In this episode Thoughtbot's Design Director, Sameera Kapila, talks about the difference between inclusivity and diversity, and how we can each lead--whether or not our roles are formally leaderly--our workplace's growth toward inclusivity.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer and this is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me interviews fascinating people about their passions. So my guest today is Sameera Kapila, the design director at Thoughtbot an educator and a speaker, a former professor, I believe, but also the possibly only friend of mine from college, go Gators, who actually works in the same industry as me.
Matt Stauffer:
By the way, if you're watching on YouTube, I just want to share my amazing Gator cup that I have got going on here. So I think possibly my only friend from college works in the same industry as me, which is wonderful and also just a really wonderful human being. So Sameera, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself, whether it's your personal life or your professional life?
Sameera Kapila:
Sure. Hi. That was such a kind intro and, go Gators.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes, go. I'm going to take a sip of my Gators cup while you talk.
Sameera Kapila:
Do it. Great. Hi, my name is Sameera. A lot of people know me as Sam. Intro, so Matt and I went to college together, known each other since freshman year.
Matt Stauffer:
Which you pointed out at the intro, was 18 ... Well, I don't know if everybody else should know. We're old. 18 years, that's half of our lives. I'm 36.
Sameera Kapila:
When you said that half of our lives part, that's when I was like-
Matt Stauffer:
That felt meaningful. I was like, dang, yeah.
Sameera Kapila:
So I just thought I'd start right then. I was in the graphic design program. Graduated, thought I'd go into advertising, did that for a year and then went to grad school in Texas thinking that I would get my master's to then be an art director. Because I was moving from Florida, I was hoping for in-state tuition and they're like, how about you teach while you're getting your master's and then we'll give you in-state tuition. I was like, sold. I could teach. Sure. Oh boy, teaching's hard.
Sameera Kapila:
Teaching is so hard and you're only a TA for the first semester or so, and then you're instructor of record, you are responsible for everything. Then you start getting TAs that are other grad school classmates-
Matt Stauffer:
So you're like 23 years old and you have like TA's underneath you.
Sameera Kapila:
Yeah, and 21 year olds as students.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my gosh. That's terrifying.
Sameera Kapila:
Totally terrifying. Definitely scary when you're 5'2 and most faculty in faculty meetings are like, "Student, are you lost?"
Matt Stauffer:
No, I'm one of you.
Sameera Kapila:
Yep. So that was fun, and I went through the program and midway through was volunteering at South by Southwest.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, cool. So you were in school in Austin.
Sameera Kapila:
I was in school 30 minutes south of Austin, coming up to Austin all the time. It's pretty much the same. At this point, It's practically larger metro area but South By volunteering was what actually moved me back into the web and away from the art direction and that side of things, because part of my responsibility was walking a lot of web developers and designers from the green room to their talks and then telling a lot of employees from social media companies that, "No, we don't have any more room for you to see your coworkers speak. I'm sorry."
Sameera Kapila:
They were like, "We're going to call so-and-so and tell them." I'm like, "Fire marshal's going to shut it down," but getting to listen to those talks, once we closed the door, I was like, oh my goodness, this is way more than what Geocities, AngelFire and Myspace were.
Matt Stauffer:
Right. This has moved forward a little bit.
Sameera Kapila:
Then I, through the grad program, was able to make a switch into the web because I was talking about it so much and getting back into it myself. We had a flash class that we were able to rewrite into a responsive web design class.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes. I like this.
Sameera Kapila:
Then I was realizing at that same time, I was really enjoying teaching because I was teaching something I was super passionate about and graduated and stayed on teaching for a while. Since I was that designer who codes sort of person, I ended up working at a code school after that, building out their design class that was Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML, CSS, some JavaScript and terminal and GitHub work all in 12 weeks.
Matt Stauffer:
No big deal. This was one of the big reputable code schools. We're not talking just a little local thing. You're a pretty good.
Sameera Kapila:
The Iron Yard, 21 different locations and I wish it was still around, but it is not, but building the design program there, suddenly being a part of the first 10 employees, ended up managing all of the design and engineering courses. So I had members of my team that were Ruby developers, Python developers, JavaScript, everything across the board. Here comes one, cat. She may just pop a tail in.
Sameera Kapila:
Hopefully she won't mute the call. She always thinks I'm talking to her, and at that point I wasn't doing any design. I was barely getting to code because I was managing 40 instructors and trying to hire 40 more. So that was fun, and we grew and we grew, and it was a lot of a big change. Then I completely moved away from that and was in operations and diversity initiatives. So it's just been a series of pivots. Then I finally went back to being an individual contributor and then a manager again at Thoughtbot.
