What Salesforce Trailblazer Shonnah Hughes Taught Me About Privilege
2014 was an incredible year for me. It was the first year I had the opportunity to develop a keynote at Dreamforce featuring the luminary developer speaker Estella Pyfrom, and it was also the year I met an incredible Trailblazer and Salesforce MVP, Shonnah Hughes. I tell this story not only because of her impact on our community as a technical expert and Salesforce MVP, or as an executive leader in the workforce development space, I tell this story because of what she taught me personally about unconscious bias, inclusion and lending privilege.
How racial equity dialogue started at Dreamforce in the Dev Zone
I like to believe that as an African-American woman from Oakland, CA who built her own bootstraps to pull herself up by, that frankly, there isn’t much anyone else can teach me about diversity inclusion. Yet time and time again, I am proven wrong as my growth and consciousness about what it means to be inclusive have continued to evolve over the years, and that is such a wonderful thing. To set the stage for the story that I am about to share we have to go back a few years. Way back in 2014, I was a Sr Solution Engineer/Architect for Salesforce Platform preparing for Dreamforce, the largest software technology gathering in the world. I’d recently made a career pivot and wanted to immerse myself entirely in the space of platform so I committed to spending all my time at the conference in the Developer Zone. And I loved it! Managing some of the most technical content and booths and educating attendees on security, app dev, and apex, was so much fun! And all the while, I had another somewhat less obvious mission of making Dreamforce more racially and ethnically inclusive and diverse.
Today if you attend Dreamforce you will find copious amounts of content dedicated to social progress, racial and gender equality peppered among the visionary business and technical hands-on content. As a woman, you will inevitably find yourself waiting in a line to use the restroom, which is a wonderful thing because historically most tech conferences have so few women, that you’d find yourself alone in the restroom while the line to the men’s restroom wraps around so many corners. Now that’s today, but allow me a moment of brutal transparent about the past — back then, Dreamforce wasn’t as diverse as it is today. Back then there was no Office of Equality to broadcast the message of inclusion, and frankly, there was no budget for it either. But there was still work being done toward inclusion by Trailblazers for equality.
Before the top down approach for equality began there were incredible executive sponsors like Mary Scotton who partnered with people like me and created space for inclusive programming. Mary held space in the Developer Zone so we could host Luminary Developer Speakers who carried powerful messages about inclusion like Estella Pyfrom, the 76 years-young #phenomenalwoman who built a tech education center on wheels called Estella’s Brilliant Bus, which travels the country to provide computer science education to communities with limited access. Mmm hmm. True story! True ally! — By the way, you should buy her book, The Legacy of a Humble Black Women.
Mary even carved out breakout session space so we could host the first BOLDforce meetups where we could openly discuss opportunities and challenges for racial inclusion at Dreamforce. The inclusive programming was great and another great reason for me to spend the majority of my time in the Dev Zone! More and more, people of color were being attracted to work in the Salesforce ecosystem and it was because we were making it a more inclusive space and offering platforms to connect them with the community.
Put yourself out there and meet new people
Making Dreamforce more inclusive wasn’t about content though, it was about the community, and you can’t connect with the community unless you “put yourself out there”, that goes for me too! So while presenting at a booth about Lightning Connect (one of Salesforce’s integration products) a woman walked by with this beautiful brightly colored hair that was laid so hard that I had to take a momentary break from espousing the power of virtualized o-data at the booth to catch up to the woman and tell her that “Your hair is awesome”, find out “how long have you been in the Salesforce community? and “by the way can I talk to you about Salesforce integration and mobile cause it’s super dope!” or something along those lines. :-) We chatted briefly and I learned that she started working with Salesforce technology the same year as I did, in 2007 AND she is a straight boss! Her name was Shonnah Hughes and she was a total #adminhero who definitely wanted to talk about integration and as a matter of fact, she had several feature requests that will make it easier to improve data quality and reduce duplicate data. I was so happy to see yet another woman of color leading with technical excellence in the community. That was one of the highlights of Dreamforce that year. I didn’t want to be weird and ask for her contact info and as a result, I wouldn’t cross paths with Shonnah again until a few years later when I would come to know her as @Saasy_Sistah on twitter.
Unbeknownst to me, Mary and Shonnah (like Mary and I) were like two peas in a pod and were basically besties on twitter. So like any good bestie would, Mary sent me a link to Shonnah’s blog which included a powerfully sweeping poem about inclusion.
Shonnah had strung together a touching collection of experiences, feelings, and words into a work of art which I so deeply identified with that I was brought to tears. Below is just a brief snippet.
“I need to see people that look like me, to be comfortable in a space I wouldn’t normally be.
I agree that we shouldn’t allow the lack of representation to stop our aspiration to achieve more than the previous generation.
