Introducing Culture Fit, an All Turtles podcast about racial bias in tech

Silicon Valley suffers from a lack of diversity, and it’s time for a reckoning. All Turtles, the product studio that created mmhmm, is introducing Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech—a new six-part podcast series.

Hosted by Dairien Boyd, principal designer for mmhmm and parent company All Turtles, the series takes an in-depth look at racial inequalities in Silicon Valley and society at large. Through the voices of 30 Black and brown tech founders, investors, professors, and other tech professionals—including legendary comedian Sinbad; Sydney Sykes, investor and cofounder of BLCK VC; and Chakanetsa Mavhunga, professor of science, technology and society at MIT—the series explores how we got here and what we can do about it.

“Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech is one of the most relevant conversations of our time,” says Dairien Boyd, who has served as the lead product and design expert for mission-driven product studio All Turtles since its inception in 2017. “We're challenging ourselves and the tech industry to build a much better culture that includes all identities and experiences.”

In one of the episodes, Phil Libin, co-founder and CEO of mmhmm and All Turtles, sheds light on how candid conversations—and most importantly, listening—have given him new perspectives. “I had always thought about most social problems in this framing of things being broken, and needing to fix them, needing to repair the damage,” Libin says in the episode. “But some problems aren't there because something's broken. Some problems are there because they're kind of designed that way, and redesigning something is a different motion than fixing it.”

In Culture Fit: Racial Bias in Tech, Boyd weaves together the stories and insights of his 30 guests to unravel common excuses for racial bias and explore how to move toward a more inclusive future. He sees the series as an exercise in how to see one another as human and how to check our own biases.

The first two episodes drop Monday, Nov. 16, with new episodes airing daily through Friday Nov. 20.

Episodes:

1. Monoculture: What is the current state of racism in the industry? Culture Fit hears first-hand experiences from people who don’t fit into Silicon Valley’s monoculture and walks through the data on the lack of diversity in tech.

2. Original Gatekeepers: Culture Fit examines the history of Silicon Valley to better understand the path to the current moment of racial inequity.

3. The Pipeline Fallacy: A common excuse tech companies make for their lack of diversity is to blame the “pipeline,” saying there aren’t enough qualified candidates from underrepresented groups in the talent pool. Why do tech companies lean on this argument, and what are they missing?

4. Built-In Bias: Culture Fit delves into the ways in which bias has worked its way into the products that Silicon Valley builds and releases to the world.

5. Internal Investigation: We turn the mirror on ourselves to assess diversity, equity, and inclusion within All Turtles. If we believe every company could benefit from open conversations about diversity issues, we need to start with ourselves.

6. The Work Ahead: How can a more inclusive future in tech be built? A good place to start is by listening to those who have worked to improve equity in Silicon Valley for years.