Jelani Memory: Making Things that Matter

On this episode of Humanizing Tech, we were joined by Jelani Memory, CEO and Founder of A Kids Book About. Jelani’s company publishes books to help kids and their grownups have honest conversations about things that matter. He authored the first book in the series, A Kids Book About Racism. We discussed that magic time before age 9 where kids and parents are reading together, how parents can become co-learners alongside their kids, and how reading these challenging, empowering and important books to our kids can ultimately enable them to lead better lives. Listen in to hear why our kids are more ready for these conversations than we realize. Learn more about Jelani’s work and find his books at A Kids Book About.

Transcript

Introduction: 

Welcome to Humanizing Tech. 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. Humanizing tech is brought to you by Kiva. 

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Anusha Neelam: Hi everyone. Before we get started, we want to acknowledge the ground we're all on wherever we're tuning in from PDXWIT has events all over Portland, Oregon, and beyond. And we want to pause to acknowledge the history of the area and work towards decolonization of the tech industry. Portland rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Cathlamet, Clackamas Chinook, Tualatin, Calapooya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia river. If you’d like to learn more about PDXWIT’s action related to land acknowledgement as well as our newest initiative Native Americans in tech, please visit our website.

Jeselle Hedman: Wonderful, thanks so much Anusha, I appreciate that. My name is Jeselle, my pronouns are she/her and I am a Humanizing Tech podcast co-host here at PDX Women in Tech, and I'm really excited to be here today with a Anusha and our fantastic guests that we have with us. And this is, this is my co-host today. 

AN: Yeah, this is Anusha she/her, for me. Our regular listeners may recognize me from the innovators segments. But I'm here to co-host with Jesselle today which I'm really excited about. 

JH: Awesome. Awesome. So happy to be here. Well, we now have the awesome privilege of being able to introduce you to our guests today. Today we have with us Jelani Memory he/him pronouns. He is the CEO and founder of a kids book about a company that publishes books to help parents start conversations with their kids about complex topics making them more digestible for our kids and the way that they see the world. He authored the first book of the series, a kid's book about racism. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and six kids. Welcome Jelani. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jelani Memory: Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's a privilege to be here today.

JH:We are so pumped. Awesome. Well, Anusha start us off. Where are we gonna start this journey today? 

AN: Sure, well Jelani just to start us off today for our listeners who may not be as familiar with your work. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

JM: Yeah, sure. I'm born and raised here in Portland, Oregon. So hometown kid, youngest of four siblings black dad, white mom, mixed kid and you know, one of the whitest cities in America. So, you know, I had some experiences. Grew up and thought for sure I'd either be you know, designing sneakers that NBA players wore or I'd be in the NBA myself. It turns out I did neither. But fell into photography right after college and fell in love with it sort of telling stories with the visual image that graduated to getting to do filmmaking for some time. And, and that was a blast. And then of all things, I started a tech company called Circle, sort of parental controls for the modern age. We invented the pause button for the internet and spent seven years building that company, raised $30 million dollars, learned a lot, and made a lot of mistakes. 

And then of all things right after we closed our series B round for that business, I left to go found the business I'm running today, a kids book about and am just having the time of my life. Not only getting to use, I think all of the things that I learned at Circle sort of starting a brand shipping products and building a team but also how to make products that really matter, that sort of resonate in the culture and, and make a difference. Having six kids means that all of my problems are kid related, all of them. And so it's no wonder that my business has been, you know, both of my business really have been focused on you know, the life of the home and the family and, and grownups and kids and how they intersect. So that's a little bit about me. 

JH: Love that. Thank you so much for sharing that kind of intro. I'd love to, touch on a couple of things that you mentioned. You know, what I think you know of that journey for me is one of the most interesting and pivotal points is kind of the decision to leave and to start A kids book about. I'd love to hear kind of the motivation and intention behind that decision. And what kind of drove you in this direction.

JM: Yeah, it was, it was really a number of factors and as much as I look back on it and think, wow, that was a really risky decision. I remember it being actually quite an easy decision. I think of myself first and foremost as a creative I, I like to make art and things that have an impact on people. And so any business that I started whether that was freelance photography or the commercial filmmaking or Circle, or even a kid's book about has been in some way to scratch that creative itch, to make something that matters and, and bring my skills to bear. And so you know, the business was changing. When we started Circle, it was really focused on the B to C play – direct to consumer and it had transitioned to B2B and, and that's fine.