Matt Stauffer:
It was funny because ... So when I reach out to somebody and say, "Hey, I want you to be on this show." I don't say, "Here's what you should talk about." I say, "What do you want to talk about?" But often I like, "Here's a couple of ideas I have." It was so funny talking to you, being like, well, it could be this, this, that, the other, this or that, the other. There's so many aspects that you could have a fascinating conversation. I was like, I think I might need to introduce the idea of the same person coming on multiple times about different things. We picked one for today, but you got a lot going on and you were kind of like ... For those who weren't around in the beginning of the responsive design world, it was kind of like, it was introduced as a concept.
Matt Stauffer:
There was the one book, but then everybody was figuring it out as we went and it took a little while for it to be a little bit more accepted and systematized. I feel like, maybe it's just because I knew you, you were at the forefront because you were hanging out with all those people in Austin. You're like, "Oh yeah, when I was getting beers with Chris Corey the other day, whatever, and all these other people," but also you were a professor or whatever the technical term is.
Matt Stauffer:
You were an instructor. So you were connected to an institution. So you were kind of like ... It's just so funny because I was like, wait, I know Sameera. I know Sameera from ... I don't even know what class, bookmaking class or whatever it was. I was like, I know her from college, but you are really leading a lot of this how to teach and how to think about it organizationally.
Matt Stauffer:
So those are really cool moment, but now you're doing stuff at Thoughtbot, which is, if anybody doesn't know, is one of the premiere ... Is it still mainly Ruby these days?
Sameera Kapila:
Lots of Ruby design and mobile.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So Thoughtbot not only in terms of premiere in terms of that particular tech stack, but also just in terms of like, if you think about, at least from my perspective, companies that are innovating in how to do what we do as consultancies or as consultants as well, it's like Thoughtbot and 37signals have been two of the biggest leading people. So again, once again, now I'm like, oh, okay. Now you're big deal of Iron Yard, big deal of this. So anyway, I'm sorry. I'm just hyping you up because I think you're great.
Matt Stauffer:
So we've known each other for this long time. You are now a design director and you're working in some engineering management and stuff, which I know we're going to talk about, but I have one question I always want to ask the guests. Hopefully this works out well. Before we get into your topic, which is, do you have any sort of life mantra or phrase or idea that you try to live your life by? I know I just sprung this on you before we started, but does that pop anything into your brain?
Sameera Kapila:
Yeah, it does. I think because of that background timeline that I just shared that started in education, was weaving through education and just because we work on the web and it's still this young thing that can't even buy beer yet or something. It's evolving and it's growing and it's changing over time. I think the forever student mindset is something that's core to my bones.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Sameera Kapila:
Because that was ... For being a volunteer who just checks badges at the door and make sure the fire marshal isn't bad is why I ended up back in the web. When I say back, I mean like actually professionally, not MySpace pages. That's fascinating to me, that something ... The reason that you would volunteer was so that you would get a badge to everything else. To music and film and whatever else, and that the larger benefit was such a big life pivot, it's just being open to those things and being a forever student. There's always something to learn.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. This is not your mantra, but I did notice that both of those have to do with things that are ancillary to what you thought you were doing. So with South By, you were there for the music and for the shows but you didn't just focus on that. You saw an opportunity, you said, I'm going to try this other opportunity.
Matt Stauffer:
With school, you were like, "Well, I would really like to have this in-state tuition." They were like, "Can you teach?" You weren't there to be a teacher. You were there to learn, but you were like, yeah, there's this other opportunity. I'm going to try it out. So taking those different opportunities, it's both that you're learning, but also that you're just willing to try something different and see value in that and not be just stuck on one particular route. So I think that's really cool too.
Sameera Kapila:
I never thought of it that way. That's a really great point.
Matt Stauffer:
Look at this. We're discovering things. So transitioning to what we're actually talking about today. So you know this podcast, at least each episode, even if you're going to come back later, is about one particular topic that you're very passionate about. So could you tell me, what are we actually going to talk about today?
Sameera Kapila:
Sure. I think given that background history, I've been the type of person who is always going to try to weave those things together. So I think about education, I think about it in the schooling perspective, I think about it in onboarding new team members' perspective and how we grow, but then also understanding how organizations work and things that can change something.
