Max Western & Kilaa Slaughter-Scott: Connected

We start our exploration into living the PDXWIT values with Max Western and Kilaa Slaughter-Scott. At PDXWIT we believe in nurturing our community through career growth and opportunities, mentorship, and skill-building events in a way that is authentic, clear, accessible and relatable. Kilaa and Max are both co-chairs of Cambia Employee Resource Groups.

Our guests share their experiences building community where none previously existed. Max Western shares their community efforts through their time spent at the kettlebell gym and work with Smyrc. Kilaa Slaughter-Scott volunteers within her community on the board of North by North East Community Health Center as well as being an involved and enthusiastic mother. Enjoy this community focused episodes as we bring awareness to initiatives we’d like to learn more about.

Transcript

Podcast Intro

Megan Bigelow: Welcome to Breaking The Glass Ceiling, a PDXWIT podcast. I'm Megan Bigelow, the founder and board president of PDXWIT. We interview people to dig below the surface of their achievements and challenges, showcasing the story behind the story. We believe that focusing on the person and humanizing their lived experiences will help us shape the future of tech. 

Dawn: Hi, and welcome to the second season of Breaking the glass ceiling, a PDXWIT podcast. A couple of things have changed since our last episode. The first thing you might notice

Dawn & Kimberly: our voices. 

Kimberly: Starting the season you'll be joining me, Kimberly Embry, a podcast interviewer and Technical Support engineer that uses she/her pronouns.

Dawn: I'm Dawn Mott, podcast interviewer and producer. I work as a software developer coming from non-traditional background into tech. I also use she/her pronouns. Joining the podcast team this season, we have April Leonard (she/her), our podcast lead. She works as an engineering manager. And Max Ono (he/him) returning as our podcast audio engineer, who works as a software engineer. 

Kimberly: It is important for us at PDXWIT to highlight values we want to promote in our community. With this, each episode will be tied to our values and vision as an organization.

Dawn: On the last episode of Breaking the Glass Ceiling, we met with Megan Bigelow, our founder and board president. Megan introduced us to the five core PDXWIT values. If you haven't heard that episode, be sure to check it out. 

Kimberly: Today, we're going to talk about Community. For us at PDXWIT, this means nurturing our community through career growth opportunities, mentorship, and skill-building events in a way that is authentic, clear, accessible, and relatable. And today, we have a very special episode because we have not only one, but two guests. 

Dawn: Max Western and Kilaa Slaughter. 

Kimberly: They have found and created a community for themselves and others in and out of the workplace. 

Dawn: First, we're going to meet Max Western. Max works as senior experience design manager strategist at Cambia, who uses they/them pronouns. They also hold the co-chair role of Cambia’s Pride Employee Resource Group, or ERG, as we might refer to during this episode. Hi Max.

Max: Hello. 

Dawn: Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. 

Max: Thank you for having me. 

Dawn: Yeah, I'm super stoked you are here with us at Cast Iron Coding. We really appreciate them letting us use this space. We're super excited that you're here to share your experience around Community, specifically around ERG’s informal communities. Before we get into that, let's get to know Max. Can you give our listeners a bit of intro and maybe talk about how you wound up in the tech industry? Maybe some about your role today? 

Max: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. I have a little bit of a unique story. So, I got my bachelor's degree in Psychology and then moved down to Boston. I was living up in Maine and started working at the Boston Children's Hospital. And what I figured out pretty quickly is that what drives me is understanding people and making better systems for them. And so after working at Boston Children's Hospital as a clinical quality improvement researcher for four years, I decided to go get my master's degree in digital experience design. 

So, I moved across the pond to the UK for 6 months and got my master's degree in digital experience design from a school called Hyper Island, and the whole focus of Hyper Island is looking at experience-based learning. So we would have industry leaders come in, give us projects and then we would work on real client briefs. So it was a lot of really hands-on experience very quickly. So six months taught, and then four months anywhere in the world— and despite my best efforts of staying abroad, which is I really wanted to do—I came back to the States and ended up in Portland, sight unseen, expecting to only be here for two months, and it is now three and a half years later, and I am still here. So, obviously I like it a little bit and I found myself looking for the intersection of design research and technology. And so I got a job with Cambia two and a half years ago as the very fancy job title “experience design strategist,” and within that I have been looking at how do we create better systems and better user experiences for people. 

