with us to say, hey this is what be systems can do we had people who were named in the 20 in data and tech which is a an awards nomination progress that women in data run so both myself and our cdo joanna hutchinson were both named on the 20 in data and tech so shout out for myself and joanna and more than that we had we had people joining from a volunteering perspective from a hackathon perspective people who just wanted a sense of community and and actually that's really grown own now into a lovely environment where we've got coffee roulette so that people can meet each other who they would never come into contact with any other time and really starting building out what what it is to have that sense of community because it's really difficult as a woman in data and tech that if all you see around you as men it's really difficult to feel like you belong in there and that your voice matters and so what's really nice is to have some of our more junior staff coming along and saying actually I feel like I belong here I've found something where I can see people who look like me I could see a career path I can see you know people who are a couple of levels above me and I could aspire to be that because I think sometimes when we look at what diversity and data as we automatically assume well you must be a great data leader and therefore you've got to. Be way up here but there's a lot of benefit in just people who are the next couple of levels above you and how did they get to that position and how do I bridge that gap because if you've got someone in a really junior role well being a CDO one day is probably about 20 years off for them so there's not really much tangibles that they can do at that point but they could maybe become a senior engineer or an architect or a consultant or what does that career path look. Like for them and so really what we're trying to do is shine the spotlight on career paths role models ambassadors for change people who are doing cool things that we wouldn't otherwise have known about because we're all busy doing our day job and that's the real important thing I guess is is the sense of belonging in the community that it starts to foster with each other and, and where I've noticed it as well from a hiring manager perspective is the amount of female applicants that we're getting now. So previously I would have got little to no female applicants for architecture roles My team is now, my data modelling team is now 50-50 men and women. So great, that's amazing for me. I will be hiring again very soon so, you know, anyone wants to come and work in my team that would be lovely. But I guess for me, it's getting those feedbacks from interview of, you know, well, I saw the things you were doing around diversity and inclusion, and I thought that it was a place that I could come and work. For me, that's worth more than anything, right? It's people saying that there could be a path that they could explore in our organisation, which is a massive one. And I guess the other thing is when I look at previous round of recruitment, I would have had a list of CVs and maybe one woman would have been in that list of CVs. From my shortlisted round of interviews we actually had three women that made it to a shortlist interview out of the four that we took to the shortlist so we're seeing a lot more women apply for these roles now I don't think it happens to be a coincidence that myself colleagues of mine are out talking about being a woman and being in data and analytics and actually this is a good place for you to work i don't think those two things are by accident that we see an increase on female applicants and and that's what some of the great work that women in data here are doing is around how do we showcase and spotlight and tell people that data is a place where women could belong it's a massive advocate for all things women in data and but i would caveat that ever so slightly around people treating women as one thing like a real bee in my bonnet about. People asking me my opinion as though it was the opinion of every single woman who has ever been born ever and I have a very different experience in life to other people so my opinion is not the only one and although some people on my team will tell you I don't often listen to that there are other opinions available allegedly but it's interesting to see that when you look at diversity studies and they say women in general well the things that I want when I'm 19 are the things that are going to be different that I want when I'm 55 we can't assume that the things that I want are going to be exactly the same and so when we talk about diversity, and from a female perspective I also mean diversity in terms of age experience socioeconomic background faith religion culture ability disability all of those things make up all of the experiences that someone has and they're all really valuable.
Tim Gasper [00:18:03.650] Yeah, no, I love that. By the way, you got some comments that are streaming in here. Hammer, Hammer Time says I can vouch for that. They're here for team Dawn. So you've got your, your fan base and your, your mentees here. So appreciate you all listening in. You know, Dawn, you said some really awesome things as you started to talk through some of these different programs and some of the impacts that they've been having. I think a couple of things that are noteworthy for me. One is, I think sometimes organizations complain when they say like, oh, you know, well, we just don't see females, you know, applying. So, you know, we have to do what we have to do with the pool that we see. Right. You know, you know, we really got to blame the educational system for, you know, not not not really encouraging people, you know, diverse involvement in this field. And I think we need to, you know, although there might be some systemic things which need to be addressed, right? Let's not ignore that. There's, I think, a different question we should be asking ourselves as organizations is, hey, what am I doing to drive awareness of the fact that this is a diversity friendly and diversity encouraging workplace? Place? How am I reaching out to some of these different diverse groups and communities? There's a ton that can be done. And you're proving this out, Dawn, where you're connecting with these communities. And now you're seeing those applicants come in. You've got 50% of your team that is female now. And if you focus on it and you build programs and community around it, and you do outreach around it, you will see those scales tip and your team will be better for it.
