00:00:10
hi hi Portland how are you all today
00:00:16
my name is not pronounced Vidya Spandana
00:00:20
this this is how it's spelled so let's
00:00:24
get that going and it's pronounced Vidya
00:00:27
spun Donna you want to give it a shot
00:00:31
yeah it's pretty good so working in
00:00:33
technology with a name like that guess
00:00:35
what I'm asked to talk about all the
00:00:37
time
00:00:40
any guesses there you go
00:00:43
diversity I wonder why I get that topic
00:00:47
maybe it's because I can get away with
00:00:49
saying anything I want with a name like
00:00:51
that
00:00:52
or maybe it's because I don't really
00:00:55
look like this dude
00:00:58
I'll take it but anyway guess what I am
00:01:00
going to talk to you about diversity
00:01:01
today but not in that corporate we need
00:01:04
19 different ethnicities on our company
00:01:07
website kind of way I
00:01:14
want to change your mind on what
00:01:16
diversity looks like
00:01:18
diversity must be considered at the
00:01:21
level of thought and perspective we must
00:01:25
go beyond defining diversity in terms of
00:01:27
gender and race
00:01:34
so let's try something close your eyes
00:01:37
for reals
00:01:39
take a deep breath
00:01:42
so now you're in the dark with a bunch
00:01:45
of thoughts just zipping around
00:01:47
take a quick peek at what those thoughts
00:01:50
are actually about
00:01:52
what are you thinking about
00:01:56
here's what I'm thinking about
00:01:59
actually I'm not I'm not gonna tell you
00:02:01
what I'm thinking about right now
00:02:04
you can open your eyes
00:02:06
my point is it's completely insane in
00:02:08
our minds isn't it wonderful that we
00:02:11
have the freedom of thought to think
00:02:13
about anything we want
00:02:17
but just imagine what it would be like
00:02:20
if every one of those thoughts was
00:02:24
controlled
00:02:25
put in place by somebody else
00:02:30
you don't get to decide what you think
00:02:33
about anymore
00:02:36
you don't get to have room in your mind
00:02:39
for funny quirky weird sick random
00:02:43
thoughts
00:02:45
all there is is someone else's hopes and
00:02:49
dreams
00:02:50
somebody else's frustrations
00:02:53
another person's likes and dislikes
00:02:58
what if your mind was controlled like
00:03:00
this for the next 48 hours
00:03:02
what would that be like
00:03:06
what if you didn't have the freedom of
00:03:08
thought for the next six weeks
00:03:13
you would be living in a kind of prison
00:03:15
wouldn't you
00:03:18
it is a prison
00:03:20
I'd know
00:03:23
I
00:03:24
lived in that dark choking miserable
00:03:27
mental prison for ten years
00:03:33
my mind and my thoughts were so
00:03:37
influenced
00:03:39
that I couldn't have honestly told you
00:03:41
what my favorite movie was
00:03:45
the people I'd hang out with the hobbies
00:03:48
I had
00:03:49
even the clothes I wore none of them
00:03:52
were truly mine
00:03:55
after high school I spent about 10 years
00:03:58
surrounded by a culture that regularly
00:04:01
oppressed women and girls a
00:04:04
culture that believed that by definition
00:04:08
women were inferior to men and by the
00:04:12
end of those 10 years I
00:04:14
believed them I
00:04:17
believed that I was inferior that I was
00:04:21
worth next to nothing
00:04:23
I'd given up my mind to them and I was
00:04:26
considering giving up my life
00:04:30
externally I had the perfect life my
00:04:34
facebook profile painted me as like the
00:04:36
luckiest girl in the world I
00:04:38
had built a business that made millions
00:04:41
I had fancy houses expensive cars exotic
00:04:45
vacations around the world
00:04:47
that was that life
00:04:49
but internally this is what the
00:04:52
landscape looked like
00:04:54
my thoughts and my perspectives were
00:04:57
limited
00:04:58
homogeneous
00:05:00
fearful and honestly pretty mean
00:05:06
for ten whole years I was trapped in my
00:05:11
own mind a prisoner
00:05:14
conditioned to act out the role of an
00:05:17
oppressed dark-skinned weak little girl
00:05:22
this is what true lack of diversity
00:05:26
actually looks like the stifling of a
00:05:29
human beings individual unique thoughts
00:05:33
and this lack of diversity can happen in
00:05:37
a group that looks like this
00:05:38
freedom of thought could be constrained
00:05:41
in a family that looks like this
00:05:47
my mental landscape back then looked a
00:05:50
lot like what the landscape looks like
00:05:52
today
00:05:53
in our societies our economies and in
00:05:57
our businesses let me show you what I
00:05:59
mean
00:06:00
the most power in our country is not
