Interview with April Wensel, the founder of Compassionate Coding, a conscious business that helps technical teams cultivate sustainable, human-centered software development practices built on a foundation of emotional intelligence.
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women and women-identified entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles. #patriciakathleenpodcasts #wildeagency #femalefounders #femaleentrepreneurs #sandiegostartups #womeninbusiness #womenintech #CEOmindset
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's w i l d e dot agency or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back, this is your host, Patricia. And today I'm sitting down with April Wensel. So April is the founder and CEO of Compassionate Cotting. Welcome, April. [00:01:40][10.5]
[00:01:41] Hi. Happy to be here. [00:01:42][0.9]
[00:01:43] Awesome, I am so excited to have you and kind of get into compassionate cotting. I think that the the impetus for the company is so fascinating. And I know that everyone listening is going to have a good time hearing about it. Really quickly, for everyone listening, the roadmap for today's podcast, we're going to get into April's academic background and early professional life. Then we'll jump straight into compassionate coding and some of the things that she's doing there. Then we're going to climb deeper into the questions regarding the history of compassionate coding, the who, what, when, where, why and how of the particular funding founding all of that. And then we'll talk about goals that April has for compassionate coding for the next three years. And so much is scaling things that really affect companies of its size and then will land round everything up with advice that April has for those in a similar position or looking to get involved in what she does. A really quick bio about compassionate coding. It's the ethos of the company is that software may be written on machines, but it's written by and for human beings. Recognizing this fact empowers compassionate coding to build stronger, more effective teams at compassionate coding. We're transforming the culture of the tech industry with compassion through speaking, facilitating workshops and providing coaching to software teams and individuals on growing their emotional intelligence skills using combination of agile methodologies and the latest in positive organizational psychology research. So and now a really quick bio on April before I start peppering her with questions. April Wentzel is the compassionate coding, a conscious business that helps technical teams cultivate sustainable, human centered software development practices built on a foundation of emotional intelligence. She has spent the past decade as a software engineer and technical leader at various startups and Silicon Valley building products in such a field as health care, education, gaming and user research as an advocate for more socially responsible tech industry. She also mentors technologists around the world and volunteers with organizations to teach coding to people from underrepresented groups when not coding or speaking. She enjoys writing, running ultramarathons and experimenting with Vegan recipes. So that's fantastic. That sounds like I'm going to have a lot to ask you myself as a Vegan, as a proud Vegan warrior. April, will you drop us straight into your academic background and early professional life following that? [00:04:14][151.3]
[00:04:15] Sure. So I started coding in high school, and so then it was the natural progression for me to study computer science at Pomona College here in Southern California as well. And although I studied computer science, it was at a liberal arts school. [00:04:33][17.6]
[00:04:34] So I got a nice, well-rounded education of the humanities as well. And I think that that's shown up in the work that I do now. But after that, I moved on to I moved up to the Bay Area because that's where you move when you study computer science for large part. And I got my first job at Sony, a really big company, and it took one job, about less than a year at that job to realize I didn't want to work for a big company ever again. I had a lot of bureaucracy in that. And then I moved on to startups and then I worked at a bunch of different startups. As you covered in the bio as a software engineer. Moving on to leadership positions as well. And I did that for about a decade. [00:05:16][42.2]
[00:05:20] And so when you kind of bounced between, was there a method to your different peppering of, I think, kind of what people have discovered, especially tech talent and nerds, as I affectionately refer to them in the industry, is that peppering different industries different from, let's say, different walks of life actually strengthens, I think, a lot of software talent and offers this more landscape view than a lot of people who are very microscopic and what they do and what areas they work on being able to work in so many different genres from health care and education to gaming and user research, it must have offered you this kind of larger view as to what your industry was all about. Is that how was the impetus for developing compassionate coding? Where you peppering things from your past 10 years of the decade you spent in Silicon Valley, or was it in reaction to those places? [00:06:17][57.2]
