Season 2 - Episode 1
Jacques Beauvais
Welcome to the second season of the Make the Future podcast. I'm your host, Jacques Beauvais, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Ottawa. Join us as we have conversations with different thought leaders about current issues facing the engineering industry. Let's explore the future of technology and innovation and how through creativity and collaboration we can make the future.
[00:23] Narrator
They say the future is coming, but that's not true. The future is already here. And it's relentless. It's not going to wait for you to catch up. How will we live in this future? How will we make sense of it? To define our course, we need a new perspective. One that engages our curiosity. That activates our imagination. One that defies the conventional. To own the future, we need to do more than just see it. We need to make it.
[01:13] Jacques Beauvais
As for many Faculties of Engineering across the country, equity, diversity, and inclusivity, are really important to us. We feel that it's important within our faculty, in the way we train young people, but it's also extremely important and we're concerned about when they go and hit the job market afterwards, what's going on in industry, in organizations, these are really important issues and they're starting to reach a critical point right now where we need to be very active to find solutions to help out on that.
And in the Make the Future podcast, it is intending to be looking at where we're going down the road the next few years, what are the lessons learned by our alumni and friends out in industry. We've been talking with some of our students and some very recent graduates about what their perspectives are on what's going to happen in the tech industry, and what their hopes are and their aspirations, so we thought it would be really interesting to have a conversation with Thusha Agampodi, who's the Engineering Manager at Magnet Forensics, to join me for some conversation with some really insightful and interesting people. So, Thusha is here with me now. Hi Thusha.
[02:29] Thusha Agampodi
Hi Jacques.
[02:30] Jacques Beauvais
So Thusha, you've been involved very recently. You organized the event of Better Together, why did you do that and what did you get out of it?
[02:40] Thusha Agampodi
I've been attending a lot of women in tech events, around Ottawa. And one of the things I noticed is that we were hearing some great women leaders, but often the audience was all women, which is great, I think there are times when women need safe spaces to discuss their ideas and to feel heard. However, I felt like we needed men in the conversation as well, and all genders, so that was the thought behind the Better Together event where we invited leaders from all genders to come together and talk about gender equality.
We focused a lot on creating inclusive work environments, because one of the things I do, I've been doing some high school visits to talk to students about getting into STEM-- especially young women-- but it was important to me that by the time they got to the workforce, that we had created environments where they felt included. So, that was the reason behind the Better Together event, and we had a great conversation there, and we had a lot of leaders from Ottawa.
[03:54] Jacques Beauvais
When you're going to the high schools, what kind of a reception do you get when you're talking about these issues? Do they already feel them, or are you meeting young people who are concerned? Do you get the impression that they have not reached a point where they're concerned about these issues?
[04:14] Thusha Agampodi
I think it depends on what grade. Some of the visits I had were Grade 9, and you can already tell. One of the first surprises to me when I walked in to these high school classes was the fact that the rooms were 50/50 when it comes to gender diversity. I'm not used to walking into a room and seeing that half the room be women. But when we talked about engineering, you could kind of see their eyes light up when we talk about the impact we can have, with engineering.
I talk about the impact I have with my job, and I think perhaps, they don't have awareness into the type of impact you can have in these fields. I can tell from the questions I get from them after-- that they didn't realize that you can have an impact on society in these fields. They also do ask questions about what the day-to-day work is like, you know-- "are you sitting in a cube all day writing software?"
I get questions from the girls in classes about "how much collaboration there is, and teamwork" and such. I definitely think getting more role models out there to high schools makes a big difference in just increasing awareness of the impact you could have and also the different types of positions that are available.
[05:53] Jacques Beauvais
And you can give them some good examples, because from discussions that we've had before, I know that at Magnet Forensics in the Ottawa office, you've been able to at least progress the balance of gender diversity in your group right?
[06:08] Thusha Agampodi
Yes, I've been working very hard to do that. I think... it takes a lot of effort. And that work's never really done. You have to constantly keep at it in terms of-- you know if I hire women, then just making sure they continue to feel heard and included. I do think having a female leader has gone a long way, it makes a difference in attracting more women into the team as well.
[06:42] Jacques Beauvais
And you're right because that's one of the concerns that I have in the Faculty of Engineering here at uOttawa too. It's not just attracting them, we have to work hard to make sure that we provide an environment that is welcoming and respectful and gives them a voice so that they can feel that they can have an impact and really prepare them for later on in the workplace.
[07:04] Thusha Agampodi
If you tackle one element of it, then you kind of actually get the rest of it-- If you start building an inclusive environment for one group, then you actually start thinking about building an inclusive environment for everyone. So, I'm actually hoping that that will happen, and I've seen that happen with my team anyway.
