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What’s Next for DEI? - Allyship in Action: The Future of Inclusive Innovation
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00:00Hello, hello. Good to see you. Hello, everyone.
00:05Hi.
00:06Well, very excited to be with you here today, Emilia and Fatiha.
00:12Thanks for everyone who is here.
00:14You know, DEI has a bad rap.
00:172025, who would have imagined that after all the waves and the buzz
00:23and all the media attention and action that's happened on DEI
00:28over the last seven to eight years,
00:30would be in 2025, actually almost having it as a taboo in a conference.
00:38That being said, it's still a crucial topic.
00:43And very, very happy to be here today with Emilia and Fatiha.
00:50Maybe before starting, just like a quick, you know,
00:52we're in the Startup Tech Conference.
00:54We're all talking about pitching, pitching, pitching.
00:57Can you do like a one or maybe two minute little introduction on yourselves?
01:02Emily?
01:03Sure.
01:03Hi, everyone.
01:04I am Emily Whitko.
01:06As you can hear, I am from the United States.
01:08And as Elias mentioned, it is particularly a fraught time for DEI.
01:15And happy to discuss any questions that folks might have afterwards.
01:20I was even chatting with my colleague, Bridget, here,
01:22when I was promoting myself for this talk about whether or not I should even use the phrase DEI
01:30while tweeting about Viva Tech, which is just not a thought I ever expected to have.
01:37I work, I'm a head of culture at a tech company that many of you may have heard of called
01:44Hugging Face.
01:45We are an open source AI platform with a particularly adorable logo.
01:51I'm focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging,
01:54which ties really tightly with employee experience.
02:00And since we are an open source platform,
02:03I also tend to work really closely with our contributors
02:07and folks that also use the Hugging Face site.
02:11Hi, everybody.
02:13I'm Fatih Agass.
02:14And I can say also thank you to Solène, who is a colleague, and he is here with me.
02:22I'm head of innovation and generative AI program at La Poste Group.
02:30La Poste Group is very committed in the subject of diversity and inclusion since many, many years.
02:42At La Poste, I don't work on these subjects, but I have other activities aside,
02:53and I'm involved in some associations which are very active in attracting women in tech fields,
03:05and another one which is very involved in giving a positive vision of diversity.
03:18Thank you.
03:19And my name is Ilyas Benjeloun.
03:22I've been three times entrepreneur, the last startup being Stay22.
03:26That is a scale-up now at 50, not as big as Hugging Face, but like 57, 58 employees.
03:33It's leveraging AI to allow publishers and bloggers to move from a side project to a lifestyle business.
03:40So, using AI and generative AI to actually optimize their blogs and generate more revenue.
03:48So, you know, helping small businesses.
03:50And on the other side, throughout my journey, I had the opportunity to launch an organization that supports entrepreneurs
03:56with peer-to-peer learning and helping them continue their journey even when they fail or they exit.
04:02It's called Elentech, as well as working in a big company, closer potentially to La Poste, called Desjardins,
04:07that is a financial institution in Canada, a cooperative.
04:10So, a lot of human values, triple bottom line, and of course, the challenges and opportunities around diversity,
04:16equity, and inclusions are core to that business as well.
04:20So, little pitch.
04:22Okay.
04:22So, we talked about the taboo aspect a bit around this topic,
04:26and maybe before jumping into the future and allyship,
04:32as the topic here is really moving into an environment where maybe compliance is not as strong.
04:40But how did we get there?
04:42Sometimes, like, I talk with people and they are a bit flabbergasted about,
04:47like, how did we move from a situation where it may not have been relevant
04:55to even bring those topics and bring those structures to a moment where we cannot even talk about it?
05:00Like, what's happened?
05:02I think that if you look back through particularly U.S. history,
05:08I would be shocked if this has not also happened in France and all across the world.
05:12There tends to sometimes be this boomerang effect that happens.
05:16So, if we think back on the last, maybe as you mentioned, seven or eight years,
05:20particularly in the U.S., we had the Black Lives Matter protest,
05:24we had, which was spurred on by George Floyd's murder.
05:28We also had the Me Too movement, which was very, very popular in the U.S.
05:33And so, we had these very strong social movements that were gaining a lot of traction,
05:37and we were talking about DEI in a brand new way,
05:41and then all of a sudden, the boomerang happened,
05:44and everybody sort of, like, you just get snapped back, right?
