Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Intersectional Innovation

0:00Transcript

0:00Hello, Mariam. Hi, Simon. How are you? Pretty good. How about yourself? Good. Oh, my God. I can hear your cold. Yeah, it's there. I guess everyone's feeling a little bit under the weather nowadays. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, it's this time of the year. Yeah. And I'm really grateful that you are here and that we have many other. Jill and Barbara will probably drop by a bit as well. And, yeah, how are you feeling? Yeah, I got my wisdom teeth removed and it's a bit sore, but I can move my jaw a little bit so I can actually talk today. You sound great. If you wouldn't have told me, I wouldn't have known. Hi, Jill. Good to see you. Hello, Jill. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. Or good morning for me. It's afternoon for y'all. Good afternoon. Good morning, Jill. Good morning for me, Jill. Oh, yeah, it is. You're pretty close to me. Thank you so much for joining us, especially in this early morning. Oh, I'm happy to.

1:13So very much appreciate it. You know it's going to be good when I'm waking up at the crack of dawn to talk about a topic. Wonderful. Great. I can see quite a few people already joining. So we can also try to be pretty on time today. As I'm sure it's going to be a really exciting discussion. And it's good to hear from my voice. I have a bit of a cold. So I'm sorry for that. So I will try to avoid speaking today. So I will pretty much do mostly an introduction today. And also Catherine, the co-host of Battery Revolution. She's unfortunately also not feeling well. So she's unfortunately not with us today. But we are really capable hands also as Mariam, who are going to co-moderate. But before we go to Mariam and Jill, who's our conversation starter for today, introducing the topic, just a few quick housekeeping rules and housekeeping about these sessions. As you can see in the title, if you're on the app, it's called Battery Revolution.

2:08We've been running these sessions now for 43 weeks. And essentially, Catherine and I, we met on Clubhouse and we run these sessions on all kinds of battery topics ever since. And yeah, these sessions last for about one half hours. They're recorded, as you can see in the title. Actually, today we're quite excited that we're using the first time this new Clubhouse feature, which allows us to record directly in the app, which also means you can listen again to this recording directly on the app, or you can listen to it on Battery Insiders podcast, which is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to your podcasts. For the session later, it's going to work this way. I will introduce also Mariam quickly. Let me introduce Jill. And then she's going to do a bit of a 15 minutes or so introduction of today's topic. And then we really want to have an interactive discussion, which means we invite everyone who's here and everyone joining later on to join us on stage.

2:58And from experience, the last half an hour tends to be the most busy one. So just if you have any questions, please come up early, because then we have enough time for everyone. And if you want to come on stage, just raise your hand. I see some people are doing that, which is fantastic. And then essentially we're going to bring you up. And when you're on the stage, there's two things how we can communicate. One thing you want to applaud, you can do a quick kind of flicker of the microphone, a bit like this. And if you want to raise your hand, this is particularly useful if there's lots of people on stage, you can do like a slow clip of your microphone. This just really helps us to know that you want to speak next. We can also add links to the session. So if it makes sense, anytime we can communicate, we can also add links if there's anything people want to check out.

3:50We also have this messaging function, the back channels. You have this little paper airplane on the bottom right. You can write to the panelists or anybody else in this room, which helps you also if you want to share anything beyond what we're speaking about. Okay. I think that's from my side. I'm actually thinking, Mariam, do you want to quickly introduce yourself? Maybe one thing actually before you do that. I just want to say super excited actually to have you both on here because I'm very fortunate also to know you into other capacities. Both of you just did a brilliant lecture for the BatteryMBA. I just want to say that, which are really well received. So you're absolutely true experts in the battery field. But that's, of course, one of the topics today. But also really engaged in our community with battery associates. So just super excited to see you both here and also have you both officially part of this part of what we're working on too.

4:40So with this, Mariam, would you like to introduce yourself? Definitely. Thank you so much, Simon. And hopefully you feel better. I'm very excited to be here today. I'm also a Battery Associates ambassador. So Battery Associates, essentially, the mission is to progress the state of batteries through collaboration, community, and innovation. And that's where I met Simon and Jill as well. Very excited to be here. I'm also a co-founder of Pulsanix, and we develop capabilities to evaluate health of batteries. And Jill, today your topic will be intersectional innovation, which I'm very, very excited about, because this is a topic that it's not just something that you've got experience in, but you've also got an organization going to make sure that diversity and inclusion is included in corporate life, but also in a lot of the different organizations, like academic programs and so on and so forth. So I'm very excited to have you here, Jill. And just like Simon said, if you've got any questions, please feel free to raise your hands and we can bring you up on the stage.

5:56Thank you so much for that introduction. And thank you all for being here. I don't think I've ever been a part of a conversation about this before. In fact, I just kind of came up with the term slash stumbled upon the term of intersexual innovation recently, as I'm trying to find words to grasp onto this kind of concept of transforming and revolutionizing a workplace and innovating a workplace and the technology from both a technical and a social standpoint. So my background, as Miriam touched upon, I feel so amazing that you called me an expert in this. It's something that I've recently, I guess, been adjusting to that. I do know a lot about this because of my own personal research and experience, but my background is in physics and material science or my degrees. And then I went on to work at Innovate Corporation doing lithium battery R&D for a few years and recently just made the transition to a new company called Electric Goddess.

7:02Yes, Electric Goddess is the company name. I know, amazing, right? And what we do is focus on consulting to make battery packs and BMS designs that are both long lasting and safe. It's amazing to me how there's certain industry practices that aren't really up to a certain standard because say the safety tests are out of date and I can go on that later. I won't talk about that now, but we, yeah, we do consulting. So I'm really happy to be director there. And I also started the STEM Thrive Guides, which provides support for targets of bias, harassment and discrimination of inside of the workplace and have been running that business for the past year. And so this kind of intersection of, you know, how can we support diverse people inside of a workplace to do their best work while also contributing towards innovative technologies? Like that's what I'm most interested in, this intersectional innovation. And to introduce the topic, I wrote something because it is early where I'm at.

8:09I'm in California. It's six in the morning. This is way earlier than normally wake up. So excuse me if I sound a little tired, but I just want to read something to you to kind of set us up to talk. I definitely want your participation. I am so excited to hear what people have to think. I hope there are lots of disagreements so that we can learn from each other. I would love that. So, and maybe some agreements too. That's okay too. So intersectional innovation refers to how we can innovate from both a technical and a social standpoint. Innovations ultimately stem from people, right? When we consider how to improve or optimize technology, we must also account for including diverse input and ideas into the decision-making process, cultivating a workplace environment with psychological safety for continued growth. It's been shown, studies have shown that when you have a more diverse team, they're more successful. And just including like one female board member, for example, improves the business's likelihood of success.

9:19This is well-studied and published. Crazy, right? But so amazing. Okay. From my perspective, there's so many ways to socially innovate that are simple and would lead to immediate positive results. Yet I see companies shying away from that based out of fear of the unknown. For fields that have historically excluded and marginalized different demographics of people, more work needs to be done to undo oppressive systems and structures. This includes providing a straightforward and transparent path for reporting and resolving harassment, bias, and discrimination in the workplace, and overall embedding diversity, equity, inclusion practices into the DNA of a company, rather than keeping it as a separate department with limited influence. Another way is to develop company policies that prioritize human health and safety, such as better leave policies like maternity and paternity leave, for one. We can't talk more, or sorry, excuse me, I'm reading this. We could talk more about this in the discussion, and I would love to hear your ideas too. And innovation doesn't have to be limited to just the technical aspect.