[00:06:20] Yeah, it was definitely I often people might pay me as a job hopper, and I claim that title proudly because it gave me that diversity of experience you're talking about. And absolutely that that helped me see that the problems I was seeing in the tech industry actually appeared in all of these places. [00:06:38][17.7]
[00:06:38] So it helped in that in that way. And then it gave me exposure to the fact that it wasn't one segment of the tech industry that was problematic. It was all of them. And like every every company has room to grow. And so it was helpful in that in that in that way. [00:06:53][14.2]
[00:06:53] OK, so let's climb into compassionate coding. Can you tell me when was it founded and how was it funded? [00:07:00][6.7]
[00:07:00] Was it bootstrapped? Did investment any of those things? [00:07:04][3.4]
[00:07:05] Yes, it was founded in twenty sixteen in May. So I just, I just quit a job because I was kind of fed up with me with all the diversity problems and things like that and just the culture of the industry. And I was like, you know, when I'm done jumping around and saying the same thing everywhere, I'm going to start a company to fix this. And so that's why I started in 2016. And thankfully at the beginning, I had savings from having worked at all these jobs, which although they weren't very fulfilling most of the time, they did pay well. So I was able to save up money to start the company. So but within a few months, I had my first client and that just came from publishing content about the issues that I saw and the solutions that I was providing to them. [00:07:49][44.0]
[00:07:49] And so people reached out to me. So I didn't do any sort of sales or anything like that. I still don't. I put out content and I let clients come to me. And a lot of companies are seeing these problems on their teams, culture problems, diversity problems, burnout problems. And so they approached me. So within that, you know, once the clients started coming in, it's now self-sustaining. So I never had to take on funding. And I don't plan on doing that because maintaining control is really important to me because of the you know, the essence of the message really comes from a place of of consciousness and social impact and things like that that are really important to me. And so, yeah. So I don't want to give that away in exchange for any funding. I have received offers and even from the beginning I was just like, no thank you to. [00:08:37][47.6]
[00:08:37] Right. Yeah, absolutely. When you can bootstrap, I mean I think even the most prolific and as long as they're being honest, VCs or angels would say if you can bootstrap, do it, everyone would do that, that's in your best interest. [00:08:50][12.5]
[00:08:51] So when you talk about cultivating sustainable human centered software development practices and then you get into it's an honor and a foundation of an emotional intelligence, can you you put that in some more like real life terms? [00:09:05][14.2]
[00:09:05] I mean, we all are. [00:09:06][0.8]
[00:09:06] I think well, a large part of the industry and all of tech and startups in general are aware that there's been for a millennia this disconnect between the beast that is the business and the people that are working within it and roles assigned and misuse of rules or talent or things like that, kind of disconnecting the fluidity and therefore bottom line of businesses. And it seems like your practices would touch on that. But can you point to kind of a little bit more of the structure of your company and kind of the services that you render? [00:09:40][33.9]
[00:09:41] Yeah, so it's true that it's a general problem in business and it shows up specifically in software development because we do spend so much time communicating with our computers. And so it's to give you an example, I was talking with a female manager on a software team and I was talking with her and I sort of said half jokingly, but I was like, oh, you have very strong emotional intelligence because she said something that was but she said, don't tell anybody. It'll hurt my cred. And the reason she said that is in software, if you're good with people, it's assumed that you're not, quote, technical, meaning that you don't have the technical skills you can't code because you're good with people. And if the scene is this very black and white thing. And so the problem is those same issues that show up in general business, if you don't have emotional intelligence, show up in larger degree on software teams because it's not just not cultivate it, but it's disrespected and it's women, women especially are so afraid of being seen as non-technical that they feel that they have to hide the fact that they are good communicators. Some of them I'm not saying all of them, but when they do. And so so part of it a lot of what I do, especially in the community outreach and the content I publish, is making the business case for caring about this in specifically a software team. Because, for example, if you're building for users and you were trying to negotiate with stakeholders, the project manager, marketers, sales, empathy is essential to be able to understand those needs. And that's a key part of emotional intelligence. So in these workshops, we break it down and. OK, here's the conversation, what are the different people in this conversation? What do they value? What are they looking for? What do they need? What are they feeling in this moment? And it's you know, it's a novel concept in a lot of these software teams to even give any sort of attention to that. [00:11:37][115.2]