[07:28] Jacques Beauvais
The tech industry in some ways, because it's a bunch of scientists and engineers working on technology, there's-- for many years there's been the appearance that from their perspective that technology is gender neutral. And it's never been the case. The exponential growth in the number of applications where we're using AI tools has raised a lot of concerns in a very public way. And I think it's raised the awareness that those biases are really important, they are making a difference-- a negative difference in a lot of people's lives.
[08:05] Thusha Agampodi
I'm a little concerned-- I know there's a lot of talk of using AI when it comes to hiring. Because there's a lot of bias already, in terms of resumes and the interview process, and then there's talk of using AI to alleviate some of it. However, I'm glad to hear that these conversations are happening about the bias that exists in AI because I'm a little nervous that we are going to replace the bias that we have in the manual process with AI that would also have a bias.
[08:39] Jacques Beauvais
Yeah, and up to a certain point, because we are training the AI. We are actually codifying, solidifying, even entrenching the biases that we have. Because once we've trained the system, using-- literally-- our biases, then it's even more difficult to extract it out of there. So it might be really interesting to talk with Parinaz Sobhani, she's one of our PhD graduates in engineering from 2017.
Right now, she's the Director of Machine Learning in the Impact Team at Georgian Partners in Toronto. So she's both working on the AI front, and she's also working on the investments front in the VC field-- and could probably give us an interesting perspective about AI today and the biases that we find in that type of tool development, that type of industry, and those fast-growing startups.
[09:32] Jacques Beauvais
Welcome Parinaz.
[09:35] Parinaz Sobhani
Thank you, thanks for having me.
[09:37] Jacques Beauvais
So maybe start a little bit a background question Parinaz, we see that on Twitter you did mention that one of the reasons that you decided to join the industry was because you really wanted to make a real impact rather than chasing citations. And I’m curious to see how your experience has turned out over the last few years.
[09:57] Parinaz Sobhani
I’m been working on real world problems. Problems that are important for our society and for the business and the tech industry of Canada. And actually I think, I’m useful, why? Because especially because I’m working with start-up companies.
And working for a start-up or with a start-up companies is very different compared to working for big corporation. Big corporation like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, they all have a giant machine learning and AI team. So you might not as dutiful or impactful because there are so many smart people working in these companies.
A couple of years ago, when you were talking about bias, we were like "why? We are working on mathematical solutions, optimizations, techniques. Where does biases come from?" And you know, the main ingredient of any machine learning, or AI system is data. Where is this data coming from?
This data is normally coming from humans. Humans behaviors, human historical data, or you actually and explicitly ask humans to annotate or label your data. And as you know, as humans, we all have our biases. And of course, when the ingredients of your systems are biased, the system-- even if you are using mathematical optimizations, the system ends up to inherit all our biases, and problems.
For the problems in data. And it's not an easy problem, building the first system is not an easy problem. Why? Because even identifying all these sorts of bias is not easy. Even if you make it human behaviors, it's so hard to attribute the behavior to like a potential bias, or so many other things out there. So when we are building a first system, first of all, we have to identify what kind of a bias we have. I can give you a couple of examples.
[12:11] Thusha Agampodi
That would be great.
[12:12] Parinaz Sobhani
I can give you an example of a couple of biases.
[12:13] Parinaz Sobhani
For example, sometimes the bias is coming from lack of having enough data of a particular microsegment of the population. For example, you are building the parts of a system, but you might not have enough data, historical data, of people of color. That's one of the problems. So historically, we haven't collected enough data from people of color for any reason. So then, you build this system, and this system is going to make more mistakes for this microsegment of the population.
Why? Because the system is kind of blind to this microsegment of the population. So even as developers--, we didn't make anything wrong, but we don't have access to enough data. And we didn't think about it. Because there might be some potential solutions and we can actually go look for such data out there, but we were completely unconscious about not having the representative dataset. That's one possible source of bias.
The other source of bias is part in representation. For example, we are building a hiring software system. When we are building the hiring system, what really matters is the qualification of the candidate. So the demographic information shouldn't really matter. It shouldn't really matter where you are coming from, what your gender is, what your ethnicity is, what your religion is-- and basically shouldn't use any of such information.
Then you are representing a candidate. So you might say, "Easy, easy. I'm going to bring up all the information about your gender, your ethnicity, like any direct information. I am not going to use those information." But it is much more complex. Why? Because there are so many other attributes that they have encoded in our demographic indirectly.
