What do we owe to each other?

Men like me go through life on Easy Mode. But we can’t sit out the fight for gender equity in the Design industry.

Men in design tend to sit out conversations about gender equality and equity. They often consider it to be a “women’s issue” or are afraid of making a mistake and saying the wrong thing. But men are also in the majority of leadership roles — and not just in the design industry. They have the most power to create change and create equity across all genders. So this isn’t a conversation they can sit out.

Following is the text of a talk I originally presented at WhyDesign 2020, an event focused on creating more gender equity in the design industry. As a “50/50” event, it featured keynotes from women and men.

Watch a video of this talk:

See the full slide deck and related resources for this talk:

What do we owe to each other? by Jonathon Colman

Act 1 of 5: Memories of Mefloquine

1999

I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso, West Africa. I’m working in public health education in a tiny village on the shore of the Sahara for about 2 years. I vaccinate children, create education programs about HIV and AIDS, record health data, and distribute food supplies.

Everyone I work with is a man. All the doctors, nurses, school teachers, tribal leaders, businesspeople, and everyone else in a position of power in my village is male. But the people I really serve are women and children. The story of the village is greater than just the people who are in charge of it.

Malaria is endemic to Burkina Faso. The US government gives me a drug called Mefloquine to kill the malaria in my system. So I never got the raging fevers or shaking chills associated with the disease.

But there are side effects.

Mefloquine causes hallucinations, paranoia, and vivid, hyper-realistic dreams. We joke that going to sleep each night is like going to the movies. But we’re all nervous about it. Some volunteers in my group leave the country because they can’t handle it.

Me? I handle it as best I can. I take the drug for 2 years. I do my job. I serve my country. But there are side effects. It turns out that when I return to the United States, it’s difficult for me to create new memories.

You know, kind of like that one guy in that one movie. You know the one.

I remember the big things — for example, I showed up on time tonight. But the little things often float away from me. Or the order that they happened gets mixed up. Sometimes historical events and stories I’ve heard get blended in so it feels like I experienced them in person.

It often makes me feel scared and confused. But not all the time.

2019

My wife is on a mission to take a photo of a door in Dublin every day for 100 days. We recently moved here from Seattle and spend a lot of time on our feet, walking the city.

She’s got this great idea about sharing photos of the doors ordered by colors in the spectrum. That way, when you see all the photos together, there’s this amazing gradient of colors. The story of the doors isn’t about their individual hues, it’s about how all of those hues work together.

Today, she’s looking for an orange door. I find one, and excitedly point it out to her. I’m jumping around, practically shouting about it.

“I already got that one,” she tells me. “Remember? We passed it last week and you said the same thing.”

Well, fuck.

I’ve done it again. That same thing I always do. How many times will we have the same conversation, but I won’t remember it?

2006

My wife and I are getting married on a beach in New Zealand. She’s reading her wedding vows to me as the water laps at our feet and tears stream down my face.

She tells me that she’ll always be our memory. Even when I forget things, she won’t. Our story as a couple isn’t about each of us as individuals. It’s about how we work together to solve our problems.

Act 2: Going Through Life on Easy Mode

Right now

Because of the way my memory works, I don’t like long talks where you only find out the main message at the end. I lose track of the ideas too easily. So I’m just going to tell you the key points right now.

Men: whether we know it or not, we’re going through life on Easy Mode. It’s what the author John Scalzi calls “The lowest difficulty setting there is.” Like in a video game.

We’re going through life on Easy Mode because we’ve completed structured society and its underlying systems for our benefit. It’s not that we don’t struggle — we do, all the time! — but for the most part, there’s almost nothing structural that holds you back when you’re white, male, heterosexual, and without disability or health problems.

It’s Easy Mode — at least as compared with, say, Trans Immigrant Woman of Color. There’s nothing easy about that.

And it’s not just you — it’s me. I’m going through life on Easy Mode, too. People who look like me have easier and more access to education, work, wealth, and opportunity than just about anyone else. We also have more forgiveness for our mistakes and failures. And everyone here knows it.

I’m not telling you this to shame you. Do you feel ashamed about the sky being blue? No, it’s just a fact — so is this. This isn’t about shame, it’s about learning.

And that’s the other main point of this talk: The need to learn. When you’re in the majority, you have a sacred duty to do no harm to others and to extend every benefit you have. Even a small act of carelessness by the majority can cause tremendous harm to everyone else. If you’re in the majority and you don’t take care, you can end up hurting so many people so badly that they remain in the minority forever.

