So, good afternoon. Thank you everyone for coming tonight-- today, I should say. Thank
you for grabbing lunch, and feel free to
grab as much as you like, and come back
and sit down. So, [speaks in different language]
[speaks native language]
Diversity Circles, Innovation Diversity and
Industry, Shannon Kelly
Kyle Epstein and Zaa Derik Gammel Joseph, Advisor Aboriginal Services
T'lazt'en Nation, Dakelh Territory. We're very
happy to have you here today and welcome
to Diversity Circles, which is our
Faculty and Staff Association session
today, which is focused on diversity in industry and innovation. I'd like
to start by always acknowledging the
unceded territory of the Coast Salish
people but because we have a member of
the Squamish nation here, Aaron Nelson
Moody Splash, we all love to get him to
come up and say a few words. Splash is
actually not only a Squamish nation
artist and member, he's also a SSHRC
collaborator with our project, so looking
at ways that we can get community
involved as being a big part of this
project. So, Splash is here to help us
with our welcome.
[Speaks Indigenous language]. Thank you for
the invitation. Thanks for remembering my
name, and having me come out. I
do come from Squamish Nation, a village
called Cheakamus, which is about half way
to Whistler from here, in Paradise
Valley. If you know the Cheakamus,
as they say in English, coming down from
from Whistler down through the Squamish
territory. It's been fantastic to work
here at the school and I'll explain a
little bit more about some of the some
of the work I got to do with Joanne
and Zaa, but I want to share a song
with you first
and my dear younger brother here is
going to come back me up. We've been
teaching him how to make a drum and then
and then teaching how to use it and he's
a beautiful man with a strong voice and
he always has good things to share, so
we're getting him to back me up a little
bit. If we sing really well maybe we can get
Joanne come on, come dance backup for us as well.
I don't think there's such thing as Aboriginal clapping, but I get your intent
There's another way--
normally we think of clapping for when
we perform, and usually whenever our
elders come in our community we're
actually sharing a bit of our humanity,
so we hold up our hands in a gesture
I've heard called [ term ] and it means
[speaks Indigenous language]. It's to 'reach
out as if to embrace' is what the gesture
means, so when we share from the
heart like that, when we share who we are,
because normally we only sing our own
songs, it's a gesture of tremendous
respect for you and gratitude for me for
being here. This-- that particular
song doesn't come from Squamish, it comes
from [ term ]. We had a very dear
elder who worked here for many, many
years and he's one of the coolest guys
ever. I don't know how else to explain it; very, very
loving. Very, very strict when he had to
be; laughing all the time;
very poetic, always had beautiful words
for us and we sing that song amongst
Coast Salish people so much because his
family gave it to Coast Salish people as a
kind of an anthem so that we would feel
unified in all the work that we do, in
all of our gatherings we would feel like
one people sometimes, so we sang
that song together and I asked him what
the song was about, because we sing it so
many times in so many ways, and he said
we sing in the beginning to remind
ourselves at the beginning of an event,
we all come from the same place. First
thing every human being hears is their
mother's heartbeat. So we try to remind
ourselves of our humanity before we do
any work together. We just remind
ourselves of that-- of our humanity with a
drumbeat from this from the song, to
remind us of our mothers and he said
that particular song is to gather all
the goodness around us, all this strength
and all the beauty, and all the
inspiration and then do something with
it. So he said it's a song about
gathering all the goodness and strength
and doing something with it so that's
why we sing it's so many different ways.
He said that's why his family shared it
with all the other Coast Salish people. So
was really glad that I-- we
don't normally go in question or elders
in that way, but I was really glad that I
asked the question and that he answered
because sometimes their elders will-- you
ask them a question, they'll tell you lots of
stuff and you're not sure if
you got the answer or not so you keep
going back, which I think is their intent,
until you start to get so much
information you've answered your own
question, but I was lucky that time. He
actually answered me fairly
quickly. He was only an hour or two.
Pretty quick response for an elder actually.
Just to explain a
little bit of who I am: I was given a
call by Joanne who asked me to come help
out in the school to create a carving to
celebrate the 50 years of BCIT's work
here and we had a very interesting--
couple of very interesting conversations
around a bunch of ideas and we decided
on a house post and for us,
kind of like the post dividing the
middle of the room, posts hold up the
roof of our house, so four house posts
would represent the family holding up
the house of our longhouse or [ term ]
and the values and the stories that hold
up your house are depicted on those [ term ], the carvings that we make. So we decided
to do that and I kept thinking about a
you know, a woman I was very much in love
with in my earlier life. We were in a
relationship for a long time; a very
beautiful person who came to this school
and she wasn't always treated well
because she was a woman and in some of
her classes, she, you know, she didn't have
a good experience and it kept coming
back to me that things are much
different now, but I kept thinking of her
and I kept thinking about the Aboriginal
students here and I started to think on
this house post I wanted to show
something: the respect that Coast Salish men
paid to women. So we used a mountain goat
horn design. There's a kind of a bracelet
that we, the men here would-- they'd go way,
way up in the mountains to get the mountain goat-- it's really hard to do in the
old days-- and they bring back these
mountain goats. They take the horns
from the goat and make these beautiful
bracelets and that's also hard and then
they would give them to the women they had
tremendous respect for, so we wanted to put
up a house post but also to show some of
the respect for the feminine or for the
women or for that side of our ourselves, or
for that side of our community. So that's
what we put on there and we had a lot of
conversations and it was funny because
we were both dreaming about the same
design when we had a conference and
the final conversation we realized we'd
both dreamed the same vision
for that piece so it comes from a very
good place and comes from a very--
invitation from a very strong woman.
