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TalentNext 2018 Keynote: Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley (Emily Chang)

Published Wed Nov 07 2018

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In November 2015, a prominent Silicon Valley investor told Emily Chang that his firm was looking to hire more women, but that they were not prepared to "lower their standards." That remark was the spark that compelled her to write the national bestselling book Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley, an expose of the tech industry's longstanding #MeToo problem that draws on more than 300 interviews and her time as anchor and executive producer of the daily television show Bloomberg Technology. In this session, Chang will call the industry on its meritocracy "bluff" and share surprising discoveries about how women were profiled out of tech based on mistaken assumptions, including a personality test that specifically selected for programmers who "don't like people." Today, women account for 25 percent of tech jobs and 8 percent of venture capitalists, and companies run by women get just 2 percent of funding. World-bending technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning is being developed with little to no input from women. Facial recognition technology, for example, doesn't recognize women and people of color as accurately as it does white men. In an industry that is shaping our future, this cannot be allowed to stand. Chang will offer concrete evidence that a more diverse industry will create better products for all of us and solutions to build more diverse teams and create workspaces where people of all backgrounds can thrive. She is hopeful. If Silicon Valley can build rocket ships and self-driving cars and connect the world, surely it can hire more women, too.

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