Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Future of the Global Workforce with Aubrey Blanche

Aubrey Blanche is The Mathpath (Math Nerd + Empath), Director of Equitable Design & Impact at Culture Amp, and a startup investor and advisor. Through all her work, she seeks to question, reimagine, and redesign the systems and practices that surround us to ensure that all people can access equitable opportunities and build a better world. Her work is undergirded by her training in social scientific methods and grounded in the fundamental dignity and value of every person.

Her professional expertise covers a broad range of equitable enterprise operations, from talent lifecycle programs and accessible product development to event design and communications & media. She is the inventor of the balanced teams approach to building proportional representation and a culture of belonging in the workplace, as well as the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment in the Atlassian Team Playbook. She works to open source these methods for all practitioners and business leaders, and releases thought leadership and tools to create positive change here at aubreyblanche.com.

She is an advisor to a variety of groups seeking to build a more just world, including Aleria Research and Joonko. Her work has been featured in Wired, the Wall Street Journal, the Australian Financial Review, USA Today, Re/Code, First Round Review, and more. She also has previous academic affiliations with Stanford and Northwestern, and an appointment at the Equity by Design Lab at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Despite the accolades listed here, she asks that you engage with her work to judge her competence: traditional proxies of merit and/or competence help reinforce the systems that keep incredible people from the opportunities they deserve.

Khadijah Anwar (BT): I found that you offer a scope of services ranging from keynote speaking to consulting and leadership development, and I was wondering what your most rewarding experience has been as an advisor pertaining to leadership in the workplace?

Aubrey Blanche (AB): I do a lot of speaking and consulting because the world is really really broken - it’s racist, sexist, all the other “ists”. There’s a lot of places that need to make progress, which is why I spend a lot of my time speaking and writing. There are many people who want to learn and grow but don’t always know how: they’re looking for guidance on how. 

What’s most impactful is one-on-one coaching. I work with executives who are well-intentioned, but often don’t know what their role was in this work...or sometimes think my work is complete bullshit. The most rewarding experiences start with folks who at first think my work is crap. Some of those folks have become the biggest champions of this diversity, inclusion, and equity work in the workplace. To see the journey of someone becoming the best version of who they can be is rewarding.

BT: In those situations where your clients didn’t think that your work was very rewarding, how did you handle that in the moment and how did you go about producing work that they did benefit from. How would you advise youth to approach situations where they’re initially greeted with very negative responses in the workplace?

AB: First, I find that the majority of people who think that DEI work isn’t valuable have some very false assumptions about it. For example, I work in the tech industry, which holds a myth that it is a meritocracy. That shows up in a lot of ways: they believe the way job ads are written and recruiting processes are already fair, that “the best person gets hired”. That’s simply not true.

Data shows that when you see a lack of representation of Black and brown folks, women, and folks with disabilities, the reason for underrepresentation is because your hiring process is biased and discriminatory. Breaking down such wrong assumptions is important. Once that assumption is broken, people understand why work needs to be done to align the intention of something with the impact it’s having. 

BT: Then, what is your vision for a true meritocracy in the tech industry. You talked about tackling assumptions to build diversity, but what do you think our end-goal should be?

AB: The end-goal is that the tech industry is a place where people are given the opportunities that they deserve. The tech industry has said basically, “If you look like Mark Zuckerberg, there are really no qualifications required. If you’re Black, you need a PhD.”

My vision is firstly, stop using “meritocracy”: it’s not real. Instead, we should spend our time questioning whether the way we’re doing things is actually fair. That includes rethinking hiring processes: not just hiring candidates because they went to an elite university. We know a good portion of those students are there because they have rich parents, while talented, hard-working people aren’t able to access that kind of opportunity. We need to question everything about how we’ve done things in the past.

BT: So you’re basically saying that there exists a different standard for different racial groups that needs to be corrected and equalized?

AB: Absolutely. Underrepresented people already have a lot to offer, but companies largely haven’t built environments where they can thrive. Responsibility is on companies to maximize the opportunity for people to show up and do great work.

BT: I was wondering if you could now tell me a little more about your trajectory - you were managing editor of your university’s paper and also worked in communications to further women in STEM. How do you think your last experiences paved your trajectory into your present-day career?

AB: My career only makes sense in reverse. I’ve built up a pretty varied skillset. As a journalist, I learned the importance of communication to different audiences; business development helped me understand how folks responsible for profit & loss think; transitioning into DEI full-time taught we want it takes to get buy-in and execute programs. Now, my role is to help other business leaders, teaching them how to do their work in a more equitable way. My role is really based on influenced rather than direct power.

Many people ask how they can get into a DEI career, and my advice is “Please don’t.” I love my job, but people can do more for this cause by incorporating inclusion into the job that sits in a core business function.

BT: Could you tell me a little about the Balanced Teams Approach on your website? Are these strategies to ensure that these equitable processes are incorporated into the workplace? 

AB: It’s a language shift that’s also a conceptual one. The word “diversity” is really problematic, because the social construction of the word means White women and African Americans. This allows programs to primarily benefit White women, while also ignoring the needs of many other underrepresented groups. Transitioning to language that focuses on “balance”, helps us avoid those issues. When a leader says their team is diverse, we’re able to say “In what ways is this team balanced, and in what ways does it still lack balance?”

I also find the concept of “inclusion” unhelpful. Corporate environments have largely been developed to serve the needs and life experiences of White cisgender men, so you’re basically asking underrepresented people to assimilate rather than be themselves. We need to focus on building spaces where underrepresented people feel that they can truly belong and do their best work.

That’s what I mean when I talk about balance and belonging - it’s not just about rebranding, but about changing the language and therefore changing the way we think about and look at these issues to actually drive progress. 

BT: I was wondering where your self-identification as a “MathPath” originated, and how you use this philosophy to combine data with empathy to further your work in activism: 

AB: While the word is a bit made up, it describes who I am and what I do. I’m a math nerd: I love statistics and social science. I’m also an empath, someone who feels things really deeply.

That’s also true in the work. How do we combine math and science with an empathetic approach to build effective workplaces? We use data to determine which strategies are likely to work and to measure the effectiveness of what we do. Empathy helps us balance the fact that people aren’t numbers. You can’t make progress without data-backed strategies, but you also miss the point if you don’t do it in a human-centered way. 

BT: I’ve noticed you’re quite active on your social media. Is this part of a human-centered approach, and do you think the advent of social media and technology has impacted the way that we should approach building belonging?

AB: I think of my social media as teaching people how to be effective leaders, which includes sharing the journey to get there. In order to teach it, I have to live it. Social media where I share my own journey. It’s also important to be sharing what works, because there are so many people looking for ways to improve themselves and are seeking guidance. 

BT: What advice would you give to undergraduates looking to enter the entrepreneurial sphere in the coming years?

AB: Build yourself a diverse network early. Most leaders have networks that look just like them. The more broadly that you can build those networks, which takes a lot of intention, the better. Seek out people that have lived different lives than you have, and especially if you’re from a majority group.