Joanne is greatly respected in our
community and in our own community, and in a
lot of other places. She's a beautiful
person, so when she called it was an
honour to come help her give you
something meaningful and I did the very
best work I could do out there in the
cold winter and Zaa bringing me coffee
all the time and it was a beautiful-- it's
actually one of the most enjoyable jobs
I've ever had. I also got to work on the
Diversity Circles logo, which is, again, we
would-- I was actually telling Zaa,
there's not actually no words for this, but we tend to think of
the feminine as red and the masculine as black, but my teachings are that
everyone is a balance and we use the
analogy of our canoes which were painted
black on the outside, so sometimes we use a
bit more
kind of a tougher energy to face the
world and we can't actually go anywhere
like that. So the inside of the canoe is
painted red, so my teachers have always
said we're trying to balance that within
ourselves, so he's very-- my teacher is
very strict with me about being both
strong on my feminine side and my
masculine side, so that I treat the
people around me properly. He said a
man who fights with his feminine side
treats women badly, so he said it's
important that you embrace all sides
of myself in order to treat the world
properly and it's depicted on our canoes.
The old Salish canoes were painted black
and red. The balance between the two, and
you can't really journey anywhere
without that kind of balance, but in this
case I want to have a bit more of the
feminine energy just because I thought
that in the pas, I know BCIT's needed
that, as I walked by that big
picture outside, there's a bunch of dudes
in the picture. I think there's like one
woman. So anyways this is one of those--
this balances things out, but it was my
attempt to try to balance things out and
to pay the respects to the very strong
women in our communities. We're still
doing work as I understand, the panel's
primarily female. All those beautiful women who
do such beautiful work in our
communities. Coast Salish culture has a lot of
a lot of recognition of the feminine.
When Europeans first landed, they saw the
men standing up front, and my teachers
were very clear that the man standing up
front is representing someone else,
speaking on someone else's behalf, so we
we model ourselves up to the wolves, the
head male and head female, but they say if
you really look closely at it, men will
stand up here and talk for a bit,
Coast Salish men will stand in ceremony to
speak and then they'll just stop and
then someone will come whisper in his
ear and then you'll start talking again.
So don't get the wrong impression, we're
not actually in charge but thank you for
the invitation again today and I want to
share the song and the explanation. I
think that's about eight Aboriginal
minutes and I was promised lunch so I'm
gonna grab some lunch and and watch the other speakers come up as well
but thank you for the invitation. Os'siem.
- Thank you so much Splash, and anytime I
have the privilege of hearing Splash
share, it's a really honouring and important
experience and I can't talk after so
I'm going to show a video and compose
myself.
- So Diversity Circles was founded, based on responding to diversity, and how diversity is
expanding, in the communities in general,
but also in the post-secondary education landscape specifically.
The Diversity Circles team had the vision to convene an interrelated array
of dialogues and workshops, aimed in part at generating concrete faculty-specific ideas
about catalyzing the great potential embedded in BCIT'S growing diversity.
There's all kinds of elements to it. There’s elements around the events, there's the workshops,
there's the pieces that we write, but really for me, it's about the relationships
that we've built through this process.
- I came into this realizing that we could celebrate these
groups using an Indigenous framework.
When we think of an indigenous framework,
we think, "Okay, who am I?" That's where we start.
"What's in your heart?" And that's why we're seeking staff and faculty right now
to say “What are your gifts? What resonates for you?" Eventually, we're gonna reach out
to students and ask them the same questions, so we can match those two
groups together, and then reaching out to the extended community, the people who
are stakeholders to this school and saying, "What are your gifts? And how can you be a part
of celebrating diversity?"
- Gifts is looking at really how individuals are
holding gifts within themselves that they may or may not have expressed
and providing a safe place to do that. You're then able to find not only
similarities with others in a mentor relationship, but also you're able to express,
you know, the joy and happiness that comes with that.
- My involvement with the logo, the logo existed already,
and I was asked to add some Coast Salish elements to it. They're part of Coast Salish art, but there aren't
specific meanings themselves, but to include those symbols is recognizing local First Nations,
is recognizing indigenous culture.
- The Diversity Circles to me means
the many circles we have, relationships within this institution and outside this
institution and how those influence each other. When we have an opportunity to
listen and hear other people speak, they find something like, "Oh, I have that or I
feel that." We're all connected in a similar goal here. When we increase
understanding of each other, then we can have a better and more positive
relationship. And when we can be more empathetic to each other, we can support each other
in doing our best work. Reaching out to students and meeting their needs,
that's what Diversity Circles is about. I think having diversity is super important,
otherwise institution itself won't be able to move forward and continue its adaptive
capacities, and and being innovative and generating new ideas. Everyone's
different and everyone's got a different way that they want to live in this world and I
if you can respect that and respect how they want to be living, to me that's diversity;
it's giving that space for everyone to be who they wanna be.
- The success would be that our faculty and
and our staff feel very comfortable with celebrating diversity, and for our students
to see a place for themselves so that they feel comfortable here, they feel
welcomed here.
- We're gonna honour your gifts and here's the champions that are
at this college already, who are gonna lead the way.
All right. Thanks, it was an honour to
share that video with you and I am more
composed now. So welcome everyone. It's
great to be here. I'm Shannon Kelly, one
of the co-creators of Diversity Circles
along with Zaa, who already said hello.
Just before we get to the panel, a couple
of quick reminders: if everyone could
take a moment right now to put on their "Hello, my name is..." tag; I know, you
know, it's just one of those things that
helps us all feel comfortable at the
table and reminds us. That would be
fantastic. Also on your table, you will
see, for a bit later on, there are big
sheets like this. This is our form of
session evaluation. So instead of the
Likert scale, we have a bit more of a
flexible evaluation tool. So at some
point, if you have something you want to
add to this sheet, you know, we
know we have one shared sheet for the
table, you don't get your own sheet, but
it's just a way of collectively
gathering some feedback, some ideas from
our audience participants. That would be
fantastic and the final thing I wanted to
remind you is just about the world map.
If you look at the back
door, you'll see there's a big world map
there, and for this world map, this is
something that we do at each of our big
events like this, we encourage people to
place dots on the map: red for self,
green for parents, blue for grandparents.
Just so that we reflect on where we've
all come from and that we all come from
different places and many of us the
same places, as well. So those are the
three practical things I wanted to remind
you of, and we're going to move forward
to our lightening panel. It's great to
have some fabulous speakers here today
and speakers are welcome to stand here
like me or we have the walk around mic
if you want to walk around in the
zone. We're streaming this event so
somewhere up here is good. No doing
calisthenics in the back. The three
questions that I asked our speakers to
reflect on were: Why is industry so
excited about diversity,
what is industry doing to support and
leverage diversity, and how do these trends
impact the work we do here at BCIT and
they can choose to reflect on any
component of that or even none. We're
honoured to have them here, in any case, so
our first speaker is Kirsten Sutton from
SAP and I just want, as a side note, to
say this is her first day back from
vacation so it was very nice of her to
agree to this panel and to to come. So
welcome, Kirsten.