That's great. We had a great business, you know, partnering with the Walt Disney company and T-Mobile and NEC gear and sky. But I found myself a little bit of drift, not having as much to work on. And you know, I'm a little bit of a chaos maker. Like I just like to get a roll of duct tape and a small team and try to make things. And you know, when you're raising your series B you know, a massive valuation, it just is not the time to make chaos. And so I realized it was, it was my time to sort of leave and go do something new, but it was really precipitated by that book that I had written for my kids. 

So, A Kid's Book About Racism started as a project for my kids. I had a new son on the way, Solomon who I just put to bed. He's probably screaming his head off you know, two and a half years old. And, I knew that he was going to be explaining himself racially to everyone he met. Cause he'd be just, light-skinned enough to go sort of what are you, and you know, for the rest of my kids, I've got four white step kids and another brown biological daughter. I wanted them to feel comfortable talking about race, culture, color, and racism. So, I wrote the book in a week and I designed it and I printed one copy, and I'm not a writer. I'm also not really like a designer. I just made a thing that I thought would have an impact on my kids. And it turned out it did, and they loved it and it was cool and it kept that conversation going, but something sort of remarkable and magical happened when I showed it to other adults, other parents, they were like, I must have this book to go read to my kid.

And after the first couple of times that happened, it was cute and flattering and interesting. And then after the 20th time, I was frustrated. I was like, what are people seeing in this book that I don't see? And it was my kids that actually unlocked the idea to go – this should really be a series of books on really important topics. Because they were in a position to go, we're ready to talk about this stuff. You grownups, you're too afraid to, so maybe these books will help. And so having that book and sort of that desire to go, I think there's something really more here and not even from an economic opportunity perspective, but from a, what kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? What do I have spent my life doing? 

And I realized that circle as a business didn't need me as much anymore, but this book thing, it wasn't going to happen unless I stepped out and made it happen and also I might be the person sort of bonkers enough to do it, to make books on death and cancer and feminism and racism and everything in between for the kids, you know, who are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old. And go direct to the consumer with that as a brand. So that's really what precipitated that leap and thankfully, you know, that was eased by the company really sort of allowing me to keep a relationship with  Circle so that I wasn't losing my paycheck right away and and then consumers showing up right away to buy the books and some investors making some early bets on me that I was going to pull off this very strange publishing endeavor for kids.

JH: Totally, and I mean, I'm not a parent, so I went to the parents in my life and asked them, you know, like, what would you ask this person? Most of them, I have gifted the book to, it just so happens. Yeah, I mean we have to initiate these conversations and I think it's, these books do an extremely fantastic job of focusing on what about these conversations is important. And that, that kind of was one of their questions that came out of this, you know, was the design elements as being something that makes the content so valuable. And so I'd love to hear about that.

JM: Yeah. So when I made the first book, it was really me operating out of my weaknesses and my strengths. I was actually a pretty handy illustrator as a kid. But, it's not my thing now. And, also when I was thinking about the content of the book, I thought, not only am I not a strong illustrator, but also it's sort of the wrong thing for this book. I don't want my kids to get distracted by pictures or to get locked into some fictional characters inside this book. I didn't want to try and depict seven-year-old Jelani. I just wanted to speak as directly and straight forward as I could. And so type and design and layout and color really became the tools my back pocket to try and communicate and convey and just give the topic justice, because the thing grownups do when it comes to tough topics, pick your top topic is we lie about it, we say to kids, we'll tell you when you're older, you wouldn't understand or, we give vague metaphors. What happens is the kids don't actually learn anything about this stuff, right. They don't learn the language. They don't learn the concepts, the ideas around it. So I was just like, I'm just going to use the actual words and I'm going to speak straight to my kids and just pretend for half a minute that they can handle it. And it turns out the average seven-year-old totally can. It's the grownups who are like, ooh, racism, can we talk about that? So that's really where it came from and then when I saw the response, as, as we started to get books out there into the world, it was like, that's working.

Wow, that thing that I sort of intended to do you know, really resonated. And, you know, if I can add one more thing on top of that it was out of my respect for, for kids and their ability to engage, not just with difficult topics, but with good design with thoughtful conversation. And my hope was, and this is really carried through as a thesis throughout the rest of the collection is that if you told kids a thing that no other grownups would tell them, if you pulled that curtain back, is that all of a sudden they'd lean forward and they'd listen and they'd really deeply care about it. And they wouldn't feel like they were getting lectured or talked down to that they were getting a seat at the table. And that the grown up they're reading that book to them probably was going to be a co-learner alongside them. Who is often going to be talking about these things themselves for the first time. And it turns out that's totally true, right. The grownups are sort of saying, I never thought about it in this way, or, you know, thank you. Your book was really helpful. I was like, well also written for, you know, seven year olds, but I'm glad it was helpful for you. If the kid and the parent can become a co-learner around something really fundamental, then there's a really remarkable conversation that can take place. When the kids are not just being told what's what, and don't ask any more questions.