Kimberly: Max, you mentioned in the beginning of your wonderful introduction about understanding people and about building better processes?

Max: Systems for them.

Kimberly: Thank you for the correction. I think that is a really good segue into our topic on community. So we'd first like to ask you what does community mean to you. 

Max: I see Community showing up in a couple of different ways. The first is you know, your personal life and how you make that Community. When I moved to Portland, I literally knew nobody, and so I immediately started looking once I decided I was going to live here for more than two months. I started thinking about how “do I build and create Community,” because I saw this as an opportunity to really shape what that looked like for me in a way that I hadn't done before. 

The second area that I see is, just your professional community of primarily those people that you work with day to day, because we spend 40 hours at least at our jobs, and it's really important to have a sense of community at your workplace, because you see these people often more time during the week than you get to see your family or your friends. 

And then the third is that Community outside of work, but it's still kind of that professional development, so thinking about “how do I build my network of people so that I am continually learning, and I'm continually growing professionally, and you know, looking for jobs.” That was how I found a job in Cambia, through a series of different connections. That led me to meeting my boss Meg Dryer through just random randomness, right, and in the end without knowing people it would have been impossible for me to actually know that this is a job I was interested in—and also get the job, probably, to some extent. I think especially in Portland, it's much more of a “who you know city” than a “what you know city.” 

So, when I started working at Cambia, I really started focusing on “how do I build community—especially around LGBTQ folks—being that I'm a non-binary person and spent a good amount of time initially struggling to get people to know how to use my pronouns and using my pronouns?” It made me realize that I needed Community within work, and I needed people who were willing to stand up for me and be supportive and be accomplices with me and making Cambia a better place to work for trans folks. 

So I took on the role of co-chair just over a year ago of our pride year ERG because I wanted to start creating and cultivating community within Cambia because I recognize that even though Portland is a pretty liberal city, there still are people who are very much against the LGBTQ community. Cambia has locations in Washington, Idaho, Utah and Oregon and we have LGBTQ folks in each of those areas and especially in areas like Lewiston, Idaho, or Medford, Oregon those communities are not as robust as they are in Portland and so when I became a co-chair, my co-chair Amanda and I decided that we really wanted to start focusing on building the building community within each of those locations. So, we started by asking people to be community leaders and hosting in-person events and making sure that it wasn't just, you know, little pictures on the screen that you were seeing of people that you're actually building these in-person relationships, so that you have a sense of community and can know who to go to when you're having a hard day and when you're not feeling supportive or you're feeling really frustrated. 

Dawn: That sounds really great. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about how to maybe get started if you don't feel a sense of community where you are. How did you take that first step? 

Max: That's a great question and it’s really hard as an adult to find community and I think that it's one of those things where you know growing up you're in school for however many years. So, you instantly have friends or I have always played sports. So you instantly have friends and you instantly have the sense of community and when I moved to Portland, my sister had a friend of a friend who I met up with for coffee and I was like literally anyone that you know, I will meet them. I was desperate for friendship and it was like we may not like each other but I'm going to go to this event with you or I'm going to, you know, start to grab a beer. 

Basically, starting to build these connections because as I met certain people, then they would introduce me to their friends and they would introduce me to their friends. And eventually I started to find people that I started to connect with and I found a gym that I absolutely love. Bleeding Heart Kettlebells and that has been a really great sense of community for me because I go there. I feel like I'm at home. I have my friends there. I get a kick ass workout. But then we also have this huge commitment to the community. We do an arm wrestling competition to raise money for SMYRC, which is a local organization. We're constantly doing different fundraisers so that it's not just you go there and you work out and you go home, but you go there you work out and you also build community. I've seen that it's a very long process and there are definitely points in time where I feel like community is really strong for me and there are points in time where I don't feel that strong sense of community. I start to question, you know, do I even have community here? And those are the things that I re-evaluate pretty frequently and what is the shape of community that I want to have. Who gets to be part of that? Then there's also this whole professional development side of it as well and looking at you know, how do I find community within professional development? 

