Beth - Including Kate Libby

yeah hi everybody I am Beth I'm going to talk about including Kate Libby so how many people have actually heard of or seen hackers raise your hand oh thank god okay so there's a few people how do people have heard of or seen sneakers yes okay audience participation is gonna work except now I'm all locked out what's my password so forgive me there's actually one side that I have that was meant to be animation but Wi-Fi is not loving me today so Who am I you're probably thinking who is this crazy person aside from the fact that my fabulous green matches my cthulhu who else am i I am a product manager for an autonomous driving

vehicle company called poly sync I have no relationship to Tesla or some of the things that they're doing but I'm sure they're fine I've been in the tech industry as a product manager just as a product manager not just tech in general for 15 years that means that I've made it five years longer than most women most women opt out at ten because they're just sick of it and they don't feel included and they don't feel like they have a say or they can make a difference they hit the glass ceiling they're like screw it out so I'm I have been lucky enough that I have people had people who have been in dev ops and

security the InfoSec community and the ops community have been tremendous for me they have been so helpful they have been supportive they have been kind they have introduced me to people they have backed me when people have come after me for a variety of different reasons you're not technical enough you don't know what you're doing you haven't been in the industry long enough I have so much love for this community it is not even funny which is why I want to make it so much better the other thing I've done is I've assisted in planning the very first herecan I'm pretty proud of that I worked with Sarah that's how we met that was a women in InfoSec on during

DEFCON I believe it was one of the first ones so you had career con you had here a con and there weren't a whole lot of options if you weren't within a particular box and so it was great to have more options for people that were safe spaces people need safe spaces so that you can have some some people as Don mentioned with unconscious bias sometimes you need people and you need that recharge so that you can be around people who are like you but what I'm gonna spend more time talking about is how you reach out to people who are different and there isn't a single thing that I'm gonna talk about here that is

easy and there gonna be days where you can't do it you don't feel like you've done it and there's gonna be days where you feel like you've taken ten steps backwards totally fine that's life it happens nobody's perfect the point is be aware of it and do the very best that you can so I talked a lot there didn't I and that was just all about me so why is it is inclusion important so today InfoSec is 11% women I think I looked at last year and it was 10 percent who you gained a percent 1% but here's the thing I'm not gonna talk to you about sis white women I feel like if you only talk about sis white women you

are not including all negatively impacted groups and all negatively impacted groups look and feel and art have all the same things that sis white women so I'm I understand I'm up here as a woman talking about this but I am NOT just talking about me and I am NOT making it about people who look just like me I'm explicitly not so please if you take it in that way shape or for her let me know raise your hand and go dude what are you talking about so some of the groups that are included in this but this is not the complete group are people regardless of ability I like to pace a lot so it looks like

I'm bouncing around but it's because the mic doesn't come with me so I apologize I'm gonna try to center myself there so people regardless of ability which I'm one of those people who's a little a DD I like to move around I have a hard time sitting down it doesn't mean that I can't do the job you have people who are visually impaired who are hearing impaired you have people who are color blind you have people who have mental illness PTSD you have people who have hidden illnesses people who might have lupus or other things and you can't see that and you don't know what their struggles are or why they're doing the things that they are on a given point in

time each and every day so you you also have people who are single parents and they can't actually be in the office from 8:00 to 5:00 because they have other responsibilities does that mean that they can't meet the minimum qualifications by any stretch of the imagination to do the job raise your hand if you think the answer is yes so one of the things that with all of this I want people to start thinking about as you're on hiring committees and as you're doing other things if you are helping to put together a job description for somebody within your group think about what are the actual minimum qualifications and you have to go back to that and make it things that

are quantifiable and have absolutely nothing to do with that person as an individual okay the other thing is people regardless of sexual orientation okay aside from the fact that this is a protected class and we're still talking about it mints - so 2017 hurts my soul but this is a for-real thing and this is something that people are often discriminated against and they are excluded they have glass ceilings because they are part of this you should be able to express and be who you are regardless again have you met the minimum qualifications to do the job there is nothing about your sexual orientation that means that you cannot meet the minimum qualifications I say it wrong

you guys and then you have people from all religious and ethnic backgrounds okay so if you look at me and then like if everybody were to come up here and put their arms up next to my arm I would guarantee you there's not a single person who has the same color as me does that mean that there is any one person who has more qualified than the other to do their job no you guys are great at audience participation I've made it so easy and then the last one is veterans so I kind of have a special place in my heart for veterans I grew up in a bit of a rough area and there were I was there

were a number of people who were raised by single moms or within who had who were just poor so as you hit the age of 18 if you didn't have people who were helping to guide you or you didn't I have to go faster you weren't doing the things that you needed to it's entirely possible that the only option you had was to join the military at the age of 18 because that was all that you had a lot of people view people who were military vets as like hey I like to go out and shoot people up no it's because they had no other choice this is the option that they were given so with that they also didn't have the