Dawn Carter [00:19:36.797] Exactly if i if i take an example and i really hope he doesn't mind me talking about this but but when i first interviewed at the systems um i interviewed as a solution architect role um and when you get to that point in your interview where people go so have you got any questions for us today and most people ask about holidays and when am i going to hear back and all that kind of stuff and i went in with a hard-hitting question of at that time um our company only had. Um a 19 percent female representation in the organization that has since changed slightly but but not enough and and we're doing loads of work on it side caveat um but at the time we only had a 19 percent representation of women and i asked the two male interviewers in that interview what are you doing to change that um and both of them come back with a really you know well we don't really see the gender we're trying to hire the best person for the job and and that's an okay answer and however I took that as a moment to say well with the greatest respect and this is where I could have shot myself in the foot really on interview stage was with the greatest respect it's not really that that good because you're two men interviewing a woman the way that you ask questions and the way that you expect them to be answered is different the way that a woman will write a CV and the way that a man will write a CV is different and if you don't acknowledge that there's those biases and that. You will come with inherent bias you will always make the same decisions that you've always made now forward on four or five months later I joined a team and I was the only woman in that team there was 23 architects and I was the only woman in that team we we had a conversation about parking at one of the offices and if you can't get parked at the office there is an overflow at the other office which is across the road from each other and you can just walk between them and my first question to every single one of those men was is it lit. And not one man could tell me if the walkway between both offices during winter time would be lit and be safe for me to walk between them because they've never had to think about it and I think when you put it in context like that to people it's just something that they've not had to think about and so that's no disrespect to people there is many things that I've never had to think about before that from a diversity perspective my eyes start to open when you start to embed yourself in those communities and and so for for another example that isn't gender related I'm also learning British Sign Language and so I'm currently level two qualified and and that comes with a whole load of deaf awareness around what is it like to be deaf in a hearing world, what is it like to be a woman in a man's world those those are things that we just. Some people will take for granted right so I can hear when a doorbell is and I know that someone's there how do you do that how do you know about that if you're deaf what does that look like how do you get a room full of people's attention if they're deaf how do you win the answers in a quiz. Is when you're all using sandwich and you can all see it how do you still win the quiz and not cheat and not tell someone an answer these are problems that I have as a very competitive person when doing quizzes how do I tell someone else the answer that I want to write down without telling everybody else in the room my answer and so the point that I'm making is that you have to really put yourself in other people's shoes in order to really experience what it's like and my first comment is always going to be just go and ask people if you don't know what it's like to be a woman in data go and ask someone who's a woman and they will tell you what it's like but be ready to listen and be ready to be shocked about some of the answers that you'll get back because some of the hard-hitting messages around what it's like sometimes to be a woman in tech or a woman in data are uncomfortable and they're uncomfortable for people who are trying to do good things um but they are really uncomfortable to listen to and unfortunately I see a lot of it that I hear a lot of it, not specifically within our company. I mean, in the market in general, conversations I have with women, you know, it's difficult. And I think as lovely men as you are, and I've spent lots of time with both of you, there comes that point where you just have to go and ask women what it's like. And so I think topics like this and having these kinds of conversations is really important to say, yeah. Just talk to people, but talk with an open mind and be ready to listen.
Juan Sequeda [00:24:25.388] Dawn, this has been, first of all, I want to thank you and appreciate so much being so open and transparent and frankly, just honest and no BS about this. Because I mean, look, I think I recall having one type of conversation like this in the podcast a long time ago about like imposter syndrome uh with steve perry you remember and this is one where we're actually diving into a lot of like the personal stuff and we talk about all these technical things and stuff like that but this conversation we're having is what people deal with every day i mean yeah they have issues with their data but you know it's really not the stuff that they're dealing with every day like this conversation we're having you every day so if i may ask let me go ask you like please please tell us right now like what are like what does it mean to be women in data you've already been sharing a lot, but tell us those things that are going to shock us, that is going to help us also kind of be more understanding. And kind of what I want to go take to this is for the folks who are listening right now, we have a lot of data leaders who listen to the podcast. Like, actually, I'd love for you to speak to them. It's like to those data leaders, like, what is the message that you want them to hear that's going to make the entire data community stronger? Yeah.