Sameera Kapila:
That's been front of mind is leadership and specifically inclusive leadership. I know we talk about diversity and inclusion, but I look at this more as a way for people who do, and also don't have leadership titles and what they're empowered to do to make the workplace better, because it is just such a time that a lot of these things are reaching a point that we need to fix some things or we need to all be a part of that change.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Sameera Kapila:
So that's really what's been in the forefront of my mind.
Matt Stauffer:
I already have questions. So this is great. So I think most people understand the concept of diversity and some people have heard about diversity, equity, and inclusion, together as concepts or as a team or a person's role. I do think that the decision to use the word inclusive versus diverse is something that I think a lot of people haven't heard a backstory behind. So before I even talk about the specifics of how this applies in the leadership context, can you talk to me about what inclusivity means to you?
Sameera Kapila:
Inclusivity, I think is the more actionable word. Diversity is like, oh, diversity happened. There's this sort of ... I even remember in college getting the course brochures and it's like every type of student. It was like a United colors of Benetton catalog. That's the ... Yep, it's a diverse group of people, but inclusion and inclusivity is the work that it takes to get there and not just that people are invited in, but that in a workplace, in a classroom or within a four-year program, how are we retaining them? How are we setting them up for success? Not just throwing them into the mix and hoping that they succeed on their own.
Matt Stauffer:
So you're telling me that if I'm a white guy, which I am, running a company, which I am, it's not just good enough. I was saying this originally jokingly, but I'm actually turning into not a joke. If I'm running a company and I'm saying, oh my gosh, I have a primarily white or primarily male or primarily American or primarily straight or Christian or whatever else. It's not just enough to get the people in. There's more work to be done. Can you talk to me a little bit about that concept, because I'm sure that happens as a part of leadership, but tell me about what's the difference between just getting people in versus actually keeping them, like you said, understanding them.
Sameera Kapila:
I don't think people do this maliciously, but I think a lot of people think, maybe at a subconscious level, once we get more people in the door that are "diverse," then we've solved the problem, but wat happens is when they're the only minoritized person in that group of people, they're having to do extra work above their own job to fight for themselves, to share different perspectives and they have to go through a lot of calculations of, is this worth the risk? Does this risk my job for bringing this up? You hired someone to do a particular job and you're putting them in a scenario where they have to suddenly represent all of these other things and add even more to their job.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my goodness. There's so many good points in that. I hope this is the angle you wanted to go and stop me if it wasn't, but let's say ... I think I say this in part, because I get a lot of business owners and hiring managers who say, "Hey, we want to do this. How do we do it?" The problem is the answer's often like, well, first of all, we don't have the hiring pipeline, which is a whole different conversation, but let's say you can get the people in the door.
Matt Stauffer:
Sorry. Let's say you can get the people in the door. You mentioned some circumstances. One of the things that you mentioned was that if somebody comes in and they're one or one of few minoritized people, first of all, they're breaking new ground, like you said.
Matt Stauffer:
Second of all, they're a minority also in being a smaller number of people, but third of all, they're not the people in leadership positions. So they're getting all this responsibility put on them. So I think the question for me is where would you like to get started talking about how the existing people can be a part of making a change so that that's not a difficult experience for them. Does that have to start at the leadership level? Is this something that everybody can do? What is creating and fostering an environment that when your first minoritized person steps in, they're comfortable. What does that look like?
Sameera Kapila:
I think there is something that everyone can do. For an example, a lot of leadership and HR can review things like the benefits that are offered. Something like do our health care providers have mental health support? Does that work in a tele, whatever this remote life is right now? Is parental leave the same for all parents? Is it same for a biological child, adopted child, legal guardianship, et cetera?
Sameera Kapila:
What does paid leave look like? What does sick days look like? That's a part of that too, because people just have different perspectives or different things that they're dealing with in their life. Outside of HR, which, I mean, there's a lot of examples there, but leadership, they are the ones who can set the example.
Sameera Kapila:
So if someone who is marginalized, who are historically marginalized and has spoken over in a meeting, a leader has the responsibility to speak up and say, "Actually, before we continue, you were cut off. Can you finish your thought?" Or if someone takes an idea saying, "Actually this was so, and so's idea." That's the biggest thing that they can do is in the right moment, be the leader, because that basically gives permission to the rest of the team, that it is okay to support that team member.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Sameera Kapila:
Setting that example is the responsibility of leadership.
Matt Stauffer:
That is amazing. So I think that there's a couple pieces there. I'm going to use myself as an example, only because this was harder to learn than I expected. There's one piece that was hard for me to learn, which was, I'm a naturally people-pleasing, conflict-avoiding person. So stepping in when somebody has done something wrong, something I think we all ... Mildly wrong, but not easy to point to is something that I think we all have familiarity with.