Okay, I was told I have
five minutes exactly, so in good software
form, I'm going to start my little clock
here. So thank you so much for inviting
me here today. I wanted to do two things
in my five minutes. So the first thing
was to add something to the diversity
discussion that I think we all do but I
think it needs to be named and that is
it should always include inclusions when
you talk about diversity, and I'll
explain why I think that and second, of
course because we're talking about
industry, I certainly want to talk about
why diversity matters to us and why
inclusion is how we make sure that SAP
is successful. So those are my two
plans for today.
I, too, was very moved by Splash's
conversation especially what you said
about how to treat people and that's
really where I wanted to start. I
certainly don't look like someone
necessarily that's had a diverse
background. I probably don't look like
someone that's had a lot of diverse
experiences but you just never know,
right? I've actually had 27 different
jobs in my life. I've worked all over and
that was in the span of 14 years. I've
had two very strong, different careers
I've been a chef and I work in software
now. I went to an all-girls school which
seems very undivere, but you would be surprised
what diverse things you learned when
you're the-- when you're girls and that's
all you get to do is everything, right?
I have been in many, many different
situations and lots of different
countries and speak six different
languages but it doesn't really matter,
all of those experiences and all the
diversity if you don't decide to do
something about it and that's where the
inclusion part comes in. So probably all
of you know. You've been around diversity your
whole life. There have been people
different from you. They think
differently. They may look differently, they may act
differently, they may know different
things. You think about your family. If
you have siblings, how different they are
from you. You think of your parents, you
wonder how did these two people get
together because there's no reason they
should be together, nor stay together,
right? You think about this. I mean that's
the story about opposites attract. I mean
there's a reason for that. When two
people come together, who are different,
magic happens, right? Much more
interesting things happen, and so that's
why at SAP, we talk about diversity and
inclusion as one thing together. We
can all see the diversity and I had a
lot of diversity in my life but it was
until I was purposeful about including
that knowledge, including those people
and seeking out that stuff purposefully
that actually that diversity is brought
to the forefront, that diversity is
actually leverage and then you get what
you really need which is diverse
opinions and more innovation. So always
start out with these two things being
together. You can recognize diversity but
if you don't include it, you will not get
anywhere with it. So we have a Diversity
and Inclusion office at SAP and we have
four pillars in that office and I
thought it would be good that we share
with you how we approach it at SAP, and
so in diversity inclusion there are four
things: one being gender diversity. It's
very important to us that women have an
equal stake in every fashion within the
workplace. That their voices are heard,
that their strengths are
leveraged and that we have a way to make
sure that the women continue to progress.
So we are EDGE certified which is the
first-- I don't know if you've heard of it
and I'm not going to remember the
acronym now-- it's for Equal Diversity
Gender something, something like that.
It's a certification to show that
as a company, we do treat women equally.
It looks at the pay equity that we have,
it looks at the roles to make sure that
women are able to progress at the same
level. We have targets in place. I'm not a
big fan of targets, but we are a software
company and if you measure it, you likely
will move towards something, so we're
trying to get 25% women in
management by this year and we're
already far past that, so the good news
is we've already achieved there. We have
special programs for women
to make sure that they can advance, so
there's a Leap program to help women
move quicker and faster when they have
sponsors in the organization, and so we
really focus a lot on gender diversity, being one of the pillars. Our second
pillar is cross generational
intelligence. We have sometimes four--
excuse me-- sometimes five different
generations now in the workforce. That is
a lot of people that didn't usually hang
out together during the day. Right, on my
team I have people that are in their
early 20s, I have people in their 30s, 40s
50s and 60s, so I have, you know, the gamut
on my team and they're not the same. They
bring different elements to it and
especially Millennials. Everybody likes
to talk about Millennials. I actually
have a reaction to the Millennial theories.
I actually don't think that Millennials
are all that different from baby boomers
or Gen Xers. I think everybody wants the
same thing. I am a Gen Xer and I want the
world to be a good place and I also want
to have purpose in my job. I also would
like to succeed and achieve things just
like they say all Millennials do - I think
the biggest difference is how people
communicate. I believe that the guys that
are twenty on my team communicate very
differently than the guys that are in
their 50s and 60s on my team. They don't
like to text. They don't really want to,
if you're in the older generation, they
haven't adopted the technology in the
same way. Doesn't mean they're not using
it-- [Alarm rings]. You've got to be kidding. Is that five
minutes?
Holy smokes that went fast. Okay,
cross-generational.
The third one, just really quickly, I'll
go through them because I want to make
sure we get through all four of them. We
have a differently abled people. This is
the one I'm probably the closest to. In
my role, we have a program called Autism
At Work. I'm not sure if you've heard of
it. We've been speaking about it a lot
where we're bringing people on the
autism spectrum into software jobs. I can
tell you that the talents that people
have on the autism spectrum are perfect
for software jobs for sure but I would
encourage anybody anywhere to think
about this. Attention to detail, ability
to recognize patterns, to work on a
repetitive task for long periods of time,
that ability to persist through long,
long periods of time on things that many
who are neurotypical would very quickly
tire from. These are things that are
really valuable. Also in a structured way,
in a software is structured, they love
that kind of predictable nature of
software and therefore it's really great
for us but everybody, and I've challenged
many businesses over the past year or so,
to look at your business. Where do you
need that type of talent? Because I
guarantee you, these guys are the most
productive employees that we have right
now, bar none, and it's been amazing
bringing them into the organization and
again, not just because we're recognizing
their diversity, but we're including
those talents in our business and we're
changing how we work. You can't talk in
innuendos and they don't understand
sarcasm, generally, and so people are much
more clear and direct in how they speak.