10:36In fact, I believe that it's necessary to start at a human level if you want to fully utilize the talent available to you. And I'm reading this amazing book right now called Multipliers by Liz Leisman that touches on this topic. So starting, it's all about starting with a culture of psychological safety. So now that I've kind of introduced the topic, I would love to hear what other people have to say. Go ahead and raise your hand and come up here. We're talking about, you know, this married power of both social and technical revolution of innovation from both the technical and the social side. And I'd love to hear, for example, examples of how you've seen it play out in workplaces, or if you have any personal experiences with how something totally changed your work environment for the better. Just a simple policy. Yeah. Do we have any hands raised? I'm not a moderator, so I can't see hands raised. Or Miriam, do you have any thoughts?

11:43Jill, when you mentioned that study that mentioned that even having one female board member really improves the efficiency of a company, is there a reason why having, you know, just from your perspectives and from the studies, having more diversity actually leads to more positive effects? Like, what is the correlation there? If I remember right, there's several reasons for that. The first is if you picture, picture like if the board was a bunch of your best friends, how much time would you spend talking about the business versus talking about, I don't know, the fun things you were up to during the weekend or talking about, you know, just personal things? I mean, that's totally fine to talk about that and to discuss that. But I think what they found in the study that is when they introduce more diverse people to the board, more of the board's agenda during their meetings was to actually focus on the company and focus on, you know, okay, what's going on next?

12:52What are we doing next? So it brought in a level of professionalism, I guess. I don't like to use the word professional because I think it describes a collection of qualities, but maybe just more diligence. And on the other aspect, if you bring in people with diverse backgrounds, maybe socioeconomic, you know, from where they are in the world, they have this perspective that other people may not see. So I think a good example of this is there's a movie with, oh, who is this? I'm sorry. I'm forgetting. I'm blanking on the movie, but it's the premise is this young woman who's just works in like the basement of a fashion industry company is like has this accident and then thinks she's really beautiful when she didn't have any confidence before. So she had this huge confidence boost and it enables her to apply to work at the front desk where she has to be the face of this company. That's this high fashion company. And she ends up bringing in her perspective of like, oh, actually the everyday girl doesn't use fancy makeup brushes.

14:04She uses the brush included in the kit. And so she helps the whole company build its product because she offers this diverse perspective of like the everyday girl or woman versus like a woman who's much more affluent and into the industry. So bringing in diverse people, you have different perspectives that could shed light on different problems and shed light on different solutions to those problems. Those are two ways that I think the paper captured how diversity helps. Yeah, I love that, Jill. And I definitely agree with you on that in the sense that even the technologies that we develop have human bias in them. And so to develop technology that is going to be serving everyone, you really need all diverse, different experiences ingrained in that technology development process. Stephanie is here. Stephanie, do you have any questions for Jill or any questions? Yes, absolutely. Thanks for bringing me up on stage. So I have a comment, also a question. And Jill, just like you, I'm not in a time zone that's at 6 a.m., but it's 9 a.m.

15:24But anyways, I definitely like to sleep in on my weekend. So apologize for my voice, my pre-coffee voice. But I'm so happy to hear this discussion because I'm a huge, huge proponent of this, of diversity when it comes to innovation. There's two things that I'm super passionate about is e-mobility and sustainable transport and promoting women and diversity in STEM and engineering fields. I'm an engineer myself. So I'm definitely trying to get more diversity and getting women into e-mobility. My examples of how I see firsthand results of having diverse teams leading to success was about like in 2015, I was leading the EV charging team or the EV charging business in Canada at ABB. I work for ABB currently. And I made it a point, I definitely made it a point to have a super diverse, not just gender, but also cultural team. And I think one of the things, well, that definitely, I'm a full believer that that definitely led to the success of the team from where it started, which was pretty much a startup to later when we grew in terms of not just regional, but also in numbers and orders and success rates and customer satisfaction.

16:49And I'm a very, very firm believer that is because I made sure our team was as diverse as possible. And so from our engineering teams, I made sure that we had women from project managers, obviously to sales and after service. And so, yeah, I definitely made it, you know, something that was super important and to have women. I think having women is one thing, having women part of the team or a diverse team is one thing. The other thing that, you know, as a leader at that time too, I had to really work on was encouraging them to speak up. So, you know, engineers are introverts, more likely. And I, when I, where I first started in my career, of course, I'm a woman, I'm an engineer. Where I first started in my career, I was really not outspoken whatsoever. I was a really, really big introvert. Actually today, I like to call myself like an extroverted introvert. I try to like push myself out of my comfort zone and, you know, get out there and be more outspoken.

17:51And I definitely encourage women to be very outspoken as well. And whenever we were in team settings and team meetings where, again, really great that I had the women in the room, but I had to encourage them to speak up. And so obviously in the first couple of meetings, that wasn't super easy to do. But then I started to learn on ways on how to, and it was something that was very, it was a two-way approach. It was for the individuals themselves. They have to understand that they have to, and they have to work on being outspoken as well. So I would kind of try to coach them and work with them on that front. And then the other front was for me also to be a leader, to make sure that there was an inclusive setting as much as possible to encourage, not just me. Of course, I would, you know, call on the women or whoever it was that was less outspoken to speak up.

18:46But also, like I said, to really encourage others too, to make sure that other people's voices were heard and to have this kind of culture to, you know, if someone's not really speaking up, you know, encourage them to speak up. So my question is, well, maybe a two-part question is, what are your best practices to get people to, or companies and teams to encourage this type of open, inclusive type of workspace? And then part two is what I'm seeing now, or, you know, the whole world is going through a pandemic where everything is really, a lot of work is being done remotely. And on virtual platforms, it's a struggle to get, you know, it's so easy to have the less outspoken person really not be seen, you know? So if you're in a team setting, if you're in person, then you can like see, okay, like this person's here and this person's not speaking. But when it's like a team's call or a virtual platform, it's so easy to miss the less outspoken people.

19:50So really interested to hear your thoughts on those two points, on how to encourage the less outspoken people to speak. And yeah, and how to do that in these challenging times where lots of things are remote and virtual. Totally. First of all, thank you so much for sharing an amazing example of how you were able to step up and try some things to get people to use their voice. It definitely takes push from leadership to create the culture. And you did that. And I really commend you on doing that. That's incredible. Thanks for sharing. To answer your question, I think there's a couple things that companies can do first and foremost, or even teams can do first and foremost to make sure that they're including diverse voices in the conversation, right? It's not just about putting the bodies in the workplace and making it look demographically diverse. It's about utilizing that talent to its full potential. And the first step is to recognize that us engineers, us people who have been in the field and have this technical knowledge may not be the experts and the people able to make this culture of inclusion, right?

21:05We don't have this expertise. And this is a huge area of expertise and knowledge that we can learn. You know, I've learned it on the way, but if I were starting out at a company that I came into and I noticed people weren't speaking up because there's this culture of silence and fear, I would hire a consultant to come in and assess what's going on. That would be my first step. There are people who specialize in this. They're often called like diversity, equity, inclusion specialists or consultants. And they're specifically trained to address issues like this. And that's, to me, the first step the company should take, though it shouldn't be the last, right? I know of a company called Career Agility that focuses on making like a scorecard for companies where they can assess their DE&I, their inclusion practices, and use that scorecard as a benchmark for further progress. So you can conduct that benchmark, you know, biannually or maybe annually and see how your company improves over time.

22:13So that's one method of doing it. But I don't think a consultant is the place to stop. As I mentioned in the beginning, creating a culture like that's truly diverse, that's truly putting people first, that requires embedding that into like the DNA of the company itself. And there's also companies that actually help with this. There's Every.1. Every.1. You can look that up. And they actually developed tools so that companies can embed this kind of culture in the full fabric of the company. So there's that. And then there's also a company called Metaspace. So they're in Europe. And what Metaspace does is has, gathers data from the companies and uses AI and machine learning in order to like optimize and perfect the company's internal policies and practices. I'm not sure how that magic works. That's beyond me. But they're really using a data-driven approach because when it comes down to a business's success, we have these metrics that define a business's success. But what's unclear, I think, for businesses at this point in time is how the diversity, equity, inclusion, how making a psychologically safe workplace actually feeds into the business metrics.