Matt Stauffer:
Like somebody tells a mildly off-color joke, but it's not straight up wrong. It's just something that makes you a little uncomfortable. Developing the ability in those personal situations, say, to be the one who makes everyone uncomfortable and just be like, no, that was not cool. Then people are like, "Why are you messing with the vibe here," or whatever.
Matt Stauffer:
That's something that many of us have kind of just ... Especially those majority cultures have had to endure or have not yet endured, the experience of choosing to make yourself and your friends uncomfortable for the sake of doing the right thing in that moment. I feel like discomfort with conflict, that discomfort with speaking up, even if you think people are going to look at you, like why are you always making this a big deal or whatever, definitely applies in work situations.
Matt Stauffer:
I do think that people in leadership more often than not are also people from majority cultures or whatever else you want to call it, who have not yet experienced the need to be the one making things uncomfortable in that particular way. So I can certainly speak to the experience of just like, let's say, if you knew exactly what to do, there's going to be a part of you that just doesn't want to do it.
Matt Stauffer:
It feels like, oh, am I going to make this a big deal or whatever? Am I going to be the person who's always talking about class or race or sexual orientation or whatever when it's maybe not there. I think a lot of people needing to do that is one thing, but even knowing how to identify the problems when they're happening is another.
Matt Stauffer:
I think a lot of us are just unfortunately ignorant of what the negative experiences of being a marginalized person would be in a lot of those things. So I think I have a lot of people who, whether or not they're right when they say, "If I knew it was going on, I would actually speak up," but they literally would say like, "I don't even know what to look for."
Matt Stauffer:
You did give us a couple examples, like being spoken over somebody else taking credit for their work. Those are big ones. Do you either have A, some other examples or B, some ideas of how someone in that situation could go about like changing their life such that they are more ready to identify those things when they happen? Are there books or people to follow on Twitter or podcasts or other tools that they can use to start getting more ready to notice those things when they happen?
Sameera Kapila:
Absolutely. I think one of the largest parts that I've noticed in diversity and inclusion education or training is a lot of people didn't have a vocabulary for what to call those things. They may have been aware of it, but they didn't know that there was a word for it, and when you have a word for something, then you can look for solutions and Google or talk to other people about certain things.
Sameera Kapila:
So the two examples that I pose are a lot of times categorize under microaggressions. There are things that aren't the blatant exclusive or ism, racism, sexism, ageism. They're not the easiest to identify because they might be a backhanded compliment or something like someone getting cut off in a meeting, but the same thing that happens there with microaggressions is that if you see those and you're like, "Hey, something was off here," you can also assume good intent.
Sameera Kapila:
There's a few ways to tackle something like the microaggression. You could bring it up in that moment and say, "Hey, I know you didn't mean it this way," because that also gives that person the out to correct themselves rather than shaming them. "But when you interrupted so-and-so, we didn't get to hear their complete idea, and I'm so excited that you're excited, but I'd really love to hear the end of this. So, and so would you mind continuing?"
Sameera Kapila:
So that's a great way to not shame either of the parties and really bring it back on, I'd actually really love to hear more about this. Can you finish your thought? It's not shaming anyone. Then I think a lot of people think that because they didn't bring it up in the moment, the time has passed and what you can do as a team member is go up to that person say, "Hey, I know you were interrupted a lot in the meeting. In future meetings, would you like me to support you? I'd be happy to. Is it okay if I go talk to the other person without naming you in saying that I noticed that they were cutting you off a lot?"
Sameera Kapila:
So you're making sure with people's boundaries that they're okay with that and someone may say, "No, I don't want you to talk to them. I'd prefer to keep my head down or next time I'll fight for myself." You're giving them the choice and asking them for permission to help rather than forcing that help on them.
Matt Stauffer:
White knighting a little bit. I love that.
Sameera Kapila:
Yeah, which only makes us feel good. So with things like that, there are a lot of examples of once you learn these words, there's a lot of resources online. There's a lot of diversity coaches and trainers. Actually, I know you didn't mean it this way, or I think you didn't mean it this way, came from a diversity trainer that I've worked with in the past and it's just a great way to work through the scary parts or the conflict parts, and just help nudge someone hopefully in the right direction. You're giving them a chance to correct themselves.
Matt Stauffer:
You're assuming the best intentions, like you said, which I love. So they're not thinking, oh, you think I'm terrible. Now I get need to get better. They're like, no, I think you're probably a very nice person and here's something I've learned at whatever.