I think it's pretty easy to say that trans folks are not a huge majority in technology and we talked about this a little bit earlier, but that going to events such as Women in Tech events where I know that this is an inclusive space, but inherently in that name “Women in Tech”, it feels exclusionary to me and it was something that I've really struggled with as a non-binary person of feeling like I was giving up a community by being non-binary that I no longer fit into the women area and I don't get that support network, which historically I had three years ago. I felt like I could fit into that space, but now I don't feel that as much and and a lot of that has to do with my gender presentation in my pronouns and consistently being read as cis-man. 

Finding that community where I have a network of people who look like me and have similar interests is hard. It's not something that comes naturally and it takes a lot of work. 

Kimberly: So, what are you doing currently support the transgender community, especially in work places? 

Max: The past two and a half years since I started working at Cambia. I have become a huge advocate for the trans community within my own company. Obviously, I have a lot of self interest in making Cambia a better place for trans folks, but I'm also passionate about helping other organizations learn how to be supportive to their trans employees. 

Within Cambia, I have done a lot of different things we brought in an outside speaker Tristan Reese, to do a trans 101 so that I wasn't the one having to do all of the emotional labor that we were actually paying somebody to educate people because I think that's an important thing that we often forget is that employees will volunteer to help support and make this organization better, even when it's not their jobs and it's not a formal process. So, bringing somebody in externally really was nice to not make it about me and make it about, we need to be better to all Trans folks rather than here's Max telling you that you need to treat them better. 

We’ve also pushed our organization to create a multi stall gender-neutral bathroom because we only had one gender neutral bathroom in the building that I'm in and it became a stress point of I drink a lot of water. So, I pee a lot and have to go into the bathroom and feel really uncomfortable and everyone deserves the right to pee where they feel comfortable. So, working on how do we make that not awkward for cisgender folks, which was a huge concern originally within our organization. You know, but what about, a man and a woman peeing next to each other? And I'm like well Trans folks are peeing next to whoever, so let's focus on making it better for them. 

Additionally, I had been focusing a lot on making our health insurance company better for Trans folks. It started with hosting a Trans 101 panel to bring to light some of the issues that are experienced within the Trans community and especially around healthcare needs and lack of access and lack of providers. From that work, it really was a catalyst to helping our organization think about how we better serve this Trans population. I've done research within the Trans community to say, “Where are we falling short and where are health insurance companies falling short?” How do we create a better system for you? And how do we make it so that calling your health insurance provider isn't super anxiety-provoking because you're worried about being dead named or misgendered. So, within that we have been working to create a transgender team within our customer service department. So that trans folks will have somebody to call when they need to understand their benefits or get something approved. 

I see all of this work really being important because transgender issues are coming up consistently across all sorts of different platforms. It's coming up in a lot of workplaces in social media, media, and in the news all the time. What I've seen from the work that I've been doing in Cambia is that there is just a lot of curiosity within our country right now around, “What does it mean to be trans?” Why are people trans? And also, “How do I support them?”

What I see within that is a lot of fear. Fear of using somebody's wrong name or misgendering them or not knowing how to treat them, or even basic things; is it a trans man? or is it a trans woman? or they’re a woman, but are they woman? There’s a lot of confusion and fear because transgender people are taking one of the things that is very deeply rooted in our society, which is gender. That is the first thing that you learn about a person often before they're even born of do they have a penis or do they have a vagina and then we set up a lot of social stereotypes of what that person is going to do. 

To tell somebody that that mental model that they've been working with for their entire life is shifting is really concerning to a lot of people and creates a lot of fear. I see my role is trying to understand where people are at and recognizing that there is so much fear and that fear is creating a lot of division within our country right now to be totally honest. I think one of the main reasons why there's so much hate is that it's rooted in fear. Fear of the unknown and fear of being different and fear of other people being different. 

So, how do I take a different approach and how do I make it about, we’re all humans and were just people. That's what we need to be focusing on is, we're people and being able to share my story and being able to talk to people about things in a way that they'll ask really inappropriate questions or say really, you know, “the trans community needs to come up with different pronouns for gender neutral rather than they/them”, and be able to understand and have that conversation without getting irate.  