So I want to challenge you to be curious. Use your curiosity to learn, and then use your learning to make progress.

You’re gonna make mistakes along the way. I certainly have — I’ll share some of them with you tonight. Just learning something doesn’t mean that you’re going to be great at putting your knowledge into action.

And that’s okay. One of the things that I hope you learn tonight is that you don’t have to be perfect. That’s because perfection is a myth — it doesn’t exist. And yet we all continue believing in it.

The more perfect you try to be, the slower you’ll learn. And that means that you won’t grow as fast or have as much positive impact as you could. So don’t try to be perfect! Instead of perfection, just try to make some progress. But of course, not being perfect doesn’t absolve you from taking responsibility for your actions. Just like it’s not an excuse to quit.

That’s it. That’s the talk.

2019

I’m watching The Good Place. One of the characters quotes the philosopher T.M. Scanlon and asks “What do we owe to each other?”

I’m curious about accountability: what should men be accountable for? How are they held accountable by others? Is it possible that they can hold themselves accountable? If so, then what for?

April, 1916

It’s the eve of the Easter Rising. Helen Moloney is in Liberty Hall. She’s asleep on a makeshift bed of piled up coats. There’s a revolver hidden under her pillow. She’ll put it to good use the next day.

Since moving to Ireland, I’ve been curious about its history, particularly the role that women played in it. I’ve learned that the 1916 Rising featured more than 300 women and, for a time, many of them were subtly erased from history by a scared patriarchy. But once you learn about these women and their stories, you can’t forget them.

Fiona Plunkett and Muriel Gifford were amongst a group of women who assisted those most affected by the Lockout of 1913. They worked in the soup kitchen and took part in food distribution.

Kathleen Lynn, an active suffragette, was the chief medical officer during the Rising. She later founded St. Ultan’s hospital for Children with her lover, Madeleine Ffrench-Mullen.

Molly Childers, who walked with two canes after breaking her hips as a child, ran guns through Howth to arm the rebel fighters.

Margaret Skinnider infiltrated the Beggars Bush barracks to collect reconnaissance. She was a skilled sniper and the only woman wounded on active service.

Kathleen Clarke was one of a dozen founding members of Cumann na mBan, even though her husband forbade her to take part. She later became a driving force behind the creation of Sinn Fein.

Elizabeth O’Farrell was a dispatcher before and during the Rising. She carried food and ammunition hidden in her dress to rebel forces. She also carried the terms of surrender to the British military, emerging into heavy fire on Moore Street, which only let up because she carried a white flag.

Winifred Carney was James Connolly’s secretary and confidante. She was the only woman present when the General Post office was first occupied, armed with a typewriter and a revolver. She was imprisoned for 7 months for her role in the Rising.

And Constance Markievicz, who kissed her revolver before handing it over to the British Army, and later told the court she was “pleased” to cause disaffection among the civil population of His Majesty.

So many brave women. We should all be deeply humbled by their courage. And what do men like me owe to them? We’re accountable for remembering them. Learning their stories. Saying their names.

April, 2014

I’m hiring the first member of my design team at Facebook. Her name is Ella Mei Yon Harris, and as we talk, I become keenly aware of three things:

1. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. But she does.
2. I’m going to hire her. There’s no question in my mind about this.
3. She’s smarter than me. More talented. More driven. And she’ll be more successful here than I ever will.

Ella’s a legend. Within two years, we decide to switch positions: I become a designer working for her and she becomes my manager. She’s far more successful in this role than I ever was and later became a director.

The lesson here for men is not just to hire women, nor just to promote them, but to actively sponsor them for leadership opportunities — and then to make space for them.

March, 2019

A product director friend tells me she’s always reported to men — in her long career, she’s never had a woman manager. One of the reasons she took this role was simply to help show other women that it’s possible to be a product leader.

“You have to see it to be it,” she tells me, quoting Billie Jean King. “The representation matters for the next generation.”

July, 1999

I’m in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. My manager is a woman.

April, 2001

I work in a small environmental nonprofit in Michigan. My manager is a woman.

March, 2003

I move to a large environmental nonprofit in Washington, DC. My manager is a woman.

August, 2004

I move to another large environmental nonprofit in Washington, DC. My manager is a woman.