Sameera Kapila:
I think a lot of ... A really important part of leadership and why I put most of the onus there is when those minoritized, first person to join the company from an underrepresented identity, actually I should say marginalized because it's been kind of done to them. They're expected a lot to educate everyone else, and that is not their job. Again, they were hired for a completely different tasks.
Sameera Kapila:
It is not their job to educate someone else on how they use a wheelchair or how they go about writing code with like a visual disability. So it's important for other people to step up and do that work, or at least ask for permission and not assume that that person wants to do the educating. So there's a lot of great resources on that online.
Sameera Kapila:
A lot of them specifically in the United States. There is a lot covered by ADA. There's a lot of examples on how to interview people with different identities. There's a lot, surprisingly, and in a lot of our government sites that tells you tips on how to have accommodations for certain interviewees and not to ask them questions like, "Well, how did you drive here when your leg is in a cast," and things like that.
Sameera Kapila:
It's really just about giving that best intention for it. "So tell me what you can bring to this job," and treat them like everybody else, because they know how to work with their identities better than anybody else.
Matt Stauffer:
That's amazing. So the question I'd asked you there was like, what could someone do? And what you just kind of said was there's endless resources. We'll try to link some of those in the show notes. I'll try to find some to link. I'll ask you for any that you love. I was just going to say, I'm sure you got a bunch, but I would say that end of the story, if somebody is looking, really truthfully, actively looking, I think it's safe to say that you can find resources out there teaching you how to do it.
Matt Stauffer:
I think a lot of it is that many of us find ourselves in a situation where we say we care about those things, but aren't willing to actually put effort into it. That's a much longer conversation that we certainly don't have time for today, unfortunately, but it feels to me like if it's something that we really recognize that someone can find themselves being this first person in the company and stepping into the first day and not feeling comfortable and easy, I think that a lot of it will naturally flow from there.
Matt Stauffer:
I think it's the presumption of, if it's comfortable for me, it's going to be comfortable for everybody else that maybe keeps us from doing that. I don't know if me saying that leads you anywhere, but is there anything you would want to say in response to that?
Sameera Kapila:
I think one of the first things that's taught in a lot of diversity training is about unconscious bias. Again, it's not about shaming people. It's about recognizing that there are some unconscious parts of ourselves that we're not aware of in how they may affect others. So the example that you pose, something that's comfortable for me would be comfortable for somebody else. That's an unconscious bias.
Sameera Kapila:
You were not aware of it, or you're assuming that it's the same and what unconscious bias impacts is there things ... Everybody has bias because of the way we were raised, something in society that told us something was normal or the way it should be. It assumes that everyone has best intentions and just didn't know another perspective. So a lot of the work that people can do can start with that.
Sameera Kapila:
There have been examples of things ... I think Harvard did implicit bias, which is another way to say unconscious bias, where it helps you catch certain things that you may have not noticed before. That covers race and gender and some other parts and you can do different things there. Some people don't like that test model, which there are going to be different examples of things out there, but doing any work in unconscious bias and really self reflecting on like, how did I act in that meeting?
Sameera Kapila:
Did I do anything to support anyone or asking for feedback from other people, which can be tough because sometimes people don't want to give you that difficult feedback either.
Matt Stauffer:
Or you don't want to receive that difficult feedback. That can be hard.
Sameera Kapila:
So I think there is a lot of self work of where could my biases be? Am I operating in a way that is harmful to somebody else, and just because ... I think another part is also just because someone else isn't saying it doesn't mean it isn't happening. People wait for the evidence. "Well, nobody told me."
Matt Stauffer:
The idea that there can be a cost to A, having to think about that all the time when you're also just trying to do your job, but then B, a cost of speaking up. My business partner, Dan and I, where always like, "Hey, we're totally open. You can talk to us about anything," but we learned very early on, thank God we learned, that just because we say that does not mean that people can feel comfortable saying anything to us.
Matt Stauffer:
We're still the ones who signed the paychecks. We're still the ones who give the progress reviews or whatever. So that's really helpful. One thing that has helped us is to have a person at the company whose job is to be available for all that stuff, who is not a supervisor, who is a known advocate for basically marginalized roles and stuff like that and who people have learned through a lot of their interactions, has no gain in putting somebody in a difficult situation and has direct access to me and Dan.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm really grateful for the person in that role and having that role as a concept in our company, because now we know that people can go to her much more comfortably than they can go to us a lot. So we're like, great, that's fine. As long as it gets to us eventually, and you all feel safe doing it. Are there any other systems or practices or roles that are a little bit less about personal reflection and a little bit more about systemic stuff where you're like, you know what, if every company did this, this particular more systemic thing, that would actually a really valuable thing?
Sameera Kapila:
There's a lot there. I'm glad that there is someone that people can go to, but at the same time, it is still you and Dan setting the tone, for sure.
Matt Stauffer:
We also still have the responsibility to ... That doesn't relieve us the responsibility of trying to fix ourselves. It's just one more tool hopefully in our toolkit. Hopefully.
Sameera Kapila:
I think another thing is when someone brings up those things, specifically, if they're coming from any marginalized identity, I think systemically right now, there's an assumption that just because they're bringing it up or they have the expertise in that diversity buzzword, because they brought up something that they're affected by that they want to be the ones to work on it. That is almost never true.
Sameera Kapila:
I know that's a big generalization for me to make, but why I think so strongly about this is that assuming that they want to own that is again, adding more work to their plate, and if they're coming to someone in leadership to bring those things up, that's them asking for help.
Matt Stauffer:
That's good.
Sameera Kapila:
I think one of the most powerful things that ever happened was there was another marginalized coworker and I bringing something up about the hiring process and we rehearsed our meeting together with each other. We had our notes ready and it's like, okay, well we'll split up the work because we were trained basically by the tech industry that if you bring things up, choose your battles because when you do, you're going to have extra work.
Sameera Kapila:
It was something that we, we believed in and we took things up and it was the first time either of us had someone say, "Thank you both so much for sharing that. That must have been such a burden." That acknowledgement was huge, and then our jaws dropped when they said, "This is my responsibility to fix it. So here's what my next steps are."
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. That is so good.
Sameera Kapila:
They got off the call and, and that person I stayed on Zoom and we're just like, wait, we can just go back to our work?
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Sameera Kapila:
And we were followed up with, as those actions were taken. So it's not just saying those things when someone brings that feedback up. It's what we do in meetings. It's setting the, okay, so here are action items from this meeting. Here's what we're going to get them done by. I'm going to follow up when I have more on this part and working through it from there.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. That was brilliant.
Sameera Kapila:
It's only happened once though.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, but it's cool because I think that if you think about people who've told the horror stories of what happens in their company when they bring things up, the first thing is, of course, does the person believe you and respond well, but then the next horror story is always, and then nothing happened. That's a very common one. So to hear the combination of those two done well is amazing. I feel like I want to talk to you for three hours and I just look up, I'm like, oh my gosh, has this really been 30 minutes already? I don't know if I'm going to stick with this 30 minute podcast thing. I don't want to bring this up.
Sameera Kapila:
I think we were jamming out to the intro for a bit.
Matt Stauffer:
We did for a real minute. In my head, I thought there was going to be a timer in this thing. Just so you know, there's no timer, but I think ... So anyway, I'll give us a couple more minutes. I have 1,000 questions, but I first want to make sure, what else about this topic did you hope we were going to be able to get to? Is there anything else on your mind?
Sameera Kapila:
There's a thousand things I could write there. That's tough. I mentioned to you I was thinking about our nine credit workshop class freshman year. That was kind of the weed out of art school, if you're not going to take it seriously class. Because if I recall, we had to do a project in each major that existed, also do the seminar class and it was like 12 hours of studio week and three hours of the seminar.
Sameera Kapila:
So I've been thinking about education a lot and just realizing how much of what we're taught in school isn't exactly inclusive either. I would've loved to have a class or within the web class even talk about accessibility.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my gosh, yeah.
Sameera Kapila:
We spent so much time talking smack about Comic Sans and it's one of the most legible fonts for kids because it's pictorial shapes, and that's how their memories forming at that time is very visually not by reading. I think it's up to age eight or nine. It's also a really helpful font for anyone with dyslexia.
Matt Stauffer:
Now that's what I have heard.
Sameera Kapila:
So we had this like, oh, it was cool to hate Comic Sans because that's what people talked about and we didn't actually get to like, how does design help people? It's our job-
Matt Stauffer:
What do we instead? It was like size 10 gray text that hardly anybody can read because it looks cool. It was like the exact opposite of what is actually useful for people.
Sameera Kapila:
Poster design class was about making a poster look cool, but does it work from across the street? Is it still a legible? What if someone's in a car? What if it's a billboard and how does height play into that? A lot of things that the ADA, when they're talking about signage design covers. There's a reason that certain signs, even for a door plate in a building that has a bunch of classrooms and it has braille on it, it's at a certain height so someone in a wheelchair can reach it as well.
