Afroflare presents Black in Tech UK

Good evening everyone. So my name is Maddy and I'm a technical writer here at Cloudflare. So today I'll be your host for this Black in Tech event, which is basically one of the events that we run with Afroflare. Afroflare is one of our employee resource groups. We have many flares, but Afroflare is the most active one. So good. So at Cloudflare we want to help build a better Internet and we believe that with our talented team, smart technology and engaged users, we can solve some of the biggest problems on the Internet, which are security, reliability and performance. So we are joined by some black professionals, men and women who have and still navigate the world of tech. We will be discussing their failures and success, what drives them and tips and tricks on how to navigate the tech sphere. So the event is titled Black in Tech and it aims to bring attention to the lack of representation and of black individuals in the tech industry. And it addresses the concerning reality that black people are often underrepresented in teams and departments, with many finding themselves as the sole black presence in professional settings. So I'm now introducing the panelists. Right. Thank you so much. So we are starting from my left with Natalie, who is the co-founder and CEO of Newcomer. And then we have Richard Kuti, who is inclusion lead at AntDigital. And then we have Daisy Alma, my colleague, who is a technical writer at Cloudflare. And then we have, last but not least, Confidence, who is a developer advocate here at Cloudflare too. OK, so we're going to start with an icebreaker question. And it's, if you had to eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be, Natalie? Going to regret speaking to the mic first. Because I'm missing home, I'd say plantain and beans, red red. OK, cool. How about you, Richard? This is going to be the most boring answer of the night, I promise you. Jollof rice. I knew it. Specifically Nigerian Jollof rice. Make of that what you will. But we're not going to start this fight now. And you Daisy? Because I also miss home, I'll say Ugali. Oh, it's a Kenyan fruit. It's a Kenyan fruit, looks like fufu. Better than fufu though. OK, and Confidence? For me too, it's also going to be rice and Jollof rice too. I can eat it morning, afternoon, evening, 24 -7. I really love it. Yeah, so I'm happy I'm not the only one here. Is it Nigerian Jollof rice? Yeah. Of course, of course. Cool. So we're going to start the panel with the first question. Natalie, we're going to start from you as you are the founder of Newcomer. And I'd like to know about yourself, your journey and how you got to where you are. Hi, everyone. I'm Natalie Naslina, one of the co-founders of Newcomer. That's my co-founder, Nigel. We are a social media platform that connects Black and African creative talent to opportunities. So we've got a feed where people can share their thoughts, everything from work in progress to final projects. Talent seekers who want to hire talent can do so doing our job board. And then lastly, we host events as well. So everything from exhibitions to concerts to workshops, anything to entertain, but then also to, of course, educate and provide resources for our community. In terms of how I got here, I'd always say from like a personal point of view, I grew up in a household that I always describe as a typical African parent's worst nightmare because I work in advertising and my sister is an artist. Those are typically roles that people would describe as not sustainable. Of course, that's changing today, but us growing up, we're definitely one of the few people within our circles who were encouraged from the beginning to be creative, to be expressive, to feel like, okay, if I'm creative, it's not just a hobby. It's something that I can do as a career full time. And I think that nurturing and validation from early on made me want to extend that to other people within the work that we're doing, Newcomer. So Nigel and I, we met in high school in Ghana, got SOS. The thing about the high school was it was truly Pan -African. We had people from all over the continent there. And although we were very STEM focused high school, we also had the opportunity to explore ourselves creatively. And within that Pan-African backdrop, naturally, when we're thinking of solving problems, we weren't just thinking about how do we solve it for Canadians. We truly took a Pan-African perspective on that. And yeah, just building on that, moving here to the UK for uni helped us really tie or connect the dots between, okay, these are the resources that are available here. How do we then extend that to the continent? And it just mapped all of the foundations that we've built on the tech aspect of Newcomer, but then also how we translate that to the physical sense of what we're doing now. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And Richard, I'd like to hear more about your work as well, since you are an inclusion lead at Andigital. What is it that you actually do? Tough question. I think I can tell you all I do. Yeah. So I've been at Andigital for nearly two years. I've been in diversity, equity and inclusion for four years, but it feels like I've been advocating for the outcomes of diversity, equity and inclusion since I was young, because it's just been my passion growing up. So day to day, my role is really about strategically, how are we making our organisation more diverse, but how are we making the outcomes more equitable and the environment more inclusive? And to be honest, in terms of how we do that, it's a plethora of ways, but your work is, there's no one team that's responsible for it. I always say that DEI is a team sport and it's a marathon, not a sprint. So it's working with the people team to look at our policies. It's working with the data and people and analytics team to look at our data so that we can track and monitor how diverse we're becoming and the outcomes and so on and so forth. And sometimes it's working with the comms teams to figure out how to get the message out, because it's not just about the mind, it's about the hearts as well. In terms of how I got into diversity and inclusion, I actually, prior to, I sort of said I've always been passionate, particularly about racial equity and before Andigital, I was at a company called Serco and I started the equivalent to Afro, the logo's not there anymore, but the equivalent to Afroflare at Serco and it was called Serco Embrace at the time and I chaired that network and I just basically became nosier and nosier and nosier and one day I was in diversity and inclusion full-time. And yeah, haven't looked back since, it's not easy, but yeah, I've enjoyed it thus far. Fantastic, thank you so much for your answer Richard and Daisy, I know we are colleagues, but I'm sure you have worked at other places and you may benefit from hearing more about your journey too. Yeah, thank you Madi. So yeah, I'm a technical writer at Cloudflare, but I also own a community called Larkstack Academy, where we teach people data science for free. Yes, so my journey to get here was when I was young, when I was still at primary school, actually, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to coding from a young age and I was curious and then went to high school and the high school awards was all about girls' empowerment, women empowerment, getting to STEM, there's a lot of that and I love that I was able to be in that environment. And so I did Python through high school, got into uni and in uni when I got to second year, my friend and I were like, we're learning a lot in school, but there's something that is missing and we started a tech community and no, before I started a tech community, we joined Google Developer Groups and Google nurtured us and everything and we're like, yeah, we want to spread our wings, started our own tech community and we've been teaching data science and technical writing for five years now, still do it. So my journey, it was mostly inspired by being curious, I'm still very curious and interested. I don't know, I wouldn't say my journey was really complicated, but maybe in terms of diversity, I wasn't raised here, I was raised in Kenya, so race wasn't a thing for me, but maybe I'll say gender, but I think that's a whole other thing we shouldn't, we can't start that today. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Daisy. And yes, confidence as well, you are a developer advocate, I'd love to know more about your background and how you got here. Certainly. So my work as a developer advocate involves creating tutorials to teach people how to use Cloudflare products. I work with Cloudflare now and we have a developer platform that allows you to host full stack applications on the front end and also on the back end. So creating tutorials to show you how the platform works and what you can build on a developer platform. So that's what my work at Cloudflare involves. And how I got into tech is I also grew up around people who were tech savvy. So my brother is four years older than I am, but he was like way, way advanced in tech. He was already working at a tech job when I was really young and he will come home with lots of projects. Then if you know about Dreamweaver, that was useful building, and Adobe Flash, that was useful building websites, he used those really old tools. So I'll hear him on calls, having conversations with his teammates, mentioning all of these technologies, Dreamweaver, HTML, CSS, then I had no idea what it is. And later on, I got to receive materials from him that I read and they're really awesome. And if someone wants to get into programming, I really recommend you check out Headfirst HTML and CSS. It's a really good, it's a well-written book and it's the kind of book you read and you forget that you're reading a book about tech. So that was really impactful for me. But before then, I actually liked building stuff. So while growing up, we used to hunt down cassette and CD players so we can take out the DC motor in them and we take them out and build toys using them. So we'll go buy batteries and wires and build little toys for us to play ourselves. So that was what I was doing before. And I wanted to do engineering and then coding came along and it was just the same thing. And interestingly, even better because you're building in a virtual space and the limits to what you can build is your own imagination. You can keep building forever. So I love building and I got an opportunity to be in a space that allows me to build endlessly. And I think it's been awesome so far. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Confidence, for your answer. So Natalie, I have a question for you because you are the co-founder of Newcomer, which is a platform for black creatives. So the question is, what are some of the unique contributions that black professionals bring to the tech industry? I think in just being ourselves, considering the backdrop of everything, it's not like we haven't ever been here, but we've always been in a context where we might not be considered as much. So even taking a tech context, even with looking at AI or even how things present in digital spaces, we then have several biases that then show through the tech because AI is more or less a reflection of what we already know to be true in society. And I think in terms of what black and other minority ethnic groups bring to the space is just bringing themselves, but then applying what they know to be true within technological contexts. And I think us working on our various initiatives and projects that bring all of that together and bringing that into spaces that have otherwise neglected or just blatantly ignored those contributions. I think that's what we specifically bring to the industry. But I think the other layer to that as well is, I think black communities, we almost have another attachment to tech, which is the narrative in terms of how we change what already exists in society in terms of how we apply tech, how we write about tech, how tech presents in other industries as well. So for myself, because we primarily sit within the creative and tech industry, narrative is especially important to us because it impacts how people interact with the things that we build, but then it also impacts the way new things are built based on the data that we've brought. So yeah, I'll definitely say it's bringing things we already know to be true to structures that already exist. Fantastic. Thank you so much. So I wanted to change topic a little bit and talk about the wage gap. So I found these stats earlier today. In 2022, UK born black employees earned 5 .6 less than our peers, while non-UK born black employees earned 12% less. So talking about elevating a black community, Richard, this question is for you. What do you think we should do as black individuals to narrow the wage gap between our peers? And I ask this question because often I hear people asking, oh, what is it that I can do to increase my salary? How do I negotiate my salary? And I want to address this question because I want to raise awareness that you can raise your salary, but a lot of people don't have the confidence to do that. Cool. So I think there's a few ways in terms of doing that. A caveat by saying, you know, hopefully I'll give some advice, but I don't know how to, I don't know about advising on someone raising their own salary, but I'll try anyway. I think wherever there's any inequity or there's a gap, it's not just an imperative for black people who weren't born here. It's an organisational imperative because the moment we see, when I look at a pay gap, I see a risk of losing talent from an organisational perspective. And if you look at most, particularly in the tech sector, if you look at the trajectory of most black employees, they get ahead by moving sideways and out of the organisation. So it's a real risk in terms of retaining that talent. So I think one of the ways that we can do that is to raise it collectively and through groups like Afroflare, where we say, this is a concern for our community. We see inequity and we speak on behalf of our community through this forum as an employee resource group, and we want you, the organisation, to sort it out. So whoever's head of diversity and inclusion, I've just added to your workload, but it's not just Clafless, all of tech, you know. So I think that's number one, that it's not on the burden of those who are impacted. It's not a burden of those who are impacted alone. It's an organisational-wide thing. And so therefore, we need to raise that. I think secondly, it is showing up collectively to campaign for one another, because I think a lot of things, especially in a corporate setting, can lose the heart. But a lot of this is really about allyship. It's about understanding that you have different privileges as well. And often, I think when we say, I am black, that can mean many things. And there's a lot of things that are similar in our experiences, but a lot of things are different. My black experience is going to be different to Natalie's black experience is going to be different to yours. So peeling behind that to understand what our different privileges and strengths are, help one another, be an ally to each other. I am not the most organised person, for example, but I do enjoy the creative side of things and speaking and so on and so forth. So how can I complement that in terms of using my voice to advocate for someone and someone helping me out with my spreadsheets or something, that kind of thing. I think lastly, in terms of on an individual level, this is going to be so informal, but believe in your source. I think a lot of this sometimes is like tabling the case and putting the worst that can happen is no, you know, kind of thing. So that's not DEI advice. That's just Richard advice, personally, from that point of view. It's not always going to go one's way. But I think one of the things that we can take from a community is that we are talented, inspirational people, like some of the most talented, inspirational people on the planet. And whenever we go into conversations, we should carry that with us as well. Thank you so much for that. And also, sometimes it's not even about, you know, asking for what you want. If you want to have a better salary, you don't need to be bored and don't be afraid to ask for it. Because a lot of the time, you know, there are people who are less confident than you, but they're doing like so much better salary wise. And I'm like, so if they're doing better, then I can do it too, right? So yeah, this is one thing that I will say, just be bored and don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Okay, next question. So this one is for confidence. I wanted to know your experience about, so with imposter syndrome, and for those who don't know, imposter syndrome