I can give you an example. I'm gonna ask you which social media are you using. And you might think that it doesn't reveal any information about my gender, or my ethnicity. But they can tell you, that if your answer is I’m a Pinterest user, then with 98% likelihood you are a white woman. So it's not as easy as saying that you will remove all these directly representing demographic information problems.
So there is a great problem, this is another source of bias in representation. So you can imagine there are so many different types of bias in the data, and then actually identifying that the system is biased or not is-- I call it a bug. It's like a bug in any software system. It's more similar to the security or privacy bug.
And you can imagine, identifying and detecting the security and privacy bugs are one of the most difficult kind of bugs that you can have in software systems. So it really needs quality assurance. It needs to have standard practices. And these technologies are practically new. We don't have these kinds of practices yet. And most of the time because we don't have diversity, working on these problems, most of the time people don't even think about it.
[15:52] Jacques Beauvais
But I have two questions that came out of what you said, and one of them is-- you mentioned that the development teams were not necessarily that diverse. What I want to ask is that-- It's been in the news a lot in relation to AI, but does the notion of bias and lack of diversity, potentially in the teams, is that really a new problem? Or does the AI technology, has it brought a very bright light to shine on the issue? Or is it really a new problem?
[16:27] Parinaz Sobhani
As humans we are all, we know, all the existing processes that are actually run by humans, they are also biased. So if I'm actually applying for mortgage, or for a loan, and I'm going to talk to an officer, there is a possibility that this officer is racist or sexist, and I might not get that loan. Right? Not because of my qualification, or my application, but because of the possibility that the officer is racist or sexist. But why it's even more important for the AI system?
Imagine that-- if you are an officer and you are sexist or racist, how many people are you going to deal with on your daily basis? Maximum ten, maybe twenty people. Right? Imagine that one of the banks, they build an AI system and they put it in for auction and it is racist or sexist. Then how many people can be impacted by such system? It's going to be in the masses of thousands per day.
So the magnitude and the impact of such racist or sexist system are much higher and more significant compared to having an individual in our system who is racist or sexist. That's why we should have more... we should have a better governance, we should have a better quality assurance, for such a system, because the magnitude and the impact of the system are much higher.
[18:03] Jacques Beauvais
So it's not just highlighting the problem, there's actually also a magnitude issue.
[18:09] Thusha Agampodi
And since we're talking about diversity, I think it's important to hear from someone who has a numbers of years of experience in the industry.
[18:18] Jacques Beauvais
That would be really interesting. And I think one person that we've been having a lot of conversations with recently, at the university, is Julia Elvidge. She's a tech business leader that's working with early stage companies. She's been an advisor, a mentor, an investor, and a board member, and she could probably bring to our discussion, really important insights.
Julia, just to give us a bit of a background into the discussion; you've been in Ottawa for a few years now, you've seen it go through different phases, and you've seen Ottawa today as now recognized as one of the technology hubs in Canada.
And you were also, at Chipworks you were part of a company that actually interacted with a lot of the other companies. Could you talk a little bit about how you've seen the Ottawa Kanata North evolved over the years and how has it evolved also, in terms of the people, in the companies, and also what you've seen evolving over those years.
[19:19] Julia Elvidge
I actually graduated electrical engineering and ended up in Toronto, to start with, with a company called LSR Logic. It was involved in integrated circuit design, and it was a great opportunity. Had a lot of fun. I just love microchips, and it was so new that we had to actually teach the industry how to make chips.
At some point, I got the opportunity to move to Ottawa and run the design centre here and that was such an exciting idea. Ottawa was the place to be, there was the Nortel’s, the Newbridge’s, the Tundra’s, the Mitel’s, all of them working with LSR Logic at that time. And involved in building their own application specific chips. And so I was just ready to say yes. And exactly that week I found out I was pregnant. And I didn't know what to do, I wasn't sure whether to bring it up or not. I actually did, they said "Great, we'll make it work."
And I commuted weekly, between Toronto and Ottawa for the first few months-- up until I was eight months pregnant. And it was a great experience, because I sort of moved into Ottawa and realized how right of a decision it was for me to be there. There was so much opportunity. There was so much growth, it was so much excitement.
And now this was an electronic semi-conductor town. And it also was a town where I could actually have a life beyond work. It was a town where I knew I could get home to my kids within 15 minutes, not an hour and a half. Which was what I was living in, in Toronto.
There was a lot of learning, across companies, movement across companies. We went through employment bulges, where Nortel was offering huge bonuses for people to come and work. We at Chipworks, we were trying to come up with ways to recruit.
