Towards Inclusive Tech
Sep 6, 2017

Upcoming Conference for a More Inclusive Tech Industry

The Berkeley School of Information is sponsoring a two-day conference about inclusion and diversity in the technology industry.

Despite widespread agreement that technology classrooms and workplaces should be inclusive, change remains elusive. To many scholars and executives, it seems that we’re repeating the same diversity lessons year after year without fundamental change in outcomes.

Towards Inclusive Tech springs from a sense of urgency about our limited success in diversifying the technology industry. We seek to engage a robust dialogue between researchers and practitioners about how to build more inclusive technical education and workplaces — and to inspire a new generation of scholarship and practice in the area.

The conference features an impressive line-up of speakers and panelists, led by keynote speakers Prudence Carter and Aubrey Blanche.

Prudence Carter, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education

Prudence Carter is the dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education and an expert on causes of and solutions to enduring social and cultural inequalities among social groups, especially in education. At the conference, Dr. Carter will discuss why “equal opportunity” has become a mantra in U.S. society but how diversity efforts still fall short of this goal.

Aubrey Blanche, global head of diversity & inclusion, Atlassian

Aubrey Blanche is the global head of diversity & inclusion at Atlassian, where she works to provide greater opportunities for everyone to join Atlassian and thrive. Her keynote address will identify the most important — and perhaps the most difficult — questions for inclusion advocates in tech and will refocus the conversations on the questions we should really be asking.

Author and lecturer Jez Humble will address the controversial Google memo by then–Google engineer James Damore. Humble will deconstruct Damore’s false claims and faulty reasoning, present the real science and history behind the lack of diversity in tech, and introduce some approaches to addressing the real monoculture problem.

The conference will feature panel dicussions among leading scholars from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, Indiana University, and MIT. Representatives from Uber, Asana, Pinterest, and Paradigm will discuss approaches that work (or don’t work) in their companies, and speakers from leading venture capital firms will discuss their important role in the technology ecosystem.

Over a day and a half, the conference will seek to renew and reframe debates about the role of women and other underserved populations that might seem stuck. The conference will construct an interdisciplinary agenda for inclusion that we can revisit and revise in the years to come.

Space is still available at the conference. Register now at inclusivetech.berkeley.edu.

Last updated:

September 6, 2017