05:50Folks get afraid of losing the power that they've spent decades, centuries, lifetimes,
05:57holding onto really, really strongly,
05:59that all of a sudden they go,
06:01oh, no, Me Too is getting too strong.
06:03We have to get rid of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights in the United States.
06:07And so, these boomerang effects happen,
06:11and in some ways, it's useful for me to remember that,
06:14because it's one of the things that continues to give me at least a little bit of strength.
06:19On some days, I'm a little bit tired,
06:21but it's good to know that despite feeling like this has never happened before,
06:26we're probably in the middle of one of these bounce-back moments.
06:31Yeah, I totally agree.
06:35To figure this situation, let me give you some numbers.
06:43A McKinsey study reveals that companies with higher ethnical and cultural diversity
06:50in leadership teams are 33% more likely to outperform financially.
06:58And we forget this.
07:03We forget the link between diversity and financial performance.
07:10This is about diversity, ethno-cultural diversity in the company,
07:15but we have also, like you said, Black Lives Matters.
07:21We have also Me Too.
07:23And these are other subjects, other issues from the society to the company,
07:32which bring another vision of the situation also in the companies.
07:42And I like that you're bringing numbers as well, because facts matter.
07:48And sometimes we're in a society where you don't know where are facts, where are not facts.
07:51But also we realize that facts also don't matter.
07:54In a way that, unfortunately, if we knew that only with data and facts we can change the minds,
08:02we wouldn't be here today.
08:04And you're right on that percentage, and I think it's crucial.
08:07But I think one of the mistakes that we tend to do in this kind of like pendulum or like
08:13boomerang effect of change,
08:14because, you know, humanity has been changing forever, basically, like evolution or whatever.
08:20But when a big social movement like this one happens, we have people who genuinely believe in that.
08:26And they've been working in companies like La Post and even before Hugging Face even started, etc.,
08:32who are really deeply passionate by that, but they get crowded by people who are just following trends
08:38and who arrive in that kind of spaces with a conviction maybe a bit different.
08:44And we become in a more performative state of DEI and a more social club-ish aspect of DEI
08:52that becomes disconnected from the business.
08:54I think moving to the future, because we're here beyond talks,
08:59because I know there are a lot of talks during VivaTech, but there is also a lot of action.
09:04So how do you see the action that can be taken so that we move away from the performative aspect
09:12of DEI
09:12and looking good, where true leadership can happen and the performance aspect of DEI?
09:22At the beginning, I think companies went to answer this question because it was just like,
09:34oh, it's compulsory, we must, we must do it.
09:38And we moved from this situation to another one where people, it's just like they have understood the benefit of
09:50diversity,
09:50the diversity of gender and diversity of ethno-cultural background.
09:58And today, a lot of people are aware of the situation and the power of diversity in teams and for
10:11the business.
10:12And they changed their mind about this subject.
10:18And we don't treat the problem or the issue of diversity in the same way.
10:23Because more people are involved in this subject and more people want the change.
10:34If I can build off of what you said, I've been thinking a lot about this since November 2024.
10:43Of course.
10:44Coincidence. Just a coincidence.
10:45Just a coincidence.
10:47The backlash.
10:50And this is not, I really hope not to offend anybody in the room because I am fully guilty of
10:57this.
10:57I have created those mandatory anti-bias trainings.
11:01I have forced companies that I've worked for to go through all these different DEI trainings.
11:07And what I've found, and then the point that I've finally reached, is that with the help of reading some
11:13research, for example,
11:15we now know that mandatory bias training is not actually successful.
11:20It might actually have a negative impact because it's creating stereotypes in people's minds that they may not have even
11:27thought of before,
11:28which is just wild to even consider.
11:32But what sort of I'll call like old school DEI in corporate settings, tried to do was change policies and
11:42small individual actions within companies.
11:45Whereas the only way to actually achieve change is to achieve it structurally.
11:51So I'll give another example of a policy that we used to use at many of the companies I worked
11:57for,
11:58which was almost like diversity hiring targets.
12:01This team needs to be 30% women.
12:04But what we didn't account for was retention.
12:07Or what is the culture, what is the structure going to look like when those people arrive?
