How Points Learned to Prioritize Their Diversity and Inclusion Efforts | Episode 6
Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work.
This week’s conversation is with Ana Lobo and Mihnea Galeteanu, a scrum master and strategic partnerships manager, respectively, at Toronto-based Points.
Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript.
Stefan: Thanks for joining the podcast, Ana and Mihnea. To jump right in, can you share a bit about yourselves and what you do?
Ana: So my name is Ana. I’m a scrum master at Points. I work with development teams to help them grow better as a team. I’m also a volunteer on the diversity and inclusion committee at Points.
Mihnea: And my name is Mihnea. I’m part of the strategic partnerships team and have been working with the employee working group since day one.
Stefan: Awesome. And what was your involvement in getting the D&I program started at Points?
Mihnea: It started in the latter part of 2017. I think it was Hubba who posted a diversity and inclusion template for other organizations in the tech space to adopt. When I came across it, I thought there was something happening in the tech community and we should be part of the conversation.
We started off with how we could open the framework up internally at Points and see what other people think. We got a lot of thumbs up from members. What’s interesting at Points is that a lot of the initiatives we take on as an organization are really grassroots. They all come up from someone spearheading an idea and trying to find support for it.
Initially, we looked around our engineering team and realized we had a problem. So we didn an initial survey to ask what kinds of topics people are interested in talking about. Then we had an initial round of lunch and learns while some of us went out and did some research on D&I and brought some stats together.
Stefan: What were some of the challenges you faced and how would you recommend someone avoid those?
Ana: Because we don’t have a dedicated individual for D&I, it can be challenging to find time. One of the mistakes was saying if we don’t have time for this initiative we should park it. But what I learned from that was actually to look at what other options we have to achieve the same outcome that fall within our sphere of influence or within our sphere of potential change.
Mihnea: For me, looking back over the past two and a half years, we didn’t have a point of view as to our contribution to the conversation and what our internal “why” was. We didn’t really take a step back and codify what we were trying to get out of it. We just sort of jumped on the treadmill and learned as we go.
Stefan: How did you come up with that “why”?
Mihnea: Through a lot of discussion. We said we needed to take a break from the treadmill and we needed to start looking ourselves in the eyes and look around the room to figure out what’s going on and what we’re trying to achieve.
Ana: I think approaching it from the perspective of a business unit within the organization. So instead of a group of individuals who want to make a difference, we see what we can tackle. It adds more structure to have that kind of template.
Mihnea: Yeah. The organization has yearly goals and a version of the OKR structure. And we’re trying to achieve organizational goals. We realized one of the ways we could organize ourselves was under this umbrella of looking at the goals and seeing what we want to achieve just like every other business function.
Stefan: Thank you for sharing that. What are your recommendations for anyone trying to start a grassroots D&I program at their company?
Ana: From my perspective as a scrum master, I’m going to bring in the facilitation and planning + retrospective into it. I think that’s something I’d really like to see us do more of, as I think there’s a lot of potential there.
When you tackle it as an initiative or project, and you’re able to show the progress on initiatives with the individuals, you get that momentum of seeing the impact and having that as motivation to keep working towards that goal.
It’s really important when it’s not part of your daily work to have a place - a centralized place - where people can see what the work is, what we’re doing, and the impact we’re having.
Mihnea: One thing we realized recently was the fact that we’re losing members of the employee working group. People were not as engaged as maybe they were at the beginning. We realized that we were spending a lot of time discussing action items … but something was missing.
It was brought by a number of people within the community that they want to take a step back and have meaningful conversations about their experiences, our day to day life, and things like that. Bridge Builders is doing a phenomenal job here in Toronto with getting people together and talking about really deep, personal, vulnerable lived experiences.
But we weren’t doing that. At Points we were focused too much on our perceived role in the D&I community as opposed to having meaningful conversations about what’s going on with our lives. That was a wakeup call.
Ana: To add to that, we were focused on the external events we could go to and have a presence… but we forgot that we’re working with people from other floors that we haven’t actually had a conversation with. Having that team bonding was missing as the group grew.
So we started having lunches - only one or two so far. But the idea was sometimes people are very scared about saying the wrong thing. And it’s from a place of not knowing, not to offend.