is the feeling that you are not enough, the feeling that you don't belong in a certain workplace. And I wonder if you ever felt like that in your career? Feel it every day. And maybe right now as well. But the truth is that we're having this conversation and I'm just thinking, maybe it's not such of a bad feeling or attribute. Sometimes it keeps you humble, it keeps you hungry, it keeps you curious to learn to get better. So it has its good side, just as there are issues with this as well. So how I have dealt with mine is basically creating evidences to show I belong in the group that I feel I do not belong in. And that involves trying to put out the best work out there, making my work world class, so to say, and going above and beyond to show that I can get work done, just as some other colleague I feel might be better qualified to do the work that I'm feeling inadequate to do. And something that has also helped me is looking back and seeing what I have done over the years. And then I go, did I do all of this? So sometimes we forget how good we are, because we are always focused on reaching the next deadline, reaching the next goal. We never tend to pause to look back and see how far we've come. And if we do this kind of reflections from time to time, we get to see that we've done a lot, and whatever it is we have right now, wherever we are right now, we deserve to be in that place because we've put in all of the work. So that has helped me creating evidences to show myself and hopefully others too, that I deserve to be where I need to be or where I am right now. Then something that has also helped is getting sponsors, that's having someone in your room to speak up for you. So I can remember there was a demo that was being put together and I had an idea to demo, but I did not feel my idea was up to par with where everyone else was demoing. And someone spoke up and asked, hey Confidence, why not also demo this thing you told me about? I was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Because someone spoke up for me, I was able to see that what I have done is on the same level as what everyone else has done. And it made it easy for me to go into the demo, show my presentation and people were happy with it. So having someone to speak up for you, or in this case, speaking up for others who might be underrepresented, speaking up for others, meeting them, encouraging them to apply for things that they may feel they're not qualified for, is also going to be really helpful. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I think one suggestion that I had, that I was given to deal with imposter syndrome, similar to what Confidence said, is to have a spreadsheet where you put all the good things that you've been doing. And then sometimes maybe in a few months time, go back to it and then read on it. And that really helps with this imposter syndrome, whenever you feel like, oh, you're not doing enough, or you haven't done, or you feel like you don't belong here, that really helps. So Daisy, since you created a tech community, I wanted to ask you, what strategies or support systems have been instrumental in your professional growth and success? Yeah, so I think there's two sides of that question, because my professional side is both the community and the work that pays, because the community for me is giving back, because I was taught by the community, so I decided to give back. Yeah, so I'd say one thing that really stands out and really I think is the best strategy to have is to have a mentor, especially someone who you can talk to frequently. It doesn't have to be someone in tech, but someone who is career-wise ahead of you, and they are in the right path that you're like, yeah, I would want to be in this at some point of my life. So having mentors has really helped me to broaden my thoughts, and sometimes you're like, I can't do this, and then you're someone like, why not just give it a try? And another thing is in terms of community, if you decide to start one or join one, you have, and even at work actually, you learn that you can't do everything on your own. Spread out the work with your colleagues, with your friends, if it's like in terms of community, ask someone if they want to volunteer. I'll give a story. When I started this community, we were just two, and it was just a uni thing, just meeting up in a lab and doing hackathons, and then people started coming, and it became a lot. Then we just decided to ask who wants to volunteer and teach something, and maybe a topic, who wants to teach Power BI, or who wants to do content types in technical writing, and people were like, yeah, me, because also for them, as they teach, they're learning. I've also experienced it even here at work. I'm still very new at Cloudflare, but recently we had a lot of workload, and I just asked someone in my team, are you able to help me? Because I was really scared. I'm like, can I ask? Then I asked, and they're like, yeah, sure, why not? They really helped me, and both of us got the deadlines done. Mentorship, find a mentor. If you can, also mentor someone. Spread your work. That's a really good strategy. Another thing I'd say in terms of your career, keep your resume fresh. It will tie up in terms of also imposter syndrome. When you are redoing your resume or your CV frequently, let's say six months, you'll be like, ah, okay. It's been a journey, and it reminds you that for you to get there, there's a strategy that had to be done. The one other thing that I think is very important, the last point I'll say is, keep studying. I say every day is a learning day. I think I call myself, one of my social media platforms, that I'm a professional student, because there's no day you wake up and by the time you go to sleep, you've literally learned nothing. If that happens, you need to start questioning yourself, your surrounding, and everything. Make sure you're learning every day. There's so many courses online right now. Go to YouTube, go to Coursera, go to Udemy. I don't know, anything. Go to CharterGPT, ask it a question. I don't know. Keep learning every single day. Yeah, I think those four are mostly what I use to run my life, not even this career. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Daisy. I feel like if you want to work in tech, it's pretty much imperative that you just keep yourself updated, because things are always changing. Right now, we're speaking that someone invented the new technologies, and then we're going to talk about so yeah, definitely keep learning, use Udemy courses, whatever. So Natalie, I have a question for you. What motivates you to continue pursuing excellence in the tech industry, despite challenges or setbacks? I think, thanks for that question, because I think it's something that I have to answer to myself every day. I was actually just telling someone earlier tonight that a couple of years ago, I actively had to learn the power of detachment. By that, I mean, everyone can have a specific plan for what they want to do, or have a specific expectation for how they want things to go, but things don't always go according to plan. It's great to know what the final destination looks like, but it's also fine to be okay with the journey looking a bit different from what you anticipated. I think having that at the back of my mind all the time helps me ground myself when things aren't going according to plan. Having that tunnel vision, without necessarily having it be linear, is what helps me go through challenges. I think even just sitting and wallowing in those challenges, I think also helps, because I also believe that if something is worth doing, or if you are the person who's meant to be doing something, the only way to get to some level of the peak of it is to do all the hard things. If things are going to be easy, then everyone would be doing it. If it wasn't challenging, it means it's not worth doing in some context. I think just having that level of detachment, being flexible, and knowing if and when to pivot, is what helps me go through those challenges. Fantastic. Can you briefly share a project or initiative where you felt your diverse background and experiences made a significant impact? I'll give you 1.5. The first is very similar to Richard's. Before working on Newcomer full-time, I was working in advertising. With the same curiosity that everyone else on the panel had, I had the same curiosity, especially since I grew up in Ghana. There were discussions about Black History Month and how we present ourselves and everything. Being an African, I noticed that there weren't as many nuances being acknowledged in terms of what it means to be Black or what it means to be African. Although we had branches in Africa, we had never acknowledged the campaigns that they had done. Back in 2019, that was my first year in the agency, but me pushing for them to acknowledge the campaigns that the African branches were focusing on was something that was particularly key for me because it helped to validate my specific experience as an African person. It also helped to validate the work that people were already doing. That ties to my point about what we're supposed to be doing. We're already living our lives. It's just that people outside of our bubbles don't always acknowledge what we're doing. That's the 1.5. The 1.0 is within Newcomer. We run this monthly micro-grant. It's literally £100 every month to a Black African creative. We've been doing that since 2022. I would do the math for how many months, but it's been a couple of years now. I always count that as a win for Newcomer because no matter what's happening in the business, we know that at the end of the month, someone is getting £100 to either finish the cover art for a short film or to buy a podcast mic or to basically do anything that helps to validate whatever missions that they have. It's always something that forms the cushion of everything that we're doing. That's always something that comes up for me. Fantastic. Great answer. Thank you so much, Natalie. Since we are in Black History Month, Richard, what do you think we can do to empower Black employees to succeed in the tech field? I think more events like this is a cliche answer, but I think to share with one another experiences, advice, insight, but also to have allies as well, because again, as I said before, it's a team sport. It's not just us. It's everyone in the organisation. I think as well, we need better sponsorship and visibility of excellence, Black excellence and stuff like that. Something that I've picked up over the last few weeks on the run up to Black History Month as well. I think I'd like to see more organisations champion their Black talent. I've seen profiles of people who whilst they do their day job, they're mentoring kids in the community. They've got a side hustle. They've also supporting a family here and they're supporting the family back home and things like that. Those are the kind of stories that resonate with most of us because we identify, we relate and whatnot. I think companies miss a trick in terms of telling those stories, championing those stories and celebrating them. I think that would be my one thing that I've taken as a challenge to myself to say, okay, how do we champion