I remember we took a chip truck into the middle of Kanata and handed out chips that, at the bottom the paper said, "Come work for us!" once they finished their chips. That's what it was all wrapped in.
[21:55] Thusha Agampodi
That was very clever.
[21:56] Julia Elvidge
But that was how crazy it was. There was just not enough great talent to go around. So Chipworks later on became a company that... was fighting for that talent. And we were one of the companies that was bringing a lot talent in internationally to the area. And you saw a lot of that. People coming in from all parts of the world and becoming really a part of the economy here.
Ottawa's changed now. It's a little different. It's not as electronics, it's not as capital-intensive in terms of the innovation that's happening here. But I love the startups, I love the chemise, I love seeing that growth happening. There's a lot of excitement about the next Shopify. And the growth that we're seeing here in Ottawa today.
[22:58] Jacques Beauvais
Do you feel that the ecosystem, if I can call it that, or the types of companies-- you talked about the big players in the early days. My sense-- because I've left for thirty years and I've come back, is that it's a lot more diversified. That's the impression I have but I'm not sure.
[23:17] Julia Elvidge
No, I totally agree. I mean it was very dominated-- sorry, I was a University of Waterloo grad, so--
[23:24] Jacques Beauvais
It's okay.
[23:26] Julia Elvidge
Everybody went to Nortel. And now it's not. I mean, you see there's so much choice. So many small to medium companies that are doing really interesting things. And it's great from an employee standpoint to be able to try out different companies. There's still some of the big guys. We still have our Cienas, our Ericssons.
[23:54] Thusha Agampodi
I think I've noticed that too, and I know, like our headquarters is in Waterloo, and they've noticed it there as well, as the big companies like Blackberry, started downsizing, then what ended up happening is that the environment around all the leaders, all the tech leaders who left these big companies, started their own companies... so there's a lot of startups around, and I’m noticing that in Ottawa as well.
As well as Nortel closed down, and then Blackberry downsized in Ottawa as well. You can definitely see that all those talented folks, who were at those companies were going and starting new things, which is great for the tech hub here.
[24:35] Jacques Beauvais
Julia, to come back to this, is diversity a problem in technology companies in Canada today?
[24:41] Julia Elvidge
From an international employee's... I see people from all over the world working in Kanata's tech teams, and I don't see in the tech team level, a white dominance right now. But you know, that's still a problem at the more senior management levels. And that needs to change.
I really think that our gender issue is very severe, hasn't changed in decades, and really does need focus right now. There are just not enough women in technology, the stat of 27% of women to men in tech is too low. And that's for STEM, that's not engineering. For engineering it would be even lower than that.
I did electrical engineering many years ago, we don't need to get into details, you know. I was six women of a graduating class of 110. You know, electrical engineering itself really hasn't changed that much. Maybe it's ten women out of 110. Maybe it's 15, it's still not good enough.
There's certainly... change is happening. I think that it's not happening fast enough. The problem is just getting them into engineering, even. It's not about getting them to graduate, I think the biggest one is getting them into it.
I've certainly tried to get girls, as in high school and previous interested, in the robotics, the semi-conductor chips, nanotechnology, AI... that's some of the work that's been done here at U of O, it's at Carleton, it's throughout. You see a number of different programs-- there's a lot of different programs. Technovation, Virtual Ventures, there's summer programs here that I was involved in as well.
They're all great, and they're all making a difference, but at some point, I want to talk about my time with eight girls here this summer. Because I asked them a question, and I was very surprised by their answer.
Why there weren't more women in engineering? This was a special class for software engineering. There were eight girls, grade 9 to grade 11, and the quietest girl jumped up right away and said, "Because people think they're incapable." Word for word.
The second, little bit older, said, "Because men don't want to hire them." And then the third, probably grade 11, said, "Because they're worried they're gonna get pregnant and not stay at the job."
And it's just like, oh my gosh, you girls are way too young to have these impressions. And I was horrified, actually. I was heartbroken, and horrified at the same time. Because I really thought that that's what we knew 20 years ago, I would have expected that answer from grade 9s to grade 11s 20 years ago.
But why now? I'm really surprised with now. Now I did ask earlier, how many of them were there voluntarily. And I think only three out of the eight were there voluntarily. Their parents had put them in this program. But they were... kids don't do things if they don't want to at least try, so they were at least somewhat interested.
But it was... it surprised me that they still had these impressions of the barriers, because I would say the opposite. I would say there's men there, out there right now, that really want to hire women, but they can't find enough women to hire. And it's something I think will help in the future. But that's coming back around to your question. That's the big diversity issue, I think, in Canada right now, with technology companies and it is gender.
