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The Psychology of Diversity: Understanding Our Own Barriers

This talk was held on Tuesday, December 08, 2015 at 7:00pm

Over the last few million years, our brains have developed some pretty novel ways to deal with the overwhelming amount of information we’re exposed to every day. These cognitive shortcuts are vital to our ability to live in the modern world, but they come with blindspots that make it difficult to effectively evaluate people: from friends and family to job candidates and colleagues. We’ll talk about why these blindspots disproportionately affect people from underrepresented communities and offer concrete, tactical ways to overcome these challenges.

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Presenter

Aubrey Blanche is the Global Diversity Programs Lead at Atlassian. There, she works with teams across the business to enhance recruiting, retention, and career mobility for underrepresented minorities. She relies heavily on social science research to understand the psychological and structural barriers to achieving full representation, and applies these methodologies to design interventions and programs that effectively create opportunities for members of underrepresented communities. She works with partners across the tech industry to define best practices that improve diversity at all stages of the talent pipeline, and coaches individuals on how to create a novel career. Before Atlassian, she was the Diversity Lead at Palantir Technologies. She holds an MA in Political Science from Stanford University.