23:41It's profitability, it's longevity, it's ability to innovate. And there is a connection for sure between those. Like we know that psychologically safe environments allow people to do their best work and psychologically unsafe environments stifle innovation, right? That's where you get people not speaking up. So those are just a couple ways that companies can make the first steps towards that kind of path. But if you as an individual in a company still want to make change, depending on your position in the company, there's only so much you can do personally. It really takes having leadership on board, having everyone on the same page. And that takes time. It really just takes time and diligence. And like you did, Stephanie, baby steps and taking that leadership upon yourself, but also recognizing what's outside of your control because you can really wear yourself out trying to do something against the grain. I hope that was helpful. And welcome to the stage. Go ahead and introduce yourself if you want to and share what you'd like to.

24:50Hello, this is Mark. I actually want to disagree with you in general. I think that actual diversity comes from below, not above. And that's my personal opinion. And when I've been to some of these diversity consultants, I don't find ultimately it helps the workplace, actually. You know, I've worked with majority international students and workers my entire life. And it actually doesn't actually lead to people being more connected and having more diverse opinions expressed in my experience. And this is kind of for someone who's actually organized, you know, women and STEM panels and et cetera. I think that these types of real diversity and thought have to come from below. They're informal things and conversations they have to come from. And, you know, that's my general opinion. So the people who can really benefit from diversity aren't always included and don't always care. You know, because like I said, I always work with majority international people. And I don't think that's actually leading to deeper, you know, thought or connection and innovation.

26:20Actually, informal events, socialization, that actually lead to a greater connection with the company, such that people can express themselves, can actually lead to better connectivity within the company. Those are my thoughts. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Let me understand this a little deeper. In these workplaces where you felt like, so you're saying that the diversity of the workplace actually hampered any kind of innovation. Can you explain why you think? In my experience, these consultants don't actually create diversity in the workplace. Diversity is something that comes from connection to people, people you work with. That's actually diversity in thought. Not some sort of superficial diversity where people look a certain way or a certain this or that. We're trying to create innovation. We're trying to create innovation by how they have their own opinion and their own abilities expressed. And those types of events don't come from consultants, don't come from diversity inclusion events, they actually come from people working hard to actually connect with their work with teammates, having events, having a socialization.

27:43That's my experience. Maybe your experience is very different. Maybe your expenses in these top-down approaches are better. I actually find that the bottom-up approach to actually having diversity in thought, because that's the goal, diversity in thought to lead to innovation, and that's the goal. Does that make sense to you, Jo? No, yeah. I completely agree that it comes from a diversity of thought and not from putting, say, diverse bodies in a room and not incorporating and including their thought in the process. And I agree that having a consultant isn't the end-all thing of change. It's maybe the first part of change for companies who haven't had this approach previously and need just some recommendations and need to know that they're not creating an environment that allows that free exchange of thought. And, but when it comes to, I think a common misconception is for, at least for the whole women in STEM push, okay, this might sound really bad, but bear with me through this.

28:51So for the women in STEM push, a lot of people envision the outcome that's the best outcome of having 50% women and 50% men. And this is with the gender binary like twist on it. Like this isn't including people who are non-binary, right? Which is not a good look, but bear with me through this. So having that surface level look of what it looks like from the outside is not necessarily indicative of having that actual free exchange of thought in the workplace, right? We don't actually know what the demographics would look like if there's a free exchange of thought because the demographics, like what the company looks like from the outside, is just a superficial rendering of what the internal culture is. And so making benchmarks like we need to have 50% women here doesn't necessarily answer the question of, well, are those women valued and heard and respected in that workplace? And yeah, does anyone else have thoughts on what Mark said? I can chime in a little bit here.

30:03It's Stephanie. So I think, Mark, to a certain extent, I would agree that it's not just, you know, having diversity is not the end goal. It's really when you said, you know, the thoughts. And so I think it's also important when you're hiring and during the selection process, like I'm going through a hiring process right now. I need to add more people on my team and I absolutely need to add more diversity. That's, you know, for sure, something that I'm doing. But I'm not going to hire, for example, a woman or someone who's diverse just because of, oh, they're diverse. Like there's obviously a thought process there. And like, do they fit with the team? And do they have the background that I need? And are they going to also fit the values that I need into my team? So I would agree to a certain extent that it's not just saying, okay, look, look how awesome my team is because it's super diverse. It's also, yes, it is diverse, but it came from me.

31:04So it came from the, you know, the company hiring these people based on their merits and, you know, the thoughts that they can bring in. And then the other thing that Jill also mentioned and I touched upon before, that it's good to have a diverse team, but you need to make sure that there's a culture of openness and inclusivity that these people are going to be able to speak up without being scared of challenging. Well, like you, like you're, what you're doing is great. Like you're coming in and you're challenging us, which is, which is great. And that's the kind of thing that's needed within companies. You know, if you want creativity and success, you need to have these kinds of ideas there. Thanks for sharing that perspective, Stephanie. Bahava, is that, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Would you like to speak? Hi, yeah, it's Bhavia. I, no, I'm just taking in a lot of the different perspectives that many of you have spoken about top versus bottom.

32:08And I honestly think that it's a two-way street. I do think that some of the things we've talked about, bringing companies in or consulting consultants to work on these diversity and inclusion initiatives can feel a bit performative. And I honestly think that if there is an issue with diversity, then it's really just the more, or rather a shortcoming, then it's more just a reflection of the company and it should make you think harder about where you're recruiting and why are you not, why is your pool of applicants the way it is? Which I know is like a deeper question that I know many HR and recruiting teams like deal with and are facing and constantly challenging themselves on having been in that environment before I'm well aware of it. But yeah, and I totally agree that just because you're 50-50 on anything or just because you have stats that say something, that's not, that's just a very low bar. The actual value of those numbers will come through exchange.

33:12But I don't think you can only rely on like the socialization within people to like really push the button on diversity because I think whether you're men and men versus women or, you know, within like certain ethnic groups, like I think people will often naturally silo themselves off anyway, especially like, I think still that happens. That's not to say that happens everywhere, but I think that there can be a tendency for that to happen and that there are ways and initiatives to make sure that there is more mingling going on and not just allowing people to kind of, what I think people have previously felt like is their comfort zone, like stay in that, depending on, you know, past life experience and how much engagement they've had with people from different backgrounds. I have an interesting story. So I have a friend who works at a company in the Bay Area and his company had a big problem getting people of a different background to stay at the company.

34:19They hire them and then they just couldn't stay. And basically the problem is the company is 100% foreign and women, but they couldn't get any American to stay at the company. But within the company there was a really good connection relationship and everybody got along, but because someone told them, some former said, oh, you need more Americans. Well, they couldn't get someone that expertise to stay at the company with that workload. So diversity is nice to have, but connection, you know, because I'm a yoga teacher, connection is more important and that connection leading to actually people who express themselves, that's real diversity in my opinion. I know people have other opinions and that's my opinion. So are you a proponent of having, like, clicks in the workplace because it leads to connection? Like, I'm a little bit confused. I understand connection, but I also think there's so much beauty and growth that I've experienced and I know others experience when we learn how to connect with people who are different than ourselves and understanding different perspectives and understanding other people's strengths and their brilliance and genius and then using that fully in the workplace to innovate and to, you know, create different perspectives.