Dawn. Carter [00:25:46.142] So I think for me, as a woman in any field, we're underrepresented in most sectors, right? So as a woman in any sort of space, what's it like to be a woman in data? Sometimes it's really bloody difficult. And I say that with the greatest respect to those people who have come and paved the way before me, because I've got it a lot easier than they do. And hopefully the generations that come after me will have it easier than I did. And and that's the whole point right that we pave the way for someone else to have an easier ride. And but if I give you some examples so so where I would be in a meeting and we'll be talking about technical complexities of whatever the thing might be as the lone woman in that room and probably the most technical person in the room sometimes people will say and turn to my male colleague what do you you think about that now I work with some of the best people who will just shut that insert swear word because I'm trying not to swear shut that down and be like maybe you should ask the enterprise data architect what they think yeah that's a great idea maybe we should ask the enterprise data architect what they think Dawn what do you think about this and so they'll just circle it right back to no no Dawn what did you think about that and make sure that my voice is heard and that's really lovely but I know that not everyone has that same experience and that's not the experience that I get every day. There are some days where I'll talk to vendors, suppliers, people at conferences and they'll have a very... A very closed-minded view on what it means to be data so to your point Tim women don't want to work in data there aren't any women out there that want to do this we've never told them that they could, we've never told them that they could aspire to be these things and a lot of that is systemic and a lot of that comes from you know when we're children and how we bring up our children and what they're led to believe in schools and and if you've ever read something like the invisible women then then you'll be able to see some good stuff in there. But it starts really early on that young girls start worrying about what they look like and how they're going to be perceived and what will people think of me more than young boys will. And we have to reach people at that age because by the time they get to my age and they're 20-somethings, whatever, you're already too late at that point. And so I think the main thing for me as a line manager, manager as a as a person with some influence and people's careers in my hands is is to try and be authentic with them so that when I talk about things from my perspective it's so that they feel like they can open up as well and so I've got a massive massive thing about being really really honest with my team of when I'm having a really bad day my team will be able to tell you when they know that I'm having a really bad day when I'm not feeling good when things are just going just awry either in my personal life my professional life and the lines get blurred and and things are just rough they will notice instantly and they will come and they'll say to me are you okay should you be at work are you all right can I help you with anything what can I do because that's the same thing that I do to them are you okay should you be at work is there anything that I can do to help you tell me what I can do for you and I think the more that we as leaders listen to have an open mind and listen to truly understand someone's perspective. The much better we're going to be as as leaders the much more we're going to get from our employees because they'll feel valued they'll feel listened to they'll feel respected and people who feel valued will always do more than what you expect from them and so I think that whether that's from a gender background or an ethnicity background or whatever the case might be listen to your people. Because they'll tell you what they need. And I've got quite a diverse group of people and different needs of people. And some have got children and some have got older kids and some don't have kids at all. And they all need different things at different times. And it's making sure that they realise that family is their number one. Absolutely. Work will be there. Work will always get done. There's nothing so immediate and urgent. There's no burning fires that we have to go and solve right now that can't wait until how you've dealt with a problem that you've got at home and I think by giving people that flexibility that trust that that just adult mindset of handle your business and then work will be there waiting for you I've got a lot of work for people so you know if you want extra work to take your mind off something I'll give you some extra stuff but if you need to have a bit of a break and you need to sort of tell it a little bit then I can take some more stuff off you and and just finding that that balance and and so for that for me it was anything that I can give as any little suggestion to anybody out there who's a leader or a line manager is remembering the people that you've got working for you they're not just numbers they're not bums on a seat they are people and they've got lives and you're you have their entire careers in your hands as a good manager or a really bad manager and I've unfortunately had both so.
Tim Gasper [00:31:06.938] Amen. Amen. And, you know, I think that as managers, we have to play a really critical role in helping to encourage the right, you know, kind of, you know, work life balance, but also making sure that we are treating people from different, you know, in this case, we're talking about, you know, men and women, let's say, right, that we're treating them in a very similar way. And, you know, when a kid is sick or something like that, that you're treating a male employee and a female employee in the exact same light there and making sure not letting any implicit or explicit biases affect that. And, you know, one of the things that we've done at data.world that, you know, I don't think we see often enough at companies is when somebody has a kid, right, a new kid in the family. Um, sometimes there are these implicit expectations that like, oh, if you're a woman, you're going to be gone for, you know, potentially, you know, two months, three months could be, you know, however long that's going to be. Right. But if you're a guy, right. And then, and a lot of times, you know, uh, men will say, oh, you know, I'm just going to come back. Oh, I just need to be gone for a couple of weeks and I'll be back. Right. Um, and creating a culture where we really encourage. You know, and this is as a manager, you need to do this with your employees, right? Say like, no, no, no, like take a week off, take a, I mean, sorry, take a month off, right? Take a month and a half off, take two months off, right? Um, spend that time with your family because, you know, it's, this, this is really about, um, uh, not just the relationship between like a mother and a kid. It's like, it's also, you know, it's the whole family unit. So I think that's, that's an important role that as managers, we have to make sure we're doing is um is creating this environment where we're really creating an equal opportunity for everyone
Dawn Carter [00:32:46.478] Yeah and i think what you're doing in that in that aspect as well tim is what you don't realize that you're doing is you're signaling at that point that child care is not solely a woman's responsibility and i know i'm talking in the binary in this instance and i'm aware that other family dynamics will exist and and so does other genders but but the point being that previously Previously, people will just have assumed that, well, a woman's just going to be off and our partner will come back to work and that's just how it is. And I think the more that we see different types of dynamics, the more we have to lean in and appreciate them. But the more we have to celebrate them by really saying, hey, do you know that this person took three months off? That's great. Tell me what you did on your three months off. That's amazing. You had so much quality time with your kid that you'd never have had before. You saw their first smile you've seen them take their first steps you were there for their first day at nursery or kindergarten as you might call it you know those things that you would otherwise have missed as a dad are really important for the children as well and really important for you to form that bond and and the signal that that sends is that it's okay for you to pick up some of that work because hey guess what they're your kids too right and so I get a real bee in my bonnet about when men say that they're babysitting their kids. You're not babysitting your own children. You're looking after them.
