YouSaid · the spoken record

Laura Weidman Powers

lines on the record: 89
first: 2017-04-12
most recent: 2017-04-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, often not. One of the things that we realize when we were working with companies is for the most part when folks go through some of the trainings that are popular now, take an unconscious bias training, they go, they sit in a conference room or a classroom, they listen to the training, they learn about how they're biased, they go back to their desks, and nothing has changed in their work environment. So there's nothing to practice or put into play necessarily. There's sort of no rubber hits the road there. And one of the things that works really well about the fellows program and sort of this combination of the training that we do and the direct service that we do is folks go to our trainings, they go back to our desks, and there's half a dozen black and Latino interns who are working there.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And using the excuse that, like, it's not me as my ancestors, like, we're never going to get anywhere. Right, no, absolutely. But we see it as, you know, this isn't something that is taught traditionally. And it's not something you would necessarily value.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that you need to fix it. Like it is our job to fix this, even if we weren't alive at the point when the atrocity happened. Right.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we don't think of it as hand holding. We think of it as real partnering and kind of walking alongside. And the idea that this is truly a journey. And, you know, you think about the context that we're in. It's not like we used to have a perfectly equal utopian society and we've somehow slipped out of that. Like this isn't necessarily any one person's fault. There's a lot of sort of societal structures that's baked into this, but it doesn't mean it's not our job to fix it.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think what we've found, and there are certainly different kind of tranches of CEOs and their level of belief on this, but I would say there's a group of CEOs who understand the business case, understand it's the right thing, and still do not know what to do about it. And there's actually a skills gap when we think about what CEOs, heads of HR, frontline managers, hiring managers, university recruiting, like there are new skills required to actually build and retain a diverse workforce, and they haven't been prioritized in the past. So there's actual upskilling that needs to happen on the company.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, that's wonderful Move the needle out. I think that's one of the problems that when I'm talking to them, you make the business case for it, like you always are like, well, you do better as a business if you're more diverse and you have to keep pushing that. And at some level, it's also the right thing. Like, what's wrong with it being the right thing? But of course, that doesn't motivate people. Because then if you don't keep up your...”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I mean, we're not actually that interested. I mean, is it, would we like people to feel good? Of course, like that's wonderful, but that's not the goal. The goal is they actually build skills and change systems to move the needle. I think that's one of the problems.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the fellows program is a real range. And if you partner with us in the Fellows program, you get access to our pool of talent. You get the ability to host a certain number of interns, and you get access to the trainings. And that's anything from $15,000 to over $100,000, depending on sort of the depth of the partnership. The company trainings we are just now teasing out from the rest. So it used to be if you wanted our trainings and support, you had to be a part of the Fellows program starting this fall, that'll change. So we're pricing all of that right now.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On so many levels. I think that we're starting to figure out ways that they actually want to engage. Some of it is, you know, I have a couple of venture capitalists who have said to me, like, you know, the reason that I spend time with you is because I'm going to be investing in your students. And it's true. 80% of our fellows want to start companies. So that is a piece that sort of lends itself to collaboration in the future. But we just met with a venture capitalist who was interested in the idea of kind of purchasing the trainings that we offer and then gifting them to his portfolio so that those founders could actually start to build inclusively. What's a cost?”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep. And then we also work with entrepreneurs. So the partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs is that we actually have eight entrepreneurs in residents in eight cities around the country. And those are black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs that we support. And then they also have a home base at sort of the local tech hub that's the epicenter of the ecosystem. And they're helping to bridge between the local diverse community and the local tech community as well. So it's really these sort of four elements. There's kind of the quote unquote supply side of student entry-level talent, the demand side of the companies, the building a bridge between those two. We act to serve a trusted broker. And then you think about that as how do you change the system that exists. And then the entrepreneurship piece is how do you build a new. So as opposed to retrofitting, exactly”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the beginning, it really felt like they didn't understand why they would pay Code 2040 for something like this. And now we have companies knocking on our door asking parties.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Somehow working. Yeah. Yeah. Although I think we've seen a real evolution over the last five years in terms of companies' willingness to spend money on this. Right. Absolutely”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the US. In the US Yeah, there's not a talk. There's certainly not a talk, and there's a lot of money spent. It's not like there wasn't, you know, it's sort of like homeless money in San Francisco. There's plenty of it. It's just not somehow working.