35:51When I've worked in workplaces that are incredibly diverse, like, Innovate was very diverse in a way because every day I would hear at least five different languages spoken and people were, there was only 60 people in the company and they're from about, I think it was 13 different countries were represented and just working with that many people from that many backgrounds, I learned so much about different cultures and how that interplays in, say, the battery industry because I've never been to China or Korea and that's where a major hub of battery innovation is, right? And I could understand a little bit more about battery innovation when I understood those cultures and how those cultures operate. And so to me, it was, I was, it's a challenge, right? It's a challenge to learn about somebody's background and to understand them on a deeper level when you've never met anyone like from that background in your life, right? And it's a, it's a challenge but I think the growth that I've personally gone through and working with people from backgrounds different than myself has made me a better researcher, a better co-worker, a better thinker and has brought in my perspective on the world.

37:11I, I like this discussion, Jill. I, from, this is from my personal perspective, I love to meet people from different backgrounds. That's just my personal opinion. I've never been someone who works well with six. I actually always want to break them up. That's just my personal opinion and, and why, yes, I, I love meeting people with different backgrounds, inviting my house and getting to know people, you know, for example, Korean people, I love their culture, their food and I would have never learned that if I personally made that initiative and this isn't something you can create from above. This is something that people have to do on their own. Yes, clicks are really harmful. They don't necessarily fall within, you know, outward diversity line but I, I wish people would feel more comfortable in their discomfort to really approach people in their background and say, hey, you know, and learn about them and, you know, encourage them to communicate more say in the workplace or the, the university.

38:20So, I, I like it. I'm glad you like it. I like it too. Does anyone else have other thoughts on this? And feel free to come up to the stage if you have anything to share, any kind of input. I think this is an incredible conversation and, you know, there's so much we can explore on this topic. So, yeah. Does anyone have anything else to share? perhaps this is a question for Jill, Stephanie, and Mark. Just based off your experiences, how have you, or what effective frameworks have you used or do you know of that would allow companies to evaluate diversity, not just in background, but also in thought that could add or benefit the company? How do you evaluate that in, say, a recruitment process or interviewing process? To be honest, I don't really know off the top of my head. Does anyone else know? I can speak of different certifications that I'm aware of and specifically in Canada, there's an organization called Women in Government Governance and what they do is they have this gender parity certification to offer to all Canadian companies and it's a long process where, you know, there's lots of interviews and they look at your D&I processes and, and certificate and, yeah, basically, it's a pretty intense type of process and kind of interview process where they look at your company and then they look at the number of women in management and across, across the company and then all your policies as well and then from that they have like a silver, gold, bronze type of certification that they give to the companies and it's, now I think there's about 200 companies that are on board.

40:44Obviously, ABV Canada is part of it and I'm very happy that it is and, and yeah, so I know of organizations like that but, not in terms of the, the actual other processes. My opinion is this, it comes from intellectual curiosity. Now, Stephanie's mentioned more sort of like in hiring, I'm speaking more actually within, fomenting that diversity and thought within other people and allowing that to come out and how can you to stimulate diversity of thought that's, but with a personal issue I don't know how to actually encourage other people that's my own, the basis of my connection and desire to speak to people with different backgrounds but I can say that informal social events, company retreats, things that are very cursory related to the things that may be discussed today actually are the best way to get people to communicate, gather, show, and actually possibly break up their clicks that they'll discuss. So, I think, I don't necessarily think company retreats and those informal events are the solution to getting people to speak up.

42:09I do think in some instances when there's already a foundation of psychological safety and of camaraderie, those are great to keep building relationships but I've been in work environments where the events, the social events were actually kind of weaponized against me as another moment for somebody to abuse and harass me and I definitely did not feel included and more like part of the group. I felt like I was singled out and belittled and made to feel lesser than. And so, I think when it comes to creating that psychological safety so that people's voices are heard and I think a big benchmark for this now that I'm thinking about this more deeply is do people feel safe to talk about even the most taboo things like harassment that they experience? Right? If your company has zero reports of any kind of conflict and harassment that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no conflict or harassment happening. That just means people are too afraid to speak up and they would rather leave the environment than bring up the issue with anyone else in the company.

43:24And that's a huge red flag. Huge. And if somebody doesn't feel like they could speak up about harassment you bet they can't speak up about anything that maybe challenges a boss and that challenges the current company's thinking and that stifles innovation. Right? So it's interrelated in that if you don't feel comfortable talking about some of the more taboo things you don't also feel talking about the taboo things as far as oh maybe we should change business directions or maybe our product should look different than it actually does because you don't feel safe enough to speak up. And to create that safety to allow people to voice whether they're being harassed and doing that takes work on behalf of what I introduced at the beginning of the talk work on creating a path that's transparent and straightforward from reporting to resolution. And right now a lot of companies like human resources departments you know they're not there for the employee they're there for the business and they're there to protect the business interests like the I would say the interest not necessarily in the innovation side but the interest in you know not being sued or protecting people who are high performers but who may be abusers in the workplace towards other people.

44:46Some companies would rather retain somebody who is abusive but has say the highest sales record and see their abusive nature as like well that makes them a good salesperson. It's like but look at the culture of your whole company. you could have multiple amazing sales people if they weren't being constantly harassed and belittled by the main sales person. You know why do you think he has the most sales because everyone else is stifled by this and I'm just sharing an example but really so when it comes to like like I mentioned those informal work events I think they help to an extent but I don't think that's necessarily a representation of how everyone feels at that moment. I know I've put on my mask at company and workplace events to be like I'm enjoying myself when really I would rather be somewhere else like because the way people treated me in those environments was not friendly and not respectful and I'm curious what other people have to say.

45:50Thank you. Maybe I can chime in a bit as well. Not too long but I think that's a really interesting point but you're very jealous as well about this in person but also like kind of what the new days means with online. It's quite different because on one hand you know online brings you closer to home because people have been working remotely from home at the same time right you also have a barrier you don't spend maybe your you know social time etc with your colleagues and yeah I mean personally I'm just quite curious as well how this may be influenced in the good and better for inclusion. One thing I just want to also bring into the room because I know maybe not everyone is really familiar with it so much with the DEI but it's been mentioned earlier as well from Jill but also others you know the idea of about having diversity and equity and inclusion and kind of why it really makes a difference and why this plays a role because you know I think this is good I think you also actually Jill in one of the videos you actually shared with me in the past also I think you explained quite well on diversity if you have a party right it means you invite everyone equity means you actually let everyone contribute to the playlist and inclusion means everyone that has opportunity to dance as one example and I think where we kind of look at this right now in a concrete example one is from an innovative setting so let's say for example battery associates when we started I was very clear to me with ambassadorship that we at least want to have 25% women I think now we're about 33 to 40% and the idea was really I didn't want to create an all male group because when we had the applications coming in actually I think the first 15 applications ambassadors have been all male and it was quite clear to me if we would have just gone with that that's something we would never be able to really recover from and it's very tough to rectify it and I've seen it from other organizations so I think later on to change it is very hard I've seen not lots of startups where they start with like five guys then 10 guys and 20 guys and then it's very tough for them to ever I think really balance out again and I think just from a culture as well so that's one thing I think you know for us was quite important but then also the question is right like how you make sure that in the organization actually you know there's like you know like as many for example women in leading roles and different working groups etc so that's something we have in our own kind of OKRs we have you know quite some clear targets what we want to achieve there but this has been really a struggle and you know that's still something we want to improve on and I know Jill we also will talk about this more which I'm excited about another thing I want to share though is with the BatteryMBA because yeah we had the same thing where we had like you know the first cohort we had I think you know all the applicants have been male essentially for the first cohort which meant we also created a scholarship to bring more women and my idea was very clearly at least 25% because that's what we do in anything we do but ideally 50% and we reached the 50% and we're very proud that so far you know we have 45% across all the cohorts and also the latest cohort we had you know we have 50% women speakers which again Miriam and Jill have been really gracious to be part of that and yeah and that's and that's it is quite powerful for us but actually what we're also doing right now maybe that's interesting for some so we're actually also tracking now internally just to look who's asking questions like you know is it woman or man and who's bringing up points like who's most engaged when we are aggregating all of this data you know like unnominated just for us to have it but actually we want to use this next time we do the BatteryMBA to encourage women to actually speak up and be more engaged because what we have observed is that's for me personally right I've been running those office hours etc that you know we had many more men showing up and speaking up and also in questions we see a high percentage of men asking again these are great questions but it's just on a on a on a group which is about balanced it should also be balance and engagement and then the question is you know how can improve this and we have different strategies what we're looking at right now I'm just curious if anybody else has seen strategies on this you know of any experience here anything else which worked and I'm just really curious because that's a process we're currently you know undergoing we're monitoring and we're looking at different strategies so it's just something which is very interesting about yeah thanks so much for sharing that Simon you know that's one of the things as I was deciding to be an ambassador of this group because I really wanted to be involved but I've been a part of so many organizations that say they stand for inclusion and then just kind of fall short and you know the way that just to tell everyone I think it's okay that I share this that in a BatteryMBA or not MBA the battery associates like general meeting there was an incident of harassment and the way that Simon and the team like worked through that and at the next meeting they had the person who harassed apologized !