those stories and those narratives? Because I don't think it's done enough. Everyone likes the celebrities that are out there and whatnot, but I think we've got many celebrities in our organisations as well. Definitely. This is one thing that I'm very grateful for. A lot of companies are cutting down on DNA. We see women in tech groups being shut down. A lot of big tech companies don't want to fund all these ethnic minorities, but CLAF is still one of the few who's supporting us and still giving us the funding to run events like this. So I'm very grateful for that. Okay. So we have a few minutes and then we're going to take questions from the audience, but I want you to ask one last question to Confidence. So how can we continue to amplify the voices and experiences of Black individuals in tech to drive meaningful change and progress? It's basically what Richard just said. So more events like this and trying to speak up for Black people. So having more communities, creating safe spaces like this, where people can come on to share their experiences. Others can come on to have conversations about challenges they're having and get advice from other colleagues who may have passed through those challenges or that stage of life. So having spaces like this is going to be really helpful in getting the Black voice out. And what would you, what would you say to someone who wants to get into the tech industry? What advice would you give them to get started? Well, that's a really hard question. So maybe in my head, I should rephrase it this way. What advice will I want to give myself? I was just starting out. So I think something I struggled with is asking for help. And really, it's probably an issue many of us have dealt with. So being in tech means that you are very industrious, you're self -reliant. You can get stuff done on your own. It's one of the qualities that is highly praised in the tech space. And if you want to be a player here, it means it's a quality you have to develop. But sometimes you need to know when not to rely on yourself and ask for help. And perhaps I didn't do that earlier in my career. So seeking more, looking for opportunities to speak to people about issues I'm having, instead of spending weeks or months trying to figure it out on my own, would have been really helpful. And sometimes it goes beyond just technical issues. Maybe I'm taking care of stuff, difficulties at work. It also has to do with career, life, meeting people who have lived through those experiences. And again, they don't have to be Black people, really, because everyone has learned of something or has experience in areas of life you don't have. And you should be willing to learn from whoever it comes, even if that person is of a different race, of a different gender, or maybe someone even younger than you are. So being able to share this problem to people, get advice on it, instead of keeping it to myself or bottling it up and trying to find solutions myself. So I think that's one thing I would like to change. And that's the kind of advice I'll give to younger confidence. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Confidence. So I think we can start taking some questions from the audience, if there's any. Yeah. Hi, I'm Dionne Condor-Farrell, Senior Application Development Manager from TfL. Just a question around encouraging more people of Black people to get into leadership. It seems like we're very encouraged to kind of do hands-on technical roles and kind of stay in those positions for many years. But there's not, I don't see as many Black people in leadership roles. And how do we encourage more of that? That's, I think, how do we encourage? I think it's about really, that's a tough one, because I think, it's a tough one, because my experience is people want to get into leadership. It's more about how do they access it and how do we enable that. But I think the encouragement is basically, reminding people that they're talented to do it. I think the landscape is still not equitable enough in tech, because in a lot of the organisations that I've seen or come across, when you're in the junior sort of like graduate apprenticeship role, it's diverse, really diverse, especially in London. Yeah, proper diverse. But as you climb and get higher and higher, again, less and less Black people, less and less from a gender, all sorts of areas. And I think that is, it's not just about, there's only so much you can teach people to assimilate to a structure. You also need to affect the structure. The structure needs to, we need to change our view of talent. And I think that's, we're still halfway, maybe not even halfway along that journey as organisations, as a sector overall. So I'd say that we need to keep pushing and need to keep talking. We need to, for those who want it, leadership is there for the taking. It's not going to be easy because a lot of what we have to do in terms of adapting might not necessarily be akin to how we've grown up, akin to how we've learned. I don't know about anyone else, grew up in a Nigerian household. I grew up in London, but in my house, it was Nigeria. And the way you got ahead is you put your head down, you worked hard and you was really good at something. But leadership isn't just about being good at something. It's about leading people. It's about the politics. It's about that corporate world. It's about navigating. And it's also about who you know. And these are things that we're still as a people and as a community getting to know, you know, many years along the line, you know, some of our first generation migrants or immigrants or second generation, you