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Training, so we have a number of different trainings and sort of upskilling that we do with the companies that we work with so that when they say that they're actually committed to diversity inclusion, they have the tools to follow through on that. Yeah”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All over the country. So we had about 1,300 applicants this year for the 2017 class from about 300 different colleges and universities. And the final class will be a few dozen different colleges and universities. In the US. In the US. Yeah. Yeah. All students in the US. All black and Latino and all studying computer science. So they're all doing technical internships. And the fascinating thing is this is our fifth sort of turn of the crank. We've placed hundreds of students at dozens of tech companies. And it's actually given us this insight into what's broken both in terms of how students are getting their foot in the door, but also how companies are getting in their own way when they want to become more diverse and inclusive. So we've taken that insight and we've developed additional student programming. So for example, now we run a TechSpring break where we bring students out to do more of the exposure networking, kind of hacking that social isolation. We also do company coaching and company.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So, what we learned actually from running the fellows program over the last How many fellows do you have? This past year we had 86 and we will break three figures, but we have not announced the number yet. So we're growing the fellows program.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And understanding all of that, I mean, it's simple as I remember the first summer with our first five students, we would get dinner and I would order Thai food. And they'd be like, what? And I was like, okay, everyone out here eats Thai food. So we're going to eat Thai food and I'm going to explain what the dishes are. And it's things as simple as that, that, you know, seem silly perhaps on their surface, but is the difference between feeling like you belong and not and feeling.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it also introduces the social aspects. I was just listening to Hillbilly Elegy. I read it, but I was listening to it, and I've just been struck recently by the part where JD Vance goes to a dinner around, I think it was at Yale Law School, and he had never been to these dinners, and he saw the networking entry points. And he's like, this is the problem of poor white people. They don't get to.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the flagship of Code 2040 is the Fellows program. And essentially what that is is we bring together a cohort of black and Latino computer science students over the summer. We place them in internships with our partner tech companies. And we do what's basically a career accelerator on the evenings and weekends. So they network, they get mentors, we do speaker series, dinners with people across the industry, and it equips them with the students, with the skills, the exposure, the experience, and the network that they need to succeed. It's sort of their foot in the door for about two-thirds of them. They've never had a job or internship before. And this is their entry into the industry.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A variety of different players in the tech industry foundations. The Knight Foundation is a big supporter. Intel has been a big supporter. Google for Entrepreneurs and dozens of other tech companies. And the interesting thing, kind of coming back to this idea of marrying kind of impact and revenue is the tech companies that we work with through Code 2040 pay for our services. So that is a big piece of our funding. To explain what you explain.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And it's super important because what we talk about a lot is there is individual experience and that is super important to share those stories and there's data and that helps paint a picture of like the real severity of the problem.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we already are starting to see it, for example, kindergartners in California, majority of people of color. But that's the decade when the census projects that the country as a whole will be majority people of color. We want an economy that works for everyone by then. So, you know, I can. Run through the stats if interesting, please do. Sure. So, you know, we look at the disparity in net worth across different races, the median net worth of a white family is about $110,000, the median net worth of a black family or a Latino family is about five to seven thousand dollars. So massive. Yeah, massive wealth cap, which plays out in all sorts of ways about the types of opportunities that folks have access to and the type of networks that they're in. So we want to see that closed and eliminated.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2040 is our call to action. It's the start of the decade when people of color will be the majority in the US. Okay. And we have a vision before them.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just turned five. So, Code 2040, broadly speaking, is creating pathways for black and Latino folks into the tech industry. And we focus on two different entry points.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And at the time, he was at Foursquare, and he and I had coffee and talked about this very issue, the combination of our experience.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or, you know Like no one has ever said those things. No, they don't, even though they're lower standard men all over the place, which is interesting. When you bring that up, they're like, oh, you're right. I've never said it. Which is interesting because I think I hate to borrow a phrase from Sean Hannity at any time because he's just an Just an awful human being. But when he calls people snowflakes, a lot of the white men in Silicon Valley are snowflakes in every term that they're like, oh, I'm not that way. I'm like, you are. It was interesting. So were you angry about it? Do you want to do something about it? How did you get to code 2040? And then I want you to explain what you're doing. But so you're doing this, you see this, you're it.