Tim Gasper [00:34:08.910] That is your child. You are looking after them. And the more that you help, the more that you're setting up, you know, the woman in your life for success because now they get to go and have their career. And they're not the one always having to drive to the school to help pick up the kid. Right. So these are all important aspects of creating balance and minimizing these sort of implicit biases. Right. You know, Dawn, you know, one other thing that I think is interesting is I know that when we were talking at Gartner and, you know, in some of our follow up conversations around this topic around diversity is around how change management kind of is is another topic that you're very passionate about. And not only are you passionate about it separately, there's actually a lot of connections and parallels between these topics. Would you mind going into that a little bit? What is your perspective on change management and what that needs to be in an organization? And how does diversity play into change management and contribute to it or become an important part of it?
Dawn Carter [00:35:12.610] Yeah, so I have, as you know, Tim, I have lots of little one-liners. And so I face every problem with the same question. How hard could it be? And that's because I assume that there's a path through it so my starting assumption is that I'll find a way to get there that that's always my starting my starting um goal and and sometimes whether that's a change that you that you're trying to put through and work whether that's a catalog that you're trying to implement whether it's master data management problems that you might have across a global organization that that's pretty hard but but thinking about it from a starting point of there is light at the end of that tunnel so how do I get there and and that applies to things even that are in your personal life right so as I said I'm learning sign language well how hard could that actually be well it turns out it's actually really difficult sometimes because the way that people think is different the way that sentences are structured is very different it's a completely different language and so sometimes it's pretty hard and you want to do whatever you want to do in life sometimes you're going to have to make a sacrifice for it and sometimes it's going to be really difficult but sometimes it's going to be really easy. And if you just don't try you'll never know how easy it could have been and so things that I've sort of turned my hand to that I thought that wasn't that difficult um you know when I first moved into data I moved into data because I was trying to test a system that we were putting in our in our old um my previous company in insurance I was trying to test the system and I figured out that if you key something in on this field it prints on a document like that and if you key it in differently it doesn't print properly and oh that's strange how does that work and starting to figure out the correlation between fields in a system and a print document which then made me create a print spec that I'd never created before and how do I get all this to work and. And actually, if I'd looked at that with a, Dawn, you're going to create a print spec for a document and just make it work, I would have gone, well, I don't know how to do any of that stuff, so no thank you. But the curiosity in me got the, well, what is that bit? And what does it look like if I just, what if, what if, what if? And I ask a lot of what if questions and I ask a lot of questions that people don't ask for fear of thinking that it's a stupid question. And I will throw out alternative opinions to people a lot of the time Just throwing this out there but what if we did this what's your opinion on that and I already know the answers that I'm looking for but I am open to being educated as well because sometimes those differences of opinions is where the real value lies and if I'm always the person that talks first in the room especially in a team situation you you almost end up with that well we'll just agree with whatever she said because she's heading up the team or or she's the technical person and we'll just agree with what that person says and you've got a lot of agreement bias whereas actually if you're a leader and you sort of sit back and say well what do you think what's your opinion on that how do you think that might work what's your recommendation as a solution for this and I know that some people in my team will be going I hate it when she does that to me but I'm doing it for a reason it's to make people think because one day I won't be there to tell them the answers they will live a career beyond me and I will move on to something else perhaps and whatever the world looks like our paths will divide and it's setting people up for the skills of being able to find those answers themselves and having the confidence to make those decisions whilst they're in a an almost psychologically safe environment to be wrong to learn to fail to make mistakes all those things are okay it's how we learn you know you you couldn't walk before you tried to stand up about a million times and fell over. So why do we think about learning any other type of skill any different to that?
