CBC Shorts: Google’s Chief Diversity Officer

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Hey listeners.

This episode is a replay of one of our interviews from our live stream at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference. Now, if you want to listen to or watch the full stream, definitely be sure to check the links in the episode description, and you can also find a full list of all the amazing guests we interviewed. Welcome home, y'all.

We're a threat at this time to bring up a very very special guest, Our good friend, Melanie Parker, who is at Google and she is the chief diversity officer there, is joining us to talk about this very very special occasion and some of the great things.

They have going on to make an impact in the community at Google.

Hi, Melody guy, Thank you, love, Thanks beautiful, thank you.

How are you feeling I'm feeling great.

I'm excited about tonight, excited about all the black excellence all around us.

So it's a great night. Yes, today, we're happy to have you.

I think one thing, sorry, Andrew, a question I'll ask you quickly. A lot of people. We hear a chief diversity officer all the time, but I think so many people out there don't always know exactly what a chief diversity officer does. Tell us what your role is exactly tangibly at Google.

So my role at Google one, I've been in my role for five years, so I know there's a meme out there five years I've been to my role at Google. But what I do I look after Google's internal workforce, and that is to make sure that people not just feel like they belong, but feel that they can bring all of who they are in the workplace.

And that's not just you know, heart and head.

That's really about I'm looking after how we're hiring, how we're promoting, how we're providing developmental assignments. I'm looking at who's leaving and are they leaving at you know, the same rate across communities? Are they looking at different rates? And then I'm looking after who's coming into Google over the next ten to fifteen years, and what programs do we need to have externally? What does our creator base look like, what does our user base? We have over

That helps me do that well every day.

Melanie, speaking of some of the impact that you all are making, you all had fight the event recently. During this conference, change Makers talk about how important it is to invest in support some of those folks outside. You talked about your role inside, but what's your impact on the outside as well, you.

Know, externally.

Our goal is to build sustainable equity, not just internally, as you said, Angela, but externally as well. So change Makers allows us to give voice, often to a community that may not have voice. What we we typically find when we look at black and brown voices is that you're either hyper visible or you're invisible in between.

That that's a whole lot of stress.

And so we want to make we want to normalize, like elevating change makers.

And we want people to know they have to feel empowered to have voice.

It's when you don't have voice that we have, you know, horrible leadership that we're you know, by being silent, we're actually giving way to change that's not progressive. So that's what change Makers is really all about. So we look to curate spaces and rooms where we can bring people.

Together, Melanie, A lot of them, at least as of late, there's been quite a political attack on diversity inclusion, what it means to have diverse workforces. Obviously, I don't mean for you to tell on your own company, but amongst your group of peers, could you just shine a light for us, let us, let us sit on the floor of y'all's couch, converse, say and share a little bit about what folks who are in that space are feeling experiencing.

So let me start with the incredible work that you know, we have long standing at Google. You know, so we've you know, long been commuted committed to diversity, equity and inclusion, and we're leaders and we're learners, and we do both transparently. We just published our eleventh Diversity Annual Report in the spring, and in the back of that when we talk about our progress, which includes you know, just historic levels of bringing underrepresented communities, which are women.

People with disabilities.

We look across minority communities as well, but we put that in an appendix. So we have the largest publicly available DEI data set, and we use big Query to open source it, so you're you know, there's no mystery in what our numbers are. You can look at them year over year, and we put it in a very easy format because we want you not just to you know, look at where we lead, but look at where we're learning and the opportunity space for all of us. I love that.

We have witnessed this massive pulling back of DEI efforts. And here we are at this Congressional Black Hawkice Foundation. You look out here, you see all this a c of beautiful blackness. But for some reason, our blackness is treated as inherently violent and criminal on the outside. So we got this pushed forward in twenty twenty and this severe retraction since then. How have you been able personally and professionally building because you are You're such a leader.

It's not makeup, y'all.

This is literally her, I want you to talk briefly about how you were able to sustain and in fact grow through that retraction.