50:57and followed up with all these action items they're taking like he was explaining for how the organization was going to be moving forward and improving on this issue like I I was kind of surprised in myself and that I almost didn't attend because it was like hard for me to attend at that time thinking like oh yeah he's going they're going to make him apologize that's great maybe I don't need to attend like I don't need to be there but I'm so glad I was there because I honestly when he apologized I found myself choking up because I realized that that was the first time I'd ever heard someone apologize for doing harassment and for me as someone who's experienced so much harassment throughout their career it was like such a healing moment just to hear someone admit like yeah I was in the wrong and I'll do better in the future and that's really all it takes so anyway Simon like based on how you all treated that I was like yes sign me up as an ambassador because I don't want to bring anyone into a group that's going where they're going to be harassed you know that's not what I want to lead people into and so thank you so much for for doing this hard work to make sure that battery associates and the MBA program are being very inclusive of people and as far as what else you can do does anyone have any thoughts to that to help sign up I have a thought Jill I the issue is bullying is very serious and harassment and this isn't I wouldn't say it's directly 100% related topic but it is analogous in some sense but you know as someone myself I've been definitely been bullied in the workplace and it's really a problem and there aren't a ton of grace strategies necessarily but not not everybody's bullied of any gender or any nationality and so the question is how do they deal with that I actually went through a third of this training so I'm not saying that should be the solution for the problem but you have to you have to decide how you let people treat you and draw the line with that totally yes we do like I actually have courses that I teach on how to navigate bullying which bullying to me is just a type of harassment I know harassment is legally defined by the law and there's certain guidelines but to me it's like anything that makes me feel uncomfortable or unsafe I just classify as harassment and then the way that I navigate it is based on prioritizing my own self-care and my own well-being and I have like an engineering process I developed in fact just last night I filmed a video where I describe it and I'm going to put it on YouTube so go ahead and like follow my YouTube channel if you want to see that video it's going to be like about 30 minutes long I tried to keep it short but it was hard and I describe how I not just recognize harassment because there's so much awareness that someone needs to have as far as what constitute as bullying or harassment you know I've I've been in situations where working in a lab environment where I was working with someone and they were taking up so much space in the room that I could barely squeeze next to them to follow along with what they were doing and that just taking up space was like a power play and that was done because I was female like I based on the behavior of this person and himself over time I realized like oh he's acting this way because he's trying to put me down so it's like these even very subtle microaggressions you know add up to be a bigger picture of bullying and I'm so sorry to hear that you experienced that unfortunately it is so common it's so common I think a survey found that over like over half of all people experience harassment it doesn't matter what your background is who you are where you come from like we all experience it in our career and you're definitely right that there's not many resources sharing how to navigate that at any age even for children you know there's a big push for anti-bullying in schools but unfortunately I see the resources falling short so that's why I created my business the stem thrive guides but you're right in that a big step is learning that you have to advocate for yourself and for many years I suffered in silence thinking that if I spoke up I would be seen as weak I would be seen as problematic my professors wouldn't give me a good grade my bosses won't give me that promotion and that fear holds a lot of people back from speaking up and that's that psychological safety you know that fear is not psychologically safe and so if you know for anyone who's if you're being bullied right now like feel free to reach out to me I'm here to help you I'm here to support you I have a community that's specifically geared towards providing resources to people so please feel free to reach out hi it's Stephanie I'd like to bring a point regarding how virtual platforms could potentially help to make things less uncomfortable or like having less uncomfortable situations and even potentially avoid harassment as well or stop harassment and what I mean by that because I had an interesting conversation with a colleague a few weeks ago and we were talking about you know this point that you know things are you know during the pandemic a lot of things are now virtual platforms rather than in person and she was saying that as part of her job she had to go on a lot of factory visits and site visits and that now during the pandemic a lot of the factory visits were were done virtually you know technology is there to to just make them a virtual and she said that she absolutely loved this because before so she she's a woman she's an engineer and she was saying that before when she would go on factory visits she would be the only woman that was there and then it like there was a lot of circumstances you know during the actual factory visit everything is fine you know she would go and explain the product and do whatever she had to do so it was you know all business but then during like coffee breaks she just felt super alone because all the men would just talk to each other and kind of like ignore her and like oh this is like this is whatever so again during the factory visit like whenever it was during meeting time everything's great but then outside of those those of those instances then it would be you know very clicky and she just felt super uncomfortable and she to the point that she's like I really hate going on factory visits because she felt so alone and uncomfortable and then she said that now that it's all virtual it's great because the entire time everything everyone's just talking about business and there's no oh let's have coffee breaks and just ignore you know the woman that's here so that's where I say and it got me thinking as well where you know back in the day when I would go to either commissioning sites and again I was the only woman so it was just an interesting perspective and curious to to hear your thoughts Jill and others on how you think that could help potentially also with with aggression if you know if during those meetings it's you know if the topics are only business as usual if that could help I totally agree and I even have a story so somebody who I know was abused in their workplace to the point where this person would be like cornered in a room by a superior and yelled at and where she lived that is actually a felony to block someone from leaving that the room and that experience of course less like gave her anxiety and PTSD and trauma and so when she was obviously leaving that workplace because it became so toxic she found remote interviews to be best because then she had no chance of being triggered because she would be triggered by being alone in a room with a man and while she you know a trigger is something that is totally typically irrational right it's just our body systems going automatically into that fight or flight or freeze response so it's nothing she could help but unfortunately so fortunately with COVID times remote interviews are normal now and then she was able to get a job at a company where it was a remote position and she found that this was the best for her on her healing journey and for you know unfortunately this is what she had to resort to but at the same time it's amazing that people have multiple options for work now that we have this remote option and just because someone may choose to work remotely or choose to meet virtually I think we need to remember that we never know what they may be suffering through or what they maybe have gone through and not judge people based on their preferences and our assumptions of why we think oh yeah like like this woman who it likes the virtual factory visits for example like it's important not to judge people based on those preferences you never know what people have been through I know Milos came to the stage and I'd like to give you a chance to speak if you'd like to I don't want to speak about women or men because I consider the each one of us human being in the business and in the so I don't divide the people for the women and men in the business or in the or in the science or something like that I divide women and men in my personal stuff and I'm trying to date somebody when straight so I'm dating women but or marrying women not men but otherwise for me for me and I'm against the preference is like 25% of the women why not 26 or why not 100 so I'm on the very merit-based system and I thought that we will talk about battery not about women well we could talk about batteries like what do you see as being a great path of innovation for batteries if you want to talk about that what do you mean a great path for innovation in the batteries can you be more specific so this conversation is all about intersectional inner innovation so innovating not just from a social like from a technical standpoint but also a social standpoint and so I'm curious what people think about how they've been able to innovate workplaces based on like how to lead to better innovation in workplace I'm thinking right now how to answer it because it's very wide subject so innovation the for the innovation you need knowledge you need information you need freedom especially freedom from fear because fear holds innovation and for innovation you need to be free from prescription so societal conditioning holds innovation so I'm saying that somebody is distracted from the from the innovation by the uh being that he needs to be politically correct like 24 hours a day he doesn't have time for the innovation he doesn't have freedom for the innovation so um innovation is freedom so do you feel like being politically correct is really difficult for you and it takes a lot of energy to do no I don't want to be politically correct and I'm not politically correct at all and politically correctness kills innovation how does it kill innovation whoever tries to be politically correct is not free to innovate and is not free to use his time to create to create some to create something so you know political correctness kills creativity why does it take time why does it take time to be politically correct okay I think oh I'm sorry I had some phone call it's okay do you want to repeat your question I didn't have a question I said why does it take time to be politically okay okay hi uh I'm here from science um can someone actually define uh what type of political correctness that we're talking about here and that at least we have a scope uh I didn't start about you gave the question that either uh what it feels for me to be politically if I'm restricted by being politically correct or something like that I can define it my way politically correct means it means that I'm uh not free to say whatever I want to say I don't have my freedom of my speech because I cannot conform to the to the my community which requires me to say that's the political correctness or it means that I'm not free to say whatever I want but I need to say something what uh society or uh closer community require but you're not free to say whatever you want anyway without it being a politically correct debate because you don't want to infringe on someone's rights or offend them so if you're not infringing upon these rights where's the problem yeah I am free to say whatever I want to say because I have freedom of speech I live I escaped from communism or socialism which uh is uh not which didn't for that reason I escaped uh communism or socialism because I didn't have the freedom of the speech now I live in the United States I'm American and I still have my freedom of the speech which is the first uh uh most uh most important part of the freedom of the freedom is uh is not uh not any society gave me freedom or any government nobody can take it away from me I can say whatever I want I think Bilos what you said in the beginning is is absolutely right of innovation needs knowledge is it it's intellectual um it's also the when you when you say freedom uh it's obviously freedom to to say what you you want to say and I think all those are correct I think the the basis of this conversation is and and to reinforce because you're kind of reinforcing what we're trying to say is that why you need diversity is because you need to make sure you know to your point of knowledge and and uh yeah basically knowledge is when you have that diversity you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need that you need including others. I mean, that's the point of innovation, like innovation and creativity spurs from knowledge, information, all of that stuff. So I think the thing is to make sure that there's this culture to make sure that everyone is heard and that you have diverse voices and different perspectives that are being heard. And, um, you know, if, if there's, if you're saying that there's things that you want to say, like, obviously if they're potentially harmful for other people or putting other people down that they're not going to be able to voice their opinion, then, then that's obviously not good for the greater good of innovation.