Juan Sequesa [00:39:13.161] This is a super important segment i think it started at like minute 33 probably 34 you just asked a bunch of questions that we need to be asking ourselves all the time and i think that was super super important uh i mean the typical i go this is a dumb question like no question is dumb it's a typical thing right like if you're at if you're thinking about it guess but other people are also probably thinking about it too guess what it's not it's probably one of of the smart questions that people are like i think it's it's opening that up about how to, just i think it goes back to our like our ethos here like you just need to be more honest and no bs with ourselves and with others i mean we need more of that like what is your what is your kind of recommendation or how can people be a little bit more bolder about this or kind of like be less afraid because bringing up these questions like asking this what ifs and and how many differences of opinions, all of this is that diversity right there. Like having this diversity of thought and bringing people, and everybody's background brings different sort of diversity that we come up with different ways of seeing the problem, come up with different possible solutions. I mean, the example I always give is you put a group of people with the same background in one room, you put a group of people who have completely different backgrounds in another room. Where's where are the different cool different ideas going to come from i think we're going to all bet at least i'm going to bet that's going to come from the the group of people who come from a very diverse background so what what is your recommendation on like like hey just go say it go ask it like how do people get over tha
Dawn Carter [00:40:45.004] It's really really difficult right and i know that there's going to be someone in my team at the moment just laughing at the moment when i say this but but someone in my team is trying to make this a thing which is be more dawn and it's not actually a thing so let's not make it a thing but what he means when he says that is just someone having the confidence to see what everyone else is thinking but nobody's actually had the balls to say it yet and so sometimes I will just say what everyone else is thinking regardless of the filter that should have been applied on it at the time and I'll just say it and sometimes that works for me sometimes it doesn't and so you have to take the rough with the smooth with it but it's just about owning it more than anything else right because like you say someone else is going to be thinking it right someone else is going to be sat there going oh what if and if nobody asks that question then nobody's assumptions ever get challenged and no one ever changes the way that they're thinking and the worst thing that we can do as data professionals is pat each other all on the back and tell us how good we are because we all thought the same thing that is. The worst thing that we can do as data professionals we should be constantly curious we should be thinking we should be questioning we should be is that is that data right is it wrong where did it come from what does it mean what am i trying to answer with this thing why does it look like that why did i even need that in the first place what am i doing and if you're not asking about a million questions as soon as you see something then you're not challenging it enough
Tim Gasper [00:42:16.564] I think these communication dynamics are so important and you know you're bringing a lot of attention to them, which I think is good, because I think sometimes folks kind of. Underestimate the importance of how much that amplifies biases or tamps them down, how much it encourages diverse thinking versus, you know, causes it to become muted and hidden. So, you know, this is this is important for us to do this right. And for all of us to be mindful of when is it time to be quiet? When is it time to be speak up? When is it time to call upon my colleagues to be loud? When is it time to call upon my colleagues to shut up? These are all important dynamics.
Juan Sequeda [00:43:11.454] Here here's the here's the you know the deal that we have i mean i always tell tim you got to kick me underneath the table literally virtually like to slack me tell me or like sometimes we're in the meetings or in dinners or like stuff like i get like tim
Tim Gasper [00:43:24.454] Sometimes i'll text one i'll be like Juan stop
694
Juan Sequeda [00:43:31.434] I think that's up like it calm down call the fuck down i'm like yeah uh i don't know exactly i know and they make no they just shut up
Tim Gasper [00:43:36.714] Juan, too much knowledge graph calm down,
Juan Sequeda [00:43:39.074] Exactly this just reminds me of who told me once it's like in an organization they had the the green box approach that's how we do things and like nobody questioned why was it called the green box and but if you go down in history and you realize it's like there was the the what's called the hippo the the highest paid person's opinion whatever what they're doing all this architecture takes your diagram and then the hippo comes in and like whoa he takes a green marker and puts a box on the wall and warren's like that's what you need to go do and then they leave and then like okay i guess that's what we have to go do and then they just call the green box but nobody ever, questioned it or asked you like what if so what if that is the right thing i think that's what we need more and i think the answer here is that we just need to be more Dawn.
Dawn Carter [00:44:24.034] It's not a thing.
Juan Sequeda [00:44:27.834] Oh, man. Tim, any final thoughts before we hit our lightning round?
Tim Gasper [00:44:34.054] I'm looking forward to try to be more Dawn in my life.