We created this pilot where we come together. It’s about asking about things you want to know about. It’s good for people who don’t feel comfortable saying it in a wider setting. But in this smaller setting, where I can ask questions that are not exactly PC, but I want to know what I am doing wrong and what the right way to approach this is.
Stefan: Thank you for sharing. What’s the bigger vision for your D&I strategy?
Ana: We’re starting to expand beyond gender. There’s race, but there’s also the way we think. And we are thinking about how we have space for thoughtful dialogue about something where we agree to disagree, but you agree to listen and try to understand where the person is coming from.
We want to go beyond visible differences and more into what don’t see - that adds to the diversity of who we are.
Mihnea: Our moral at Points is that we’re more, together. Going back to the roots of the organization and how it all started, we’re just a combination of individuals that may come to the company. So one of the things that came from us not having a focus on D&I has been having cultural sensitivity training, learn more about what’s going on in the world, and make sure that this new event or new team joining us feels welcome.
Our vision five years from now is that this D&I initiative won’t be needed. We realize that’s probably not realistic and there will always be work to be done. But I think we’ve landed on the working group as sort of a lobbying group within the organization for everything D&I specific, working closely with HR and other stakeholders.
Stefan: What is a community that you go to for learning and support?
Ana: Toronto Bridge Builders! And Crescendo as well. I would also say Latinx in Tech. They are one of the first I know of that has child care. That made me think about maybe we should have our events earlier because people have to go pick up their kids. It doesn’t always have to be focused on “D&I” it can sometimes just be a community of people who are mindful and apply D&I to how they approach the tech and non-tech community.
Mihnea: One of the things I realized I was not doing enough of was being within Points and learning more about what’s going on within our organization. A lot of my learnings over the last few months have been around the side. I’m trying to spend a lot more time on the community here.
Stefan: You mentioned before a couple organization that Points supports - what is one of those and what is its mission?
Mihnea: One of the most recent has been Venture Kids. they do a lot of work in the community, trying to help those communities left behind by tech advancements to learn technical skills.
Stefan: I love the work Takara Small is doing with Venture Kids. Now onto the lightning round. What’s your favourite quote?
Mihnea: “Life is too important to be taken seriously,” by Oscar Wilde.
Ana: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Stefan: What motivates you in life?
Ana: Fairness. I’m learning how to manage facing unfair situations in a way that’s not conflicted but constructive. When I see unfairness, it’s a trigger - I want to know what we can do to make it fair.
Mihnea: Trying to move the need on something on a daily basis.
Stefan: What’s a movie or book that changed the way you look at the world?
Ana: The Age of Stupid by Randy Armstrong. It’s an environmental documentary and it opened my eyes up to the power of the media in creating awareness around a situation in a way that brings a clear call to action.
Mihnea: Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It by Professor András Tilcsik at Rotman at University of Toronto and Chris Clearfield. It explains in layman terms what AI is about and what it’s going to do - everything from daily tasks, to your job, to society in general.
Stefan: Favourite podcast?
Ana: CodeSwitch and LatinoUSA.
Mihnea: I have to give a shout out to our colleague here at Points who started the Toronto Tech Podcast. He brings in people to talk about their day job - it’s really done in a conversational way as opposed to Q&A.
Also the Tumble Kids Science Podcast. I was driving back from a roadtrip with my two boys in the backseat of the car, so we listened to a lot of the podcast which is about taking complex science questions and bringing them to a level even kids could understand.
Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?
Mihnea: Whale Shark organization. You can adopt a whale shark and you’ll get tweets or emails every time they are seen again. I thought it was phenomenal to bring us closer to environmental issues - you get an email from a whale shark, whether it’s seen in Indonesia, the Indian Ocean, or whatever.
Ana: Google Home. Given the fact that my child at five years old has expanded her vocabulary by saying “Hey, Google!” … it’s just incredible. I would have never foreseen when I was growing up that I could just ask Google anything and it’ll have an answer for me.
Stefan: And how can people connect with you or opportunities at Points?
Ana: For me, It’s LinkedIn. So look for Ana, Scrum Master, Points, and you’ll find me. Another way is through a meetup for women in tech.
Mihnea: I’m at a lot of programming and meetups about diversity in Toronto. If you’re there, that is where to find me.
Stefan: Awesome, thank you both!
That wraps up this episode of our podcast, if you want to listen to audio version click below.
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