I am sure by now it’s no longer news to you that major companies - among those many Big Tech companies - have announced that they will stop or at least significantly cut back on their DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) initiatives. Meta announced it would eliminate its DEI department along with its biggest DEI initiative that included hiring a diverse workforce, training, and sourcing supplies from diverse-owned companies. Zoom and Microsoft have rolled back their DEI programs too. Amazon announced it would significantly curb them. However, the sad news is not just coming out of the tech industry but from companies across all industries: Pepsi, Disney, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McDonald’s and Walmart to mention a few more examples.

This can be interpreted as a response to Donald Trump’s harsh stance on DEI programs. On his first day in office, he signed an Executive Order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” where he states that corporates, institutions and government functions have “adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.” He also says that DEI initiatives undermine the “values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system”. Instead he calls for “restoring merit-based opportunity”.

Admittedly, reading this made me sad, angry, frustrated and especially misunderstood. Furthermore, going through some reports of companies justifying their DEI elimination or cutback decision made me feel like either of us got DEI completely wrong - them or me?

What DEI was and is for me

For me DEI was not about hiring underrepresented groups simply based on the fact that they belong to an underrepresented group. It was something completely different. Having worked at Amazon for almost four years, I benefitted greatly from their DEI programs - not because I got hired and promoted without working hard, striving to learn and get better or putting a lot of focus and energy into work. But through all the amazing learning opportunities I got through the Women@Amazon, WomeninAI, Neurodivergent, Latinos@Amazon etc. Chapters that organized great sessions on the importance of visibility, personal development, mindfulness, imposter syndrome, how to deal with stress and overwhelm, how to negotiate, what career traps to avoid, how to drive your career strategically - the list goes on. Many of the learnings that I am now teaching other women through my coaching program came from these sessions (simply click here and send the email if you want to learn more about the program). And on top of all that learning, it created a great sense of community and belonging through offline events in your region in an environment where you sometimes or even often feel like you don’t belong.

DEI was also about learning about each other, other groups and how all humans come with their biases and what we can do to not let them take over completely. So this is what DEI is about for me.

Now why is DEI important? 

From my own experience as well as from talking to managers in the tech space that have or had both male and female direct reports, women often have difficulty navigating the corporate environments and mainly because they don’t know the rules. Especially early on. When talking to managers I often hear this: “Women do amazing work but they often don’t ask for half as much as men do” (salary, promotions, stretch projects etc.). Women often don’t negotiate, they still underestimate visibility and think good work just gets rewarded. They are often very self-critical and have very high standards for themselves. Instead of letting women (and other underrepresented groups) learn it the hard and long way, tell them how the game works!

DEI in hiring - my experience

So yes, I don’t know how the decision to hire me was made. But I have seen and was involved in making hiring decisions about others. DEI considerations for hiring processes was about getting QUALIFIED candidates from underrepresented groups into the pipeline or interview process, e.g. through a strong employer brand that values diversity and DEI programs, that has an above average diverse workforce, that offers flexible working arrangements, that offers the chance to do exciting work and grow. During the interview process, Amazon tried to have at least one female interviewer in the group of interviewers when interviewing a female candidate to make them more comfortable and get (some) diversity in the interview committee. I was often that female interviewer. So yes I was placed on that interview committee partially due to my gender. But when it came to the hiring decision, it was all about the candidate’s qualifications - both technical and behavioral (you might know Amazon interviews with respect to their Leadership principles and culture). In fact, in no other a company have I seen a more standardized and qualification-based hiring process. Before interviewing, you go through several rounds of training. Every interview is documented and you have to fill in standardized forms. In the end, the committee comes together to make a decision based on technical qualifications and fit on leadership principles.
Moreover, contrary to other companies, I haven’t heard of cases where women were not hired at Amazon due to being at the beginning of their 30s and “probably getting pregnant soon”. I am not saying these don’t exist at all but at least from what I saw it was not part of their culture to accept those arguments in a hiring decision - quite different to what I have heard in other companies.

DEI and the economy

DEI is a long-term investment that - when designed and executed carefully - pays off economically. The latest McKinsey Diversity report states: “companies in our top quartile for ethnic diversity show an average 27 percent financial advantage over others” And: “Companies with representation of women exceeding 30 percent (and thus in the top quartile) are significantly more likely to financially outperform those with 30 percent or fewer.“

Yet I understand that when times get hard businesses sacrifice long-term gain for short-term benefits. What frustrates me, makes me angry, sad and feel misunderstood is when DEI is claimed to be neglecting people’s skill sets and qualifications and claimed to have no impact. Well yes, maybe some don’t because they were not well designed, executed or measured properly. Then eliminate those and create impactful ones.