12:12And so the focus needs to be much less on mandatory trainings and just talking about DEI
12:17and thinking about how we can actually change the structure of a company.
12:22We're probably not in a position right now where we're going to change the structure of laws
12:25or the structure of things that are required.
12:28But in your own spaces, you can start to think about what does this little house that I live in
12:34with my colleagues look like
12:35and what can I do to change the structure of the building?
12:39Absolutely.
12:39But I may disagree with you a bit on the aspects of structural versus organic.
12:44I'm more of a proponent of organic aspects, of getting the movements going and making it natural or become natural.
12:54Like one of the aspects, and obviously I agree with the structural aspect,
12:57but I find that sometimes in policies when we're trying to actually enforce something or go faster
13:02by throwing money at a problem or by creating a department of DEI and HR, DEI, etc.
13:09My view, and I may be blunt on this, but it's garbage and it's more detrimental because what it creates,
13:16it's silos and it creates teams of the oldies or the white old folks who may not even understand this
13:22whole language.
13:23And they're like, okay, if you are this, I'm psychologically putting a, not to stop, but like a break on
13:30that
13:31because it's too uncomfortable, it's too much, one shot, uncomfortable, so my brain locks.
13:38Whereas if you do it in an organic way and involve that and interface, etc.
13:43Like for example, what we did in some hiring, instead of saying like, oh, we need to hire this amount
13:49of people,
13:49we'd be like, hey, we need to interview this amount of people.
13:53So it's still performance-based, like may the best win, in a way, with the biases and everything,
13:59but still you work ahead to make sure that you do the extra mile to get more women, for example.
14:07And one of the, just to finish on that, like one of the aspects what we had was, for example,
14:12when you hire for a senior leadership position, you have more men applying for it versus women.
14:17So inviting the HR people to consider the people who may not have applied for a certain role to be
14:22like,
14:22you know what, like when you interview, think of maybe switching roles of the person.
14:27So that aspect in a more organic way that is not too heavy, I find like could have been or
14:34should be in the future
14:39more simple in a way to move the change.
14:41Yeah, I fully agree with you.
14:43My only comment is that you just have to make sure that when you hire those women that you've interviewed
14:48more of,
14:48they are working at a place that welcomes them and is supportive of them.
14:52Absolutely.
14:53Yeah, because it's a question today.
14:55The women who are hired, they face a sort of gossips around about their,
15:07yeah, they have been hired because they are women.
15:12They are not competent and so on.
15:14And they heard that and they say, okay, I quit.
15:19And this is a difficulty.
15:21At La Post, for example, we don't hire women because they are women.
15:28We ask to have four job descriptions, CVs from women and other from men.
15:39And not only, especially for top positions, only CVs from men.
15:47Yeah, absolutely.
15:48And I think this whole message is, and like, I think that's the good news.
15:51So for me, the good news where we are today is there is less bullshit, there is less performative work,
16:00and people who really care will come to the bat to play.
16:04So now is a great time to actually work in that space, connect it with the business line,
16:10and move away from a kind of perceptual aspect of like DEI as charity work to actually DEI as a
16:16business work.
16:17And one of the points that I would like to talk a bit more about now is the financial return
16:25of DEI.
16:25You talked a bit about the 30%.
16:27The innovation benefits of having more diverse voices.
16:32And also like diversity beyond just like gender, etc.
16:36But like the cultural and neurodiversity, that brings actually tangible value.
16:40I don't know if you had some experience in your companies where you had some highlights or some examples that
16:45you would like to share with us.
16:47Maybe, Emily?
16:48Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about this.
16:50Hugging Face is much smaller than a lot of people think.
16:53We're only about 200, 225 employees.
16:57But one of our biggest strengths is that we're actually in almost 30 countries.
17:02We're a remote first company.
17:03We're fully global.
17:04I really, really love the fact that I can talk to one of my colleagues at any point in the
17:10day
17:10and not know where in the world they're located.
17:12It's a pretty neat perk that also comes with all of the innovation possibilities that Elias mentioned.
17:19One of the first things that I did when I joined Hugging Face almost four years ago
17:23was, again, to your point, remove our DEI channel from our Slack, our work messaging platform.
17:32Because what that was doing was it was centralizing conversations about DEI in one place.
17:38And the only people that were looking at those conversations were the people that cared about DEI.
