Presentation: Scaling Culture Change With Ally Skills

Track: Building Great Engineering Cultures

Location: Seacliff ABC

Duration: 4:10pm - 5:00pm

Day of week: Wednesday

Level: Beginner

Persona: General Software, Technical Engineering Manager

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Abstract

Ally skills are ways people with more power and privilege can support people with less. Building and rewarding ally skills is crucial to building an inclusive engineering culture. Without them, the responsibility for fixing bias and discrimination in your culture falls to people with the least power and influence. This talk explains why allies should take action, describes some important ally skills, and recommends several concrete ways to embed ally skills in your engineering culture.

Speaker: Valerie Aurora

Software Engineer & Diversity and Inclusion Consultant

Valerie Aurora is a software engineer turned diversity and inclusion consultant. She is the founder of Frame Shift Consulting, which helps technology organizations build in-house expertise and leadership in diversity and inclusion. Through the Ally Skills Workshop, she has taught thousands of people ally skills: simple, everyday ways for people who have more power and influence to support people with less. She worked as a Linux kernel and file systems developer for over 10 years at Red Hat, IBM, Intel, and other companies.

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Conference for Professional Software Developers