It's changed our culture by having these
hooks in our organization and embracing
them the way that we do. So I will not
bore you with the forth pillar and I
will move on because I see Corey
standing right there. But I did want to
say again, diversity is all around you
and it's been around you all this time
you must be purposeful about including
it and if you do you're going to be able
to break through to new innovation.
Having everybody think the same way or
surrounding yourself with people that
like your ideas-- you're not going to get
a new idea and you're just going to do
the same thing over and over and over
again and in software the world out
there is huge and everybody can access
it. So for us if we just keep doing what
we've done in the past, we're not going
to reach the people who need the help
and need the software. So I'm sure that's
true in many businesses you'll be a part
of, so remember those two things if I
got anything across. Diversity means
including diverse opinions and diverse
people and in order to get innovation
you have to be able to do that. So, thank you.
- Thank you so much Kristin. It's
totally fine. I know five minutes goes by
so fast. But actually, our panelists from
VanCity unfortunately is ill today
and so it's okay that you took extra
time. I do want to mention that Kristin's
colleague, Ashley, is in the audience. I
think, Ashley, so if you have
questions in general about VanCity,
Ashley's here if you ever just want to
connect with her, I'm going to actually
go forward to Dr. Cheryl Staub-French
and then come back to Cory, since we had
a change in our panel.
So welcome Cheryl.
Hello. Maybe I'll start
off by thanking Kirsten for
going first and going over, so now I
don't have to be the one that's going to
be doing that and I was told I get eight
minutes, so it's all good now. Well, first
let me just say that I'm really humbled
and honoured to be here. Already, even
though we were at the beginning of this
event,
I feel really inspired and touched by
the energy in the room and so I'm a
professor at UBC in the engineering--
civil engineering department. I'm also
the Goldcorp Professor for Women in
Engineering and part of my job as the
Goldcorp Professor is to increase the
number of women entering engineering and
we have a goal at UBC of getting to 50%
by 2020. So very ambitious. Over the past
seven years, we've gone from about 18, the
national average, to about 30%
entering our engineering program so
we've made great strides in recent years
but I have to say that sitting in this
room and hearing the amazing welcome
by Splash and hearing people
talking about balancing the feminine and
the masculine, being in the engineering
community, I realize just how
overwhelming the masculine side of the
culture can feel. So it's really nice to
feel like I'm in a place that that
honours both and one of the messages that
really resonated with me is this whole
idea of, you know, reaching your full
potential and really thinking about what
your gifts are and what's interesting
for me is I almost left engineering many
many times and I'm so grateful that I
didn't because now in my new role, I get
to be a part of the solution in helping
to change the profession and so what was
a challenge has become a gift for me and
now I can bring my gift to this
particular problem. And so it's just a
really nice framing for me in terms of
thinking about what what we're trying to
do. So in terms of-- I'm going to be
speaking specifically kind of
about UBC and from the perspective of
engineering and really kind of the
general perspective of STEM fields. This
is where I've been living most of my
adult life and speaking to the
industry and the demand or the the need
for more diversity, it couldn't be more
important or it could be more important
but it's very important to think about
how we're addressing the need
for more STEM students and so I really
kind of broke this down into sort of
sets of threes. And so, why is this so
important within the STEM fields? The
first is just thinking more generally
about kind of the earlier messages. We
want everyone to reach their full
potential and imagine what we could do
if everyone was able to reach their full
potential and I think about maybe the
person that's going to figure out how to
counteract the effects of climate change.
You know, is that person getting educated?
Or the person that cure cancer, is that person getting
educated? So, I really think about how can
we, in the educational sector, you know, at
UBC, really help to help to think about
that more fully and explicitly in the
way that we work. The second thing is
that in engineering specifically, we have
a huge talent pool challenge. So we are
looking at a significant labor shortage
within the engineering sector, about a
hundred thousand engineers by 2020--
additional hundred thousand engineers
that we need to educate. So we have to be
better at reaching out to
underrepresented groups and so that's a
really important part of our motivation
as well. The last thing is that what's
been really great for me and this new
role is that I get to learn about all
the different research that's going on
around diversity, specifically around
gender diversity but around other forms
of diversity and there's some great
studies showing that more diverse teams
are more innovative, more diverse
organizations are better performing and
there's some really great work that I
always cite whenever I talk is around
diverse teams are smarter. So if you have
gender diversity in a team, if you have
too many men it doesn't perform as well.
You have too many women, it doesn't perform
well. If you have really good balance, you
get-- those are the higher performing
teams and so the more that we can
incorporate that into our thinking, you
know, the stronger we're going to be. So
what are we doing about this at UBC?
First is that in our role, I'm the
director of eng-site and what eng-site does,
it's all about getting youth and in
particular girls, engaged and excited
about engineering and so we do a lot of
outreach events. So we're trying to get
people in sort of the, you know, all the
way through from K to, you know, university
exposed to STEM and giving them more
visible pathways to the STEM fields. And
the challenge is that, you know, women
still-- there's still tremendous bias and
so we do a lot of
bias training with teachers and parents
and really any-- you know, counselors, any
of the different people that we can
speak to because bias is still happening
and is still kind of discouraging girls
from pursuing the STEM fields. The other
thing that we do is around teacher
training. So we actually have teachers
come out to UBC and we do teacher
training, both to help them understand
about how to educate people in STEM, but
also so that they're aware of their own
biases as well and how they may be
encouraging or discouraging different
kinds of students. And then the last
thing is around parents. We do a lot of
work with parents. Any event we run at
UBC, we include parents. And we also try
to talk to them about their own biases
and how they may be holding their own
children back. And then the last thing
I'll say is that at UBC, you know, we have
a new initiative where we're trying to
make sure every, you know, everyone has a
pathway to pursue a STEM field. So we're
going to be doing a lot more outreach in
the schools, going into the schools, going
into rural communities so that everyone
has sort of equal exposure to the STEM
fields and so we can better pull these
you know, sort of underrepresented groups
and help to make engineering and STEM a
more diverse area and profession. So
thank you. I think I'm even-- I'm a minute early.
All right, thank you.
I think that Lisa Taleo was called away
to deal with another situation, so I'm
going to go to Cory. And Cory knows Lisa
and will include Lisa in another event.