November, 2008

I join the largest consumer cooperative in the United States. My manager is a woman.

July, 2013

I join the Facebook Design team in California. My manager is a woman.

January, 2020

Kim Mackenzie-Doyle is inviting me to give you this talk, the talk you’re hearing right now.

She tells me that one of the reasons she organizes this event is to amplify the voices of women so that they can inspire other women to join the field of design and advance further in their own careers.

“You gotta see it to be it,” she tells me. I believe her. I’ve seen it.

Part 3: What Should We Expect of Men in Design?

Last month

I’m conducting an online survey of people in the design industry. I’m asking them to answer questions about how they experience gender equity at work and in the design field as a whole. I’m also asking what they expect of men, and what do men expect of themselves?

162 people from all over the world take the survey. The clear majority of respondents self-identify as women, though just over one-quarter are men.

They work across the design industry. Their broad range of experience spans from those just entering the field to being 20+ year veterans.

Likewise, their roles range from entry-level to C-level executives to founders and more.

I ask people to rate their level of satisfaction with the support they’ve seen from men for women, transgender, and non-binary people where they work. Out of 162 people, just 47 (or about 29%) are very or extremely satisfied.

I also ask people to rate the support they’ve seen for women, transgender, and non-binary people from men in the design industry as a whole. Out of 162 people, 56 (or about 34%) are very or extremely satisfied. This tells us that — at least among these respondents — more people think the design industry provides better support for women, transgender, and non-binary people than the average workplace.

An extremely optimistic reading could imply that if you’re in a bad workplace, you can turn to your professional community for support and it will likely be better.

But I’m no optimist — that bell curve doesn’t indicate success at all. Because only about a third of people find either their workplaces or professional communities to be very supportive enough of people who aren’t men.

Men: we’re in the majority. We have the ability to change this, to do better. How should we hold ourselves accountable?

4 nights ago

My wife and I are in bed. Soon we’ll be asleep, but right now, she’s annoyed. Annoyed at me.

She asks me why I never believe what she says. But I do, I do! But she points out how I always show doubt whenever she makes a claim.

Let’s set this in its proper context: my wife is a PhD biochemist who’s now in her second career as a very successful working artist. Me? I’m just some dude in a hat. And it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t have these credentials — she deserves to be believed. So why is my first instinct to ask her “Are you sure?” It just pops out of me before I realize that I’ve said it.

Has she told me this before? I’m not sure… I think she has. But the fault isn’t with my memory — it’s with me. It’s no surprise, but I’m the asshole here.

I don’t know why I keep doing this, but I know I need to do better. I’m not perfect. I never will be. I’ve made so many mistakes. And I’ve hurt people, too. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to — it matters that they were hurt.

I’m sorry, honey.

She’s holding me accountable to doing better. That’s what I owe my wife, what I’ll always owe her. But it’s also what I owe myself: trying to be the best version of who I am… a version who doesn’t hold her back.

Our story as a couple isn’t about each of us as individuals. It’s about how we work together to solve our problems.

Right now

My wife is here in the audience. I can’t see her, but it’s safe to say that she’s blushing. And annoyed at me again.

Last month

People are answering my survey questions. I ask them about what we owe to each other — what men can do to better support women, transgender, and non-binary people at work and in the design industry.

I’ve been talking a lot, so now let’s see what these folks have to say:

• “Men can use their position to ensure everyone gets opportunities to challenge themselves.”
• “Men can understand their own biases and limitations and make a conscious effort to rise above them.”
• “Champion the ideas and roles of women as much or more than they champion their own ideas or that of men.”
• “Stop saying HI GUYS! on Slack.”
• “Keep in mind that your experience is not the only experience.”
• “Get to know the struggles and barriers of the people you work with.”

• “If you find yourself feeling uncomfortable, that means you need to listen more.”
• “Stop being hostile to my ideas and then telling me: You’re getting emotional.”
• “In meetings, if you see women getting interrupted, say: Hey, what were you going to say?”
• “Don’t tell us to be more assertive, and then punish us for being abrasive.”
• “I don’t need special treatment. I just need men to look at me as an equal individual.”
• “Fight for more inclusion and more equality in pay.”
• “Men should use their power to level the field and weed out all the old school conservative political A-holes.”

Looking at these as a whole, I’m learning that to improve gender equity in the design community, you don’t have to suddenly become a perfect person and solve the problem all at once. All you need to do is make some progress.