1:09:48Yeah. Yes, you are right. And I said in the beginning that I don't divide, uh, um, the people for the woman and men in the science or in the business. I don't divide them also for the old young, I don't divide them for the black or white. Uh, for me, they're human beings and the innovation requires the good explanation. Good, uh, explanation, uh, science is basically good explanation and good explanation needs to be criticized. Most need to be open to the criticism because otherwise it wouldn't be good explanation. So, uh, it needs to be falsifiable. Good explanation needs to be falsifiable by the other people. And, uh, like the Newton's law were reversed by the Einstein, you know, so, uh, in some of the, uh, that laws basically needs, it needs to be so, uh, falsifiable otherwise, uh, science doesn't, and innovation doesn't I agree. I think I know what you're trying to say. Like for me, for example, I welcome criticism. You know, if I'm, if I'm saying something and someone disagrees and I definitely want to, to hear it because, you know, if my idea, if there's other perspectives, I definitely want to hear it.

1:11:11But I also think that there's a big difference than of, you know, cause what we're, what Joel was saying was in terms of harassment, which harassment and having a different opinion are two different things. Like you can have a different opinion and say it in a way that, you know, is very constructive versus harassment. And Milos, I mean, I I've, I've heard, I've heard you a couple of times already. Um, so I, I know you're, I know you come with good intentions. So I'm definitely, definitely saying that. So I think we're overall saying kind of the same thing. Uh, and I agree with you at a, at a high level for sure. It's just an interesting, um, debate. Yes, precisely. So basically I'm trying to say that, um, um, I'm, uh, I love, uh, ladies. I love women. Uh, I have three daughters. I have my two ex-wives. I have plenty of friends. So, but in the science and in the business, I'm for the, uh, married base system, it means that it doesn't matter if it's woman or man, uh, whoever is better or whoever is the right in the innovation, whoever has the best explanation, his explanation stands means that his innovation stands. I'm against harassment, obviously harassment is not good morally, maybe not even in many countries legally. Uh, but, uh, how I am going to solve harassment, uh, if I don't know the particular situation for that one, there are some, uh, in organizations like the companies, they need to deal with the harassment. Those are individual cases. Uh, and, uh, in the, in the case, if it's crime, it should be prosecuted. Murders, uh, they are not good, um, but they exist, but they are prosecuted. It means that we need to deal with the harassment if they, uh, it exists, but, uh, generally to talk only about harassment, it's, uh, like the, in the abstract is not useful.

1:13:25To simply put, you have to have a right to have a, a failed conversation. That could, some people, even if that's not your intention or, or even that's your, um, how you feel, in order to be able to innovate such a way that maybe fails, not failure, could be an innovation. I think that's what he said I, I, I didn't hear you, Mark, properly, but what I am trying to say, um, innovation, uh, innovation needs to be, you need to be free to innovate and it doesn't matter what kind of group of the people you are. So basically I'm, I, I cannot discriminate who will come with the best explanation. The, I cannot discriminate if it's going to be women or men. Why not men? Uh, but why only women, you know, or why only men and why not women? So I'm saying that, uh, best explanation, innovation requires, requires, uh, needs to be free from the restricted, uh, uh, allow innovation only one kind of the group of the people.

1:14:57Thanks, Milo. I think Ajoun, you would like to come. Yeah. I mean, I was, I've been listening to this conversation for a while and a very interesting conversation. And, uh, you know, I am, uh, uh, you know, a startup entrepreneur in the clean tech space have done startups in the past. And let me tell you how difficult it is sometimes to bring this element of, um, diversity, not withstanding the fact that, um, all of us want that. I mean, we don't want diverse opinions in an organization. So let me tell you how it works now, especially, um, in the Indian context, what happens is typically when you start a startup, you have an idea, you go to, uh, angel investors and the first thing that look at you as, you know, what has been your past success, or you've done this entrepreneurial thing. You had a good exit. Great. So we'll back you. Uh, which college do you come from? You come from one of the top five universities in India. So great.