17:43And what we wanted is actually, as you said, to decentralize these conversations and move them into our sales chat,
17:51into our hub building chat, right?
17:54Talk about how do we make our website more accessible and talk about that in the chat where we're talking
17:59about the website
18:00as opposed to in the DEI chat.
18:02And I've seen great examples of conversations happening.
18:07I can use the accessibility as an example where, because it's happening in Slack,
18:12and because our Slack is open to all employees, these conversations include engineers.
18:17They also include ethicists.
18:19They include accessibility experts.
18:21They include office managers.
18:22And they include people from all over the world, which means we're getting so many perspectives.
18:27It means we're actually building a pretty great product.
18:30And then we triple down because we're open source.
18:33It means we get lots of great feedback from everybody in the world also.
18:38That really helps us to innovate faster, stronger, better than companies that are closed down.
18:44I love that.
18:45And I love this aspect of having a distributed approach to diversity in general.
18:51And we talk a lot about empowerment, but the base of empowerment is empowering the existing teams
18:57and the people who are already diverse.
18:59And to your point of the hiring, it's like, yeah, you can be diverse.
19:04But if all your hires are, let's say, a woman in marketing or a woman in HR
19:07or the immigrants in the front line and et cetera, you're missing the point.
19:13And even more so, you create that kind of fracture.
19:16So I love this idea of, and I think I never thought of it, so thank you,
19:20of having a distributed aspect and almost like a web, you know, like the...
19:26A hub.
19:27A hub, but interconnected mini clusters within teams and empowering those people
19:33and making it pervasive.
19:36Like a...
19:37Pervasive, I wouldn't say...
19:39Yeah.
19:40So it has a ripple effect.
19:42It's the same when, at the beginning, we saw big companies naming or hiring the director
19:51of diversity, which was compulsory from ethno-cultural background,
19:59just as if it's only them who are aware of the problem.
20:06And now, everybody can be aware of the problem.
20:10But the image you are bringing on the table is that, don't be afraid.
20:18It's just their problem.
20:20It's not yours.
20:21And this kind of thing gives a bad formulation for this question or issue of diversity.
20:32Yeah, absolutely.
20:33And I think that's why moving ahead, and that's why I say, like, it's a good news in a way.
20:38Like, everything that is happening today, because it's like a Band-Aid.
20:42We put a Band-Aid on something that was wrong, and we went to a party, and we felt that
20:48we were okay.
20:50Now, we are ripping off the Band-Aid.
20:52We're kicking off a lot of the bullshit, because we collectively, anyone who has been involved
20:57into DEI over the last 10 years, has also been involved into this performative work,
21:02hiring or creating a department of DEI.
21:04Like, the dumbest idea.
21:06And you couldn't even antagonize against that, because people like me who would say,
21:11no, this is dumb.
21:13It's not ingrained into the business lines or the technology department.
21:17They would be like, are you racist?
21:19I'm like, no.
21:20I'm actually, I think that it should be empowering the teams, not creating, as you rightly said, Fatiha.
21:26So, I think moving forward, it's a good thing.
21:28Now, when there is no policy, which I believe it's a good thing, personally.
21:33When there is no department of DEI, which I personally think is a good thing, and to your
21:39example of distributed aspect.
21:41Now, how do you see we can bring allies, because more than ever, allies will be key.
21:48When there is no compulsory, you cannot just put lipstick on a pig.
21:53You still need to get that movement towards change.
21:57So, how do you see getting those allies to join, or getting more work towards increasing
22:03allyship?
22:04And what is for you allyship, first and foremost?
22:06For me, allyship is all people which are already convinced of the necessity to work on the question
22:21of diversity, of gender or ethno-cultural background, and to make them help us to change the situations
22:34in the company, and take the word, and speak, and help people to understand the situation, to bring
22:46another way of viewing the situation, and to, well, when we are, for example, when we are in a meeting,
22:58to make people listen to the proposal of this person who is maybe diverse in comparison with others.
23:12What about you, Emily?
23:13Yeah, I fully agree.
23:15We touched on the topic of amplification or sponsorship a little bit, which I think is a good illustrator
23:21of this point, because my take is that allyship needs to be rooted in action, right?
23:26We can't just believe these things are true.
23:29We have to take actions to support folks.