[29:14] Thusha Agampodi
I agree, I think that's what got us started in this conversation to begin with when I collaborated with uOttawa on the Better Together conference, which was really focusing on gender diversity. I care about diversity as a whole, but I do fully agree with Julia that getting more women into tech is a big issue, and I've been reading a lot about why, and how do we tackle this, and I don't have answers, but I can talk a little bit about the things I've noticed.
Definitely there's not enough women coming in, and I've been reading about some studies that ask women who go into engineering, when you ask students who go into engineering, why do you choose to go? And I think the answers you got from the men were just across the board, all over.
But the answers you got from the women, were more specific in talking about someone in their life that was an influence, whether it was an aunt or an uncle or a parent. And I can relate to that, you know. I went into engineering because my dad worked at an engineering university. And a lot of the women I talked to have similar stories.
I think definitely, for one, examples make a huge difference. Which is why we are speaking to Parinaz and Julia, I think the more examples we can get out, the better. And then, of course, once you get in, how do we build an inclusive environment?
Because like Julia said, even if you get diversity at the lowest level, the entrance level, as you go up in leadership, you see it's mostly male. You see that the top 500 companies, you know it's like 4% or 5% are women. So definitely when it comes to performance reviews, there's bias there.
[31:05] Jacques Beauvais
I hope you've enjoyed our conversation so far, and we're going to continue in an upcoming episode. And I really hope you'll be able to join us.
Season 2 - Episode 2
Jacques Beauvais
We've been hearing a lot recently about how equity, diversity, and inclusivity issues are affecting the technology sector. So I really wanted to sit down with the thought leaders and discuss the problems, and some of the things that are being done to try and improve the situation. What's the problem of not having equity, gender equity in the leadership, or on the teams in the company. What's the consequence?
Julia Elvidge
You don't get better decision-making, better problem solving, and great discussions. I really think the more diversity-- and you can look at the Myers Briggs' diversity too. There's thinkers, and feelers, there's extroverts and introverts, so you do look for that kind of diversity in your team as well. But the more diversity, the better you have in terms of piling ideas and tossing them around and figuring out which one is right. You don't want a group think approach where everybody's got the same idea and "Oop, thumbs up! Let's move on. Beer time!"
[01:10] Thusha Agampodi
Diverse perspectives is what you're looking for.
Parinaz Sobhani
I'd like to add a little bit on that more from the practitioner perspective, what actually worked for venture capital. And what we really care about is the business outcomes, right? I'm really encouraged by the number and quality of the studies that clearly tie high performing companies to team diversity.
So it's not a secret to us anymore, to an investor, that if we are to have a better return for our money, you need to invest more in diversity. So basically, I want to say it's not only good for society, it's also good for the business. And that should be the kind of message we have to have out there. We have to frame it as the business agenda. We have to frame it as the business outcome-- it's good to have more girls out there in the tech industry.
But-- normally, nobody has a question mark. There is no question. At least, that's my hope. And I'm really encouraged that most of the people, they are kind of sold on that idea that they need to have that right mix. But what is really missing, especially in the tech industry, because-- it's tough because companies have to move so fast. And there are pressures to move incredibly fast. Normally, the opportunity for promoting gender and diversity can be de-prioritized. That's the main problem.
Jacques Beauvais
You're saying that. Are the investors saying that when they talk to their start-up? They need to bring in gender equity, and diversity within their teams? Do you have the sense that they're passing that message on to the founders?
Parinaz Sobhani
[03:11] Exactly, so the investors are committed to building the diverse company also, and for promoting diversity in our portfolios. And as you said, it can be diversity in the board, it can be diversity in the leadership, or it can be even diversity in the actual entry-level or junior position.
Thusha Agampodi
Parinaz, I hear what you're doing. How consistent do you think that is across the venture capital industry? I think it's very uncommon, personally.
Parinaz Sobhani
[03:43] Maybe if you were asking me two, three years ago, I would say no, it's not-- it's not part of every investor agenda, but actually, if you look our LP, people that give us money, they ask us such questions like that. So we have enough for it. If you look at the recent case of more diverse companies, or even those companies that are founded by women, we have enough data out there. It's so hard to actually question it now.
Maybe it was harder to create five years ago, but right now we have enough examples of ways this has been working, that has been funded at least by women or by diverse teams, that really leaves no kind of question mark or no blank page, to wonder why this is how... diversity. (Inaudible) they have dedicated part of their form for only investing on, for example, companies leading by women, or for example, (inaudible) because we all understand the importance of such initiatives, not only for society, but also for the business outcome.
