In February of this year, Women in Technology hosted an Allyship Webinar with guest speaker and author Karen Catlin who provided 331 attendees with guidance in creating a better workplace for working women and other underrepresented groups. The lasting impact of this event shortly inspired participation in the Better Allies Book Club in August 2021, sponsored by Office of Information Technology (OIT) to encourage its values of creating a more inclusive work environment through daily videos, exercises, and discussions. By delivering the content in short, bite-sized pieces, members could easily engage in thought-provoking discussions and make everyday actions to ultimately become a better ally. Though the club’s activities were heavily shaped around Karen Catlin’s book Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces, the inclusion of outside resources and recent articles encouraged readers to actively engage in topics and to finish reading the book.
The Better Allies Book Club was available for anyone within OIT to join, sponsored by CIO Kian Colestock, and coordinated by Meredith Ehrenberg and Sylvia Bass. Within the first month of its official launch, the book club received participation from 17 staff members with all costs covered by OIT. Most of the members were primarily individual contributors and a few in management positions, limiting the effectiveness of actions that are better suited for leadership positions. Nonetheless, the daily involvement of these members helps ensure that OIT is an inclusive and engaging place for working women and underrepresented groups, which would not have been possible without the sponsorship of OIT or the book club members.
A few practical takeaways from the book club, provided by Sylvia Bass of UCI’s Office of Information Technology:
- Don’t strive for perfection – People are often afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they don’t speak up. Karen challenges us to be curious, to listen, to be open-minded and iterate as we learn.
- Be willing to apologize – If we have made a mistake, we shouldn’t double down, but apologize in a heartfelt way and discuss how we can do better next time.
- Be an upstander, not a bystander – “When witnessing offensive, harmful, or harassing behavior of any kind, each of us has a simple choice: Call it out or be complicit.”
- Open career doors – Help others by mentioning their names in important meetings or suggesting them (with their permission) for stretch assignments. If people talk over someone in a meeting, turn the discussion back over to them. “I want to hear more about what (name) was talking about.”
- Diversify your network – If everyone in your circle of peers looks like you, you should make a sincere effort to expand that. We tend to hire and promote people we are comfortable with and they tend to look and act like us.
Shohreh Bozorgmehri, OIT’s Division Director of Student and Academic Services, says, “Ultimately, the key to successful allyship is to continually raise awareness by promoting open dialogue and educational opportunities that foster a deeper understanding of how to become a better ally for all members of the organization.”
Women in Tech @ UCI