DEI and bias

My hope would have been that by now the majority of leaders were aware that decisions, especially hiring, promotion and decisions about competence and power, are never 100 % objective - we all are humans and we all carry our biases. We like to choose people most similar to us. If we don’t address those biases actively through awareness and mechanisms (like unconscious bias trainings, a DEI-oriented and standardized hiring process), they influence our decisions heavily and what looks like pure merit-based decisions easily becomes distorted by the biases we all carry.

Well the good news is: Now since we are back to merit-based opportunities, I am sure we all won’t ever have to endure an incompetent leader again - never saw that happen pre-DEI ! 😅 

Studies and stats 🔢 

Diversity is a business case not just the right thing to do.

Source: McKinsey (December 2023): Diversity matters even more: The case for holistic impact

AI 🤖 

Reasoning models are the new kid on the block of AI models. OpenAI compares them senior co-workers, whereas previous LLMs are junior co-workers. Here are a few resources to familiarize yourself with them.

• Reasoning models - all levels
  Nice and quick introduction of reasoning models by OpenAI. Simply ignore the info on API configuration 😉 
  
  

• Reasoning best practices - all levels
  Learn when to use reasoning models and how they compare to GPT models. This OpenAI article also covers how to prompt reasoning models effectively.
  
  

• DeepSeek-R1 release
  The release of this model dominated the AI news for some time since it achieved on-par performance with OpenAI’s reasoning models but was trained with a fraction of the resources, questioning the necessity of ever-increasing computing power. In addition, it is open-source and you can understand how the model was trained. Here are a few resources to look at:
  How DeepSeek Trained AI 30 Times Cheaper? - all levels
  DeepSeek-R1: Architecture and training explained - all levels

  From Zero to Reasoning Hero: How DeepSeek-R1 Leverages Reinforcement Learning to Master Complex Reasoning - intermediate
  

Wellbeing Hack 😁 

Mindful news consumption

In the past weeks, I have often talked to people who said that recent developments in the world worry them and make them feel hopeless and down. I can totally relate and I think we need to remember taking back control where we can. This starts with taking control of how much time you spend listening to news that upset you and at what time of the day. Also, of course, you can think about your circle of influence and take action and have a positive impact on your friends, family or even wider community.

Coming back to news, here are my recommendations:

• Set a time limit and commit to not watching or reading news for longer than that.

• Experiment with different times of day - e. g. instead of listening to it in the morning where it might dampen your mood, do it in the late afternoon or early evening (not too late to prevent negative impact on sleep).

• Focus on getting information on outcomes rather than following the whole process. For example, on an important election day, watch the news in the evening or the next day once results are reported instead of watching all the election forecasts throughout the day.

Try them out for a week and see if you feel better and decide if you want to keep going or what you want to adjust.

Events 📆 

Lots of events coming up on the occasion of International Women’s Day in March.

• Women's Empowerment Meetup - in-person
  @Thoughtworks, Berlin
  Feb 27th, 5 - 8 pm
  

• Rooted in Power - A Women’s Circle - in-person
  (for more info see above)

  @Sana Studio, Berlin X-Berg
  March 1st, 5 - 7 pm
  

• AWS Women’s User Group Berlin Meetup - Women’s Day Special - in-person

  @Amazon, Berlin

  March 6th, 6 - 9 pm
  

• International Women's Day 2025 - Redefine Possible - in person and online

  @Google, Berlin
  March 12th, 5 - 9.30 pm

Content recommendations 📚️ 

My favorite pieces of content to learn and grow!

• The laws of magnetism | Jospeh McClendon III - Further Faster Podcast
  Joseph is one of the coaches that works closely with Tony Robbins (the most successful coach and motivational speaker) and is on stage for full days at many of his events. In this episode, Jospeh explains how everything is energy and electricity and why that means that you can not only chase after things but also attract them to you. I find this idea very intriguing - as chasing and running after things all the time can be very exhausting 😀 
  
  

• Reignite your Relationship | Esther Perel - The Rich Roll Podcast

  Another podcast with Esther Perel 😄 - I simply love how many insights she gives on one of the most complex topics ever: human relationships.

What do you think is your biggest challenge to succeed in your career? ⛰️ 

 👉️ simply reply to this email - make it succinct!

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