Minerva is a great-- has a great program
called Combining Our Strengths and it's
my honour to now introduce Cory.
So I do know Lisa. Thank you for having me. Lisa
became a grandma for the second time
last night, so I imagine she may
be busy without her, also very tired from
what I understand, was a late night
because I think she posted about a
11-ish last night. So, thank you for
having me. I appreciate being here. I
think that these two lovely ladies that went
before me may have said a bunch of what
I was going to say but there's no
question this is a topic of the day:
unconscious bias, privilege, diversity. Of
course, for indigenous people, in light of
the Truth and Reconciliation commissions
and the calls to action, we see industry
understanding in institutions,
recognizing the importance of including
indigenous people and also, of course, the
disparity and the
over-representation of indigenous people
in the areas that we don't want to be. I
mean, the reality is indigenous people
are at the negative end of every
social economic indicator no matter what
it is and if you ever, I say this every
single time I make that statement, if you
ever find an indicator where we're at
the positive end, please send me an email
and say "I found one!" because it'll be a
very exciting day because in all of my
years of teaching, I've never seen an
indicator, other than the fact that we
have at least twice the amount of
children as non-indigenous people have,
which in my case is very positive
because I can afford my four children. I
can afford to feed them. I can afford to
clothe them and I can send them to
university, which, of course, is not the
case for a lot of indigenous people. So
the importance of diversity, of course, is
exactly what was mentioned. Is it's the
source of innovation. If you-- the
more minds and the more heads and the
more people with the different life
experiences as well as pure lived experiences that
bring the different types of thoughts and
different types of interaction, the
different approaches people are going to
take to a variety of different issues, so
it's an absolute must to have innovation
and, of course, innovation is often the
result of some kind of catastrophe or
some kind of disruption and so that's
another trendy word that's out there.
Innovation often comes as a result of
disruption but it makes more sense to
approach it rather than wait for that
disruptive event or that challenge or
that lawsuit perhaps. It makes more sense
to bring diversity forward before those
things happen, not only because it--
obviously, one of the number one reasons
is it involves profit, economically
it's feasible. Economically, it makes more
sense to include more people as possible
and as an institution like BCIT and UBC,
were in the business of educating people
and providing them with skills and
training and one of the easiest ways to
right the social economic indicators for
indigenous people is to have indigenous
people have skills and training. You know
people ask me, in another life I practice
law, and people ask me all the time well
how do we help indigenous people? The
criminal justice system is racist. It's this and this and this and they
go on and on the easiest thing is to not
have our people come in contact with the
system in the first place. So if we minimize
that contact and they don't actually
ever enter the system then we-- doesn't
matter if the system itself is
structured and-- of course it matters-- but
you're not going to have that over
representation so then the question is
how, in the same with children and family,
we're over-represented in this province
by 60 to 70%
of the children and care are
indigenous. No one's going to argue that
indigenous people are more criminally
inclined or more worst parents than other
people. There's something wrong with the
system, so how do we prevent that. One of
that is that recognition of diversity,
whether it's in the institutions, whether
it's in post-second-- whatever
post-secondary institution, whether it's
an industry, whether it's in government.
No matter what, we have to have that
diversity. So there's no question
diversity is valuable, not only
economically, but also in terms of
innovation and ideas, it's also in terms
of governance. You can't govern a group
of people with only half or a fraction
of them making the decisions. That
doesn't work. We've seen-- you know, I'm
history person or a history instructor
but there's hundreds and hundreds of
revolutions and disruptions and things
that have happened because of people
feeling disempowered and people feeling
that their needs and things are not
heard so you have to have that. It goes
all the way back tonight. I mean, of
course, morally and socially, it's the
right thing to do but also legally, we
have four recognized distinct groups in
this country:
Aboriginal, disabled, visible minorities,
and women. If you-- and people often say to
me-- well how do I know if I have a
problem? Well, if you look around you and
you only see people that look like you,
then you know you have a problem. It's
not hard. It's not rocket science how to
figure this out, and I've had chairs of
boards, "Well, I'm not sure what we're
missing."
Okay, they all look like you. So we've got
to sort that out, right? So it's not-- but
that's also a part of the privilege and
the unconscious bias job issues, right? So
part of my role, obviously, at BCIT,
is to bring in those initiatives and to
bring in the diversity in terms of
indigenous students. UBC is one of the
institutions that certainly has led the
way. I know I'm involved in UBC in
different ways. They had a goal of having
2000 by 2000 and they reached that goal
and over achieved that goal. I'm quite
certain under Cheryl's leadership, you
will achieve that goal, as well, in terms
of STEM and in terms of engineering for
women, and let's get some indigenous
women in there as well, which will I know
you're roping me into helping you with that,
which is fantastic, but-- so there's no
question. If you look around and look in
your programs. Who are your
students? Who are your work colleagues? Do they look like you? Do they have similar
experiences or not? And these come to
everything. So one of the things here, of
course, with our HR department,
how do we ensure that diversity comes
through? How do we ensure that the
students are coming to BCIT as well.
One of the things that has been evident
to me, having come into this role, is
indigenous students, the majority of them
come to BCIT in cohorts. They don't
come as direct entry students and we're missing something there
obviously because the students aren't
prepared. The students aren't or they're
not getting selected and in the
different-- some places have changed like
in terms of the Bachelor of Science in
Nursing, they set-aside seats now for
indigenous students. We also have to find
those students to get them into our
difficult three year program instead of
four year program for Bachelors of
Science in Nursing but it's certainly
possible. So why are we not achieving at
the same rate as other people. It comes
down to a couple of things or why I
guess, why are we not achieving and what
can you do to support that? We're not
achieving because of all of the
historical biases, the legacy of
colonization, discrimination, you know, all
of these things that we can go on and
talk about and we have entire courses on
them, but it's displaced Aboriginal
people, its marginalized us. We don't
have the same access to things that
people have but other Canadians
have and it's kind of a spectrum now.
