Women of Color in Tech

Introduction

One of the important duties in my job is helping customers figure out “why”: with all of the options that are available to them for their needs, and their limited time and resources, why is my product the one that they should choose?

Considering a career in tech prompts the same question. Of the career fields and options available, why should you, as a woman of color, pursue a career in technology? More specifically, why should you pursue this career field considering the well-known, heavily researched, and persistent challenges we continue to face in the field?

To be honest, I struggled with how to effectively answer that question every day while I wrote this book. I deal with many of the issues raised in this book, and more, such as the following:

• Keeping up with dynamic and complex technology areas, while balancing what's demanded of me daily at work and home.
• Dealing with the occasional insensitive comment made by the ignorant and the unpleasant, rooted in misconceptions about my race and gender, and then wrestling with whether to respond and be dubbed as “sensitive” or let the comment stand but let it slowly eat away at my spirit.
• Seeing many people willing to give easy praise and “advice,” but few willing to publicly advocate on my behalf professionally. There are people who say they are allies but whose words, actions, and motivations reveal anything but.
• Being the only one like me in the room and sometimes feeling tokenized.
• For the women of color peers ...