[00:11:38] Right. I'm wondering. Well, going along the lines with what you were talking about with having this this high IQ level kind of equating to a low tech level, do you think that that was a myth that's propagated by the engineer or that also got kind of attached to by management and is kind of expelled? [00:11:57][18.9]
[00:11:57] And it's not dissimilar to the archetype of a computer tech talent being an 18 year old boy with a hoodie in his parents garage? Right, man. Like, it's just it's the most unrealistic archetype I've ever heard of. And I don't even I know a great deal of tech talent all over. But I was I was brought up in my career in Silicon Valley and nobody fit that archetype. And it was only ever working against the industry to pretend that that was kind of our, you know, our mascot of some sort. And so do you think that it was I guess my question is for you, because you've kind of unearthed this problem and and look through the different strata at the issues. Do you think that it was crowded and only maintained by the tech talent, or do you think it was also heralded by management, this kind of disconnect between if you can communicate beautifully, you must not be good at coding? [00:12:46][49.1]
[00:12:49] Yeah, so actually, it's an interesting thing, it's a combination of both, but I traced it back like through doing research and found this really interesting paper written in the nineteen sixties. [00:13:00][11.0]
[00:13:00] And it came out of a study at IBM for what makes a successful programmer and the people who did that study, among other things included and I and I quote here, programmers don't like people. And that was included in the in the sort of profile of the personality of a strong programmer. I feel like dealing with the legacy of that since the 60s, at least probably beyond. And so the way this shows up in a practical way is in interviews. So interviews for software engineering jobs are still largely like, I'm going to watch you code the answer to this problem. And we're either in person on a computer or on a whiteboard, which is very not indicative of the daily work. And so it's really not a good way to evaluate the strengths of the software engineer, because in the real day to day life, it's much more collaborative and it's much more you can look things up and it's not like what do you memorize and that sort of thing. But that sort of hiring practice will find you, the people who like to code alone in a basement and don't talk to people because they'll just happily crank out the code for you. But are they going to be the strongest person on your team? Unclear, because they may not be able to communicate and things like that because those things are seen on some teams. Nice to have. But I like I said, on many teams as a sign that you're not, quote, technical, a term that I don't even like because I think everybody is technical in some way. [00:14:32][91.1]
[00:14:32] Yeah. [00:14:32][0.0]
[00:14:33] And well, and I also think that the development of things like Agile and all of these new systems were kind of this bridge between I would argue that the lone wolf back door program or breaking into CIA for fun, all of those concepts are actually only maintained and well sustained and is self singular person company, because at some point you have to communicate. And when that was realized in the early aughts, all of these companies started coming out with systems and programs that helped people communicate schedules, goals, progress, those types of things, the hierarchies within the system. [00:15:10][36.9]
[00:15:11] And so I think this was kind of on the horizon anyway. And chasing down IBM's we should find out who wrote that and get them on a podcast series between you and I and find out why they've endured progress forever since programmers that don't like people probably have bigger issues than programing at hand. Yeah, yeah. [00:15:34][22.7]
[00:15:34] And it's, you know, it's a very good point. [00:15:36][1.5]
[00:15:36] And I will say to touch on the agile thing, though, one problem there is that the Agile Manifesto was written by all white men and a large series of them, and it definitely does not address many of the problems we're still seeing in technology related to people. And it also, although it can help you collaborate to produce value, as they call it, in the system for the customer, it does not incorporate ethics or anything like that, which is also a big part of building for humans. And and I think we see a lot of that in the tech industry and how Facebook's been treating user data and all kinds of things. [00:16:13][36.7]
[00:16:13] So that's interesting. I didn't know that about Agile. [00:16:15][1.8]
[00:16:15] I myself remember when Scrum made it into my household with sticky notes and stuff like that as like a system that I was practicing on a person to see if it could help me like manage the soccer team of children I had running around my house and activities and things like that. It was genuine. Nerds would come over and say, is that scrum as you doing scrum? And I was like, Yeah, you bet I am. So yeah, I love it. That's a great finding. Yeah, well, I mean, in finding the guy who composed these things and whether or not we want to give us give our kind of dedication to people, there's no way if it's written by all white men, it even describes a community in which it was written for at the time, let alone now with the error of visibility and exclusivity ideally theoretically upon us. So can you claim sometimes. Yeah, well, right. It's it's all about how much to change we are. I mean, the voice is being there for exclusivity and things like that. But there's a lot of talk, especially in the higher echelon of management, things like that, as to how much difference it's actually making on hiring and bottom line, the real logistics of it. [00:17:25][69.4]