Well, you know, I'm not surprised by some of the things that we see because whenever we have progress, we have people who are looking at how do you get to that progress?

You know, And so that's what we see.

How I stay focused and how I encourage others look at the data.

What is your data?

Say, like we're data informed. And one of the things I say is like I exist and my organization exists to close gaps, and how am I going to find those gaps?

I'm going to look at the data.

So I'm not disheartened by looking to my left or my right. I'm really looking forward and where do I need to continue to like close those gaps, make that progress and really meet people where they are and people really need us to continue to create safe spaces to bring them together.

Melody, I'm interrupting Retu, Mama and Papa Rye that Paples here at the Congressional to give your ticket legislative commerce and they're looking for their tickets for dinner. So we will be remaining if we did not have Papa Rye come by, come by and get on the mic.

Papa Rye, he wants you. This is what he said. I want you to know. This is what my dad was going to do. This way in front of the camera. This way, would you leg.

As beautiful, Mom, Mama, Rai and Papa Rye are here your own cameras.

You look beautiful, You look so beautiful, gorgeous. We're in the middle of an Interviewers Live and we love you.

So we wanted to have a cameo from Mama and Papa Rye say hi to everybody.

We can't go back.

That's right, that's.

Right, that's right.

I want to want to remind everyone that this is a nonpartisan conference.

We're not going.

I love it.

In case anybody wanted to know why, I'm so hard headed.

Thank you all so much for being here. It's a pleasure.

You're gonna stay on set, okay, perfect.

And father r We love you. We'll see you inside at the dinner.

I love it.

We had to, you know, she had to get her parents their tickets.

So we have generations of women that live in my house. Well one and a half your old granddaughter to my eighty seven year old mother.

This is like being grandmother welcome. This is you know, like, what are the rules right?

But it's funny you say that because you you know, you look gorgeous, and we have beautiful grandmothers.

In our community, of course.

But I'm always bringing up when Donald Trump said, well, I thought he was talking about Vice President Harris. I thought she was a lot younger. Turns out she's sixty. Like he's gonna learn a whole lot about how black

So really, you know, our goal here is to build sustainable equity.

That's the same thing that we want to do with AI.

And so you know, we want to move responsibly, and sometimes that means you don't move as fast as you're looking at that responsibly and we're looking particularly when you look at like black community and brown communities and other underrepresented groups.

We know there are two sides to a coin.

One do no harm and the other side of that is leave no community behind. So we've developed a set of AI principles.

A part of those principles.

Is ensuring you know, the ethical responsibility that we have and some of the work like I lead a HBC President's Council and with Howard University, we have our research AI research project with them where they own all the licensing rights, and it's called Project Elevate Black Voices because our own research and external research shows that automatic speech recognition doesn't recognize all the dialects that exists.

In the black culture.

And so Howard is seeking to you know, with their own student body and our researchers, they are getting first hand experience and how to develop the research that will support the technology recognizing.

The dialect a little bit better.

We have a five million dollar grant we put at Spelman. Doctor Gail will be at our Google table today, so come give her a shout out.

But those are the types of.

Things that we're doing on that front. And lastly, I'll say we worked with the Divine Nine, the Links Incorporated and Dress for Success to really train one hundred thousand black women. But of course our community we've now trained over two hundred.

Thous black women. We're still going strong.

Delta Sigma Theda has been out in front really, you know, embracing and taking this technology like out to the communities that they served, and so we're really proud of the effort.

You love it. Thank you so much. You are so grateful to have you. Enjoy the dinner. This is my favorite time of the year.

I always tell people my favorite moment is when the members walk across it.

That's my favorite.

And last night I saw representative of Jasmine Crockett and I said, I'm going to be so excited to see you and the other freshman representatives walk across the stage.

Thank you for having me, Thank you, thank you for partnering with this.

All right, thanks for listening to you guys. Please please please remember to rate, review, subscribe, and tune into our regular episode on Thursdays, We Welcome home, y'all.

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