Smart Talks with IBM: Coding Together for Racial Equality

economic recessions to climate change. But one issue that really ties into all of those when you look into it, and frankly has for centuries, has been the need for racial justice in the United States. The stories of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, Eric Garner, and so many more have prompted crowds to protest in the streets and call for systemic change. And it's not that the underlying issues of systemic racism

are new. In fact, what makes them systemic is that these issues are woven into the policies and social structures of the United States. Rather, it is that they are undeniable and we have a responsibility to address that. To that end, within IBM, a group of employees began to formulate a means to lean on the company's enormous spectrum of technologies towards the goal of attaining true racial justice.

The company's history of programs and initiatives that aim to make the world a better place served as a sort of launching ground for the call for Code for Racial Justice. Today you'll hear a conversation I had with three important members of that initiative. Dale Davis Jones is a Vice president and Distinguished Engineer at IBM and the leader of IBM s gts are cotect Community. Lisa Banks is a distinguished engineer working within the CTO office of the IBM

Cloud Engagement Hub. And Brittany Lonesome is a creative architect with a deep experience in cloud systems. Listen to their stories and how they and other IBM r s were able to take the incredible emotional response to the racial justice crisis and turn it into actions that anyone can contribute to. We have a lot to cover today. We've

got a really big and important topic. But before we jump into that, I would love to get a little more information about my guests today and to learn about your professional background and what brought you into the jobs that you you currently hold and what you find exciting about it and why it matters to you and really to the whole world. But let's start with you, Dale. Can you tell me a little bit about what it is you do and how you got to where you

are today. Okay, so Hi, I'm Dale Davis Jones, and I'm in the Global Technology Services part of um IBM, where we serve more than four thousand clients in transforming their I T infrastructure, which means we look at what they're doing to run the infrastructure to ensure that they are continuously evolving to meet the needs of the world today, and we help them on that journey with cloud, with AI, with automation. For for those of us who are not

in it. UM you go to the store and you know the air condition works in your grocery, the food is um is not tainted, the hospitals are running with the right systems, and the patient records are in order. And UM I leave the architects who work with clients on these engagements, and I'm also the global leader for the architect team. My background really briefly is undergrad I was UM a math major with a minor and computer science. UM. I did graduate school in UM in Systems, UM and controls.

And I've had I would say, a checkered career at IBM, and that I have had many rules in many different parts of the business, from the mainframe organization to consulting technology services and a standing corporate headquarters. UM. As someone from a small island, which is Trinidad and Tobago, it's really exciting to me to get up and know in a given day I can be talking to clients and IBM or is in UM, you know, almost any country in the world. Yeah, Lisa, can I hear a little

bit about you? Sure? Absolutely so. I am a computer engineer and mathematician by degree. I've reinvented myself several times throughout my career and IBM. I started as a mainframe developer. I've worked in corporate technical strategy, where I had the privilege to meet and work with Dale. As a matter of fact, and one thing she did not tell you about her professional background is that she's actually the first

black female distinguished engineer in IBM. Uh. She saw something in me, put her arm around me, mentored me, and I'm very happy to say that with her support, I became the second black female distinguished engineer and IBM. But as I mentioned, I've I've reinvented myself several times. So, like I said, starting the mainframe development, moving on to corporate technical strategy, I've worked as a industry solutions architect

UM in cloud for IBM. I've helped IBM with several acquisitions including you Stream, Clearly, the Weather Company, and helped define a new business unit UM around those acquisitions. Within IBM, I've worked with teams to do DevOps transformations UM too adopt cloud technologies and architectures for legacy applications you know.

Right now, I am on a team called our Cloud Engagement Hub where we guide and advise IBM's top clients on their journey to cloud UM, making sure that we're able to help them rethink, re engineer, reimagine their legacy application portfolios UH to leverage and take advantage of the values of some of the newer technologies that are out now. And I focus primarily right now on mainframe modernization and how we can bring a cloud native developer experience UH

to the main frame. So it's really exciting to have a job that fuses both my my you know based fundamental experience and IBM and all of the newer things I've learned in some of my more recent roles. Wonderful and Brittany, Please, I would love to hear about your background as well. Sure, Sure, I wish I could say I was I was the third UH black female, but not the case. Were very very honor happy to be you know, to have worked within me in the company

of of of Dal and Lisa. UM. I'm a I'm a gym, a boy engineer by trade actually, and I joined UM IBM after getting my UH Tech NBA from Johns Hopkins. I came in through the IBM Summit UH Sales Sales Organization UM, so I was a client pacient architect UM for stually most of my career. I started with the CAMPS portfolio back when it was Cloud and a Living to Mobile Social Security UM, and then moved UM solding into the cloud organization for UM the last six years of my career, SO I helped client with