Sameera Kapila:
There's all of this stuff that we never really covered and even in our history, it was so Eurocentric and graphic design only starts really with Gutenberg press. There's so many more examples of it. I think like sometime in this past year, or maybe who knows? What is time? Sometime in the last five years, maybe, I think they uncovered some stuff under the big Pompeii explosion and found a food cart that a lot of the tile work at the front of it represented what food was made by it.
Sameera Kapila:
It was such a cool visual system that it felt really matched with iconography and the way that we talk about making an icon set, because they all a similar background, they all had the same grout distance between tiles. There was a system there. We should be talking about those things and we should be talking about design from a more worldly perspective. Those are things that I've been thinking is like design education needs a little bit of a rebrand or not a rebrand, just kind of a overall.
Matt Stauffer:
Maybe like a rebuild from the ground up kind of situation.
Sameera Kapila:
I think if that happens in school, then that starts to change our industry, but we could have those conversations in book clubs or design growth and lunch and learn meetings at work too.
Matt Stauffer:
I think that's super valuable. One of the things that I've found is that at least in the programming world, some of the most influential teachers don't come up with new ideas themselves, but they find ideas that are in a different discipline or even in our world, I work in PHP and one of the guys who's been most influential in our particular world goes to the Ruby world and says, "What are they doing there?"
Matt Stauffer:
Then contextualize it in PHP and we go, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing," and all the Rubyists are like, "Yeah, we've been doing that for a while." It's very interesting for me because if you were to imagine that someone weren't to need to feel this pressure to be super innovative, but instead say like, "As a designer, how can I be the designer that understands just what came from Pompeii, just what came from China, just what came from Brazil or something like that? What are the things I can do to just bring these contextual ideas or historic ideas or whatever that have been known and studied for ages, but it wasn't a part of my American or Eurocentric art education. How can I bring those into the general populace of designers," and just that.
Matt Stauffer:
Be a archeologist, historian, sociologists, cultural, whatever, ethnologist and just do that. Is there space for that right now? Someone not even having to reform the entire education system, but just to make it exciting, make it accessible to people. It's a really interesting idea.
Sameera Kapila:
There's a group of people that are doing the BIPOC design history. I'm trying to remember the link, but I'll get you the link and last year they did a whole series on African-American and African influence in design. So a lot of protest art, a lot of texture, a lot of color and I think they just announced their Latin American history course, and this is online and you can take this.
Matt Stauffer:
I love this. That's awesome. All right, because I am trying to wrap it. I don't want to wrap it. I would say, I think that I have one unexpected question for you, which is going to try and make you even shrink things down even more. If I am either a designer or a programmer and I don't own a company, but I want to be a part of making change at the company I work at.
Matt Stauffer:
So we've talked about the industry a little bit, but if I want to make change at the company I work at to make it such that when I do have, or if we already do have coworkers who are minoritized in the company and also in the industry, what is a couple things that I can do practically?
Matt Stauffer:
One of the things you talked about was just reflection internally, but are there any ... I don't want to call them easy steps because they don't need to be easy, but can we say, "At least to do this and this. At least. Here's your baseline." Are there any things that come easy to you or is it more, you really just got to figure out what it is for you?
Sameera Kapila:
I think the group setting parts really matter. So whether that person is talked about when they're not there and it is that sort of like, that was a really kind of awful joke and it didn't harm them directly but having that conversation with that person and sometimes that needs to happen with that water cooler conversation. It's using those opportunities in group settings to speak up and you can say it from your perspective.
Sameera Kapila:
You don't have to say, "You harmed so-and-so," because that's maybe not what someone said. It's again, going back to that, you may have not meant it this way, but the way that I'm interpreting this is really harmful towards that person. So I think that has a lot of power is bringing those up in group settings, whether the person harmed by that behavior is there or not.
Sameera Kapila:
There's so many different things, but if you have ideas or things that you want to bring up, having conversations with other people and seeing how they feel about it, having conversations about salaries informally and seeing if everybody's being paid in an equitable way and then banding together to work through larger things. I think a lot of group work, outside of that self-reflection can be really powerful and impactful. It helps set an example. It helps you feel like you're not the only one fighting for something. That can do a lot and people can bring a lot of different perspectives into it that we wouldn't have considered.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I think I'm going to take that to transition to my last question for you, which has a little bit of relevance because I want to know from everybody what it was that helped them get where they are. When we were talking about what topic we're going to do, one of the things I said to you, because I want other people to hear this is, I don't want to just say, "Hey, you know what? I've got a woman of color in my podcast. I'm going to ask her to talk about inclusion or whatever."