Thusha Agampodi
[05:15] I agree with you, I agree that with the stats, and that women leadership is a great thing in the start-up community, but venture capital firms are still dominated by men. I mean we're talking... I can't remember, is it 95% men? It's a pretty high number, still. So you know, I love to see that that's happening, and you're seeing that, and the more we see that the better, because it will push more start-up companies to get that diversity right from the beginning.
Parinaz Sobhani
[05:53] Raising capital or getting access to capital still is much more difficult for women funders to raise, and part of it is because it's still pretty much white male dominated. It's more like unconscious bias. Because you know, you can trust people of very similar backgrounds more easily, and that's kind of normal outcome of not having diverse investments company. So now, in our company, we have, as I said, that's why we are committed to, first of all, diverse teams internally, and also trying to promote diversity.
Jacques Beauvais
[06:41] Thusha, you've managed to do very well in having diversity in the Magnet Forensic Ottawa site. How hard did you have to work to come up with close to... what's more than 40% of your employees that are women?
Thusha Agampodi
It fluctuates, but it's a small team. I think we're at 27 now. It does fluctuate, but I'm trying to keep the percentage higher than... I'm just trying everything I can, basically. One of the things I've been doing, is that I've been visiting high schools and universities, talking about what I care about. And I think having a female leader, as an example, goes a long way. So when companies now come and ask me "how do I get more women in?" I tell them "it's easy, just promote a few." So certainly, that helps.
And then, I've spoken to my team a lot about the unconscious bias that exists, like Parinaz says, it exists in AI, but it also obviously exists in human, in the hiring process. You know, there's studies that talk about the resume bias, if you read a resume and it has a woman's name on it, they're less likely to get called in for an interview. And if you have an ethnic sounding name on it, you're even less likely to get called. So I openly talk to my team about it when we review resumes. And I know I have these biases too, so I'm not trying to necessarily-- I mean it's great if we can eliminate our biases, but they're ingrained.
So what I'm trying to do is have a diverse group review the resumes, because I'm thinking like if you put diversity in maybe you get diversity out? So we review resumes with that in mind, and then in our interview process as well, we try to have a diverse set of interviewers who go in. This way, I'm thinking, as long as you pass the technical interview, that's obviously very important, because I think no one wants to get hired as a token or diversity stat, and I care very much about-- "I want to be hired for my qualifications, not because I'm a woman."
But as long as you pass the technical interview, then I have the diverse interviewers, and have your bias, and hire, and if I have a varied number of interviewers, I get that out of it as well. And it seems to be working. And like we spoke about, it does take a long time. If you're in a hurry to hire, then you might have to make some decisions quickly.
So if you get a large number of candidates, and you have to hire a large group very quickly, like Parinaz says, you might make some calls and put diversity in the background. I've been grateful that Magnet's given... we've put a lot of thought into our hiring and we always say we're not just filling bums in the seats.
So I'm given the time I need to find the right candidate. And I'm always trying to find the candidate that brings the diverse perspective. It doesn't necessarily have to be a woman. Sometimes it's the junior candidate, if my team is full of senior developers right now.
Or someone from a different school, who comes with different types of training, but it does-- especially if you're trying to get more women onto the team-- because there's not many women graduating right now, it definitely takes you longer to fill that position, but it's worth it.
I think, I can see the results, the outcome of my team now, and they're very productive, and they question each other a lot, which is healthy debate, because there are diverse opinions we disagree, often, but then I think you do build the best products at the end.
Jacques Beauvais
[10:32] Have you seen, over the years Julia, this lack of diversity being an impediment to moving projects forward?
Julia Elvidge
I mean I've always been a proponent of high performing teams, and myself, and diversity helps there. But to get a high performing team you have to build trust. And trust is partially getting to know each other. And being able to break some barriers. Once you have that trust, then those conflict situations, those good conflict situations that bring better ideas, are easier. And you can understand another's point of view--
Jacques Beauvais
You can make a constructive conflict, rather than a negative one I guess.
Julia Elvidge
[11:25] Exactly, and if you know your colleague is an introvert and hasn't said something in awhile, maybe you'll say "Hey, we haven't heard from you, what do you think?" and to promote the conversation, instead of talking on top of each other. And so... the more you can do that the better. We took the time at the senior management team to spend quite a bit of time trying to take our team from a forming team to a high performing team. And you think it's simple, that was like a six-month process. There was a lot of thought, and discussion, both one on one and as a group to get that understanding.
But I think that, women are actually an asset there. I've heard it said, and people have mentioned it to me, that they're happy to have me in the room, because I help sort of remove a little bit of the testosterone. That it's not escalating all the time, the discussion, and that they have to be a bit on better behaviour.