know, so I think it's still going to take time. But the best way that we can move forward is acknowledge it, acknowledge where we're at. Companies shouldn't try and pretend like, oh, we can't find the talent. I can't swear, can I? We can't find the talent, the talent is out there. And equally, us as a people need to understand that we're adapting to a new system. That's it. So I have a question out of curiosity, Richard, because you are an inclusion lead, what are some mistakes that you have seen people making when they want to enter the tech sector or anything that you can share that can help us learn something? I think for me, it's not so much entering the tech sector that is just showing up in terms of like performing or just trying to get ahead. And I don't think it's necessarily a mistake. But it's, again, I think it's the stakeholder management and the managing upwards, you know, and again, it's the like, there's doing a good job. Yes, do a good job, but also shout about the good job you're doing, you know, the self promotion. I think that's something that we don't do as much as our peers. We do a good job and stay quiet about it. But I think, you know, that's something I have to learn myself as well, you know, I need to sometimes, you know, sometimes complete a document and say, hey, I completed the document, you know. And I think, again, that's an example of the structure not necessarily working for us, because we're very humble and whatnot. But sometimes we have to shout about what we're doing. And I think that's probably the most common thing. And I'm not going to say, because I'm not this guru that advises people. This is me and my friends talking, you know, like I'm there from that point of view. That's something that's a shared struggle, I think. I absolutely agree. And I have the same problem. I like I do so much for her, but then I don't, I don't say. So one thing that my manager always says to me to be my, I need to advocate more, share more, the work that I do, and be my best advocate, because no one is going to do it for me. Another question from the audience. I think this is more towards Daisy. My name is Barbara Jagwazi. I'm a product manager at UKHSA. But I'm really interested in how you manage to fit in self care between the nine to five and the five to nine, having a full time job running your community? Yeah. I'd say it's the ADHD. But in all honesty, it's not the easiest. Because yeah, I have to do my nine to five, do it well, and advocate for myself and finish it. And sometimes we are running boot camps, like today, there's a boot camp, this month, there's a boot camp going on, that that is also happening. And after that, I have to take care of myself, I have to sleep eight hours, clean my house, never ends, right. So I'd say, my biggest, the biggest thing that has happened to me that I think it's a blessing, is I've had people just volunteer to help, not help, I don't want to say help. I've had this community for a while. So these days, it's always like, I have this boot camp, like right now, we're having a boot camp for data analytics, right? Today, there's a class happening right now. Before the classes started, there was like a curriculum. I asked a few people in the channel, like who wants to do, here's the curriculum, do you think you can lead any of them? People said yes. And I was like, who else thinks that in case I'm not around, that they can able to host the class, someone else is there as a backup. So the one thing that has helped my nine to five and my five to nine, is that there's help, there's people to lean on. And my nine to five, like my work here at Cloudflare, I'd say I have a very, really nice team. Maddy is my colleague. This is the first time I'm seeing her in person. But yeah, so I'd say even at work, I'm blessed to have a very helpful team. And that's not always the case, in all honesty, but I put my stuff in chunks. I'd say I put my jobs, my tasks in chunks. If you're in tech or you're a product manager, program manager, you know about sprint planning, story points. That's what I do really. Like it's not, okay, there's the story points and everything, but then now you story point your day to get, it's like, yeah, you're supposed to do this huge chunk. It's like five story points, but then you know you can't, you're not going to do all the five story points today. So you basically reduce them into smaller and smaller tasks. And then work is over 6 p.m. I'm supposed to start, go to the gym, do a boot camp and go to sleep. So good thing is that we've already planned on who's doing which topic and go to the gym or not, you know, and rest, rest is also very important. I think I do take a nap sometimes, just a 30 minutes nap when you feel like everything is falling apart, because it does happen. And it's necessary that you notice that I'm going to crash and step away from that laptop from that screen and just sit and sleep, eat, have a snack, anything that makes you happy, anything that makes you relax. If you want to go for a walk, go for a walk. And then when you come back, you'll have a clearer vision, you'll have a clearer mind. And you might even find that you had the solution already. You were just panicking because you've been sad all day. You've been doing these things all day, all week sometimes, because the burnout can come on a Thursday or on 2pm. It depends. And lastly, this is very weird, but drink water. I'd say that as someone who is learning how to do it, it sounds very cliche sometimes, but also at the same time, it doesn't sound cliche because we might, you might find yourself abandoning your health because you're