1:15:56Awesome. We like you. Uh, just the fact that you have these labels and then what do you do? You know, you reach out to the alumni network of your university, you reach out to ex colleagues, all of whom have come from a certain privileged background because they belong to the same privileged background as you come from. So you raise the money from these privileged people and then you start hiring. So what do you do? You reach out to your college network and say, Hey, you know what? I want to recruit, uh, freshers coming out of university. But you reach out to ex colleagues and they ask you to ask them to recommend people, you know, who are looking out for jobs. Um, you recruit the same people that you work with, whether it's out of intention or whether it's by design, it just happens that way because, you know, that's the easiest way out. And, uh, you know, we've all been, uh, at some point, uh, guilty of this. And, um, and at some point we do realize that this has to change. And in my current startup, we consciously decided to, um, okay. What also helped was the fact that we'll be honest that, you know, right now there is a huge uptake in the technology scene. So resources are difficult to come by. It's a well-known fact that, people have more jobs, technology in the high tech sector. So we consciously reached out to, um, you know, people with very, very non-conventional backgrounds. You know, we tried to hire engineers from, uh, not premier colleges, a lot of women, because, you know, they usually don't get the first pecking order. Um, we found women who had taken career breaks, um, and, and, and we recruited them because it just, uh, made life so easy for us. Nobody else wanted to hire them for whatever reasons, HR policies, but you know, they were great fits. Um, so sometimes, you know, this diversity, um, issue is thrust because you know, you have a lot of, uh, conventional methods of working, which have just been steeped in because you come from a certain college, certain university, let's take the example of the U S if you're from the Silicon Valley, if you're from Stanford University, um, you just make it in. I mean, you will get an audience, uh, while somebody probably from a little less privileged background will not. Um, and a lot of it now will depend on leadership. So, so we've taken a stance that, uh, we will hire people from as unconventional backgrounds as possible.

1:18:20Uh, we'll probably now hear higher for technical roles, non-engineers, people with maths background, statistics backgrounds, um, background people with aptitude so that we can, uh, not only lower the cost of hiring, but also get people who are non-engineers, not necessarily, um, always coming from the same, you know, cohort of people. Um, so these are some of the experiences I'm just talking from my personal experiences. So obviously that's not a reference for the whole industry or even the Indian tech sector, but you know, just two cents because I thought it's a very interesting conversation. Uh, diversity is a large issue here because of cultural reasons. I'm a little surprised that, you know, even in the U S and, and advanced countries, uh, you know, the issue is still alive there. So, uh, thanks for letting me speak. This is Arjun. I'm done speaking. Thanks. I just want to comment really quickly, Arjun. You made me think of something that is like so important for innovation, but it's also important and you touched upon it and what you explained about how people are used to making decisions based on, you know, what they've always, how they always have made decisions. But as a researcher, you have to become conscious about how you're making decisions, right? You have to become aware of your own biases and how, what the social norms are or how you think you've always done research, how people have always done research in order to like break those rules and experiment and invent. And so it's like that same process of you, you reflect back on, you know, how have you operated in the past?

1:19:59What are the limitations of the way that you operated and how can you progress in the future? And like I said, like this process of assessing, you know, how we've made decisions in our past and then reflecting on that and coming up with new ways to test, um, is the process of research is the process of innovation. So I see so much parallel with that. Thanks for sharing. Thank you so much. You know, it's not easy because, you know, um, you do work in an environment which has got other stakeholders, right? So even if you're the CEO of the company, you have a board to report into and, uh, you have other stakeholders who have, uh, I'll give you an anecdote. Um, if, if, if there is time, I'll just share a very interesting anecdote from my personal working experience of a colleague who I really, really felt they went out of his way to, to, to do something very nice. So we had this colleague in a, in a company that I worked, a lady who had a child back home. I mean, she was a, she was a mother of a young child and, uh, and she had this, um, request that from all of us that, you know, if it be, if it would be fine that she could leave it for, and she'd take half an hour to reach back home and spend time with her kids and, and then work from home. I mean, this is 10 years back, so she was not very prevalent then, but she insisted and requested and her reporting manager had no issues. And the reporting manager was a very senior person in the organization. So nobody really said something, anything, but we would always have this situation where we were, we would be in a meeting and this lady would excuse herself at 4pm and she'd leave and all of us felt perfectly comfortable.

1:21:42The people who had an issue were the HR people. The people who actually raised a stink and not in front of the management because her reporting manager, as I said, was a very senior person who could just simply override anybody else. But the HR people really took objection because they felt this was a breach of protocol. There was exceptions being made unnecessarily. And I found that really surprising. Otherwise, the organization was fairly progressive. And I felt that the, you know, and this is where leadership comes in. And I really, really respect that gentleman who, who stood the ground and said, Look, this is my team. I take the calls. She delivers results. Don't, don't come in my way. So just let her be. I will take the call here. Created an issue. But you know what, I really felt the gentleman stood up for what was right. The lady worked, she delivered her results. Small adjustments were made. But, okay, you know, a very nice lesson learned. And I'll try and implement things like that when, when I reach that. Or, you know what, I own the company. So I do will, I will implement these kinds of progressive policies in my own organization as much as I can. Thanks.

1:23:09Thank you so much, Arjun. That was a great story. I see Maggie is also on the floor. Maggie, do you have any comments or questions in the topic of intersectional? Yeah, I just got on. I'm so sorry. I'm late. So I'm assuming by the conversation that I'm hearing is we're talking about diversity as it pertains to innovation or what's, what's the context? And I'm sure I have comments. So intersectional innovation in the way that we're talking about it just relates to how we can innovate at that intersection of technical and social change. So it's really broad. Very broad. Okay. Excuse me. I mean, I can comment in the past and past situations I've been in. We're not diverse. We're not respective of diverse people, values, opinions, technical backgrounds, or anything like that. I'm currently in a spot now in innovation. We're successful. And I think it's because there's diverse people, technical backgrounds, diversity of thought, and everybody's listened to. So, you know, just, and I'm not sure again, since I came in late, if this pertains to this conversation, but, um, it works. Um, and when you tend to be around people that are just like you, um, you're not going to get anything done. Um, I've been in situations where I've, uh, crossed over different technologies, uh, in particular lead acid to lithium-ion, uh, the lithium-ion crew was like, this isn't lead acid. You don't know anything. And I'm like, well, you know, electrochemistry is still the same, you know, and I have a pretty good understanding of that. Um, I was even told, oh, you don't have a PhD in lithium-ion chemistry. And I'm like, that's because there isn't one. I have one in physical chemistry. I actually know certain principles that might be applicable. So, um, that, you know, obviously that job and career for me and even that company was not successful, but, um, I just can't say enough about my experience now in an innovation group in the utilities, which typically is a very old school, um, institution type, uh, place. Um, but it, you know, bringing in different, um, backgrounds, uh, different people, different, it's just, it's been a wonderful experience for me and I see that it works. So hopefully that's relevant to the conversation that I mostly missed this morning. I'm so sorry.

1:25:35No, thank you for your experience. That's right on topic. And I, I do find too, in my experience of coming from a physics background that people don't necessarily know how that can translate to like the engineering side or the electrochemistry side. And, and I, I love that you have a PhD in physical chemistry because you're at that perfect intersection between all those things necessary for batteries and electrochemical technologies to work. Uh, though, you know, you can't discount all the mechanical electrical engineers, uh, and material scientists. So yeah, that's a great perspective on, you know, you have so much to bring to the field. I think the, in the battery industry, the big example of this that I hear brought up and again, and again, is with the Nobel prize winner, John good enough and how he came from, you know, a metal oxide background. He studied those materials a lot. And then when he was in a lab innovating on batteries, he just put what he knew inside of a battery and revolutionized the technology and made it what it is today and won the Nobel prize for it. So it just shows how having that interdisciplinary, uh, way of thinking from different fields and applying them to different fields is the way to kind of shortcut to innovation. And so when you're thinking about, you know, who's on your team, are they just a bunch of electrical engineers or do you have people from different fields of expertise or who will learn to different universities? You know, that's one way to make a step towards making that ground fertile for people to learn from each other and learn different perspectives. Um, and I used to get so confused as a physicist, I'd hear the word, what was it?