And the best way to do that? Get curious about other people’s experiences and then listen to their stories.

Part 4: Progress, not Perfection

1989

I’m reading Watchmen, a comic book that’s also a dystopian political fantasy. I can’t put it down.

Among other things, Watchmen features a character who exists across all of time, experiencing every moment at once. So he talks to people about the past and the future in their present.

He’s a tragic character. He loses everyone he loves. He eventually separates himself from humanity, choosing to sit out their messy fights and relationships… but only after he causes the deaths of millions by failing to act.

The character’s superhero name is “Doctor Manhattan.” But it doesn’t escape me that his real name is the same as mine.

Right now

What men should be accountable for is slowly becoming clearer.

Men owe a great debt. The best way for us to start paying it down is by acknowledging our privilege and the structures we built to enable it. That’s our first step toward dismantling them in favor of something better, fairer, more equitable.

I don’t want our story to be about every man for himself. I want it to be about how we solve problems together.

Let’s take a look at some things that actually work.

2012

Etsy are struggling to hire engineers who aren’t male. This is a problem because roughly 80% of Etsy’s online marketplace is made up of women.

So they have an idea, which is to offer talented women “Hacker Grants” that provide need-based scholarships to enroll in an organization called Hacker School. This is a three-month, hands-on course designed to teach people how to become better engineers.

A number of studies have shown that everyone performs better in school if 50% of the participants are women, so gender equity was a key metric that both Etsy and Hacker School valued.

You see, the story isn’t just about the women. It’s about how women and men perform better when they’re together.

Every time Etsy runs this program, the number of applications by women to their team skyrockets. And in the summer of 2012, women made up over half of the Hacker School attendees.

Etsy are able to hire 8 women from Hacker School that year. And they quickly reached a point where almost 1 out of 5 of their engineers were women. Keep in mind that Etsy did this in 2012. For comparison, Facebook didn’t reach this level of women in tech until nearly 6 years later.

Etsy didn’t solve the problem, but they made progress. Progress over perfection.

2016

One of my recruiting partners at Facebook tells me about a new approach to interviewing called “diverse slate.”

What they usually do is to hire the very first candidate who makes it all the way through the interview process. But for this role, they won’t hold any interviews at all until they’ve assembled a diverse slate of qualified candidates.

A study highlighted in The Wall Street Journal found that “Individual evaluations lead to poor hiring decisions. Some 51% of the employers who considered candidates individually chose an employee who had underperformed relative to the group. By contrast, only 8% of the employers who considered candidates side-by-side chose under-performers.”

The impact of this practice shows in Facebook’s diversity data. Between 2016 to 2019, the percentage of technical roles filled by women grows by 25% in just 3 years. But this isn’t just about women or minorities. It’s the story of how teams perform better when they have a mix of different people.

Facebook didn’t solve the problem, but they made progress. Progress over perfection.

2017

I’m taking part in an interview debrief. These debrief meetings happen after a candidate has completed all of their interviews. All of the staff members who interviewed them get together in a room to talk about the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, they make a decision about whether or not to hire the candidate.

But this debrief is different. Because this time, the recruiter starts off by asking everyone in the room to share any known, conscious biases they might have for or against the candidate.

Conscious biases are the things we’re conscious of that affect the decisions we make. For example, maybe I’m positively biased against the candidate because they’re from the same city as me or they work for a company I admire. Or maybe I’m negatively biased against them because they attended a rival school to mine or they mentioned they dislike something I care about deeply.

Conscious biases are different from unconscious biases because, well, you know about them, they’re explicit, and they’re closer to being top of mind for you.

But once you get into the habit of interrogating yourself and questioning your biases, you begin to get an idea about the ones you might not have been aware of.

It’s a little like opening a door to a dark room and letting some light in. It shows you the shapes of the furniture inside, even if you can’t make out all the details. It begins to help you make the unknown, known.

I’ve brought this practice to Intercom. Now we record our biases as we become aware of them in interviews and take some time to share them with one another during our debriefs. Doing this helps us evaluate candidates more fairly.

We haven’t solved the problem of unconscious bias, but we’ve made progress. Progress over perfection.

2016

I’m crying in a bathroom stall. I made a big mistake at work and I let down my team. Facebook has a giant, self-contained campus at their California headquarters and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go where it would be safe to cry.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been there. Crying at work is, well, a thing. It happens. And when it does, it’s just so… real. Several of my colleagues were far braver about it than I was and they cried in front of me or others.