Matt Stauffer:
That was a decision that you made of your own volition and I'm glad you did, but I think that because you do happen to be a woman of color who've come up in this industry, this question I hope to ask everybody is particularly insightful, which is what insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people will give to others. When we were talking earlier, one of the things I said was, it doesn't have to be when you were younger like a kid, it could have been when you were coming up in the industry. So I'm curious as you've been thinking about that question. What comes up for you?
Sameera Kapila:
I think sometimes we all get a little bit too busy with our jobs to mentor and support others and mentorship could be towards students, or it could be that volunteer walking in from a green room, and that's really how it started. I remember one of those people was Jeffrey Zeldman who I was walking, he was like, "Oh, so you're in grad school. So what are you learning? What do you know about the web?" That's how that conversation started and he stayed in touch for a year just to be like, "How are you doing? Do you need anything? Do you have questions?"
Sameera Kapila:
Having people like him, and a lot of the happy cog folks and parable folks that were local to Austin asking themselves, "Hey, do you want us to come talk to students? Do you want us to look at portfolios?" That was hugely impactful.
Sameera Kapila:
They were actively trying to bridge the gap and some of them maybe hadn't been speakers before and it helped them build confidence to speak. So it actually helped both sides. It helped students who ended up being apprentices or interns at their companies, gain their confidence and they got to know people and be industry that when they went to their first meetup, they were like, "Hey, I know that person, they reviewed my portfolio. I feel safe enough to go up to them."
Sameera Kapila:
So I think paying it forward or passing it forward has so much more of an impact than people think that it can. I think also for a lot of managers or what I wish was taught to anyone becoming a manager, I think we were to assume that because a job description is written, everyone must fit that cookie cutter.
Sameera Kapila:
What I learned at The Iron Yard was that the more differences there are between your team, the better. So when I look at hiring, I'm looking for the gaps that exist on my team and for a role that they have to be the designers who code, I am trying to grow a team that, one is really good at consulting. Another might be really good at code and can go into heavy Ruby stuff.
Sameera Kapila:
Another one could be an incredible illustrator and need to work on some HTML and CSS. So I think instead of looking at job roles as this cookie cutter, try to get maybe half of the things met or really look at where the gaps are on the existing team so that everyone has those different perspectives. That's a part of building a diverse team in terms of skillset too.
Matt Stauffer:
That's really cool and really great.
Sameera Kapila:
Code schools are not bad. Code schools are really good. Graduates from there should be considered as much as a four year person, a two year community college person or a self-taught person.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. So if somebody thinks that you're amazing and brilliant, I will be linking your website ... Of course, they will. I'll be linking your website and your Twitter and everything like that in the show notes, but is there anything else that you would love someone to do to follow you, support you, or just be involved in something that you're really passionate about that you think they should go do? Basically, how can we follow you? How can we pay you money? How can we support you with the things you care about?
Sameera Kapila:
Honestly, Twitter and my site are probably the best at this point. I think with the pandemic, writing has just generally been hard. So I think I have like a January 1st and a January 2nd of 2021 post, but that's about it, and really a lot of Twitter is just telling people about my dog or yelling about Texas politics. Those really are probably the places I am the most. Those would probably be the best.
Matt Stauffer:
All right. Well those will be linked, but it is samkapila.com and @SamKap on Twitter and check the show notes for those. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you just realized you wanted to say, or are you feeling good for today?
Sameera Kapila:
Well, I already said go Gators.
Matt Stauffer:
Come on.
Sameera Kapila:
Although I haven't watched a game in forever-
Matt Stauffer:
Me neither, but I still wear-
Sameera Kapila:
I think nothing else is coming to mind, but I am so excited that you asked and I'm so glad that we could catch up, especially because like you said, we've known each other half of our lives. The first time I realized that you and I were both in that web world, I was like happy hand clapping. This is so cool.
Matt Stauffer:
I showed all my friends, I was like, "I know her." Okay. Awesome. Well, Sameera, I really, really, really appreciate you being willing to ... And I said this at the beginning, but to take a risk on this new thing. You've never heard any episodes of this podcast and you're willing to jump on it. Thank you so much and of course, I appreciate your friendship over the years and everything you're doing for our community. Everybody go follow her, go check out everything she does and she's great. So until next time, be good to each other.