their cloud strategy. It's adopting cloud is being successful on the cloud and the organizations UM. Lisa and I actually did cross paths very briefly. UM. I think it was about five years ago when I was working on a first of a con project without being research. Um, it was a it was a a high gpustrating and cloud plant for for for various use cases and in the gaming and healthcare something some other industries. So yeah, I'm

just really excited. It's happy to be here. UM. But the sectually about ib as well is the this is the flexibility and control that I've essentially had over over over my career. I was able to the previous roles kind of create my own roles while within IBM. So um, that's that's really what maybe treat not being over other of other companies with for was just being able to

be in the droversy of of of your experience. You're just like, my next question is one I feel like the importance is sort of evident on the face of it, but I feel that this is one we need to address. So in your own words, can you explain why, since we're talking about call for code for racial justice, why everyone should care about racial justice? Why is this an issue for everybody? When you ask the question, why does

it matter to everyone? I think we've I think the first thing is to understand what we mean when we say racial justice, UM, and what I have learned and read and believe is that racial justice is a systemic and um systemically fear treatment of people of any and all races that results in equal and equitable opportunities for

all people as well as outcomes for them. And I think if we are clear on that, then it is not about black versus white, or um other you know, any race you know versus another, But it is a systemic fair treatment of all people. And if you think of this as we're all humans living in a civilized society, then it is incumbent on any human who wants to preserve a civil civilized society to understand that injustice for any race takes a tool on the society. Um. It

leads to unrest. It affects um everything that we hold dear as human beings, a right to life, to a quality of life, an a right to good health, a right to justice and fair treatment, a right to education,

a right to vote. And once you introduce where you know, um racism and racial bias into a system, you you you create an imbalance that really damages the fabric of how the that entire society functions and creates uh an environment where it is not possible for anyone who is a civilized human being to function um the way that they need to. And and and there's one other thing, right, It's not just a matter of not discriminating and not um,

you know, promoting inequities. It's also being deliberate and ensuring that we support others and each other as human beings to achieve a sustained level of racial equity, UM, to achieve the rights that a civilized society expects UM as a human being. And when we get rid of that, when we devalue or we don't value each other as human beings equally, we create an instability that has a long lasting impact on our health, our safety, our well

being as human beings. That's my view. Well, I think that's a good segue for us to talk about Call for Code for Racial Justice. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and how it even how it even came to be, and how each of you became involved with this project. So UM that we of the George Floyd in our protests, which again came about via video. UM, that's when the conversations really you know, started to come to come into the workplace, you know, finally,

after after many years. And so the way I got involved in in a in the project that that first week, UM, we you know, we had a lot of talent call in talent hall discussions, asked me anythings, UM, just various discussions across ib with the black communities, Allied communities, UM, not just in the US, but but literally across the world. And UM and and as part of those discussions, UM, you know, the black community asked for you know, a call for code, you know, an initiative to apply technology.

Can can we you know, put our heads together, our expertise together to to to UM to find technology to this issue. So UM and and do and much who is also UM one of our leaders for this initiative UM. I worked with him on D on the Cloud Advisor UM team. So he called myself, Lisa dell um and asked us to be you know, a part of this initiative and just and to build it and to build

us into what you know the program is today. So when he called it, it was a no, it was a no brain and there wasn't even I thought it was like, of course, this is a lived experience. We're black in the office, were black outside of it. So it was something we couldn't we we could couldn't pass.

You know, Brittany's right, right, I feel there there was a sense of anger, of pain, of frustration, of just just so much emotion right from the black IBM community in the wake of recent events George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, countless others. Things kind of came to a head and the Black community spoke up and IBAM listened, you know, And and I have to stop and say that I'm

incredibly proud of what IBM's response has been. Within two weeks of George floyd murder, IBM was taking action and responding. They were listening. There were a series of town halls, of small round tables, fireside chats, discussions, in in team meetings, in slack and email. IBM wanted to understand. And the Black community spoke up and IBM heard the pain. IBM listened to the frustrations. We took all of that information,

all of that feedback, and we synthesized it. And when I say we, I mean a group of black IBM rs uh in concert uh you know, with the you know, senior executive sponsor of the Black Community and IBM. We worked together. We synthesized it. We used design thinking to really understand what are the common themes, the common threads, and we found some, right, I think we found maybe you know, Brittany can keep me honest here, she's been

in this since to start with me. Um, you know several themes maybe ten fifteen different common central themes around systemic racism in our society and how we wanted to combat those. Uh. We distilled them down. We put them to a vote to the Black community and IBM and said, look, we listened, we heard. Let us play back to you what we heard. Are these the right things or these the the activities the initiatives that matter to you? Are these the problems you want to see us as an