I wish I were that brave. But I’m not perfect. I still have a hard time with this, and I imagine that other people do, too. Especially women, who are judged far more harshly for crying at work than men. Men who cry are often thought to be brave and passionate about the work, where as women are seen as emotional, hysterical, or weak.

I wrote about the way that gender affects our perspectives of people who cry. My goals were to create awareness, start a conversation about why it happens, and to help people going through it.

I didn’t solve the problem, but I made progress. Progress over perfection.

2019

Jasmine Friedl, one of our design directors at Intercom, completely redesigns our hiring process for designers to reduce the impact of our biases.

Because of Jasmine, we no longer ask candidates to complete a take-home design exercise. We don’t do this because it’s clearly biased against people who don’t have time for extra work — like parents, caretakers, people with multiple jobs, and, well, everyone. We also think people should be paid for any extra work they do.

So instead of a design exercise, we now hold ourselves accountable for having better conversations with our candidates to understand their past work, their design process, and how they work with teams to drive impact. This makes our recruiting process much more effective and far more respectful of our candidate’s time.

We’ve written up our hiring and interviewing process so our candidates know what to expect in advance and so other employers can learn from it. That way they can make good decisions about how to prepare and whether or not we’re even what they’re looking for.

Setting clear expectations helps candidates with impostor syndrome find their way toward applying for more roles. While some studies show that impostor syndrome affects women more than men, others show that it’s spread equally among genders.

So we also did this with our internal design process, our career levels and expectations, and several other resources. They’re all publicly available at intercom.design.

We want our design candidates to see these things because we think people do their best work when they know what to expect. So all of these resources aren’t “cheat sheets” — instead, they give all candidates the best ability to show us their strengths.

Progress over perfection.

2013

For the first time in my life, I’m learning how to give feedback effectively.

A trainer is walking me and a group of my colleagues through the Situation-Behavior-Impact (or “SBI”) model of giving feedback. It’s pretty simple:

• You start with the Situation: That’s the context about where, when, and who’s involved.
• Then you go to the Behavior: This is what you, personally, observed a person doing.
• You end with the Impact: The result of the person’s actions on you.

For example, you might tell me that, in our group meeting, I cut you off while you were explaining your idea, which meant that the team didn’t take action on it.

Giving feedback like this helps reduce bias. Moreover, it helps people come to terms with what actually happened. There are entire books about SBI, but it’s really no more complicated than that.

Progress over perfection.

2017

I’m learning that performance reviews are often biased against women. I see a presentation from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford that tells me:

• 60% of women have received feedback that their communication style being too negative
• 76% of women have received feedback that their communication style being too aggressive

A study in The Wall Street Journal found that, compared to men, women get:

• 2.5x as much feedback about having an aggressive communication style
• 2.4x as many references to team accomplishments
• 50% fewer references to their having “vision”
• 50% fewer references to their technical expertise and skills
• 33% less feedback linked to business outcomes

No wonder that women aren’t promoted at the same rates to the same levels of leadership as men — among other issues, they’re given different feedback! And that feedback’s skewed toward how people perceive them rather than the actual business impact of their work.

The research shows that men and women tend to use communal language to describe women’s performance: “team player,” friendly,” “good with relationships,” “committed to the team,” and similar phrases. But men and women use agentic language — words that show agency and ownership — when talking about men’s performance. These are words like “visionary,” “influential,” “risk-taker,” and “independent.”

Helping each group to understand gender bias in language and how it impacts the perception of performance is a good first step. But a better one would be to help each group strategically use each other’s language to actively combat those biases. One of my colleagues, Jennifer Davies, facilitates a workshop that does exactly that.

Progress over perfection.

Part 5: What We Owe to Each Other

2012

Kelly Sue DeConnick reinvents the decades-old character of Carol Danvers, more famously known as Captain Marvel. Rather than being a damsel in distress who only furthers the storylines of male characters, this new Carol has agency. She’s a three-dimensional person with desires and dreams who takes ownership over her life.

No one tells Carol what to do — she tells them.

In an interview, DeConnick says, “Carol falls down all the time, but she always gets back up. We say that about Captain America as well, but he gets back up because it’s the right thing to do… Carol gets back up because fuck you.”