Juan Sequeda [00:44:41.454] Love it. I think that's our T-shirt. All right. Honest, no BS lightning round. Let's kick it off. If there's one thing you would encourage to improve diversity in an organization, would it be to focus on community outreach? Or would you point to something else?
Dawn Carter [00:44:58.054] I think it's um focusing on listening to the people that you have um so they will tell you what's wrong in your organization they will let you know the things that are not working things that are broken processes that need to be improved if you're going to go out to them and ask them for their opinion you need to be prepared to listen to the answers and make actionable changes on those answers because if you ask them and don't but do anything, they'll stop telling you. And then they'll leave.
Tim Gasper [00:45:24.872] Yeah, well said. Second question for you. If you have an HR organization, you know, and or your leadership team at your company, that's really strongly emphasizing diversity, and they're trying to create programs and things like that. Have you seen that that is enough? Like, can that be enough of a driver? Or does there need to be other things happening groundswell individual contribution to really making diversity a thing?
Dawn Carter [00:45:49.672] Yeah it needs to come from both angles and i think that that certainly our organization there could be a challenge that if we're so busy looking at what might be deemed to be the minority in situations right so we don't have a 50 50 gender split in our organization we don't have an ethnicity and balance in our organization those things are out of kilt and so if we only focus on fixing the problem fixing the minority then we're never appealing to the people who are in that majority and actually we need to flip some of the conversations so as a woman I often see you know how to tell a woman she could be more confident and how to negotiate your salary interviews tell you what would be a better training course for people to go on how not to lowball someone when you offer them a job that would be a really good course for people to go on because actually what you're doing then is you're sending the message that it's not the women you need to fix. It's not the minority that's the problem, it's the system that's broken. And if we think about asking all of those questions about what if, what if, what if, that green box, then we will make a much bigger tangible change than if we just try and focus on the needs of the minority. And I think that's really where systemic change comes from. Vote Dawn for PM.
Juan Sequeda 00:46:59.392] Freaking honest right there. Stop, actually, how about let's stop, like, how do you negotiate your salary? How about we stop, start, stop low-balling. Yes. I mean, we could probably accomplish the same outcome, but it's just thinking about it from a different perspective. I mean, just this is already the diversity of thought right there, how we're like, just think about it from a different perspective.
Tim Gasper [00:47:29.902] Yeah, honest, no BS and flip the script every once in a while, right? Think of it from another angle.
Juan Sequeda [00:47:35.542] All right. Next question we have actually here from the chat. What can men do better tomorrow to improve the situation in the workplace to break down those barriers?
Dawn Carter [00:47:45.762] Thanks, Sean. I work with Sean, so that's good. So I think it's not just about what can men do to break down those barriers, but it's about being open about the challenges that both genders face, right? And earlier on this year, we got some great people in to come and do a talk and a webinar talking about men's mental health, because it's not just about what could women do, how can we support women in our organisation. How can we support men in our organisation too? And so it's got to be about finding the things that are imbalanced and all walks of life and leveling out the playing field and it's it's the difference between equality and equity right the the equality is you know the scenario that I like to use because I love shoes is giving everyone the exact same pairs of shoes but if I'm a size six and you're a size ten well that's not going to be great for you if you're trying to squeeze your feet into my size of shoe the equity piece is you know giving everyone the most appropriate shoe for the type of job that they're about to do so don't mock up a ladder with a pair of stilettos on have shoes as it fit you have them appropriate i use that analogy quite a lot for people so it's about bringing everyone onto that balance and and for some people that will be how can we help raise awareness in some things a men's medical or one in their life let's talk about that that rises to one in four if you're a man from an ethnic minority it's a real prevalent problem that we have inside and we've got almost 80 percent of our workforce is men one in eight of them are likely to get prostate cancer in their lifetime that's a lot of our workforce we're not talking about it enough we're not talking about these things because we're so busy focusing on really small problems over here going well we'll just solve a little bit of leave for people then we'll just fix this bit of problem and we really need to start looking at it from a systemic change rather than just a little bits on the edge to keep people quiet for a couple of weeks that won't really work for me.
Tim Gasper [00:49:38.808] Yeah, so well said. And it's, you know, this is bigger than, it's bigger than what we as organizations can solve, we have to do what we can, but these some of these are, you know, societal things, right. And I think you bring up a great point along kind of what you said there, which is that, you know, just because we're talking about diversity, and we're talking about the well being of, you know, of women and people of color and people of, you know, all sorts of different kind of unique backgrounds and persuasions, right? Right. You know, men's health is a thing, too. And we want to make sure that the whole thing is that it's about holistic. It's about holistic of making everyone balanced and bringing everyone's needs to the table and making sure they're being met.