[00:17:26] Yeah. [00:17:26][0.0]
[00:17:27] Can you speak to, like, as of late, kind of when you come in to implement specific things, how do you root out issues that you then go into and kind of solve with this, like, emotional intelligence aspect? [00:17:42][14.4]
[00:17:44] Yeah, so, you know, there's a lot of common patterns that I see and that I saw for 10 years in the tech industry and then now with my clients. And so what I do is interviews. [00:17:54][9.6]
[00:17:54] So in the same way that designers do user interviews, I do that with the people on the team and leadership to understand where some of the gaps are, to understand where there's unproductive conflict happening on teams, to understand problems in their hiring process and problems of stress and burnout and that sort of thing. And I do so I do like very in-depth conversations with those people. And then that helps shape the content that I use in the trainings and to help provide an alternate way of doing things right. [00:18:26][31.3]
[00:18:26] Absolutely. And so you go in and kind of self diagnose her, it sounds like per patient, per issue, per company. It's out of the box. [00:18:34][8.2]
[00:18:35] That's one thing that's really, I think, set me apart and attracted people to compassionate coding and why I haven't had to do like sales pitches and things like that, because, one, I have the experience as a software engineer who's know has a background of maybe being also suspicious of these skills, because I took a while to sell me on the importance of this. So I'm able to use that sort of empathy for the techies who don't want to talk about people and their feelings and all that. And then that's one unique thing. And the other thing is that I really do customize the content so that it will resonate with the audience because there's so many emotional intelligence programs out there and some of them are people find value in and that's great. But a lot of them are that sort of like standard corporate. I'm going to click through this deck and say these things and then that's it. And I try to make it a little more conversational when I make fun of it, like I do at the beginning, that we're going to start with trust falls, then I'm just kidding. [00:19:32][57.0]
[00:19:32] And I'm very happy to have Investec. [00:19:37][5.0]
[00:19:39] So it's fun. It's I try to make it fun for me and for the people involved because I think that that's, you know, especially with attention spans these days, it's important to to keep it to keep some energy to it. So it's not just yeah, it's not just kind of here's the science behind emotional intelligence and here's why it matters. And all these things like I cover that, but try to do it in a more casual conversational. [00:20:01][21.7]
[00:20:02] Yeah, well, it must be changing. I don't know any of the statistics about it because I don't spend my off hours rooting out how it changes people's bottom lines. [00:20:10][7.6]
[00:20:11] But it must be because it's the new buzz term in any in any system that's breaking a profit and even in some startup circles that want to really configure properly. [00:20:21][10.7]
[00:20:22] I've talked to a couple of startup female women, identified companies that say, you know, we want someone to come in and give us a diagnostics of the direction we're headed in right now because we don't want to kind of integrate and weave in these these problem issues until later on and getting like an emotional intelligence program to make sure that we set out, I guess, a blueprint, if you will, of of how to build. And I thought that that was a creative way of using it as well. But it must be changing not just the like the bottom line and ROIC of companies, but also just the culture within it. I mean, right now, everyone's all about retaining talent to go around. You've got to keep your people happy. Yeah, putting the right talent to the right work is what promotes, I imagine, more happiness. [00:21:05][43.3]
[00:21:06] Yeah, absolutely. And a great resource on that for people who are trying to make the business case for anybody in their company or to themselves that this matters. A great book is Awakening Compassionate Work by Monica Wallin and Jane Dutton. They have done it's full of peer reviewed research on things like that. And they specifically talk about retention, both of employees and of customers, because as you can imagine, when you're compassionate with people, they stick around. It makes I mean, it's logical sense, but it's funny that a lot of this stuff to convince some people they need the research. But I look at something like yoga, for example, which people have been benefiting from for millennia. And then it's like, oh, now the science says it's good for you. So now I'm going to do it. And it's like, OK, yes, of course I love data. I come from a certain background. I love that. But also, if it's a small investment, which some initially it is some of these things to to start valuing these these things, try it out and see how it works, especially in your own life. It's a small investment. Like I'm going to try incorporating these practices because to be honest, I like helping companies with their bottom line and in the sense that it helps, I only work with value aligned companies. I try to to the best of my knowledge. And so I want to help them accomplish the things they're trying to accomplish in the world. But more fulfilling for me is actually helping individuals be happier in their own life because that matters much more to me than the profits of some company. But it's true that it also helps out with that. And that does, I think, initially draw a lot of people to it. [00:22:38][91.4]