AN: Yeah, no, that was one of my questions was I had listened to your reading on the YouTube channel of a kids book about racism. And I was immediately curious about you know, it's not like any other children's books, but I've, I've really seen before. There weren't any illustrations or pictures or anything, but it's, it's interesting to get that insight into why you chose to not include that and, and just really focus on the topic at hand. And it sounds like these books are really intended to supplement conversations that families have with their children. Do you ever provide any recommendations of age ages to, you know, bring these books into the conversation?

JM: Yeah, so our, a kids book about series about series, now 39 books launched, is for kids from five to nine. There's a few reasons why that's true. One, you know by the time your kid gets to be five years old, they're often beginning to read or reading. They're also in school, which means they're having experiences outside of the home. So now they've got some, some things to reflect on and bring back and then, you know, capping out at nine is, you know post nine, your kid's got a smartphone, you know, they're a on Tik Tok you know, like, and they're also not really down for like, read me to bed. Right. that thing just sort of goes away. And there's actually a phenomenon called the decline by nine, which is like kids just stop reading with their parents altogether and they either read by themselves or they don't read at all actually. And so we wanted to catch kids in this magic period where for these four years, kids are reading with adults frequently, if adults are doing that around them. But also it's a special time. The kids kind of don't care what books, as long as they get that special, one-on-one slow down time where, you know, grown up is not ahead in the smartphone and paying attention to them and listening to them and interacting with them. So we co-opt that moment to say something that matters like as cool as cat and hat is – it's not saying anything to my kid, it's just not, but these books they're there, they're starting some of the most fundamental, important conversations that kids will ever have with, the grownup in their life, not going to be auntie, uncle, grandma, grandpa, you know parents, you name it – teachers. Teachers love our books by the way. We want them to fit into sort of any and every kind of context where that magical zone happens. The books don't really work if you're four and under cause it turns out four and under they're not reading. And also they really like pictures. They really, really do. So we just launched a new line of books, A Little Book About board books, you know 22 pages and they're full of illustrations. And again, they're designed for the age groups still on really sort of challenging, empowering important topics, fear sharing, activism, bravery, et cetera. And if you can imagine, we're already thinking about what do books look like for those tweenage teenage kids and we're exploring that trying to figure out what form factors would really make sense there.

JH:  Well, absolutely and I love this because I think so much of the conversations I've had with kids about them or heard kids say about these books are very much so based in, and I feel like I get to have conversations that are for grownups. This is allowing me that seat at the table. They don't have that language yet, but that's what you hear. And I think it's extremely interesting and very, very valuable. And I see that as someone who's had the privilege of being around a lot of kids in my life like that, that beautiful, magical age of reading with the adult is super prime and important. Awesome, well, thank you so much for sharing. I'd love to know, you have explored this magical space, you obviously moved into those younger kids and kind of served those different populations. I'd love to know. Do you anticipate that the products will continue to kind of inadvertently also serve the adults in the lives of these kids? As you continue to create, you know, new product lines and such.

JM: 100% you know our, our company, any company really has, has the task of coming up with, you know, what's its mission and, and I I've sort of intentionally not articulated our mission or nailed it down to one sort of pat sentence. Because I want us to be sort of living the thing out day in and day out, and then we get to codify that to go, that's our mission. And, I've used words like trying to tell the most important stories that kids ever hear. You know, so that could be very mission-based or, you know, making challenging, empowering books for the next generation, that sort of stuff. But if I really get down to what we're up to it's about enabling grownups to give the kids in their lives better than they had, because what I find again and again, and this is my experience as a parent, I'm not exempt from this is there's this fear that you're going to screw your kids up.

I don't care if you're a teacher or an auntie or a mom or dad. You have this innate sort of terror around remembering your childhood trauma, the things that happened to you, the things got said, you didn't get said to you and passing that onto your kids. And you just want them to stand on your shoulders and be better, have better because they deserve better. And it's your shot, it's your one chance to give them what you didn't have, but there's all of this, this, this paralysis that happens because, because you don't have the tools. How do you talk to your kid about gender identity or about what happens to the body when it dies or why do people die? How do you talk to a five-year-old when you never had that conversation and not just like a five-year-old with your parents, you never had that conversation until you got to college.

