My Interview with Stacy Brown-Philpot: How to Build Diverse Teams & Cultures NOW

Recently, we gathered a group of Fuel founders for a discussion with Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit and founding member of Softbank’s $100 million Opportunity Growth Fund. Together we covered topics both important and uncomfortable. I wanted to share some of the tactics here to help founders think through how to build diverse teams and cultures now. 

At TaskRabbit, Stacy has practiced what she preaches - an impressive 60 percent of the company’s leadership is women, 48 percent of its employees are Hispanic, African-American, Asian, or two or more races, and 16 percent identity as LGBTQ. Stacy shared valuable insights about how companies can drive substantive change during this pivotal moment. 

As Stacy pointed out - changing the face of tech will change the economic inequity in our society. But what specific actions can founders and CEOs take immediately to build diversity into their teams and cultures? By no means should your actions be limited to the steps listed below, but these key takeaways from Stacy’s comments can serve as a roadmap for how to get started:

Identify and take ownership of the problem. Acknowledge that there’s racism within your company. It’s not that you put it there intentionally; employees are complex humans and they don’t check their emotions, backgrounds, etc. at the door every morning. But, once you admit to yourself that the problem extends to your own house, you can claim your role as a person who is in a position to help solve it. That’s when you can start leading your team and culture toward a more diverse and inclusive future.

Take the time to revisit your values. We’re in a seismic moment. Going through the process of examining your values brings people in the company together and forces you to examine the moment. You may end up with the same exact list, you may tweak a few small things, or you may find yourself with a completely different list - all positive outcomes. 

Put systems in place to embed values into company culture. Once you have your values, you have to have systems in place to make sure you’re living those values. These systems can be folded into peer reviews or performance reviews, and/or they can become an element of evaluating total performance when considering promotions and merit increases. Meeting this moment requires you to put your values into action.

Formalize your commitment with partnerships. Many early stage startups feel that when you have low headcount and low budget you aren’t in a position to move diversity metrics. But whether you have 2, 20, or 200 people on staff, you can set up an internship program for minority candidates with CODE 2040. You don’t need to be on a hiring spree to partner with the network of black engineers at Dev Color. Making intentional moves toward diversity by partnering with organizations committed to promoting racial equity in tech is within any company’s reach.

Set real targets. Instead of thinking about progress in terms of quotas, think about it in terms of targets. In this world of high-growth startups, we set revenue targets, growth targets, target budgets. We do this because targets change behavior. So start by setting hiring targets that include diversity goals - let this be a target you work toward just like your revenue goals. 

Make the hiring managers the owners. Instead of centralizing this goal within your people ops department, distribute its ownership to the people actually running each team. In addition to making sure targets are represented in every function, this simple shift can quickly boost the focus, importance, visibility, and efficacy of diversity initiatives within an organization.

Make the space for discussion. Sometimes the path forward starts with a real conversation. Fostering an open environment helps strengthen cultures by encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work, acknowledging that outside events get carried through the office door, and letting colleagues engage with one another on a deeper level.

Pay closer attention. A habit that every single person working within the tech industry can build is to simply pay attention to how certain moments may be different for you than for your colleagues. In a fundraising meeting? Notice who gets the brush off and who gets the serious questions. Your colleagues don’t have the options to tune these things out - they hear and feel these things viscerally. Behaviors like this won’t change overnight, but the more people we get tuned into them, the sooner we can stamp them out. That makes being aware of where they exist and how pervasive they are within this industry a habit worth cultivating.