Then helping people think through, why is this the way it is and how do we think differently so that they're not going to be as angrier and is fearful that they start to understand and that I'm a trans person and not this two-headed monster. I'm not this big scary person that I'm just a person who's funny and has hobbies outside of just being trans. 

I focused a lot of energy on how we help people know how to support trans people and that means telling them how to correct somebody when they see somebody getting misgendered. Having them recognize that that's not going to feel comfortable and that they need to be aware of their own discomfort because the discomfort that a cis-person is feeling about correcting somebody about a trans person being misgendered is not even close to the discomfort that the transgender person is feeling. We need to understand that and that it's also important to recognize that you're not expected to be the expert and that it's okay to ask questions. It's okay not to know things and that it's okay to make mistakes as well and you just have to recognize that when you make a mistake that you need to correct yourself and you need to not make that an apology train all about you and all about your feelings. “Oh my God. I'm so sorry that I missed gendered you. I really didn't mean to, I just made a mistake.” How to apologize in a way that doesn't make the trans person actually feel worse about your mistake. 

Dawn: Thank you for sharing that. I know that I can take that with me and I believe that we can all take that home with us. Thank you for joining us today Max. Thank you for all the work that you do in the community. Thank you for breaking it down getting real with us. 

We'd like to take a moment to thank breaking the glass ceiling sponsor, Kiva.

Kimberly: Kiva is an international nonprofit working to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive.  More than 80% of the borrows Kiva serves around the world are women. They are headquartered here in Portland, Oregon and are hiring Engineers to work on blockchain and Marketplace projects. Learn more at kiva.org/careers.

Dawn: In the second half of this episode. We're going to continue this topic with Kilaa Slaughter Scott. She is an experience design project manager and the co-chair of the African-American employee Resource Group at Cambia. 

Kimberly: Thank you for joining us today. So before we get into our topic on community, we'd like to get to know you a bit more. So, if you could give our listeners a little bit of an intro on you how you wound up in the tech industry and also the role that you have today.

Kilaa: Sure, how I ended up in tech is actually pretty humorous at this point. You know, the old saying is that you make all these plans but we have a higher power of who actually controls all those plans. I have an extensive background in the healthcare industry. I've been with Cambia for over 13 years. The majority of that time has been on the health plan side. I got to a point in my career after going back to school and taking a lot of course work on sociology, really learning, understanding communities and society. At that time I was in sales and I realized that I no longer wanted to do that and through the course of my career it was often guided by others telling me things that I was great at things that I should be doing. 

Finally I had to really lean in and listen to my voice. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. So I met with some people within my organization and they asked me, “have you ever thought about doing project management?” I've managed a lot of big RFPs and did a lot of implementation and you know big management of fulfilling RFPs. I'm like project management, okay, tell me more about it and is in the tech industry and I said, say what? I don't know anything about tech but that person but you know how to do this, you know how to do that. You don't need to know how to be an engineer because we have engineers. We need you to manage this project from start to finish and make sure that they're delivered on time, that you're removing any blockers, and that we're reaching milestones and you know how to do that very well. 

So then I went home and I really looked into the tech industry and I saw an under-representation of people of color and I said, this is a problem. I'm going to be a part of the solution. I’m in. So, I got into the tech industry that way. 

Kimberly: That is a super powerful statement. I just want to circle back on that of being part of the solution and your ability to identify that problem, and beyond identifying it or complaining about it as some or most of us probably end up doing, you wanted to be a part of that solution and of being a part of that solution, I think ties in well with our topic on community so first what does community mean to you?

Kilaa: To me, community means belonging. Everyone wants to belong to something when you're born into this world belonging to your family. It starts there. Unfortunately, some people have really rough upbringings and they don't get that sense of belonging even with family. Outside of your family is your community. So, when I think about community, it means belonging. My community is my family outside of my family, going outside of that door, that community, and then there's also a professional community. One of the big things that has humbled me in life is having a strong sense of community. 

It started with my upbringing in my household growing up in a two-parent household in African-American family was not normal. When I looked around a lot of my friends and family members came from single-parent homes and I grew up in an area in Portland, Oregon. I was born and raised in Alameda. It's a district that was red lined. My parents were one of the first African American families to buy a home in that community. So, I've always been in a position where I was the only for the minority. Already, but I had to really lean into that community because that community was my home base.