So, we look at all of our product suite as really enabling the grownup there to engage in these ways with kids out of this fundamental belief that kids are ready, they just need the language to engage and also the respect that they can engage. Then the parents need the courage to step into it. So that they're no longer saying, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to say it, or I don't know when to say it. We sort of say, here's this book to start somewhere. And hopefully this is the first of actually 10, 20, 30 conversations about this across the next few years, with that kid in your life, as opposed to ending the conversation. My book doesn't say everything there is to say about racism, because that wouldn't be possible, but two, it would be the wrong way to start the conversation, right?

It's a starter of a conversation. So now when the kid finishes that book with a grownup, they have a thousand questions or they have a thousand experiences, they can share things that happen. Things they've seen, things they've heard that now they can, they can engage with the grownup on it. And universally, we hear this from so many of our customers that they're surprised how much their kid has already been thinking about every single one of these topics. They'll share a new story, a new idea, a new thought that otherwise would not have come up and less, this third thing, this, you know, bit of media on this important topic stepped into their lives.

AN: Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you mentioned how kids are more ready for these conversations than we realize. Because I think back to when I was a child, I was super curious and I would ask a million different questions all the time. And taking a glance at your site and looking at all of the different topics that you're covering. A lot of those were things that I was super curious about as I was growing up and my parents would always say to me, we'll talk about it when you're older. And of course they meant it in a loving way. They wanted to, you know, I think protect me from having these hard discussions. But thinking back to how I digested that, I didn't stop looking into it or try to ask questions and, you know, whether it was to my teachers or other kids, it's not like, just because they said that I stopped thinking about it or stopped getting curious about it. I only got more curious about it. And so I think that's really interesting to me, for sure.

JM: Yeah, when, when grownups say, I'll tell you when you're older, they're essentially saying I'm not going to teach you about this, go learn it about it somewhere else. And it's a very naive view that the kid's not going to go ask their fourth grade friends about it. Right. No matter how big the topic. That discomfort is real, right, when your kid comes up to you with the question, right. And you're just trying to drive them somewhere. And your head somewhere else, you're trying to listen to a podcast. There's that fear of going, this is my one chance to say the right thing and I'm not prepared, so that's real. But I also, like, my thing is like, I want to let those grownups and parents off the hook to go, it doesn't, it shouldn't be a one-time thing.

You're not just gonna drop the tablets from down on high and then that's it, it's an ongoing thing. And, the thing that I, I hope I try to do, and I try to remind myself to do is never lose those teachable moments because I don't know if my kid will be interested in that thing again. Right. When a kid goes, Hey, I have a question about this specific thing. I just, you know, like to take that curiosity for all it's worth and run with it. Because, you know or I'll go pick up my kids from school and go how's your day. And I'm like, it was fine. What'd you do? Stuff. It's like, I'm just begging for them to talk to me. But when they initiate with me, I'm like, oh, like later, you know, I'm busy. I got stuff, you know engaging with them, I think is so deeply important.

JH: Absolutely. I, had the privilege of being in a family that was made of adopted children. So my parents were both white and we were all black. And so you, instead of kind of shying away from those conversations, it was the conversation because it's how everybody came here. Right. It's our family origin story in a way. And so I think that what's so interesting is, you know, some of these, depending on, the family, some of these topics are comfortable, some of, or, you know, something happens in the family and one of these topics becomes something that the kid gets really familiar with. And so one of the things that I have been thinking about is, you know, some of the more serious topics, suicide that's a heavy one, mental health, that's a big one.

Right. and so how do, how are we making sure that we're like pre-introducing these concepts and the ideas, so that when you do come upon them in your life, you have the tools you have and even if factual is going back and asking your parents, because you could ask them in the first place that is exceptionally valuable to, and I think that, I think that they are something to note in that you're also providing that experience for people that kind of prepares as well. Because, I know many adults that still struggle to talk about suicide and we have to make sure that that conversation is prevalent because it exists and it's something we need to be aware of. 

So I love that. So you mentioned 39 books. Did I hear you say?

JM: 39 books in the kids book about collection, and then we just launched, I suppose it's 40, since we just launched a kid's book about anti-Asian hate we, that was literally a seven day project from start to finish from initiation of writing to getting it to customers for free. So it's free today. And then six more books in our Little Book About collection.