This is about more than me. It’s about all the young women of color who are not yet able or ready to address this issue and so I am willing to forego my fears to help the next generation in the coming years.” — How Can I “Be” What I Cannot See? by Shonnah Hughes
I was so moved that I tweeted back to her suggesting she share it with Gregory G. Greenlee to have it published on the BlacksInTechnology blog. Remember this moment because it will come full circle later in the story.
I wanted to see Shonnah’s story shared more widely among the black tech scene because her story was so inspiring to me as a technical African-American woman. A few months later she would be named a Salesforce MVP, becoming one of 3 African-American Salesforce MVPs due to her incredible contributions to the Salesforce ecosystem of Trailblazers.
A few months later still, at Dreamforce 2016 we would finally get together again, face to face and use the opportunity to celebrate her success as an MVP and my success in launching the Life Model Assessment app among wonderful friends, allies and MVPs Rachel Rogers, Peter Chalmers, and Ryan Headley. I clearly remember this day as we were all speaking so candidly about diversity and inclusion that it led to Shonnah interview Ryan about his journey to allyship. Check that out too when you get a chance and all her other awesome interviews.
You might think Shonnah would take a moment to slow down and take a vacation after being named an MVP, but nope!
A few months later Shonnah would partner with a group of amazing MVPs and diverse women (Selina Suarez, Rebe de la Paz, and Stephanie Herrera) to launch Pep UP Tech☁️, with the mission of giving motivated, underserved students the access, skills, mentors, and confidence needed to begin careers in tech and help diversify the industry. They were making big moves as the leaders of diverse workforce development training and career success in the Salesforce ecosystem. And PepUp Tech was bringing in everyone from the community to help. For example, in August 2017 Shonnah invited me to meet with some of their students over dinner during Midwest Dreamin, one of the largest Salesforce User Group Conferences in the United States.
The dinner was a huge success! We were able to get the cohort, many of whom traveled to Chicago for a chance to “see what they can be”, be seen, supported, included, and connected to Trailblazers in the community. For me it was a chance to see first hand, the impact that PepUp Tech was having on people’s lives and families. I was humbled, touched and proud all at the same time.
At some point a few days later at Witness Success conference Shonnah and I had another chance to talk. This time we didn’t talk about technology at all. We talked about obstacles in life as women of color who used our intellect to escape violence and poverty while still helping to carry the weight of loved ones who are currently overburdened with extreme conditions of violence and poverty. We talked about the true weight of being not only a woman in tech, but a leading women in tech, and still being care takers with extremely challenging circumstances at home without enough support. We’re no Sheryl Sandbergs with in-office nanny’s and in-home au pairs. Nah, we really do it all across family and work, and we have to find a way to do it all at the same time because opportunities don’t sit around waiting for us because the circumstances are difficult at home. We cannot afford to pay the opportunity costs. Our next generation can not afford for us to miss the mark.
It’s important to be clear that not every African-American woman you meet in tech comes from the hood like we did— actually I can safely say that most black women in tech do not share this story. Most black women in tech went to a formal school, got formal degrees, and didn’t come from the hood at all. But Shonnah and I did. And as a result we both faced unspeakable tragedy. We both lost siblings to violence. We both lived elements of the stories people bob their head to when they listen to trap music. We both experience the real life ghetto struggle in our past, present and future and we are not ashamed of it! And — like the hero Harriet Tubman we keep going back to do everything in our power to free our people from the shackles of poverty, violence and oppression. Our Underground Railroad is the tech outreach programs we‘ve developed. And with all of our accomplishments and awards, we still faced personal struggles from being single mothers and care takers with more mouths to feed than just our children, and we still have dreams of our own that often sit on hold but we never give up on.
The intersectional corporate trauma women like us continued to face on a daily basis (yeah, I said it) is something most of our supporters just didn’t understand. And while we cheer and support the growth and success of other women, those allies in tech who inspire us, we know for a fact that our challenges, and the weight we carry is far heavier than even our greatest allies can ever imagine. There are no words to express it. And so for me, having Shonnah in the Salesforce community, doing her work, and being who she is, her authentic self, with all of her story, personal, family and career… For me, she had become the very answer to the question her poem posed many years before “How Can I ‘Be’ What I Cannot See?”
You would think the story stops there, but it doesn’t because as Shonnah continued to bring so much of herself into the community and space, she continued to help me see more of myself and more opportunities to “Be What I Wanted to See.”
The next time I would see Shonnah present on stage would be in Salt Lake City, Utah in May 2018. Utah is among the most homogenous places I’ve ever been to in my life, so I really appreciated the Rocky Mountain Salesforce User Group for inviting me to present at Snowforce and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Shonnah would be speaking as well, and giving a talk on privilege no less. What I hadn’t anticipated was how emotional I would get during her keynote. Her keynote led us through an exercise that would in effect, tally our privilege. I ended up being the only person in the room with a big fat zero for privilege points while others had point ranging up to 100. Well, whatever! I’m a successful woman, and a global thought leader so of course I have privilege right?!? So why did I get so emotional that I could barely speak? Because in order for me to function in the society we live in, I do everything in my power on a daily basis ignore the unequal distribution of privilege in this world that gives others unfair advantages over me so that I don’t feel like the world is stacked against me. I spend a lot more of the time thinking about the privilege I have that others do not, so that I may take action to redistribute that privilege to help others who don’t have to same level of access or opportunity as myself, not the other way around. So I was overcome and Shonnah gave me an opportunity and a safe space to express that within our community. I didn’t know that was something… a release that I needed to have.
After that experience I didn’t think there was anything more that I could do about privilege beyond what I already do until I received an invite to present at the Inaugural BITCON2018 conference by the Blacks in Technology Foundation (remember the tweet before of my wanting to share Shonnah’s poem with the Blacks in Tech community). The conference would happen in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St Paul and of course whenever I think of those cities I think of my homegirl Shonnah cause that’s her hometown!
I was really excited about the conference so I submitted a talk on AI called “Building Predictions: Artificial Intelligence for Life and Work”, which was accepted! Later when I found out Shonnah wasn’t speaking there I felt like it was a major miss, and I felt a little weird speaking at a conference in Minneapolis without having Shonnah on stage. I’ve seen many conferences come to my hometown in Oakland for example, and only a handful have ever reached out to invite me to submit a CFP and frankly, as a leader in tech I find it offensive and tragically non-inclusive. I think conference organizers should make it a point to include a number of people from the local communities in their events as a matter of respect not only for regional inclusion, but also out of consideration for communities who are facing rapid gentrification and displacement, but that’s a whole different blog post. Let me get back on topic!
Speaking in Shonnah’s city without giving her the platform she deserves was unacceptable for so many reasons. But in particular there was frankly so much affinity across our stories that if a random person were to describe the both of us, the abstract highlights of the story would sound practically identical. We both came from the hood, except for me it’s West Oakland, and for Shonnah it’s North Minneapolis. Both of us and our families have been traumatized by the loss of loved ones through gun violence, for me it was losing my brother, for Shonnah it was losing her sister. Furthermore, we both understand the horrors of police trigger bias when dealing with black bodies, for me it’s Oscar Grant, for Shonnah it’s Phillando Castillo. And to combat all those atrocities, we both co-founded organizations and communities to advance people of color in the tech space and create social justice, for me it’s BOLDforce, for Shonnah it’s PepUp Tech. And ultimately we were both the answer to the question “How Can I ‘Be’ It If I Can’t See It?”.
So really there was no way I could just accept the “outsider/silicon valley” privilege and give a talk in her city without sharing the stage with her. It was suddenly an opportunity for one black woman to lend some well earned privilege to another who’d equally earned the same platform and elevate both our messages together. Working together we could spread her message of enabling access and opportunity for underrepresented people to build tech careers, and my message that enables people to contribute to the space of AI which needs diverse perspectives to keep us from making biased and unethical technology solutions. So the AI session that was allotted to me started with Shonnah sharing her personal story as a native Minnesotan, along with the mission and impact of PepUp Tech. And it was the most gratifying presentation I’d ever been a part of.
We shared the platform, we shared the stage, and together we’re multiplying our impact. It’s my hope that others can be inspired by Shonnah’s story just as they may be inspired by my own, and that our combined impact in the tech community continues to grow and feed off of the other. It is through this unity of Ohana (family) that we can truly transform our world and finally reverse the problems that lead to inequity in the first place.
If you enjoyed this story please take a moment to share it and donate to Pep UP Tech☁️! Just click this link to donate and remember, it costs us nothing to take a moment to think about what privilege we have that we can lend to others.
Ayori Selassie is an expert in the field of AI (Artificial Intelligence) for smart CRM assistants and a leader of Product Marketing for Salesforce Einstein at Salesforce. Selassie is also the creator of Life Model®, and the inventor of Life Model Canvas® (the framework to design your life). Selassie hosts and produces a podcast with Tech Sistas called #TechSistasTalk to empower women to succeed in their life and careers, and is a globally recognized thought leader, entrepreneur, philanthropist and innovator. As an entrepreneur Selassie founded Selfpreneur®, a company whose mission is to create a better life with Life Model Design®, Work Life Integrity® and the merger of entrepreneurship and employment. Selassie publishes content regularly on TheSelfpreneur.com to share best practices and stories of the need for disruptive social innovation in the fourth industrial revolution.