[00:22:38] Yeah. And kind of reaching along those same lines of where you're driven. [00:22:42][4.3]
[00:22:43] Kids you talk about within your bio about, you know, getting coding, teaching and coding to the underrepresented groups and populations, which is something I myself am incredibly passionate about. I think it's a way of stabilizing and equalizing some of the class disparity in pay parity issues that we have, not just gender, but different groups of people across our country as well as the world. Can you speak to some of the projects that you're involved that does that? [00:23:14][30.4]
[00:23:14] Yeah, absolutely. So one group I volunteered with a number of times, and I highly recommend everybody support in any way they can as Black Girls Code. So they have a number of chapters throughout the country that I know of and it's really fun to volunteer. You like to help the girls build little robots or build a game and scratch and they're just so excited. So I sit in one of those. I participate in one of those workshops and then I hear some white guy that I'm working with say, oh, girls just aren't interested in programing. And I'm like, like, you need to volunteer with Black Girls Code and see or maybe not volunteer because you probably not be very encouraging, but at least observe what happens in these workshops because it's just so inspiring. They love it. And it's not that we have to convince them to love it. They just love it. They love doing it. And so that's one that I love as far as like women later in their career, older, older women, I volunteered with Hack Wright Academy as a mentor. And that's a great help from the transition from another career into software development. [00:24:14][60.2]
[00:24:15] Because, you know, although I also want help the next generation, like I'm in this generation and I grew up and, you know, I studied computer science and I got in the industry. And so even if we get these girls in the industry, they're not going to stay in Maine. [00:24:31][16.4]
[00:24:32] And so I also really care about changing what's happening now and not just the next generation. [00:24:37][5.5]
[00:24:38] Absolutely. Absolutely. As do I. Do you. So just to back up a little bit, Black Girls Code, I'm familiar as well. [00:24:45][6.7]
[00:24:46] And I love I adore trying to get the founder to interview with me. She's a busy woman, but it's for everyone listening. It's a nonprofit and it's got a lot of different chapters. I don't know how many, but it's kind of dispersed all over the nation. And its drive is to help underrepresented populations get into the fun behind technology and coding. Right? Yeah. So it's and it sounds like I have never been to an event, but it sounds like they're they're sweet and kind of fun and age appropriate and getting young girls who wouldn't normally be exposed to technology and coding and things like that going with it. So if you were looking forward for the next three years, you kind of in your idealistic vision board moment with compassionate coding, where do you want to see it in three years? [00:25:32][46.7]
[00:25:33] Like what kind of metamorphosis or growth or whatever that might be for you would be ideal? [00:25:37][4.8]
[00:25:39] Yeah. So for the past three years, I've mostly been focused on in-person workshops with companies and so I built a lot of been able to tailor the content and understand the pain points and all of that. And so right now, actually at this moment, I'm working on an online course to make that more accessible. So it doesn't involve me traveling all around. And so it will help me scale in a way that that suits my lifestyle and my preferences. And I consider a lot of options, but not just for other people who are sort of interested in this sort of thing, like you can train trainers and then have like that as your model. But for me. That just wasn't what I wanted to do. I didn't. Again, like a lot of the message, a lot of the value comes in the uniqueness of like even just how I present it and things that I'm sure I could find lovely people to present it. But that would take the time that I'm an investment and oversight that I'm not really looking for right now. So online course seems like a great way to go. So I'm working on that. And I'm also working on a book for compassionate coding to again reach more people. [00:26:38][59.6]