JM: Amazing, I love hearing that. Well, this isn't such a lovely conversation thus far, I'd love to know, a little bit more maybe about your personal story and you mentioned a little bit that a fear that comes with being a parent and being an auntie and being all of these care characters in a kid's life where, you can place your own fear and your own trauma and your own experiences onto, what you hope that will occur for them. And I'd love to know what your childhood informed you as well, wanting to be able to have these conversations in a really direct and clear manner.

JM: Yeah, quite a bit. I like to think that you know, no one is an overnight success or the thing we do today is in some way, we've been preparing our whole lives to do that thing. In the entrepreneurship world, we call it an unfair advantage. And, and my unfair advantage was, you know I grew up to two drug addicted parents. You know dad abandons a family by the time I'm four. I don't have any memories of him in the home. And I probably see him, you know a dozen times everywhere, you know, from five years old to 18 years old and, and mom, bust her butt working nights as a nurse and driving us kids to three sports, year round and school and, everything in between and never sleeping somehow to make sure us kids had a better shot, but what that meant was is we never talked about anything.

And even when something sort of confronted us face to face, it was like, you ignore it, you brush it under the rug, you just don't talk about it. And, and that was very formative for me and, and sticking in my mind of going, that's probably not the right way to do things. And so I sort of, you know I made a pact with myself that when I had kids we weren't going to talk about anything too late. We were always going to talk about things too early, that the risk of never talking about it was really high because I lived it already. And so why not mess up in the other direction and start these conversations super early and, and in a very weird way, see what happens. Just to go, what if I just swing the pendulum the whole other way?

And it turns out like, you know, kids are totally fine with it. You know they're really, really fine with it. When you respect them and you start these conversations with them. So that was informative for me as a part of my experience, but also, my sister got pregnant when she was 15. I was 14 and, a newly minted uncle you know, in middle school. And I was, I was the closest thing that little girl had to a dad. So you learn how to change diapers. You learn how to get up in the middle of the night, you know, you learn how to install a car seat, like all those things. And so 14 year old me was learning fatherhood. But getting to practice, it was like training wheels really.

And, I fell in love with it. I loved not just kids, but that care-taking aspect, but I also got to practice. And so it wasn't, until gosh, 10 years later that I wouldn't have, you know, that I'd have my first kid and be sort of like really prepared, I suppose for what the life of fatherhood looked like while also having the task of inventing fatherhood cause remember dad's not there. And so that, that, that father figure I am, I'm, I'm collecting different men in my life to sort of play that role. I'm sure there's some sort of like, you know, Friday and that's why I collect action figures sort of thing. But I collect father figures too. And what I got to do is borrow from each of them a bit of fatherhood.

What to do with your kid on a weekend, right. How do you deal with a problem you know: do you hold a kid when they skin their knee or do you tell them to get back up? Like all those things. I was working from scratch and so having my own kids also allowed me to go, what would I do if it was just the right thing? I don't have, I don't have the playing football in the front yard to draw on. So what's the right thing to do with my kids? And talking to them felt like the most important thing that I could do. One, because it’s attention, but two because knowledge truly is power. And when we don't give kids words and knowledge and ideas, we disempower them. We rob them of something that's truly theirs. Their birthright and it's, and it's ours to offer. Freely every day. So you can imagine all those things. That's just my life, that's my sort of ongoing life. And when it came time to make a book for my kids, I sort of was like, well, I'm not an expert at this, but I also have my own story of which I know better than anybody else in the world. And I also know about fatherhood because I've been practicing it since I was 14 years old. And so reducing that into a book was actually pretty simple. So we've taken that as a mantra with the business to go find people with owned first person stories. They don't have to be writers. They don't have to be designers. They don't have to be published and help craft their stories. Because everybody is truly an expert on their own story.

And if only every children's book got to be written by an authentic voice on a specific topic, which is not really the case, then I think the content we'd see would be more sincere, more authentic, more earnest, more impactful. So that's, that's our books. We're 40 books in and most of the authors have never been published. Most of the authors who do not consider themselves writers. Most of the authors are people of color or women. And we get to represent these underrepresented voices, I think in a really remarkable way. And, and tell the most important stories. So it's like a double whammy in that way. So I've digressed very far from the question, apologies for that.