1:27:18said, I just saw the thought that was like a atomic polarization. And then it turns out polarization is used in battery world to describe that irreversible capacity loss just in general. And I was so confused, but now I kind of get it. I hate it. And I mean, probably not talking to the right crowd here, but anode and cathode to me, you know, I'm used to positive and negative just because, you know, the reactions reverse. So that took me forever to get used to and kind of set my head around. Okay. In this world, we're calling, you know, specifically anode and cathode, but no, I get it. Definitely. Definitely. I love that. Well, we've been talking for an hour and a half now, which is incredible. And I think this has been such an amazing conversation. I've learned a lot from all of you. And I really appreciate hearing these different perspectives on this topic. I think there's so much we can talk about more and hopefully all these seeds have been planted and you can go home and really think about, you know, how are you innovating in your life and what are the best practices? And there's so many scholars out there and people out there sharing amazing information on this topic. Like I won't even begin to start because there's so many and I don't have any in particular in my mind right now, but you know, I think this group, this people in the battery industry, all I've come across are people who want to make the world a better place, who want to see positive change in the world, who want to, you know, decrease carbon emissions and make the field more sustainable and more ethical. And I just hope that we can think outside the box of ways to innovate to reach those big solutions. And so if anyone has any final comments, I think we can wrap up this conversation. But does anyone else have anything to tell you?

1:29:15May I chime in? Of course. May I chime in? Yeah. You know, one of the interesting things I've learned working in the battery industry for the last couple of years, and my background is I am a mechanical engineer who worked in the software industry and then went to the telecom industry and then landed up in clean tech and now in the battery industry. So one of the things that I've learned is it is only about interdisciplinary knowledge because the use cases of batteries are across transportation, utilities, and the chemistry, the chemical engineering, the electrical engineering, the electronics have to work together to take data out, which will be analyzed over a cloud network. Sitting and, you know, the cloud network will have to transmit data over a telecom network. And finally, you need core computing to understand the business of what is happening on the battery side. And finally, the utility will be used by the utility of the battery will be in transportation. So you will need people who understand transportation, who understand charging. So, you know, we all have to start thinking out of the box. We also have to start respecting different industries because whatever we do in this industry will only make sense if it's used by people across different industries. And all of them will come with their perspective. So this is what I have learned in my last few years working in the battery space. So my background, of course, is very different when I spent almost 16, 17 years in core telecom doing BSS and OSS and stuff like that. So anyways, this is our topic of intersectional and innovation. This is an important topic because the kind of activity I see between a lot of the speakers is that, this is my observation, is that women communicate in a way that's more communitarian and less confrontational and men tend to be more confrontational and hierarchical.

1:31:26And because we're trying to integrate this industry and our industries, that's going to lead to conflict. And at the same time, with this conflict or, if we deal with the conflict in a good way, in a helpful way, actually can lead to more innovation that people actually utilize the skills in a more meaningful way. Thank you. Mark, I think we lost you. Mark, I think we lost you. Oh, did you hear me at all? Now you're back. Okay. What I was saying is that women often communicate in a communitarian manner and men often communicate with each other in a very aggressive and hierarchical way. And try to integrate these two communication styles and relationship styles and lead to complications in a professional environment. But at the same time, if we can integrate together in this industry, we can actually utilize more voices in a way such that we have more innovation. Yes, there are definitely a plethora of communication styles and each and every one of us have, you know, a social upbringing that where we were taught to communicate a certain way. And maybe my response is very being very humanitarian.

1:32:56Right. But, you know, it's it's it's really difficult on, you know, for everyone. It's not an easy thing to act in a way that is like conducive towards something that we haven't been taught, you know, growing up and go against what we've been taught. But I see it as a practice. Right. We can always get better. We can always improve. We can admit to our mistakes. We can apologize for our mistakes. And we can just keep growing and keep learning from each other. And it is a big it's really difficult. I mean, that's why we're not there yet, obviously. And there's a lot of debate on what is the best practices, you know, what actually is leading to progress. And I don't think a lot of the answers are clear, but I think there is more research going on today than at any other point in history with these kinds of dynamics. And I hope that just continues. And yeah, there's so much to learn in this field.

1:34:04And there's so much so much space for growth and opportunity and innovation and discovery and defying what you previously thought. Right. And defying your expectations for what is possible. I think I really love there's a feminist scholar named Bell Hooks. Well, she named herself Bell Hooks. That's another story. But he writes that we need to be imagining new realities, imagining new realities where, you know, we are all the voices are included or all people are treated equally. And I would like to take that a step further and say, like, let's create those realities. Especially if you're in a leadership position, understanding, you know, what what are the what's the extent of your knowledge and expertise and making sure that your team is being utilized to its full potential and then finding ways to expand that and to bring out their genius and to bring out their innovative side. You know, how can you do that better? And like I mentioned earlier in this talk, I'm reading a book called Multipliers by Liz Wiseman that talks about that power of how certain leaders, you know, while there's one anecdote where it says with one person, when you meet with them, you feel like they're the smartest person in the world.

1:35:30But with this other person, they make you feel like you're the smartest one in the world. And who would you rather work with someone who makes you feel dumb all the time? Because guess what? Studies show that when someone puts you down, makes you feel dumb, makes you feel belittled. You actually start to behave in that way. It stifles you. But if you're working with someone who knows you how smart you are and challenges you in the right ways and has you step up to your full potential, I think that's the kind of qualities that we all admire in a leader to bring out that best side of ourselves and to grow in ourselves. And anyway, I'm just kind of rambling. But yeah, does anyone else have any thoughts? Otherwise, if there isn't, also we can also kind of wrap it up looking at the time, also being very appreciative of all the time. Jill, Mariam, everyone else has already shared. But today, because we went over our one and a half hours and I appreciate it.

1:36:35It's 7.30 now, Jill, so you can get started in your normal day. It's been great. It's been a very early Saturday. Thank you so much for creating this space and for everyone for participating. I am so appreciative that we're having this conversation because it's something that I want to start talking about and keep talking about with all different people. So thank you. And thank you so much, Jill, for being with us. Please give her all a follow if you don't follow her on Clubhouse yet. Also, I put some links about her on my Twitter feed. That's why I pinned it on the top of the screen. So if you're on Clubhouse right now, you can click on that and you find some links to Jill's work. And she has a fantastic YouTube channel as well. She does so many amazing things. So please have a look and check out all her amazing work. And there's lots I think we can all learn and get inspired by as well.

1:37:23And I also want to say a big thank you to Mariam for co-moderating today and for stepping in. And wonderful to have you here as well with us and everyone else like Stephanie, Mark, Milos, Esam, Arjun, Maggie and Bavia who contributed for today's session. And yeah, also maybe one thing I think which does really I think also kind of summarize it quite well. I think it's, you know, we all in the battery space and the battery space itself is quite interdisciplinary. You know, it requires all kind of different insights and backgrounds. I think I think what kind of also became quite clear in this discussion is, you know, we need all of different perspectives. We need everyone's perspective, respect to that for their gender, their backgrounds. We want everyone to be part of this and everyone have to have voice and everyone feel included and being part of that. And I think that's kind of, you know, some of the work we work on here.

1:38:11And I'm also just want to say a big thank you for everyone involved with battery associates, you know, from the team, but also the ambassador, etc. To really like, you know, fostering that and really having this as part of our mission. And really, I think there's so much to be done. And I really appreciate you coming on here today to share some of these and really get a kickstart also on a bit of a wider discussion on this topics. But this, you can also listen back to this. Actually, it's the first time this can be recorded on this app. So if you go on battery revolution, the club afterwards, hopefully it should show up somewhere. It's a recording and we will see where it is exactly. But yeah, if you want to listen to it again, if you miss something, you can also listen on it there again. I think it was a really interesting discussion. So thanks so much again. See you next Saturday at 3 p.m. CT time for another discussion and have a wonderful weekend.

1:38:59Thank you. Feel better, Simon. Thank you. Bye. Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you all. Thanks, Miriam. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Simon. Thank you all. Have a great rest of your day and weekend. Bye-bye.