Dawn Carter [00:50:22.528] Absolutely. And our internal webinar that we run in April this year with the World's Strongest Brothers, the Stoltman Brothers. And if you follow World's Strongest Men, you'll know who they are. But but they talk really openly about their mental health and and tom who's got autism they talk really openly and they came to do a webinar at our organization talking to 1400 men and women in our organization about having mental health struggles and and the message that i really wanted to get across that was if the world's strongest of strong men talk about their mental health so could everybody else.
Tim Gasper [00:50:56.128] Yep and men out there it's okay to be stressed out it's okay to be vulnerable. Um yep all right final lightning round question what's the one thing that we could do to encourage more diverse thoughts and ideas in our organization that maybe we haven't talked about yet today,
Dawn Carter [00:51:21.188] Um i think it's listen to the voices that aren't heard so that they'll always be be someone in the room that doesn't speak up because they're scared about what other people are going to think of them they don't want to ask the question publicly they're introverts they're not sure they're not confident they're they don't feel like they're in the environment where they can ask that find a way to get those voices as well because those are the voices where they've been thinking about it a lot they probably have a lot to say they're just not comfortable in the setting that you're in so making it comfortable for them to come forward forward.
[00:51:55.298] I think that's a great suggestion thank you Dawn.
Juan Sequeda [00:51:58.358] Wow all right tim takeaway time tim take us away with takeaways
Tim Gasper [00:52:08.498] All right i will do my best uh to takeaway some takeaways here we started off with you know honest no bs right what does diversity in data mean and you said that you know diversity Diversity is, you know, not just about, you know, trying to create more balance, right? In terms of gender, in terms of color, in terms of many different things, right? Not creating this balance just because it is nice or because it's even just like the right thing to do, right? It's because diverse thoughts also means that we're going to be looking at things from different viewpoints and we're going to get to better answers and better results. And I think that's really impactful. Of course, it's important to do these things for all, you know, because it's nice, because it's more balanced, because it's the right thing to do. All those things are very important, but it's also just going to result in a better outcome. It's going to be better for our company. It's going to be better for our world when you, you know, think about things from a true stakeholder, a broad stakeholder perspective and get all of those views in there. And it's also going to result in better data, right? Data Data has biases, data has complexities to it, where when you bring diverse thought, diverse approaches, a perspective and consideration of is diversity being reflected, then your data is going to get better too. Folks don't talk about, you know, diversity enough because they don't know really how to bring it up. But if it does, you know, but if it doesn't come up from a point of maliciousness in terms of why you're thinking or, you know, want to talk about these things, then you should bring it out into the open. Be transparent about it. I think that's really important. And, you know, it connects to, you know, some things that, you know, I've been trying to read and learn more about, like anti-racism, right, kind of anti-racist kind of approaches, right? If we never talk about it, right, we're never going to solve it. So we have to become comfortable, you know, as, you know, white or white seeming males and things like that to be able to have these kinds of conversations, right? Uh, women in data, right. Um, you know, that's an important aspect of the community that you've been connecting to a lot of what you've been trying to do, uh, you know, in your own organization, you mentioned that you were involved in a group that was helping, you know, drive diversity in your organization. And, you know, what does it mean to be a woman in the organization? Um, and, uh, recently y'all named yourselves as the data and analytics women's network, which I think is It's an incredible name, an incredible acronym as well that will last for the ages. And you mentioned that there are all sorts of programs that they've been focused on. One of them is, you know, like the Women in Data Conference and really engaging with that, right? This year, you said you took 80 people to the conference. Two of the folks were named in the 20 in tech. You were one of them. Congratulations, which is awesome. And, you know, that all kind of ties back to role models. So role models is really important. It also ties to community. Right. You mentioned things like coffee roulettes that help people meet each other, connecting people in that community. All these activities from the community outreach to the things that you're doing within the organization, the talks that you're doing, this kind of, you know, leadership shows people that your company cares about this, that you care about it as a manager, that you care about it as a peer, that you're engaging in that conversation. And what it's doing is it's resulting in actual results. The applicants are much more balanced in terms of the diversity of the applicants. Your team is 50, 50% women, 50% men. Right. Um, and you know, when you approach it this way and you're not just, you know, approaching this, uh, with sort of, uh, you know, a single threaded lens and you're really engaging and building that community and empowering people like you, Dawn, to be role models for the organization, it makes a huge, huge difference. So, um, there's so many more other things, but you know, Juan, I'll pass it over to you. What are your big takeaways?