trying to, we are black people and I would say most of us here are coming from a very African household. Whether you're a first generation immigrant or second generation immigrant, there's that, my mom would say, when you come into my house, you're Kenyan. You are in that house. So you are, you're not, you're all in this same space and we have, we are lucky to have come from similar traditional backgrounds, but yeah, we forget that we are, we were used to like working hard, working hard, but then you forget that we, our health is the most important thing. So yeah, drink your water, take your rest and things will work out. I also want to, so Barbara, so I, how I manage my calendar, I always block out time for anything. It can be gym. If, you know, a certain day I kind of have meetings, I just block out no meetings and no one books meetings. To really make use of your calendar efficiently really helps you and also you tell other people to respect your time. I think that helps. I think there was one question and then, yeah, and then we're going to take another one virtual. My name is Dominic, I work in talent acquisition for Digital Ocean. This is a question based on something Richard said about allyship within ERGs. I was just wondering if there's any tips of how you can improve engagement within ERGs, particularly around those sensitive subjects like pay, like difficult experiences at work. So this is for anyone who's built a community, maintains a community, just how you get that engagement around some of these sensitive topics. I think, I'll start with this. I think in terms of like how to navigate it, I think the best, the most value that I've seen in terms of ERGs coming together and just being and growing is ensuring that the first thing you kind of create is a safe space. I think that safe space and that sense of community will allow for authentic conversation to flow. And then from there strategically, it's the dialogue and the conversations that you use as your data to then link into change. Now, I think from my experience, and this is my experience, obviously working in DEI, but previously as well, chairing a network, that's when it's really worked. It's when there is that sense of trust and safe space. And sometimes that has been, like creating a drop-in session where people just come in and talk. And sometimes it's been very, very focused on what is your experience of X in our organisation? But I think how we create safe spaces, there's probably a million and one ways to do that. There's no silver bullet or line. I think it's just about returning to some of the essence of what the panel has said, is that it's about community at the end of the day, and that shared sort of like experience and leaning into that. I think that should be the foundation for any ERG from my perspective. There's loads of things to go up, the pay gap, promotion rates, retention, all of these things across like an organisational speak in terms of like the employee lifecycle. But the reason why ERGs are so valuable is because they're able to curate, to gather and harness what the story is behind the lived experience of a particular group and articulate it back to the business to say, this is the experience, the shared lived experience of your black people, of your Asian people, of your women and whatnot. And then, you know, throw in a few individual quotes that really bring it and hopefully that is enough to then, it's almost like a business case for change, if that makes sense. So that's my experience anyway. Yeah, I'll just add something quickly to that, because I think in terms of engagement, it's both the members of the ERG and then obviously like C-suite management and stuff. And what I personally struggled with as well is because it's not part of our like paid job, we struggle with accountability, we struggle with consistency, we struggle with even aligning on what like the goals and missions are. So I'd say having that all set from the beginning in terms of what the objectives are for this quarter, for this year, blah, blah, communicating that internally with the team and then having different ways of alignment in terms of accountability on what that looks like, not necessarily in terms of compensation, but then more so what is everyone looking for from the ERG? Because we tend to find that some people are looking for safe spaces, some people are looking for resources, some people are looking for very specific connections between them and C-suite as well. Everyone has different expectations of what they want out of the ERG. So I think getting those out of the way first and then leaning on data as well to take, like Richard said, taking that back to C -suite saying, this is what the people are looking for, this is the data that proves that and that's how you're coming forward. Fantastic. So we are coming at the end of the event, but before ending, I just wanted to thank the people who have helped me putting this together. So there are just so many people that I have to thank, but I'm just going to name a few names. So one is Alina Livingstone, who is hey Alina, business development representative. She has helped me so much, she knows. Thank you so much Alina. And then we have Anthony Picassio, Danny Rodriguez, Louisa Marquez, Nicholas, who's our IT guy there. Thank you for filming and recording. DJ, who's not there, but anyway, he's here. Our fire marshals for keeping us safe. Thank you so much. The London places team for putting up the space and the chairs, arranging the food catering and also our fair leads. So thank you so much for joining this event. I hope it was fun and helpful.