[00:26:39] And it's really about turning compassionate coding into a platform and a community for everybody who ascribes to these values. I was talking with somebody else and she was like, I don't know, like everybody should be a compassionate coder, like all developers to go through this training because it will be more effective in their job, happier because that's the other thing. And this is how although I'm very interested in diversity and I think emotional intelligence is very important to growing diversity, a lot of times if I'm trying to convince somebody from the majority overrepresented groups and tech to care about this, I lean on the burnout issue because a lot of people, even from overrepresented groups, are feeling burnt out by the inhumane work work style. Just go, go, go all the time. And emotional intelligence also helps with that. And so a lot of times we start from that, like understanding your own suffering your own problems. And then that provides a pathway to other people are feeling this, too. And maybe they're feeling it worse because they're from a group who has all these other things against them because of our society and bias and our privilege and whatnot. So that's kind of an entryway. [00:27:45][66.1]
[00:27:45] So anyway, so, yeah, I see it as something that's just almost in the same way that, like, agile moved things. It's kind of like that, like moving that sort of approach, that it's not just like we add on and then it's nice to have that they can talk to people to know it's core. Like we put humans at the very center of every decision we make, even what framework we use in which programing language we use, we think, how is this going to affect the people, both the people using the code and the people are users. And what features are available to them? [00:28:13][28.0]
[00:28:14] Yeah, I think for that and perhaps this is my naiveté and I have come to this meeting here and so I'll just go ahead and expose it. But it sounds like a fun cowboy cowgirl land in so much as part of my chagrin. And coming up in the Valley during the OT's was all of the perks to some of the change or the development of the nerd culture. We're actually totally built for mind control and enslavement. And you have to stay with me here. I swear. Google's campus came up while I was holding down Silicon Valley, albeit as a fashion photographer. But I was watching the development and unde and I had a great deal of friends and investment and husband that was coming up during that time period as well. And it was all built around keeping them on campus like a cult. And I've gone into these diatribes and blogs and things, so I don't care how much I demystify Google from loving me at this particular moment. But the idea that they were going to bring your dental appointments, wash your car, keep your dog there, it was also you never left Google. It was like your entire life was built on keep coding as long as possible. Free coffee, free food, don't leave campus as it was terrifying to watch. And I kept telling people it's not a perk like crazy. And I think that it was seen as hysterically funny back in the day. But what I what I believe that your company and an emotional intelligence programs are doing is kind of coming in and or at least they have the freedom to do, which is evaluate like where the perks really perks. Do they actually approach all personalities involved is keeping me in one geographical location for twenty four. Seven is actually my form of purgatory. Yeah, I grew, I die. And so for certain people it works. They don't want to leave, they don't want action. But this concept that we were bringing in this fun nerd like we have a foosball table. Well foosball for me is boring after two plays, like there's just different things that I think coming in and reevaluating the freedom that emotional intelligence programs has to evaluate all of those factors. And was it really fun and was it exclusionary? You walked in and found I was just telling someone the other day, I've never walked into a new startup that had a huge infusion of capital and money. And so they have the fun little games and quilting corner. Everybody giggles at that. And I'm like, it's no more funny than a pool table is just another hobby that someone could have. It just they were all developed and explored by these very exclusive measures. [00:30:53][158.8]
[00:30:54] And so in doing emotional intelligence testing, I think that it reaches into inclusive city because it has to kind of suss out exactly what measures are in place to make people happy. And the freedom to do that is amazing. [00:31:06][12.5]
[00:31:08] Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I agree with you about all that. I mean, in terms of. Google and I also I have said many critical things at Google, so I'm with you on that one, not a very inclusive place. And what's funny is Google has they've had mindfulness programs and things like that. But ultimately, that's the thing is like none of these are going deep enough to look at these like root problems of cultural issues, which is making assumptions about what people want and then like one type of person and then building around that like you're talking about in the tech Twitter verse. Lately, people have been discussing alcohol at tech events and how it's billed as like, oh, everyone, you know, there's a beer on tap in the office and everybody get drunk. And that that makes women feel unsafe for one in a lot of circumstances and that not everybody, for many reasons, wants to imbibe that much in drinking. And that is putting that at the center makes it sort of alienating to others. And I think there's definitely something to that. And it relates to this idea of perks and who are we really serving with these perks? Right. [00:32:06][58.0]
[00:32:07] Because the perk at my personal company would be an all Vegan diet. And I can guarantee you that 90 percent of the people out there would not feel like that was a perk, flipping things on its head. I had this dream one time of developing an entire empire based on on on female centric, stereotypical female centric things and then bringing young white men in and being like, it's a perk. We have a quilting corner. We have a Vegan center. We support local nonprofits during our weekends with drives and food drives and things like all of these different things that people were doing that were that were exclusive by nature, but pitched as fun and dazzling and very, I think, sarcastically opposed to inclusive city. [00:32:51][43.9]
[00:32:52] So if you ran into a woman, a young woman identified a woman, let's say, over this weekend, and she came up to you and said, listen, April just got my my software development degree. I'm going to go I'm going to go up to the valley. I'm going to pepper around some some companies. I'm going to do some stuff. [00:33:11][18.6]
[00:33:11] And then eventually, I think I want to start my own startup. What are the three pieces, the key pieces of advice that you give her, knowing what you know now about your history moving forward? [00:33:21][9.8]
[00:33:22] Yeah, I think one is trust yourself and your instincts more than anything else as a woman in tech that doesn't apply to everybody. But I definitely think it applies to women in tech because you're going to get a lot of advice from a lot of people, women with more experience, who have made concessions in order to fit in and have sort of made compromises that you may not want to make and that you don't have to make just giving up some of the elements of your femininity. Like I used to wear the hoodie and I used to dress that way and I used to not talk about women's issues because that would make me that would ostracize me. And I I don't regret it because I have compassion for my past self, but. Do you think that if every woman acts like that, then nothing's going to change? [00:34:04][42.5]
[00:34:05] Not to put the burden on women, but I also think there's an opportunity here to initiate change through cultivating authenticity. So that's all one, which is just trust yourself more than anybody else. And that means ignoring a lot of advice that seems to come from people you might respect on some level because it might not serve you. So. And I think another one is don't be afraid of leaving when things get toxic. Don't be afraid of being a job offer. I was and I never had a problem finding a job because software engineering is in demand. So a lot of people give fear based advice on that, which is like, oh, you don't want to leave because that will look bad on your resume. I don't I have not found that that's the case because I don't want to work for a company who has such a narrow view of professional life to think that that's that that's a red flag or whatever, because also for women, a lot of times they have to leave because it's sexual harassment or even just being disrespected or underpaid or all these things. And so there's so many reasons to leave a job. So the companies you want to work for know that and recognize it. So don't be afraid to quit when things get bad. And I think, three, it's it's never too early to start giving back no matter how early you are in your career. And so especially this goes out to women who are overrepresented group themselves like white women. So do what you can do as well to support people of color and people from other underrepresented groups in tech, because we still have a certain amount of privilege ourselves and we can leverage that to improve things for other groups as well. And so I think it's never too early to start thinking about that, volunteering with groups like we talked about, but also just in terms of how we advocate. So in the same way that we want male allies to advocate for us, like we're in a position to advocate for our colleagues and to amplify their voices. And I think that's important, too. [00:35:48][103.6]
[00:35:49] Absolutely. And I think that that speaks largely to mentorship on a lot of levels. [00:35:54][4.6]
[00:35:55] I've talked to a lot of adults lately who talk about mentorship being this kind of like I found someone doing what I wanted to do and I asked them to kind of be my mentor, which to me is plagued with a lot of weird question marks to begin with. But it's it's a random question, and I've never gotten into it. But I think that giving back begins this mentorship model that can really be given openly. And I truly believe I mean, it's the impetus for this this podcast series. It's about developing a platform of any sort where women can give back via testimony, via a story, via anything that might help other women. Coming up. [00:36:31][36.3]
[00:36:33] And I want to wrap up with asking you a question that I indicated to in in the middle of it. Did you yourself kind of getting into mentorship? Were you ever moved? Did you ever find a system or a group of people that you identified with that helped you with your career, like with your trajectory, or have you been just yourself steered self-motivated entity? [00:36:53][20.6]
[00:36:54] Yeah, it's funny because I often joke that my mentors or myself or books that I read because I find that those are most inspiring to me. I read books and I see what resonates with me and I apply that in my life. And so there have been great people through books that I've read that have influenced me. But humans, I think it was Carol Adams who is big in the animal rights movement. She wrote a book, but she was tweeting about something and she tweeted an article and she said humans are imperfect, but like books are perfect or something to that degree, meaning that books can perfectly live by values, but humans are flawed. Right. So which is so true. And so I guess I find comfort and inspiration and aspiring towards what I read in the books with a dose of self compassion, which I also got from a book by Kristin called Self Compassion. But in terms of groups, I will say that because to be honest, some of those groups I'm in, some of them and I often try to provide encouragement and inspiration, but I don't get a lot from them in terms of encouragement, inspiration only because there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of people who are afraid and who have kind of made themselves small because of because we live in the patriarchy and everything like that. And so there's a lot of they're limiting beliefs will sometimes they'll try to like when I first started my company, I joined this group for women like a coffee group, and it was for women, freelancers and entrepreneurs. And I started talking about what I was doing. And I like to think anyone's going to pay you for that. And like, I was like, that's not what you want to hear when you're first starting out. I left that kind group. Yeah. Because they're not trying to be mean. It's like it's their own fears projecting, you know. And I've come to realize that I have compassion, but I did not want to surround myself with that. And, you know, they're more inspiring. And I will say this one that I've found now is the Vegan Lady BOCES Group. So I'm part of that one. And if you're sincere in San Diego, you should join it, too. We have a local chapter. [00:38:46][111.2]
[00:38:46] I will. Absolutely. I love to meet up groups. I think I find the same a lot of what you're talking about. [00:38:51][5.3]
[00:38:52] I worry about negativity, reigning supreme and well, I still want there to be platforms where people can kind of air that I'm out. I have a very specific personality profile that deals more with give me the work to do, like show me the ladder to change. [00:39:06][14.1]
[00:39:07] I'll start climbing it. Yeah. So and there's different needs for all of that. But I like that. And I think that you're right. The more women I've spoken with who talk about mentorship and things of that nature, they get very leery of saying, oh yeah, I just found this one God like creature that. Just given all of this wonderful information, and I do think that as entrepreneurs, particularly, particularly as women, are women identified individuals, you have to fight 14 times as hard to get to that particular place that you are. You have become kind of your self assigned compass as to how to get through things. And I agree with you as far as books are concerned, I worry with young people who get too into the idea of mentorship. I always say, you know, you need to vet your mentors like you would vet your employees. And this goes with voices as well. And that's a whole nother diatribe. One day I'll get into with you. But the idea that we're proclaiming anyone as smarter or more well attuned into directing you in your life is nerve racking. I agree to sign and also don't apply your dentist to your florist. Make sure you keep your self-appointed mentors in the lane they belong in and not get into everything. [00:40:23][75.3]
[00:40:23] That's a really good point. I heard a metaphor from someone and I don't know who to credit on this, but it was like I have a personal board of directors kind of, and they're sort of like leading your career. So it's not your official, like company of directors, but like I have a panel of people that you can kind of pick and choose advice from. And I think that that would address some of that. But ultimately, I think, like I was saying earlier, like, you're your final filter. Like if things don't resonate with you, like on a deep level, I think sometimes it makes sense to ignore what these supposed godlike figures say. Trust yourself. [00:40:54][30.7]
[00:40:55] Absolutely. I agree. Well, three pieces of advice. Your first one was trust yourself. The second is don't be afraid of leaving a job when the time has come and never it's never too early to start giving back. [00:41:07][11.9]
[00:41:07] And I think those are pieces of advice I'm going to circle back around in a year and and interview you again and see what's going on, because I think that your trajectory of doing online courses and stuff is definitely where the future is headed for a lot of industry. And so it'll be interesting to talk to you as you're on that new wave. And I just want to say thank you so much. I know as founders and CEOs, everyone's really, really busy. And I want to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me and our podcast today. [00:41:35][28.2]
[00:41:38] Thanks for having me. It's been a great time, thanks so much. [00:41:40][2.1]
[00:41:40] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving me your ear. And until we talk again, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte. [00:41:40][0.0]
[2423.6]
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Interview with Courtney Caldwell: Co-founder ShearShare
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