Excerpt from a 2019 YouTube panel/talk (Jason M. Lemkin upload) arguing that leaders must actively speak up on gender equality, equal pay, and racial equality rather than remaining silent. The speaker emphasizes that silence from those with social power—particularly white men—is an expression of privilege, references the MeToo era and diversity movements, and likens today’s growing norm of prioritizing diversity to how cloud computing became normalized over the prior decade.
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And to Molly's point of, like, you can't get in trouble if you don't open your mouth. Like, those days are over, okay? That type of leadership where you stand back and are like, I'm gonna see what happens. You won't be a leader in five years if that's the way you decide to do it. Like, you have to play in this. And if you are a white person, who. My God, if you are a white man, which I love white men. I'm married to one, I'm made two, I'm down with it. Right? I like them. But you have the most important voice in this because no one expects you to say anything, right? You can just stand by the wall and be quiet. I don't agree, but I'm not, you know, I'm not getting involved. That's the definition of privilege, ladies and gentlemen. And in this day and age. Wait, can we stop and clap for that? I agree. I mean, I do think that that's the definition of privilege. And I have a lot of privilege. I'm well aware of how much privilege and luck I've had in my life. I'm not sitting up here acting like I'm perfect by no means. But I do think that in the day of MeToo and in the day of diversity and equality, this was not a topic. Five years ago. We were weird in the corner being like, we gotta do something. Something about this is wrong. And she's a black woman and I'm a white woman. And we work at a really amazing company that's on the edge and thinks about things a little bit differently. But, like, this wasn't normal. Like, by the way, I'm old, but cloud computing wasn't normal. Ten years ago, I spent, like, most of my career telling people it was okay to put their data in the cloud. Now we act like that's normal. Right? It's the same thing with diversity.