IBM community as a whole tackle. And we put them to a vote because we know that we can't do everything as much as we might want to. But if we bring focus to a few things that we can move the needle, we can apply our technology are best and brightest to try to solve some subset of the problems that we face as a society. Uh. We put them to a vote. They voted, and those are the three themes that we have UH externalized as part of Call for Code for Racial Justice, Diverse Representation, UH police

and judicial reform, and policy and legislation reform. Dale, you want to share yours, as Lisa and Brittany shared, and dow mch Um IBM fellow pulled me into our Call for Code Challenge team and I started to say, Wow, I have you know this other project. I'm running this other initiative and it's it's morather than just IBM. And then I had a really hard talking too with myself and said, IBM is listening as Lisa's said, right, um, we have IBMS attention. The world is looking for help,

the US is looking for help. I could choose my choose to loose sleep over the fear I'm feeling, the frustration I'm feeling, or I can channel my energy right um and my waking hours to doing something. So I said, Okay, I'm gonna jump in and I'm going to help. And it worked out that and had some challenges that took him away from this right at the end of August, and I ended up having to manage both of these.

But Jonathan, I will tell you this, right I sat at the beginning that one of the best things in IBM is waking up every morning and knowing I can talk to people in many countries of the world and clients. But one of the things I didn't say is that the people in IBM from all of life came together to help me and and do and Lisa with both

of those initiatives. Right, I have a team of sixty people who have been working with me on the I T Language initiative, and the passion and the drive is unbelievable that they bring to the table, all volunteering to help. We have more than five hundred people from IBM plus Red Hats who have come together to work on the Call for Code initiative. And for me, it was cathartic. It felt like I was able to do something I

I was. I was going around, I would almost say, in a daze, and I turned on me my turned my emotions on and off for survival. And we got people from you know, all ages, right um, all different parts of the company, all different kinds of skills coming together to build this out. I think was cathartic for all of us, and it helped us to channel what we're doing, what our frustration, our numbness, our exhaustion, um

and our fear. But I will say for me, Call for Code really helped me to feel that I could contribute in a tangible way and bring others along. And everyone who's been working with us on this has been really touched by the power of our technology, the support of our leadership Bob Lord, Aravin Krishna or SeeU to

create a space for us to make this happen. And I know it's a long answer, but I really want to do to understand, you know what what it meant for me, right because I was shutting down, literally shutting down and operating in you know, sort of an automatic mode just for you know, my my personal and mental and emotional survival, and Call for Code for Racial Justice allowed me to feel and then channel those feelings into

helping the team. I'm really really incredibly impressed with what I'm hearing, not just by you know, knowing that this is such a critical topic in the first place. I mean, that's the fact that we have IBM ers dedicating precious time to really tackling this. That really speaks to how critical an issue it is. It also speaks highly of the character of you and all the other ib M r s who have uh participated in the Call for Code for Racial Justice and I'm I'm humbled again to

be part of this conversation. Can you talk a little bit about some of the actual work that you have created with Call for Code for Racial Justice so far? Sure? So at least I mentioned and in betid out of the podcast, we synthesized UM, you know, input from the black communities down to three themes and their police and judicial reform and accountability, policy and legislative reform, and UM

diverse representation. So for police and judicial reform, we're looking at how can we use technology UM to better analyze broad data, provide insights, and make recommendations that will drive racial equality and reform across criminal justice and public safety. For policy and legislation reform, it's the question is how can we use technology to analyze, inform and develop policy to reform the workplace products, public safety, just legislation and

society at large. And then for diverse representation, we're looking at the prevention, detection and the remediation of bias and misrepresentation in workplace UM products in society. And like we've been saying before, you know, full corporations and for the you know, for the world to succeed if it's critical to have light representation at every level. UM. So within the Police in Judicial Reform theme where we're gonna release

a couple of solutions. One looks like the capabilities for contribution, management and analysis of categories of trust and information about

incidents for both the police and their stakeholders. So for Police in Judicial Reform and accountability, one solution UM is a web bag that allows the defense attorney or public defender to upload information about a case and and they're defendant, and we'll send this data to a bias detection engine and using the results from that, we can create a report outline and possible charges, the range of possible sentence, peach charge, evidence of passed bias UM indeed biased recommendations

for police bargaining sentences. So again, how can we trans form the process when someone is going to trial. We also have another solution that predicts how likely UM a charge the sentence sentencing will be very different if the convicted person was of a different race. FIRD solution for Police in Judicial Reform is a content management application that will allow civilians to contribute uh statements and evidence to police Internet reports and create a tamper proof record with

all accounts of the Internet. For policy and legislative reform, we have a web advocation to enable and empower black people to exercise their right to vote by assuring that their voice is heard. It's a it's a virtual one stop shop for but voters to assist them with all of their their voting needs. And another solution for policy legislative reform is a web based application to help advocates find legislation of interest based on the advocates preferences for

impact areas and geographical location. UMAN. Finally, UH, we have a platform as capable of story curated PRNL information as

a termined by the community. It provides a mobile friendly way for users to examine that information, increasing their legal awareness UM and to allow them to communicate their reactions and thoughts via the recording of video testimonials to be shared with the community and that people responsible for the creation of that And for diverse representation, I'll turn it over to them to talk about the work that we're doing there. So diverse representation UM is a theme that

really cuts across all of the three themes. And if you think about racial intstice and bias UM. If you don't have a society that UM is diverse and UH those uh and and you don't have a way of eliminating both explicit and implicit bias from your society, then you run into some of the challenges we see where policy and legislative reform or police UM legislation and reform

accountability isn't UM isn't performed in an equitable way. So for the but for the diverse rich representation solution, what we really have focused on is providing a means for us to detect bias and content that promotes negative stereotypes about the black community that UM promotes both in an avert and a subtle way UH, racial language and themes that continue to reinforce the perception of one race, in this case blocks as lesser than or less value than

another race or other races. And also to provide a way for the community to come together two work on this issue, which is a lot less UM a lot more difficult to tackle than overt racism in many ways because it gets into the UM language we've accepted as part of the norm for a very long time. Can people get involved in build upon the work that you are doing with Call for Code for Racial Justice, So

we will be announcing the solutions next week. UM. We have a Call for Code for UM Racial Justice site where if you're a developer, you can register, you can get involved UM, you can start contributing code ideas UM.

If you are a on GEO or private sector company or other interested community entities like community governments, you can UM engage and share that you are interested in partnering with us, maybe as a tester, maybe as an end user, a deployer, or someone who wants to take what we're doing and build a community around it to implement with

their own developers. So we have created a site. These solutions will be featured on those on our websites UM under IBM Developer Call for Code, UM for Racial Justice and UM we will be ruling these solutions out and any developer or or UM par ecosystem partner can join us UM to be part of the journey of taking these solutions and bringing them to our communities in America

and the world. And all they have to do is click on a link and sign up and if they'd like to go learn about it at All Things Open and the Inclusive in the inclusion and diversity. Um uh tracks they can um, they can hear and do talk about those solutions in a number of sessions a Lisa or or Britney. I don't know if there's anything else

you wanted to add. Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing, which is partly you know, why it's so important that we've open source these, these starter kits, these solutions, and also how people can get involved. Right. Yes, this is technolog legy, but you don't just have to be a developer, right. I think the the net of it really comes down to the fact that you know, I think I mentioned this before, you know, we want to address the community. We want to apply you know, technical

know how as well. And so that's why really the premise around open sourcing these, right is we know, we recognize that there is a diverse representation issue in the tech industry. Um. And I think by open sourcing these it allows us to open the aperture and get a broader, uh set of contributors working with us, whether it's developers, whether it's people in the community who want to make a difference, who have an idea or see a problem

that they think technology can help. Solve and so I think, you know, open sourcing, this really helps us to bring all different types of skill sets, all different different types of um people together to really form a community. And you know, for folks to get involved, please don't think that you have to be a developer, that you have to be a coder. You know, there's room for everyone and and all types of skills UH to participate in

in in Call for Code for Racial Justice. I it's hard for me to put into words how inspirational I have found this conversation. You look at a problem as enormous as the addressing injustice, racial injustice, and I think for a lot of people, the first reaction is this problem is too big for me to do anything that will make any difference. And I think that this initiative proves that wrong, and it gives people that opportunity and that hope that I think a lot of people are

really searching for right now. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much, not just for being on the show, but for doing this incredible work and and for opening up the doors for other people to be a part of it and to make the world a better place. It is a truly phenomenal story, and I am so thankful that I get to be one of the people to tell it. No, thank you so much for having us. Thank you, Jonathan M. Really appreciate this opportunity. Yes, thank you. I have covered the

tech industry for more than ten years. In that time, I've talked about topics ranging from inconsequential two critically important issues. Racial justice clearly belongs in that second category, and I mean it when I say it is a problem so large, so deeply ingrained in the systems that run our society, that it was really hard for me to get a feel for what the average person like myself could do

in response to it. The Call for Code for Racial Justice is a great example of how anyone, whether they are a developer or not, can get involved to make real world change happen. The work that comes out of this project will help address wrongs that have been part of our world for far too long, and in the end, righting those wrongs will help everyone. Systemic racism really does harm everyone within a society, and when there is real justice that is equitable across the board, we all benefit.

To get involved. Please visit developer dot IBM dot com slash call for code slash, racial dash justice. You don't need to be a developer to be a part of this. You just need to have the desire to make the world a more us and a better place. That's all for today, Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.