If you haven’t read comics because of how they’ve portrayed women in the past, DeConnick’s works like Captain Marvel, Pretty Deadly, and Bitch Planet are great places to start. And there’s plenty more out there.

I’d urge you to be curious.

Right now

I’m urging you to be curious.

Men, that’s all I hold you accountable for: curiosity. It’s not much to ask. After all, if you look like me, then you’re going through life on Easy Mode. Curiosity is literally the lowest possible bar for you to reach.

But curiosity is also one of the most important skills for designers to develop. That’s because it drives our self-awareness, our ability to diverge and converge on new ideas, and our empathy for the people we serve.

Jasmine Friedl says that curiosity is important in design because “When we desire to learn new things or new ways of doing things, we’re better problem solvers. We lay out and explore problems before offering solutions. We talk to people instead of answering questions ourselves. We use evidence over conjecture.”

Curiosity drives learning. Learning drives progress. Progress creates more equity.

Right now

You have a choice, a chance, a challenge.

Are you a man who’s been sitting this conversation out, not taking an active role because you don’t see it as your problem? Well, I’m sorry, Doctor Manhattan, but every man for himself is not going to work.

The stories we tell can’t just be about men. They should be about how we all work together to solve our problems. Because those are better stories. Because we can’t build equity unless everyone’s involved — especially the people in power.

Right now

Being part of the conversation doesn’t mean you have to control it. But it does mean that you need to be curious enough to listen, and listen enough to learn.

It doesn’t mean you need to be perfect. Believe me: no one expects you to get this right. All you need to do is make slow, steady progress.

Right now

It’s time, our time. Time to start learning. Because I know what we owe to each other. And I know what I owe to you.

Progress.

Acknowledgements

These people made this talk happen. As always, for anything that I got right, please thank them; for anything I got wrong, please blame me.

Kim Mackenzie-Doyle, organizer of WhyDesign, founder, entrepreneur, activist, and past president/current board member of the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI). Kim created WhyDesign, which is an amazing event, community, and movement in Ireland that’s advancing gender equity in design.

Nat Maher, the woman keynote speaker at WhyDesign 2020 and founder of Kerning the Gap. Melanie Lynch, who spoke in the WhyDesign panel, and is the founder of HerStory. Jennie McGinn, who interviewed our panel, and is an entrepreneur and lecturer at the Technological University Dublin. Róisín Lafferty, who introduced us, and is the co-founder of Kingston Lafferty Design and current president of the IDI.

The generous sponsors of WhyDesign: the IDI, Dublin City Council, Vision Branding Solutions, Dublin.ie, Pixelpod, Dolmen Design & Innovation Ltd, Design Enterprise Skillnet, Glasseye, Bradley Brand & Design, and Wilde Irish Gin.

Marja Huhta, scientist, artist, entrepreneur, and my wife of over 13 years. She holds me accountable and inspires me to do better .

Jasmine Friedl, friend, writer, designer, leader. When I was panicking about this talk, she gave me the idea of doing the survey to bring other people’s voices into the story.

Damon Lindelof and the writers of HBO’s Watchmen. Watching the series last December kept the original Watchmen comics by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons top-of-mind for me as I prepared this talk.

Michael Schur and the writers of NBC’s The Good Place for introducing me to Scanlon’s theory of Contractualism and for making me consider how the ongoing loss of memory affects world-building, narrative, and identity. Also: thanks to Anita MacGillivray and Jessee Mayfield who got me to watch it in the first place.

Dr. Claude Millogo, Julie Wagemakers, Christine Manninen, Philippa Jane Benson, Elizabeth Ward, Megan McDermott Stanley, Samantha Starmer, Alicia Dougherty-Wold, and Ella Mei Yon Harris. These remarkable women leaders shaped me, inspired my work, and gave me opportunities to advance my craft, career, and teams. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. And I owe it to them to give everyone access to the same opportunities they gave me along the way.

The Irish Passport, a great podcast by Naomi O’Leary and Tim McInerney. They put that image in my head of Helen Moloney asleep in Liberty Hall with a gun under her pillow.

Every Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Burkina Faso, especially those who made it through Stage ’99 with me in Bobo-Dioulasso. ✌️

Kelly Sue DeConnick of Milk-Fed Criminal Masterminds. “Further, higher, faster, more — always more.” 🤘

The US Army, more specifically the folks who developed Mefloquine back in the 1970s. I know it’s saved countless lives, but still… Fuck you.🖕