ability to network or do other things so that's neat I just described you a whole lot of problems tonight and you're probably thinking oh my god all I hear from me too and everything else is there's so many things and you feel burdened by what you can't do and how you can't fix it so the rest of the talk is all about the things that you can do so let's talk about some things and everybody has different abilities so I tried to hit a broad stroke of things that you can do depending on the time that you have and your abilities and what your interest might be so there's mentoring there's a number of groups that you can actually

be a mentor for there's chick tech there's black girls code there's a number of different organizations so make sure that not make sure attempt to get out of your comfort zone and mentor someone who isn't like you that's gonna give you that sense of appreciation for walking in their shoes and understanding some of the challenges that other people have that are different from the challenges that you have we all have challenges but it's good if you start to think about what everybody else is doing there's also volunteering so there are schools that are title one schools does anybody know what a title one school is okay so typically a title one school is a school that most of the kid there's a

large percentage of the population where the the kids are or their households are at poverty level below around there's like this band there and so they get government funding with that they have different programs that come in like the Sun program the Sun program is always looking for people who can come in and help them so if you're part of a network one thing that is super rad and you are giving kids who wouldn't normally like bangin things around who wouldn't normally have the opportunity to have access to what we do in the InfoSec world is let's say you have ten people in your group and they all have slightly different things that they love and that

they have as skillsets you can have once a month go in to the school and you can teach a class nothing naughty but you can teach a class to these kids and get them interested in what is going on and that's something that you can do just from a volunteer perspective then you have open source projects so sneakers again raise your hand how many people who've seen sneakers awesome so in sneakers who is the person who identified where the key was to break the cryptographic code shout it out if you remember the name Whistler what was interesting about Whistler yes so there's a thing called V Pat and what that is is that as a bunch of code and

regulations to make things available for site readers so that you have keystrokes for gooeys etc so think about it if the team did not have Whistler they couldn't have found the key so you need people with different abilities so think about some of your open-source projects that you use that you love that you are part of every day and see if you can start to integrate some of that code into it when all else fails you can donate money besides they have free tickets but it is not free for people who to be here this space is not free so giving money on a regular basis you're allowing people to continue to come and network you have

people who have donation programs and they have people who are underprivileged that can't go and donate can't go and network and so if you donate money to those conferences then they get the opportunity to network networking see how it all flowed it's like I planned it so with networking networking can be super scary so what I would encourage you to do is to be the Kevlar vest for people so if you have someone who's a little nervous about it maybe they haven't networked because they feel different they feel odd so be that Kevlar vest let them know that it's safe create a safe space for them the other thing that you can do is you can help people who

have been hired to feel comfortable and hurt I think this is the only example I'm going to use Kate in and just her name so how many people have been in a room where you have someone like Kate who has said hey I I think a great way to solve this problem is if we did x y&z crickets Fred over here goes you don't be awesome what if we did XY and Z and it was like wow that's amazing Thank You Fred that is the coolest idea I've ever heard and you're sitting there going Kate Kate just said that and a lot of times you're like not sure what to say or do in that

scenario so one thing that you can do is go Fred that sounds like a great idea and it sounds like everyone just like plus one Kate's idea which was what you just said so I wonder how can we think about moving that forward Kate do you have any ideas for that and if you don't you know what that's totally fine let's figure out how we can all do that together so you're taking it back and you're bringing it back to Kate without calling her out and making her feel like oh my god someone just called me out which could be a deterrent for her to throw ideas out in the future you're making it a positive experience for Kate

to speak up next follow people who aren't like you on social media and stand in when they're being harassed how often does this happen that you see people who are being harassed and you're like oh my god they have to deal with this on a regular basis you know what it sucks but here's the thing having a man go up against a man is far more impactful than a woman continuing to fight 20 men far more impactful follow them understand what the challenges are use their same language but let them know that you're doing it for the purposes so that they don't have to take that emotional hit to do it themselves so be that Kevlar vest for them having a

white person go up against another white person also far more impactful and you're doing again that same thing where you're taking the hit so that they don't have to think about how it is to be in their shoes and how exhausting it is every single day to have to defend yourself and to have to say what I'm doing is okay and I should be able to have this opinion and we don't have Wi-Fi this would have been a much cooler slide it would have showed you that from my perspective if we all look the same if we were all the same we'd get tired of looking at each other it's actually song quote but I

really believe that we get tired of looking at each other there's actually this amazing site where you can actually get stock photos absolutely free for calling out women of color and textured and so you can start to have that as a subtle thing in the background as you're doing your talks and they have all the stock photos of a wide variety of people who are in conference room meetings who are white boarding stuff who are giving presentations who come from all different backgrounds use it have it in your background it doesn't always have to be I don't know he-man or cat photos so speaking of

you