JH: It’s all very Important and extremely relevant. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. About your backstory. It's interesting to me, I'm listening to you talk about it. You know, I had a very different experience, but sort of ended up in a similar position where I grew up in an immigrant household. So my parents were always struggling to kind of find permanent residency in this country going through all of these various struggles. And so and then on the flip side, me and my sister growing up in a predominantly white community we just had questions on questions about different things we were encountering and they just didn't have the time with all of the things that they had going on going on to slow down and really explain to us these different things that we were going through, or try to really sit down and have these discussions. And so I think for me too, as I got older, I've definitely had a similar pact that I made with myself as well for, you know, down the road one day when I have children too, to kind of make this a priority. So it's interesting to hear you talk about that.

JM: Yeah. it's and it's something that I also, as a thing that I try and hold myself accountable to as well, because you can get busy and you can slack off and you can just sort of go not now, right. And fall into all those same sort of tropes and traps. It's not any easier. And yet I try to remind myself that my kid, I try to just remember what I was like when I was seven, when I was nine or when I was 11. And just going, like you remember all those moments. And when I became an adult, I went back and looked at my childhood with a critical eye, the critical eye of a thoughtful, educated adult. And it was like, that was messed up, you know? And adults can get by with a lot when their kids are kids, but when those kids become grownups, they get to go back and go, wait a second, how come this? Or how can we never talk about that? Or why were you always so focused on this, but I needed this thing. 

Being that present father today, so that the 20 year from now story that they tell about their childhood is one where they were enriched and they were paid attention to, and they were cared for that's a very long game to play. But, maybe the only one worth playing. Because the consequences on the other side are devastating and, and my dad never got to have a place in my life because he never took hold of it and he never earned it right. Once he lost it, he sort of never earned it back. And that, that's complicated and also that can become generational. So what's the, the phrase the buck stops with me, I suppose. It's just like my kids are gonna have a different kind of dad. And that means that when they become parents, if they become parents, there'll be different kinds of parents and hopefully far better than I am.

JH: They will have had some of that purview into what good parenting looks like. No, I love that. Very, very, very valuable. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. This has been such a lovely chat. I think we're probably coming near the end of our conversation. I think that, you know, we've had the opportunity to hear so much fantastic information about the books, how they came to be, you and the influence of course there as maybe as much as you'd like to share about what's to come. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. I just want to make sure to shout that out. This has been a conversation I know we both have been looking forward to, so thank you. 

AN: Yeah, absolutely. And as we, as we close out the segment you know, a lot of what we were hearing today in our conversation revolves around having these meaningful, meaningful conversations. And you know, not just with kids, but also as adults, like really tackling these head on and not really trying to escape from, from having these harder discussions. Do you have any suggestions for, for our listeners on how they can become change makers in their own communities?

JM: Yeah, I've got three, three bits of advice. One is to talk about this stuff. It's uncomfortable, it's hard, you know, pick your subject. And, and when I say talk, I don't mean lecture right. Or talk down to or teach, I mean, talk it's a conversation and then, you know, conversations are two ways. So you have to listen and listen to people who don't agree with you or maybe have ideas that are boring, but listening. We can't expect others to listen to us if we cannot listen to them. And then third is try and empathize, try and find some empathy. All I'm describing is what I try and do with my kids, what I try. Right. I'm not sure if I'm successful at doing it, but I try to just go, what are they thinking and what are they feeling and why might they be thinking and feeling that and just try and understand it.

And I think that's when changes are not just of a near on the outside, but they become internal and long lasting. You know, I've never seen anybody's mind change because they got yelled at, it just usually doesn't work. But when there's true conversation, when there's real listening and real empathy, that's love. And, I think that allows, adults to, to move, to change, to grow and and to become change makers, not just for other folks, but for themselves to be like, it's not just about us changing other folks. It's about us changing right. Being changeable, I suppose. 

AN: Oh, I love that. Thank you for sharing that wisdom. We will go ahead and add links to your website so our listeners can check out all of these amazing books. Also as always shout out to our incredible podcast team: Max, April, Jesselle for letting me co-host with you today. And everybody else that makes this possible. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you if you have any feedback. So reach out, reach us at podcast@pdxwit.org. We will catch you on the next episode.

Outro: PDXWIT is a 501 C3 nonprofit with the purpose of encouraging women non-binary and underrepresented people to join tech and supporting and empowering them so they stay in tech. Find out more about us at www.pdxwit.org. Like this podcast? subscribe! and like us on your favorite podcast platform. Want to give us feedback, contact us at podcast@pdxwit.org to help us improve and ensure you learn and grow in the stories you hear on humanizing tech.