everybody. Welcome to our kickoff episode of the sub mishmash podcast. For this one, I got a chance to visit in with Submit Herbal and talk with Austin. So about diversity in tech. You're listening to this of mishmash podcast

being a Chinese immigrant where you're taught to sort of keep your head down and listen to your elders. And don't question things that doesn't work when you're trying to raise money, right? You know you're being entrepreneur. I think I don't have a model in front of me in terms of what it's like to speak up and boldly go after your own ideas. You know,

this is Austin. So her family immigrated from Hong Kong to California when she was just a year

old. And yet in the 1st 2 years, my parents have always said it was super hard, like they kind of just did any jobs they could. They cleaned bars and whatnot and their their main goal was always for us to get a very good education and get into the good school, which, you know, I think Mr I did because, you know, went pretty good schools in California. But there was sort of never a gold beyond that, you know, they always kind of figured that once we got a good college education, that everything would work out.

Shortly after graduating from Stanford, HASTA joined the ranks of Google in its early days. Then she went on to graduate school and found her way to another start up tech company that she's been helping to build ever since. And that company, you may have guessed is submit a bill. As it turns out, life in Montana and life in Tech can really change you. They

never really felt the sense to be an activist towards diversity until I moved to Missoula.

But things like this happen.

So my husband, he's white. And sometimes when we go to stores like a sporting goods store, if we're buying something, the salesman will speak to him, and

not to me and this

or you know I'll be walking around. Some stupid person will say, like me, how or something.

And this

This one time I went to the parking garage in the middle of the day, and these guys on these stairs, who looked like they were high on something, started asking me, Oh, are you Korean are you? You know, whatever.

And this

with this back alley neighbor. She thinks my name is Hangar Pong. Like she actually says that. Oh, hyping or pong. I forget your name and it's just completely ridiculous.

And this

I ended up going into this one restaurant. Ask him if the tables and the hostess there she said they were full. But then she told me this restaurant across the street was good, but she was speaking to me super slowly and she gave. It was like but the restaurant across the street is very good, you know, with, like, the thumbs up and everything. And I could just totally tell that she thought I was part of some sort of tour group

or something. And this is exactly why.

Why, it might have started feeling more like an activist. This is probably it, you know, dealing with this kind of stuff that just happens maybe a couple times a month. It can make a person angry. I don't think it's that people have bad intentions, but I do think that it's important to call it out if if I want to call it out right, because otherwise it just will stay there and nothing is gonna change

about it. All these experiences made us to think about where she lives, on where she works and how a lack of diversity might actually really be harming both.

I mean, just makes sense that you would want different kinds of people in your company for diversity of opinion and background, because otherwise you have all these people with similar opinions who aren't really building off of each other. You're just agreeing on something and not getting anywhere.

So lack of diversity makes it hard for a business to innovate. But it gets worse. It makes it even harder to attract the really talented people.

We've had really good candidates, cringe a little bit or hesitate, I guess, is a better word for it to come here because they think, Oh, well, I don't know if I want to bring my kids up in Missoula, Montana, if they don't have people around them who look like them.

Those types of candidates seem to be naturally drawn to more cosmopolitan creative hubs like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, New York, Portland They're not necessarily going to come to Missoula, Montana. So if diversity is what drives innovation and what draws top talent. Well, how do you make diversity happen in a place that, well, maybe just historically, it's not really their

diversity in tech. Done right is where you're having this constant discussion, and you don't stop at any point. Really. You try to reach goals, but the gold keeps ideally increasing. You would have people in multiple levels of an organization in terms of power, be representative of different kinds of people in different backgrounds. And when I talk about diversity to I'm not just talking about race or ethnicity, you know it should be ability or sexual orientation or religion. Everything, really, and people of these different backgrounds are able to feel like they're heard and don't feel like they're a token in their organization. They can actually contribute to the conversations about how to hire from more diversity. It just kind of something that keeps building on itself. And you just kept to keep pushing it.

These kinds of pushes air happening everywhere in tech, but is it working?

Yeah, so hard to say that these are all the things were going well, aside from the fact that things are being talked about because I don't know that there any results in the tech world at large. How much of it is just publicity or trying to come off as being inclusive when the data doesn't reflect it? Maybe it's still too early. And the physical part of me wonders. Is this like just a phase in the tech world or publishing world where every X years people talk about diversity and then it kind of all goes away again? My job in this, as someone who cares about it, is D'oh! Keep it going. At least in my own small part of the world.

This'd episode of some mishmash was written and produced by Alex Alvie are mixing and sound by indigenous. You're listening to this of mishmash podcast.