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. No, I wrote a blog post, actually, what you're really saying when you talk about lowering the bar and hiring, which is basically that it's coded language that's racist and sexist. Because I've never heard anyone say, you know, if there are qualified white people out there, we'd hire them or we'd hire more men, but we don't want to lower our standards. Like no one has ever said those things.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And the narrative at the time, this was 2011, was, well, Texameritocracy. And if you're here, you deserve to be here. And if you're not, you don't. And the reason that, you know, there aren't more people that look like you is because there aren't more qualified people that look like you out there. Do you believe it?”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a small consumer web startup. It was based in LA doing a handful of different products that were all focused on communication sort of in the consumer web. And I started out doing marketing and moved on to strategy and monetization and ended up through a series of events running products at the company. And so, yeah, so I was working really closely with the engineering team and sort of helped pivot the company from consumer facing to a developer-facing product, actually, which then obviated the need for me as a non-developer leading product. But the interesting thing was that while I was sort of digging in working with the CTO and with the engineers and understanding sort of the power and potential of that skill set, I was also still representing the company on panels and in meetups and finding myself in all these rooms where there just were not that many people. There were no Laurel. There were no other Laures. No, no, not at all.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is the best part of Silicon Valley. Just it opens up the possibilities. And I think it makes you feel empowered in a lot of ways to shape the future. And I was both thrilled by that and confounded by the lack of diversity that I saw. I actually ended up working at a tech company, a friend of a friend offered me a role building out a marketing role out plan, which I was like, I do not know what a marketing rollout plan is, but I'll figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. I'm in. What was the”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the thing that struck me the most was this focus on entrepreneurship and the future and possibility and the way that people said yes. So people would walk around saying, I have an idea for X. And the response was always, great, go do it. And how can I help? And that was just a really different mindset than what I was used to. That's the best.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes And I basically realized that sort of this vague term that I'd heard Silicon Valley was this total immersive living, breathing, culturally different phenomenon. And I was in the middle of it. So describe it for a moment.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That makes a lot of sense. It was great. I found out everything. And then they were shocked that I understood there. And they were shocked that I went to Wharton actually. I took one of those executive courses.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly, exactly. And I really felt like so many nonprofits are creating so many types of value. And the job of a nonprofit organization is to choose which value to give away and which value to charge for. And so I felt like if I wanted to better understand the business side of things, the quickest way to do that would be to go to business.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the for-profit side, you know, you report on revenue, and that's a measure of success. And the nonprofit side, its impact as it should be, but often the team that's dealing with revenue is totally separate from the team that's dealing with impact.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, good question. My parents asked me the same thing. I wanted to go to business school because I knew that I wanted to end up in nonprofit management in the public sector. But I was really disillusioned with the way that money and impact were so divorced in the nonprofit side. They are. I don't know.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I mostly worked in education, youth development, nonprofit management. I'd started a couple different organizations. There was a community service organization. I ran as an undergrad that had been in Harvard for 20 years, and I raised the funds and brought it to West Philadelphia Public Schools with undergrads at the University of Pennsylvania. And I'd started a tutoring company with some friends. I ran operations for a big public art project in New York City. So bounced around a bunch, but was always really interested. Why did you want to go to...”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Morningside Heights in Manhattan. Columbia? Yes, right by Columbia. I went to public magnetic school to hunter growing up. So again, a lot of diversity in my day in, day out. And I was on the East Coast after that. So I went to Harvard for undergrad. I worked in New York City. And then I made the jump out to the West Coast for graduate school. So I decided to go out to Stanford for a JDMBA and unwittingly found myself in the middle of Silicon Valley, which I'd sort of heard of before, but not diverse. Yeah, it turns out that was one of my observations, actually. So what have you done before?”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I grew up in New York City, which is relevant in part because I grew up in an extremely diverse neighborhood, went to a really diverse neighborhood.”
2017-04-12 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Laura Weidman Powers, CEO, Code2040 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT