Change Catalyst: Melinda Epler on Creating Change by Including Everybody in the Conversation
By Jared Karol
When Melinda Briana Epler, Founder and CEO of Change Catalyst, says she is trying to bring the whole tech community together to talk about solutions to diversity and inclusion, she really means the whole tech community. If your goal is to empower inclusive and sustainable innovation, you have to be intentional and look at creative ways to bring all groups of people together — groups based on gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, disability, veterans, the LGBTQIA community. In other words: everybody!
Speaking at the Ability and Tech Conference in Berkeley last spring, Melinda emphasized how she and her team used this very intentional approach to inclusion when they designed the first Tech Inclusion Conference in the fall of 2015. Including everybody has proved to be a successful approach, with that one conference in 2015 having now blossomed into 14 Tech Inclusion Conferences in 2017 — kicking off with the Austin Tech Inclusion Conference two weeks ago.
Melinda and her colleagues at Change Catalyst are pretty well connected, but they don’t know everybody. To be inclusive to all groups, they are constantly having to expand their networks. Speaking about that first conference in 2015, Melinda said, “What we found was that we actually had the hardest time including people with disabilities because we knew so few people. There are definitely people with disabilities in tech. We just didn’t know how to find them.”
So when Change Catalyst was approached to put on a conference specifically for people with disabilities she of course said yes — and got to work right away. For nine months, Melinda and her team worked with the Computer Technologies Program team, put together an advisory council, gathered eight ASL interpreters, found a captioner and a visual graphic designer, brought on 30 volunteers, and put together a conference for a community that really wanted it.
And how did it go?
“The most exciting thing for me has been the audience’s reaction,” Melinda says. “First, that they showed up, and that we had standing room only; the excitement to meet new people and to understand this better to come up with new solutions together.” When listening to Melinda speak, togetherness is a theme often revisited. It’s that togetherness and collaboration that “helps catalyze conversations — to get people thinking about what they need to do to get to a point where they’re going to take action and really go back to their companies and make a difference.”
And Change Catalyst is making a difference. The tech industry is still in a pretty early stage in thinking about diversity and inclusion, with a lot of companies at the very, very beginning of the conversation, let alone action. The release of diversity numbers by some big companies in 2014 was a catalyst for these important conversations, and while it hasn’t moved the needle that much, it at least is sparking questions: “How do I do this? How do I really create change?”
It’s these questions that people are asking that prove the need for a company like Change Catalyst and Tech Inclusion Conferences. When people from all over the tech industry can come together in one space and have real conversations about important solutions to diversity and inclusion, we will start to see change. Conversations alone won’t create the change, but what they will do is provide skills, best practices and the motivation to begin the shift toward a more inclusive culture.
“Real results take time and they take money and they take a drive from the top down and from the bottom up and everything in between,” Melinda says. Diversity and Inclusion Specialists — as well as leaders and employees — need to be empowered not only with time and money, but with all kinds of resources so that they can do their job well. When companies start focusing on all these things, we will start to see real change. And, as that change takes place, you can count on Melinda and her team being one of the main catalysts making it happen.
Listen to the full podcast below or here.
About Change Catalyst:
Change Catalyst empowers diverse, inclusive and sustainable tech innovation — through events, consulting, research and training.
Our Tech Inclusion programs explore and develop innovative solutions to tech diversity and inclusion.
Our Startup Ecosystem programs help underrepresented entrepreneurs and investors to start, scale and fund worldchanging businesses.
Change Catalyst is a Certified B Corp, winning the “Best for the World” award for community impact in 2014 and “Best in the World” overall in 2015.
The Change Catalyst Team
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