My friends, my neighbors, and wonderful people who are lifelong friends who are like family. I also had a community where I really needed that sense of belonging and that community is where I met friends and I have my family and we had a black community here in Portland, Oregon. We were located in northeast Portland prior to gentrification. We don't have a hub like we used to. I think about going to my grandmother's house on Cleveland and Fremont and you knew every single person who lived on those blocks within a mile radius and they knew you. They knew your family. If you did something three blocks away by the time you got back to your grandma's house. She already knew it happened. Because of gentrification that community no longer exists in the way that it used to and so I think that social media has now been the gathering place for that community. 

But again, there's multiple communities. There is my community where I feel that sense of belonging and that safety net. I think aside from belonging, a safety net a safe space is very very essential to a community because having the community you should feel safe and that is one of the most important parts of the communities that people are able to put their arms around you and make you feel safe. So with having that safe place within the community, it's important that that safe place lives in every single community that you have built around your life. 

Dawn: And how do you go about finding that type of safe space in your work? 

Kilaa: I think that it really has a lot to do with the organization that you work for and the culture of that organization fortunately for me. I work at Cambia Health Solutions who has a very rich culture and part of that culture is family and can be very intentional about making it a safe workplace that is built around community. I am the community involvement chair for our African American employee resource groups. We have other resource groups like Pride that Max is co-chair of, we have Hola, we have Military and Care, as well as the Women's Employee Resource Group. It's really important for organizations to make sure that they do have Employee Resource Groups, so that way people from different communities can also find a safe space within a large organization. 

Being a chair of the African American Employee Resource Group and the community involvement chair, I have a unique opportunity where I'm really able to connect Cambia with the community and the community of color and African-American community in Portland. I'm able to bring awareness to events. I'm able to bring awareness to causes and may not be on Cambia’s radar. 

So, I've been able to establish a relationship with the Cambia foundation, human resources, and other areas in our organization to bring light and connect the dots and the community of color and to our company. Our company has been phenomenal in supporting a lot of these organizations that are within the community of color. One that's near and dear to my heart in particular, I sit on the board for North by Northeast Community Health Center. North by Northeast Community Health Center is the only health clinic and organ that focuses on healthy outcomes of African American Health. They have a cuts and checks program where they actually go into the barber shops, the black barber shops, and they go meet people where they're at. While the brothers are giving their haircuts, they check their blood pressure, look for pre-existing things to catch it before it comes in to become something catastrophic, and they create a place that is safe in the community because we're people who within our community, the community of color may not necessarily always feel safe going to the doctors, they come to them. So, I really appreciate that can be a step up and support organizations like North by Northeast. 

Kimberly: Thank you for sharing all of that Kilaa, and all of the work that you've been a part of especially Cambia. I want to segue into the importance of community and you mentioned earlier about having that safety net. What other positive effects do you see the community bringing yourself and other people?

Kilaa: Absolutely, the positive effects that you see within a safe community gives people the opportunity to be themselves authentic selves. When you are being who you truly are that is when you are at your best and that is when you're at your healthiest. Oregon is one of the whitest states in the country and so there is a lack of diversity and a lot of under-representation in many areas in this city and in the state, so it shows up in the workplace. Often, there are a lot of people of color who are in workplaces and their divisions. They might be the only person of color or it might be one or two and it's really hard to understand what that feels like if you are not in that position. 

Often, a lot of times people of color are conforming on a daily basis or conforming to fit in within groups within an organization. That is exhausting and there's also a lot of studies that show health-wise how it has a negative impact on health when you're having to conform all the time. It's important for people to start being able to see people of color for who they are instead of expecting them to conform. You can be professional without having to conform. 

So, how do you bring your authentic selves to work? And how is that appreciated and celebrated? That is about changing workplace culture. It's also important industries like tech where there is a big lack of diversity under-representation is for people and these organizations to start seeing people beyond what's in front of them. 