We used to all be lumped in this group
of not having the skills and abilities
but now we have indigenous people that
have achieved in almost every single
area and faculty and job that there is
in Canada. There's not an indigenous
actuary yet. That's the only one I
haven't found, so let's hope there could
be one but so we have broken the
cycles in a lot of ways in our achieving
in all of the different areas and all of
the different faculties but the reality
is is we still face a lot of these
hidden things. So one thing that you can
do is to be aware of your own privilege.
Be aware of the privilege. What allowed
you to get-- why are we all here in this
room?
I recognize that as an indigenous woman
I've checked two of the boxes in the
Constitution of 1982's boxes. I'm here
because my parents made me could be here
basically. I had no choice but to go to
university and that's obviously my
privileged in my position, being born to
a father who's the youngest of 13, who
never had to go to residential school
because he was 13-- I'm sorry, he
was 6 in 1951 when they changed the laws
and allowed Aboriginal people to move
off reserve and not go to residential
school, so he didn't go to residential
school. So that's the privilege and the
fortune and luck that I have but how do
we give that to other people and so
it's recognizing in yourself the
privilege that you have, what allowed you
to be here and when you look at people
and let's face it we all make judgments
about people, there's no question and
often it just comes down to the fact of
basic human need
to be feel safe and secure, right? You
walk into a room, how do you decide who
to sit next to? How do you decide who
to talk to? Those types of things. So
being aware of that. How do you decide
who you sit next to? Are you going to be
courageous and sit next to somebody
that doesn't look like you or that you
may not always-- you would maybe likely
not ever sit next to. So being aware of
your own privilege would allowed you to
be here in sitting where you are and not
applying your values and beliefs that
are obviously based off of your lived
experience onto others. You have to be
very very aware of that and as well
unconscious bias is absolutely vital.
It's kind of the buzzword today but it's
great because it's about time that it
comes out and people start talking about
it, because if that comes from the
privilege and that comes from that lived
experience and you know I meet people
all the time and say "I'm not biased," "I'm
not-- you know, I support and love
everybody." Well, maybe in this room you do
but how do we how do we support that and
become aware of our unconscious bias and
again it's looking around the room to
see if people look like you. How do you
make decisions, you know, as instructors?
You know, you have to remember, right, I've
heard from instructors quite a few times.
Well, often they say "Well, the student
isn't attending. It's mandatory
attendance." That's great, but you have to
remember that most indigenous students
about eight to nine out of ten have
children and are a single parent. What if
that kid is sick? How do you deal with
that and not to say that non-Indigenous
students don't have children that get
sick as well, but likely they have
different mechanisms and support to be
able to still attend school versus the
likelihood that a non-indigenous student
not being able to have that. Or I hear
from instructors, "Well it's not fair if I
do an alternate exam or do a different
method of evaluation" but you have to
keep it-- I didn't know it was a
PowerPoint but I could, there is, you've
probably all seen it. I use it quite
often and it says-- I call the little guys
Charlie-- there's three three guys trying
to watch a baseball game and some can
see the baseball game, and some can't see,
and this poor little guy, Charlie, is
actually in a hole under the fence. So
that sets the unconscious bias and the
lack of privilege.
So you have to know that all the
students that come to you in your
classroom are not coming to you equally.
They don't have the same access to
resources. They don't have the same lived
experience. They don't. They may be the
first person that has ever graduated
from high school in their
family. They may be the first person to
attend post-secondary school, so being
aware of those types of differences. They
may also be looking after, you know,
other family members. They may be the
only one that has an income. They may be
the only one that's not addicted and
again, I'm not saying indigenous people
are the only ones with these types of
issues or these types of challenges, but
certainly it's a little bit more in
indigenous communities and the access to
resources or support is often a little
bit less than you would find in non-indigenous communities. Even just the
simple act of seeking help. Asking for
help can be challenging, right? You know,
unless they see a non-in-- unless
they see an indigenous face maybe they
won't ask for help. Maybe they're still
dealing with their own identity. Maybe
they've had negative experiences in the
classroom. I've had that and I'm sure Zaa
and Joanne has had that as well, where you're seen as the expert if
you're the indigenous person in the
classroom. "Oh, let's see what Cory thinks
about this" and I know absolutely nothing
about the topic or the province that
they're or the issue that they're talking
about, so it's being aware of those
things. Another thing that I hear from
instructors often and I guess more K to
12 teachers is "Well, I'm not indigenous.
I'm uncomfortable teaching this
knowledge." Well then figure it out.
There's more than enough resources out
there now and if you don't know, email me.
There's more than enough resources out
there that if you're reasonably
intelligent, I assume able to search that
knowledge and search that information to
be able to figure out that stuff and
plus also, why are we comfortable if
you're in English or History,
why are you comfortable teaching about
Romans and Greeks? Mythology, grade seven.
My daughter's in grade seven that's what
she's learning right now. Her teacher is
not Greek nor is she Roman. So how come
she's comfortable teaching about Greek
mythology but not comfortable teaching
about indigenous spirituality? Of course
it has to be done with respect. I guess
because the Greek people aren't going to
come back and attack her
for it but you have to do it with
respect and you have to acknowledge who
you are and acknowledge your experience
and that this isn't your experience but
being open to that. It is incredibly
important. So I guess I'm almost done or?
Okay. I think they're going to give me a
warning. So I guess, I mean obviously,
diversity is important not, only
economically but in terms of governance,
in terms of innovation, in terms of being
inclusive, in terms of a better
experience. You know, again, if we just had
only men in this room or just had only
women in this room, things would be
completely different and the other
biases and the inequities to be aware-- we
often talk about the racial and we talk
about the gender, but you also have to
talk about the economic discrepancies
amongst us, the disabilities amongst us,
the other-- locations, you know where they
grew up, you know, have they traveled?
You know, that's makes a huge
difference in somebody-- in their outlook
and their perspective on the world and I
just gave a talk last week to the First
Nation or to the BC campus-- BC Open Textbook Conference last
week and one of the things is access to
technology. We think at BCIT, I mean
technology's in our name, we think
technology is accessible to all
indigenous people. The government of
Canada or CRTC--
the CRTC has made it its
mission to have 50-- or your internet to
be at the speed of 50 megabytes per
second, is that correct?
See, I don't have my little things. My-- my-- I don't really-- I'm not-- I mean
I'm at BCIT and
I'm not really good at technology, so
they've mandated 50% or sorry-- 50
megabytes per second as standard across
the country. So what we have in British
Columbia is, we have they'll say, 95% of
the First Nations in this country-- in
this province, have internet but it's at
2 megabytes per second. It varies between
two to five. So the definition of
connectivity is also exceptionally
challenging to indigenous communities and
often what they have is the
transportation. So they have 95%--
the hub or the transportation goes to
the First Nations community but it only
goes to the band office. It doesn't go to
First Nations' homes. It's not there so
how do we get First Nation students to
apply to BCIT?
What do you tell them? Go online. Well, if
you're living in Dease Lake and have a
speed of two, good luck, right? It's not
going to happen. You're not going to be
able to save it. You're going to lose it.
You're going to get frustrated. So those
are the types of things and those are a
lot of the biases that we often think
and that's an example of privilege. I
have internet in my home, we all have
internet. We get mad if it takes, you know,
"Oh my god, it took five seconds. I can't
believe it." You get all upset, right? So
imagine if it took you five minutes and
they also have to know, even in some
indigenous communities still party lines.
We don't--- or radio phones.
There's not even telephones, so this
whole idea of access to technology and
therefore access to the world and access
to a variety of knowledge and
information, even knowing that as a woman
you have a right to X, Y, & Z and an
employer when they're
interviewing you-- and I look at my
my HR person over here-- has no right to
ask you certain questions, right? How are you going to learn that? How, if
nobody in your family's had a job, how do
you know what your rights are? When
you're in that job hunt or search or
how to behave in an interview or how to
do those types of things. So, alright.
Thank you so much, Cory, and thank you for
covering so much and also for letting us
know that Lisa's okay and hopefully a
happy, happy grandma. Yeah, I believe it
was a family situation was mentioned.
Thank you so much. So, we're going to have
a mini break and I really really really
want to encourage people not to leave
our seminar at this point. I know that's
always tempting to look at your to-do
list for today and say now is the time
but we're going to have the interactive
portion after the break. Our panelists
are staying and they'll be
at the tables with you and it's-- we're
going to show a video on unconscious
bias and do some really interesting
things. We're going to take the feedback
from the audience so that we capture
your feedback and your opinion, so please
I encourage you not to leave the seminar.
We are going to take a quick 10-minute
break, so you can refill your plates. If
you're not eating any more, there's a
table at the back for your empty plates,
but please feel free to eat more. I think
there's still some food back there. We
have some great guests: Newcomer
Employment Support Program from Options
Community Services Society is here.
Dr. Sonya Voskovich from our Power
Engineering program and Opportunities
for Women Engineering is here. CRA is
here with great federal jobs
opportunities and also from the BC
Electrical Joint Training Committee,
Kelly Kean Leitner's here. So, some great
people to visit also on your mini break
and after the seminar portion, but for
now I'm unleashing you for 10 minutes.
Okay, thank you.
For folks who haven't smelled it yet,
there is fresh bannock over on the back
table over there, so please help yourself.
We're going to start to wrap up the food
area and then get everyone back to the
seats and we'll start up again.
If we can encourage people to come back
to their tables, please. You can have a chance
for conversation in your groups, thank you.
[Video] What would the world look like if
everybody were aware of the stereotypes
that they have and biases that they
have. When we talk about unconscious
bias, we're basically saying our world view
can actually exert an influence beyond our
conscious awareness and it creates
ambiguity.
You're a program engineer who's built
something extremely innovative and you
say, "Who do you think your user is?" This is 
where I have the most fun. My name is T. V.
Ramen, and I led our work on Android
accessibility for three years. Write down
everything that you think you know
about your user with respect to
abilities, inabilities, special abilities
disabilities. Almost every assumption
that you write down on that whiteboard
about 'this is the user I think I'm building
for' is questionable, because our various
unconscious biases define the boundaries
you're unwilling to expand. These biases,
they're the shortcuts that our brain has
created, so that we can deal with the
information that we process every single
day.
Right when we see anyone, whether we
think about or not, we are implicitly
automatically making judgments about how
warm and competent that person or thing
is.
All humans need to make decisions and
so we fill in the blanks because our
brains are wired to do that and we fill
in with things we don't know with, you
know, past experience. Oh, you pattern map
to someone I think I should hire so I'm
going to hire you versus this person
because they didn't map. I can't fill in
the blank because they don't look like me
or they're not from my same background so I
can't see how they're going to make the jump.
Every single person is great at things
that you may not expect them to be but
it's really hard for us to see that when
we're so powerfully guided by the things
we expect to be true in the world.
I grew up surrounded with
this conversation about what you can't
do and what you won't be able to do. My
name is Enrico and I'm an autistic
software engineer. The first time I go
through the performance review process
I was asked for five strengths. It was
the first time that I had ever been
prompted to think in that way about
myself and it was really a life-changing
moment for me.
When we are working on our
day-to-day jobs, we are still making
judgments about the people around us,
about the resumes we see, about the
employees that we're trying to decide whether to put them on teams or not.
People are very wedded to the idea
that they can perceive something
objectively and statistically, they're
wrong but it's hard.
You've become attached to this idea that
you can assess something by looking at it.
These subtle assumptions we make about
people can have lasting effects on who
we're promoting, who we're hiring, who we're
putting a leadership positions. We have
the responsibility to understand the
assumptions that we make and understand
the errors that we make.
But it's not just for the collective good. If you take
the time to understand more about this,
there are things that you can implement
for yourself. It will help you develop as
a leader and to do your job even better.
It made me realize how often I have a
very strong belief that is simply
incorrect. When I look at one of these
evaluation situations, the first question
is, How can I eliminate the sources of
potential bias and leave just the data,
so we can actually make better decisions.
If you're not conscious of the biases
that you have, you're just not
contributing at the level that you could,
and you're not innovating at the level
you could, and so your products won't be
as good. Your results won't be as good.
When you think outside the box with respect to
the assumptions you made about
how some body would use this wonderful
thing you built, and when you broaden that
perspective as to who you change the world for,
you build something even bigger. 
So for those of you who don't know me, my
name is Kyla. I'm the Member Engagement
Officer with the Faculty and Staff
Association, and also get to be the Project
Coordinator for Diversity Circles which
is a great honour. We wanted to show that
video because we weren't sure how many
of the presenters would pick up on
unconscious and implicit bias and thank
you to those who did, which is great, and
we also wanted to draw your attention to
an article. There's a few newsletters on
the table, on your table, there's more
here to the side if you want-- where one
of our staff wrote a piece here about
implicit bias and the work that we can
do around that. And part of this is also
things vary. What might seem like small
things but the name tags that you have
in front of you or on you hopefully, also
here have a place for your gender
pronoun and that is to support the fact
that when we see folks, we often assume
that we know their gender and therefore
the pronoun that goes with that gender
and so it's important to start to, by
design, provide tools for folks so that
they can use the gender that is theirs,
and so that others can use it as
well. So just like we share our names on
these, we also can share our pronouns as
well. If you're if you're unfamiliar with
what pronoun options are available for
you, you can grab one of us, we can talk
about that after, and point you to some
resources as well, but it's important to
use tools like this as well. So what
we're going to do now is we're going to
stop talking and we're going to give you
some time but also I'm going to use a
bit of facilitators privilege where I'm
going to ask Robert to join that table
and I'm gonna ask the two people here to
find another table, perhaps right over
here, just so that we can make sure the
tables are full for discussion. We're
going to do two different parts of this. The first thing we're going to do is
have you turn to a person next to you,
ideally pairs, so if it
doesn't work at your table, just turn to
the other table nearest to you - just because of
of time and I will timekeep for you.
And we want you to do is sort of a
verbal version of the exercise we're
doing at the map, back there. Where you
share your name, also perhaps it's not on
here, but if you'd like to share your
pronouns so that folks at the table know
how to refer to you, you can do that as
well and then just talk a bit about
where your-- how you got to be here today.
Zaa has asked me to model this, so my
name is Kyla. I'm here in Burnaby today
by way of my grandparents who left
Latvia during the pogroms that were
being committed against Jews. They left as
small children. Their parents took them
to South Africa for a safer life, and
then my parents grew up in Apartheid-era
South Africa and felt like they could
not support that government and so they
left and came to Canada via New York to
fight against that government and try
and be part of bringing Apartheid down
and then they had me here in Canada and
so that's how I'm here today. So, thank
you. Take a couple minutes and I will
give you a switch in two minutes, okay?
Thank you.
If you haven't switched, switch now please.
Okay, if you can wrap up what you're
saying and come back.
Alright. 
This is great. Hate doing this.
Okay, as Robert, my new facilitator
mentor, Robert Daum likes to say, this is
the worst part of facilitating, is to
interrupt the conversations but there
will be more. So, now what we're going to do is,
at your tables, we're going to have a
conversation again. There is a notetaker
at each table. If the notetakers want to
raise their hands or great. So the notetakers are there just to capture things
so that again, like Shannon said, we don't
lose all the wonderful things that
you're talking about, they will also
gently bring you back if you sort of
wander off to talking about your
weekends or the amazing thing you're
pet did, so these are the questions we're
asking you to focus on. I won't read them
because they're up here. I'm also
considering some of the focus areas of
this project. In terms of how the
conversation can go, there's some
guidelines up there on the side there
that you can use if you feel like you
need them. I should just clarify the last
part about "Don't share what people said."
It means don't attribute what people
said so don't say, "Oh, Jeff said so and so."
But by all means go out there and say "Oh,
we had the most interesting conversation
about incorporating gender at BCIT." So, just in terms of
attributing it to folks who are in this
room. So, we're going to-- timewise, you want
to make sure you have time to visit
folks at the marketplace afterwards, and we
have some wrap-up stuff so I'll watch
the room and see how conversation is
flowing and things like that, but we're
probably looking at about 15, 18 minutes
or so and I will definitely give you a
warning, okay. So, thank you. Enjoy.
This is your five-minute warning.
Two more minutes.
Okay, I'm going to ask you to wrap up the
thought that is being shared and come back.
Easily the worst part of this job:
stopping conversation. So, just a few things,
thank you for participating in this and
sharing your thoughts. Like we said, we
will pull the notes all together and we
will get them posted in some pretty
format. So, the next thing we want to ask
you to do before we wrap up is you
should have in front of you a little
piece of paper, a quarter sheet piece of
paper where I'm going to ask you just to
take a minute silently and write
something down or if something really
doesn't come to you you can take this
away with you and this is for you to
take home to stick up on your bulletin
board at work or wherever makes sense
for you, just to sort of be a reminder of what
you took away from today and what you
can do, something action related that you
can do to support diversity and
inclusion in your workplace. So just take
a minute to do that and then I will tell
you what's next.
There's even colourful markers on your
table if you want to use those.
Alright, so write that commitment, "I
will..." whatever is that you'll do, then
that take that with you. So before we
actually get to this, I just want to
share-- Shannon and Zaa have not
even seen this yet. Sometime during this
event, our website went live. I got a
message from our tech folks.
diversitycircles.com is now online. You will
forgive all the technical glitches that
I'm sure we will find over the next
couple days. Feel free to email me about
them all and I will get them fixed but I
did want to bring attention-- Splash has left
but I just want to say that Splash gave
us permission to use the artwork that he
adapted the logo for, as the navigation
menu. So, this is the navigation that we
have here and you can scroll through it
all and find out, see things, links to
videos, resources. This is just sort of
the basic content we had available to
load into the site this past week and we
will continue to add things to the site
but the videos from all of our past
events if you haven't been to them are
on there and you can sign up to get more
emails and do all those fun web things.
So we want to thank you for your time we
know how valuable it is. We want to thank
you for your contributions. I really
really want to encourage folks to do a
couple things before they leave. One is
to eat bannock because
that's a lot of bannock
over there and also to take time to
visit the tables at the back. The folks
that are at the back have also been very
generous there with their time
today, so chat with them about their work
and share a bit about your work as well,
and thank you. We have the room for a
while so please continue conversations
and feel free to reach out to us, and
also just if you want to scroll any
thoughts on these feedback forms that
would be great. Thank you so much.