Juan Sequeda [00:55:59.104] I love what you just said. Like, what does it mean to be woman in tech? Just go ahead and ask. And be ready to listen and be ready to be shocked i think that's such an important kind of like that's an honest no bs right there i mean you know your answer it's just bloody difficult right but you say this with respect like so many other people women who have actually created the path to where we are right now right i mean you brought up some examples like oh what do we think let's well they don't ask you but let's let's ask the enterprise data architect which is you right i mean we need to be more like be more authentic with our feelings everybody around this stuff right i mean to be able to are you okay is this is this something there's something going on right should you actually be at work right now like maybe like this is what folks feel more valued they'll always give more and like i was like employees and people they're not just numbers and we had this whole conversation on the change management and i love how you just said like face every problem with the same question how hard can it be i mean and you'll find a way to get there and there is and think about it there's always light at the end of the tunnel and yeah it can obviously very hard and you need to do some sacrifices, but sometimes it can be easy and you won't know until you go try. Ask the what if questions. Ask questions that people may fear to ask because they think it's dumb. We need to have these differences of opinions. You need to ask, what do you think? What solutions do you think? We need to actually kind of help people to think more about what's going on. We need people to be that Dawn who you said is have the confidence to see what others are thinking, and go own that. We need to be constantly curious. And this is where that kind of diversity comes in. It's like, when it comes to data, is that the right data? Where did that data come from? Like, why do we need that data in the first place, right? And we need to be focusing on those. There's so much focus on the small problems. And there's kind of, we understand things holistically. And at the end of the day, we need to be more Dawn. Be more Dawn. I like that.
Tim Gasper [00:57:51.167] Hashtag be more Dawn.
Juan Sequeda [00:57:57.107] Dawn, anything else? Anything we missed?
Dawn Carter [00:58:02.647] I think that's a really good summary. Thank you. And thanks for your kind words. I mean, I think I'm just someone with an opinion that has a louder voice than some others. And I refuse to be quiet. So sometimes that works in my favor, sometimes not. Not whilst my actual title is enterprise data architect i'm more i'm more often than not describe myself as a professional feather ruffler i'm trying to get people to do things differently and that comes with ruffling a few feathers and and if people feel uncomfortable because i'm asking them questions to think differently and why do you need that data why is it going to look like that or if it's from a how do we do this from a personal perspective and that's okay because Because the end goal is how do we become better? How do we get different outcomes? And you can't keep doing the same things and expect different outcomes. You have to do things differently. And we're just going to have to embrace that both as an organisation and a society. We're just going to have to be different.
Tim Gasper [00:59:02.116] You you have to be curious and you have to be results-driven and professional feather ruffler, right, Juan?
Juan Sequeda [00:59:09.936] That's a t-shirt right there. Oh, man. All right. Let's wrap it up with three final questions. What's your advice? You've given so much advice, but what's your advice about data, about life? Second, who should we invite next? And then what resources do you follow?
Dawn Carter [00:59:27.076] Oh my advice will be never accept because we've always done it like that as a responsible answer for anything um who we should invite next oh so many great people um i would recommend anyone from a company called fertility to come and talk about some of the great work that they're doing around females female reproductive systems the lack of data around female medical health and And it's just phenomenal the work that they are doing. But from a literacy perspective and getting people to talk about data and really being open about what data is and not scaring people, I'd recommend Greg Freeman from the Data Literacy Academy. And so shout out to the work that Greg's doing in our organisation. And things to follow. I'm a big advocate of women in data. So go and follow them. But also some of the other podcasts like Let's Talk Data. I was fortunate enough to be on one of their podcasts earlier on this year, but the work that Mariah Tallent are doing behind that and She Does Data is just phenomenal with some of the results that they've had on placing successful candidates in. And one of them's got 80% female placements at the moment from a recruitment perspective. That's just fantastic. They're not just talking about it, but they're actually seeing real action through the stuff that they're doing, which is great.
Juan Sequeda [01:00:48.516] Fantastic advice. advice Dawn this has been a phenomenal conversation because it we really were uh we were again i appreciate how uh open and vulnerable we're having this honest no bs discussion about topics that again people are thinking about this stuff but they're like not having it and i appreciate you coming on to be actually have this conversation and hopefully people are listening and can also reach out to you about this if they have any other questions and stuff just a quick next week we have Amalia Child I'm this is a this is going to be an episode about combining data and the library science world she wrote a great post about the five laws of data enablement how the father of library sciences would make his data team indispensable that's going to be a very interesting episode about another twist of stuff and then with that Dawn thank you thank you thank you and as always data.world thanks you for letting us do this every week for now on year five, Dawn, thank you, cheers I'm looking forward to seeing you soon in the conference.
Dawn Carter [01:01:44.616] See you soon.
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