When you think about hiring and doing inclusive hiring, organizations have to be more intentional about it. Now you do that is to come up with a strategic plan of connecting with communities to be intentional about inclusive hiring. Take a look at what's on your job applications requirements and think about changing the language of that because there is code switching when you talk about the language who perform from culture to culture. If you are able to expand on life experiences as being part of qualifications to be fit for a job, you can teach how to do it to learn how to do a job once they're in that position unless it’s for a specific field like engineering, or a doctor, or a lawyer. If a person has soft skills, you cannot teach soft skills necessarily, but you can teach a person how an organization does a particular role. Allowing someone to come in and say, hey we're willing to do some on the job coaching and training to teach you how we do it here and how you can be successful and provide that support around that person. 

I've had the opportunity to work with our wonderful human resources staff and have discussions about holistic recruitment. When we think about our recruitment efforts, we have to look beyond the matchy matchy. This person went to this school, they have this level of education, they have this level of requirements that they meet for the actual job. We have to look beyond that, especially bringing talent to a city like Portland in a state like Oregon. When we bring talent here. You gotta think about people who are going to be relocating, not just relocating themselves, but also relocating their entire family and we want to make sure that there is a sense of community here. If I looked at if I was living in a city like DC and I got recruited to come work in Oregon or Atlanta automatically and if I look at it, if I’m matching apples to apples. If it’s the same job title in Atlanta the same job title in Oregon. Typically they are going to want to work in Atlanta because they know that there is a community of color that looks like them as representative of them. For Oregon, in order to get those types of recruits here, we have to take a more holistic approach and say hey, we have a community here and we have to bring people out to connect with them to say this is that community this is where you can find that community. 

These are the places that you go get your hair done. This is a barber shop where you go get your haircut. These are schools that your children could go to, this is the place where we all get together and connect. So it's really a holistic approach to diversify. Not only the tech industry will all industries here in the city. 

Dawn: And do you think that starts by having a variety of people of all colors of all genders sitting on the boards and doing the welcoming? How do we get our companies open to this kind of thinking? 

Kilaa: Well, you have to have it reflected within your organization. So you start really doing the work inside you start really being honest you talk to people in the community and you have to hire people within the community. Even if that means creating jobs to where they are a connector of community in order to funnel other positions down those networks to get people into your organization. 

That is some of the work that I'm actually doing and I talked earlier about being solutions-based. We know that this is a problem, but I'm not here to spend a lot of time around the problem. The problem has been identified. I'm here to bring solutions to the problem. It's working to bring solutions of how organizations can do a better job of diversifying their organization and their networks. 

Kimberly: Thank you for sharing your experience and all of your perspectives focused on community. We want to wrap up this episode and as breaking the glass ceiling tradition would have it. We've got to ask both of you Max and Kilaa a question. 

Kimberly & Dawn: What is your favorite life? Hack Kela. Let's start with you. 

Kilaa: My favorite life hat is honestly, I'm a dope mom, I get it done. Okay, I do not play. Maybe that's the project manager in me. Maybe it is the organization in me, but I get it done. I am a mom, I am a wife, I am a career woman. I am creative and I do all of these things and I get it done.

Kimberly:  Get it done, and Max. What is your life hack? 

Max: My life hack is well, I don't own a car and so I am only on a bike and that means that grocery shopping is like my thing that I take a lot of pride in. Including getting a watermelon on my bike back home and I used to live in northeast Portland and Fred Meyers has the cheapest watermelon. So I would put it on my handlebars so it couldn't necessarily fit in my backpack. I would put it on the handlebars and carry and get it all the way home. And so I pride myself in the most obscure things that I can carry on a bike anywhere that I need to go. 

Dawn: That's amazing and hopefully I ever need a ride you're biking by and I can just jump on those handlebars and keep on going. Thank you both so much Max and Kilaa. Thank you for being here with us today. Thank you podcast team for helping put this together and thank you for listening. If we didn't have listeners. What would this be? 

Thank you to our sponsor Kiva who has helped students pay for tuition women start businesses Farmers invest in equipment and families afford needed Emergency Care on the next episode of breaking the glass ceiling will be meeting with Natalie Ruiz. Chief executive officer at answer connect Natalie is a prime example of how being authentic can catapult your career and inspire others to be brave enough to do the same. 

PDXWIT is a 501c3 non-profit with the purpose of encouraging women non-binary and underrepresented people to join tech and supporting and empowering them so they stay tech.

Find out more about us at www.pdxwit.org.