And not because I was more senior, and because I was a woman in those cases, and have always been a facilitator, always trying to get the best discussion going and have that good conversation so that we can move the company forward in a much more positive manner and go for those positive results. And I really find it very valuable, so anything you can do, and diversity is one of those things, to get to that higher performing team, the better, and the more successful you will be as an organization going forward.
Jacques Beauvais
[13:08] You've all mentioned some issues and warnings. I'm still grappling with what you said about the young girls participating in the summer, the interacting with. That was really disturbing, that we still have those perceptions. I mean they're young, as you said; there are people that are telling them this.
Clearly, it's still in our culture, you talked about the speed of having to move to hire, to move quickly, we're trying to build up the Kanata North and the Ottawa tech sector, you're in an investment firm, Parinaz and trying to help the company build-- Are we in trouble? Are we going to hit a wall? Or are you optimistic about our ability to build those high performing teams over the coming years?
Julia Elvidge
[14:08] I believe that part of the issue was 2008. I'm gonna blame 2008 on it. So 2008 there was a financial crisis, tech sector got hit again, and to a certain extent I think that young women at that stage were more practical and said, "oh well, IT is not good. I'm going away from IT." I think there was a certain amount of that and we have a chance of recovery now, because that's passed long enough. But that's one of the reasons why we've been stuck at this 27% women in STEM. I think that there are programs that I see changing, for engineering, and I can see the stats finally moving.
Electrical engineering just doesn't seem fun. It doesn't seem interesting, I don't understand the social impact I'll make, and this is important to women. There was a study done that, and analyzed the question, an essay question for entrance applications for engineering. They filtered it, and they looked at all the women's answers, and all the men's answers, and more often than not, something like "social impact" showed up in the women. Not the guys, they just want to do something... you know be interesting problem, solving, that sort of thing.
The social impact is something we need to bring out more because it's not obvious how electrical engineering has a social impact. Biomedical engineering, which is a program that has much better numbers, almost 50/50 in terms of men to women in the programs. That feels like you're having a social impact, that's great. So explaining how electrical engineering has a social impact, to the next generation, I think is one of the things that will make a difference.
I also, based on my most recent experience, I am convinced now that yes, we have to put more women in front of young women, and show them that we made it there. But we also need to have men there that are supporting the women, so that these young girls understand that there is a male population out there that wants them to come work for them. That there's not that barrier.
Thusha Agampodi
[16:43] I fully agree. I think that because there is that stigma, when you think about engineering-- when I think about engineering-- I knew it's going to be male dominated. I'm going to be studying with mostly guys and working with mostly guys. Until we get rid of that, I think it's important for men and women to go and talk to these students, to say "look at how much fun we're having working together." You know, that's important, and there are these male allies, and everyone who's here to support this. I think that's huge. And then I do agree that societal impact goes a long way for women. I think environmental engineering has similar numbers.
So for universities, I think what you can do for sure is change your marketing. Change how you market engineering to students if you want to get more women in. I did have questions for Julia, because I know you've been in the industry for a long time. Not too long, great amount of time to get great experience, it's been great for me.
I've seen you at a few events, and I know the Women in power technology group that you're a part of. It's been inspiring for me to see Julia, as a leader in the tech industry because as I've said, examples are really important. I'm curious to hear your opinion on what you've seen so far in the growth, and do you think the groups like the Women in Power technology groups and these gatherings that we have, can you talk a little bit about the influence that it has on the young women who join?
Julia Elvidge
[18:22] Yeah. I think if anything, there's almost too many women's groups now. And we need to bring some of them together and make them more powerful. There's some great ones-- I like Women in Power technology because it doesn't say you have to be an engineer. It's... you're working with technology companies, and many of them are technical, it's a great generational learning experience. There's young people that are really driving it and keeping it going, and I'm really happy to help and bring people in and get some great topics and great discussions going, but it's a fabulous association for building your network.
And that's one of the things that women do badly, usually. That's changing too, I think, is building your networks. And those networks should not just be women either. But finding ways to continue building your network helps you grow, and gives you opportunities to move, in the organization and beyond the organization.
There's other ones-- Women in communications and technology has a great mentoring program I'm involved in right now, and it's fabulous because you get hooked up with-- I got one woman engineer in Halifax, another woman working in program management here, and I love it. Just great conversations. It's fun to help each other, and the more we can support each other, the better.
I think that maybe there hasn't been enough of that. And because we've been in male dominated technology companies, and education system, we kind of forgot to help each other, I think. I see a lot more of it happening, about really helping each other, giving high fives, and helping them move up.