00:06:03
held by the top 1% of the population
00:06:07
power in America is held by the top 0.1%
00:06:14
one-third of the population of the
00:06:16
United States produces less than 3.5% of
00:06:19
the GP GDP and
00:06:22
more than a half the people in our work
00:06:24
word for workforce or women yet less
00:06:27
than 5% of the leaders of our top
00:06:30
companies are women a
00:06:34
few people at the top
00:06:36
making decisions for the rest of us
00:06:40
that feels a little too familiar to me
00:06:43
so there I was 25 years old with a 25
00:06:47
year head start to a midlife crisis I
00:06:51
couldn't continue living that way any
00:06:53
longer a member of the Living Dead I was
00:06:56
a real-life zombie
00:06:59
so I snapped I
00:07:01
lost it I
00:07:03
lost it all in the best possible way so
00:07:08
one day I cheerfully waved goodbye to
00:07:11
the security guards of my private estate
00:07:14
and I left I
00:07:17
left the Empire I built the businesses
00:07:21
the houses all my possessions
00:07:24
everything was left behind for good a
00:07:28
few very strange hours later I found
00:07:32
myself in the care of about 15
00:07:34
Vietnamese nuns
00:07:38
very compassionate and caring they took
00:07:40
me in without speaking of single word of
00:07:42
English I spent a few weeks with them
00:07:44
and their monastery and that that night
00:07:47
lying in bed at the monastery I had the
00:07:49
first thought in 10 years that I could
00:07:52
really call my own
00:07:53
every single thought in my brain was a
00:07:56
piece of junk I
00:07:58
needed a completely new mind
00:08:02
that moment of honesty marked the
00:08:05
beginning of my journey from a life
00:08:07
based in on truth to a life based on
00:08:10
truth
00:08:11
that day marked the first day of a three
00:08:14
year journey around the world not to
00:08:17
find myself was not Eat Pray Love
00:08:20
but to rebuild myself to breakdown
00:08:23
myself from scratch and the very next
00:08:28
morning I began thought by thought to
00:08:31
actively bring in new perspectives new
00:08:34
ideas
00:08:36
new experiences I
00:08:39
opened my mind to life
00:08:44
one decision at a time I
00:08:47
began to diversify my thoughts
00:08:52
so I moved to a remote village in Costa
00:08:54
Rica teaching yoga to tourists and
00:08:58
living on nearly nothing I lived in a
00:09:01
shack with ten other people a shack that
00:09:04
had a leaky roof
00:09:06
and there's not very safe and I
00:09:10
experienced poverty for the first time
00:09:12
in my life real poverty from this was my
00:09:16
house to this my Shack
00:09:22
and from there I moved every few months
00:09:25
working random different jobs studying
00:09:28
meditating sifting through every single
00:09:31
one of my thoughts rejecting the ones
00:09:34
that didn't serve me I
00:09:36
studied all over the world eco
00:09:39
communities and was a massage therapist
00:09:41
in the Highlands of Scotland near the
00:09:43
North Sea I
00:09:44
shared an 8 a room with an 8 or an old
00:09:47
boy named Nicky in London he would be
00:09:50
doing his homework while I would be at
00:09:52
short documentaries he was the best
00:09:55
roommate I've ever had
00:09:56
he even let me have the top bunk and
00:10:00
some months and years went by like this
00:10:03
I
00:10:04
face new fears found new strengths
00:10:09
ended up across 10 different countries
00:10:11
over three years as
00:10:14
you can imagine my respectable Indian
00:10:17
parents living in Silicon Valley
00:10:21
were freaking out
00:10:26
but my mind found freedom
00:10:30
it wasn't easy
00:10:32
these years were some of the darkest
00:10:35
scariest years of my life
00:10:39
these may sound like paradise vacation
00:10:42
spots but my reality was the opposite
00:10:47
countless dark nights in Costa Rica
00:10:50
Pacific winter storms raging 24 hours a
00:10:53
day
00:10:55
seven days a week no electricity no
00:10:59
light
00:11:00
cut off from the rest of the world the
00:11:03
roads were washed out
00:11:06
the shack would shake every time
00:11:09
lightning struck and the howler monkeys
00:11:13
would scream all night long if you've
00:11:14
ever heard of howler monkey screaming is
00:11:16
like death it's thirst and I couldn't
00:11:20
sleep I
00:11:22
couldn't run away I just had to sit
00:11:26
there in the pitch dark
00:11:28
in my mental prison cell and face it
00:11:33
that was thousands of miles away from my
00:11:37
oppressed life I was supposed to be in
00:11:39
paradise
00:11:40
but I was still trapped
00:11:43
it took me months of countless nights
00:11:47
like this to bring in lightness
00:11:51
to heal the darkest corners of my mind
00:11:56
restarting your brain is an intense
00:11:59
transformative
00:12:00
painful experience going from utter
00:12:04
darkness
00:12:05
to the dawn of light
00:12:08
so what does this story have to do with
00:12:10
diversity again
00:12:12
well this is exactly what we have to do
00:12:15
at the macro level to bring in true
00:12:19
diversity of thought into our societies
00:12:22
no I don't mean that we need to send
00:12:25
everyone away to Peru hallucinating for
00:12:27
ten hours a night on a Vision Quest with
00:12:29
a shaman
00:12:30
but for those of you who are interested
00:12:33
it's Cosco
00:12:37
what I mean is that we need to
00:12:39
proactively seek out different
00:12:41
perspectives we have to go out of our
00:12:43
way to encourage differences of thought
00:12:46
inside of ourselves and in our
00:12:48
communities we must be curious about the
00:12:51
99.9 percent and eventually I found
00:12:54
unshakable peace I returned to the
00:12:57
United States and began to work again in
00:12:59
technology and then one day as I was
00:13:02
leaving a meeting in the pearl cafe
00:13:04
umbria famous cafe Ambria I got a phone
00:13:06
call it was from the White House so
00:13:10
after all those insane crazy experiences
00:13:13
getting a phone call from the White
00:13:14
House was probably the the top of insane
00:13:17
and craziness
00:13:18
it's and and they were offering me a job
00:13:22
on top of it I
00:13:23
was recruited as a presidential
00:13:26
innovation fellow to use open data and
00:13:28
technology to support economic growth in
00:13:31
the poorest countries of the world
00:13:36
yeah
00:13:38
exactly
00:13:42
my three-year mental Jedi training it
00:13:44
wasn't my name or my gender that helped
00:13:48
me scored this opportunity of a lifetime
00:13:50
all those diverse experiences gave me
00:13:52
the strength and creativity to kick ass
00:13:55
at one of the most challenging and
00:13:57
rewarding jobs of my life working for
00:13:59
the President of the United States
00:14:06
and finally my sweet sweet parents
00:14:10
finally they got it they understood
00:14:13
years as a nomad destroying my inner
00:14:16
zombie repopulating my mind had finally
00:14:19
paid off
00:14:21
throughout this journey
00:14:23
one single poem played in my mind over
00:14:26
and over again
00:14:28
4,000 year old son script words or am i
00:14:31
as my sister tells me to pronounce it
00:14:32
sanskrit words one of humanity's oldest
00:14:36
call to the gods
00:14:39
acet oma seth gamaya thomas o ma jyotir
00:14:43
gamaya
00:14:44
meridian ma i'm adam gamaya
00:14:49
this prayer now serves to remind me of
00:14:52
my three-year journey of how I saved
00:14:55
myself from death of how far I've come
00:14:59
and how how much farther there is to go
00:15:02
as surely as night turns today I know I
00:15:07
will always venture into the unfamiliar
00:15:10
and return with true treasure
00:15:13
and in that spirit will building a new
00:15:16
school of technology here in Portland a
00:15:18
school that places diversity of thought
00:15:21
and perspective at its heart
00:15:23
it is imperative that we build an
00:15:27
inclusive community that provides
00:15:29
opportunities for everyone to grow and
00:15:32
learn
00:15:33
early in my travels I had one especially
00:15:35
traumatic night I
00:15:38
had an epiphany I
00:15:41
was it was a very violent night and I
00:15:44
was in a room by myself just looking at
00:15:49
myself in the mirror tears streaming
00:15:51
down my face
00:15:52
answers just anything you know you have
00:15:55
those moments
00:15:57
and it dawned on me that no one is
00:15:59
coming
00:16:01
no one's coming to save me
00:16:05
to protect me I
00:16:09
only have myself
00:16:14
and this insight is fundamental
00:16:17
at the macro level in our world today
00:16:21
no one person or company is coming to
00:16:25
say this
00:16:27
no corporate quota program will
00:16:30
magically increase diversity and
00:16:32
inclusion in our societies and our
00:16:36
economies and our technologies
00:16:39
if you were to take one message for my
00:16:41
story I hope that it's this
00:16:44
get out
00:16:46
actively seek out different perspectives
00:16:51
diversity and inclusion must begin in
00:16:54
your mind
00:16:56
thought by thought
00:16:59
look for that little zombie inside of
00:17:01
you and
00:17:03
challenge it
00:17:06
each and every single one of us has to
00:17:10
step up
00:17:13
thank you
00:17:16
[Applause]
00:17:16
[Music]