Thusha Agampodi
[20:37] I have a last question for both of you, for Parinaz and Julia, since you've touched on the topic, the importance of a mentor and Parinaz maybe you can speak to whether you have a mentor and ally who has advocated for you and helped you as you started your career, and Julia I'm happy for you to speak to the importance of a mentor as well and how do women and others go about finding one?
Parinaz Sobhani
[21:00] Yeah, like my best mentors were-- the ones that had the most impact on my career and encouraged me always, and always pushed me to my boundaries, they were all male. And so I believe... I have also amazing women around me. They are like really good role models for me. But back to the point that Julia mentioned, it's very important to also have other men in your network and as your mentors, because they can also... we can learn a lot from them.
And also having such relationships and conversations if you're not a man also makes you more confident to have similar conversations to your boss, or to the senior management, to people in the senior management role, or most of the time, these positions are held by men. It makes you more comfortable; it makes you more confident, and actually having those kinds of, supporters, are really important in your career.
Julia Elvidge
[22:15] So from my point of view, I had a great mentor, but I'm going to talk a little quickly, about, there's an HBR article that just came out. It's called "A lack of sponsorship is keeping women from advancing into leadership positions." And it was a really interesting read, because we mix up the terms mentor and sponsor a lot. And a mentor is somebody that does a lot of one on one conversations with you, and provides guidance. Pretty private.
Sponsor is the other end of the spectrum. That one is somebody that is willing to be loud and say, "This is the person we should promote. This is the one that should take this huge project." When I'm a sponsor, I'm putting my career on the line for this individual. So... it was a very interesting article, just out. But it also pointed out that there are steps in between that are possible, beyond mentorship, and the next one is connecting.
Somebody... I love connecting, I'm having a great time at Invest Ottawa, just connecting entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs to investors, and it's amazing that mesh of connections, and how valuable it can be, and how much one entrepreneur can help another entrepreneur, and it really is a good step towards that sponsorship level. You don't always have to put your whole career on the line.
And my mentor was really a sponsor, if I think about it now. Because he was an individual that helped me become president of Chipworks. He saw the potential in me. He slapped me around a lot when I said stupid things, like "oh not right now." I said "I've got two kids at home," and he said, "No. Now. You've gotta do it now. This is not going to be here later."
And I really valued that. I did need that slapping around at that point. It was one of the best opportunities that I grabbed, and I'm really glad that I grabbed it. And I honestly usually end, talking about leadership and women, I say "Say yes. Say yes. Say yes." I mean, grab those opportunities when they arrive. You'll work it through; you'll make it work somehow. And they'll really help you grow.
Thusha Agampodi
[24:45] I think we do tend to say, "We’re not ready" far too often. I would like to take an opportunity now to thank Julia and Parinaz for joining us today. It's been great learning a little bit more about you. And you're both such great examples for everybody in the tech industry and certainly all the women in the tech industry who might be listening, as great examples to learn from, and to get inspired by, so thank you very much, and thank you to the Dean for this opportunity.
Jacques Beauvais
[25:17] Thank you to all of you.
Our outreach program involves 43,000 youths in the Ottawa area in the last twelve months. It's huge, but I'm still shocked that we still have such barriers to break through and try to make-- next summer; I think we're going to have another step, which will be exciting when we start. We now have a recognized private high school in the Faculty of Engineering, so next summer they'll be giving the 11th grade physics course, and they will be focusing on women.
Because-- and it's going to be interesting because I'm a physicist and engineer by training so I'm always looking for real data. And it is known by everybody that the 11th grade high school physics course is the showstopper. So I'm really, really interested in seeing whether this is real, and if we can have an effect when we address that.
[26:19] Well that was extremely interesting as a discussion with Parinaz, with Julia, and I really want to thank you too Thusha for joining me today, I think we can continue this conversation in the next episode. I think there's still a lot to explore, about all the issues around equity, diversity, technology, and inclusivity. So thanks so much for joining me today Thusha, and we'll talk again soon.
Thusha Agampodi
[26:44] I agree, it's been a great conversation and I think we're just starting to get to the heart of it. So I'm looking forward to having more conversations with leaders from Ottawa.
Jacques Beauvais
[26:52] I want to thank you all for tuning in on this episode of the Make the Future podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and that you learned as much as I did. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss the next episode. And we would also like to really thank our guests, and the podcast production team: Kyle Bournes, Valérie Samson, Karen Massey and Francis Bertrand-Lafrenière. And I really hope you can join us next time.