23:31And one of the ways that we discussed that's really useful in supporting folks that Fatiha
23:36mentioned is this amplification piece, right?
23:40So, if your colleague is from an underrepresented group, particularly an underrepresented group
23:44in tech, has a great idea and nobody's listening, especially if you hold some power in the situation,
23:50just repeat it and be like, hey, did everyone see what Emily said?
23:53That was awesome.
23:54That can actually be really, really effective.
23:57And so, I just think that what you said is exactly right.
24:03I'll go back to the web, this distributed web.
24:06It's a great concept and I do think it works, but it does require a lot of people to take
24:13a lot of actions and a lot of small actions in order for the web to work.
24:16One of the ways that I think the web supports itself is that one reason why people don't
24:22take action, particularly on emotional topics, is that they're nervous.
24:26They don't want to say the wrong thing.
24:28They haven't taken action before.
24:30And what this web does is it gives lots of these mini little examples of other people
24:34taking action and other people being allies.
24:37That way, you can gain confidence in your own allyship.
24:40We have to move from mentorship to sponsorship.
24:46People must be really involved in this question and help the other to go to the stage.
24:55Yeah, absolutely.
24:57And I think on my end, and I love the moving from mentorship to sponsorship because I do
25:03believe that sometimes mentorship creates this distance that can keep the status quo actually
25:09of dependency, et cetera.
25:11But I think like time has changed and especially now what we see today with AI going at the speed
25:19of light, the changes in the innovation landscape as well as the geopolitical landscape that
25:24has changed over the last year.
25:26I won't say why, but like that has changed over the last year.
25:29But on the bright side is we see what we used to call like the global south, like Africa,
25:36Middle East, India, et cetera, going fast, being actually more steady.
25:42We see countries like Morocco, Saudi, Qatar, Emirates, India as well, who has been very stable
25:48for many years.
25:49Like Morocco has plans for like 20 years and their innovation strategy, their capital,
25:54their investments.
25:56Like we see steady movements that are compound interest.
26:00So like every effect of every year compounds to the next.
26:04They're not like those big swings that can happen in the US, for example.
26:09And those are actually becoming very interesting innovation partners, market partners, but also
26:17capital partners.
26:18Because we see countries like Morocco has OCP, for example.
26:21Like it's a big phosphate resources.
26:24We have Saudi, obviously have resources, et cetera.
26:28And they are investing in the future beyond natural resources.
26:31And guess what?
26:33Europe, Canada, I live in Canada, has huge amounts of immigrants, have huge amounts of people
26:40from this diaspora who are living here.
26:42We're in France.
26:43We're in Paris.
26:44Look at this room full of diverse people.
26:47And I believe we're not capitalizing on that.
26:50I believe the allyship needs to be rooted into this opportunism, opportunism, opportunistic
26:56view, opportunistic view that is actually a tangible one.
27:01Like a new market, new capital, new commerce, new talent, et cetera, that we have to save now.
27:07And now is the time to actually save it.
27:09Yeah, yeah.
27:09Because diaspora can build bridges with their country of origins.
27:17And they know the culture.
27:19They understand the way of living, acting, the things interesting for their origin countries.
27:28Even if they are not born in these countries, they know the culture.
27:34And they can help for the business in these countries.
27:40And I mean, it's really a question of business.
27:45And some companies have understood this.
27:50And they have, and today they use their diaspora to bring the ideas in other countries and to
28:02build bridges with other countries.
28:06Yeah.
28:07I love what we're talking about, how these, the countries that you don't normally think
28:11of as the big players in the game, as you mentioned, are innovating and oftentimes leading some
28:18of the AI race.
28:19And my only like tiny pushback in terms of, not even a pushback, I just want to be really
28:25careful when framing this conversation because it tows the line between partnership with these
28:33organizations or these other countries to almost like an extractive relationship, right?
28:39I don't want to think of folks outside of France, the US, Canada, the EU as resources for us
28:46to be pulling innovation from.
28:49It's just like, these are humans and they're doing amazing work.
28:54And it might as well, they would be much better partners than in that case.
28:58I think of some like multi-language models that have been, I think, very successful in doing
29:05this work, including Hugging Face's Bloom model, if folks are familiar.
29:09It's an open access, open science, multi-language model where we worked with countries all over
29:14the world, had contributors all over the world because we were noticing that large language
29:19models were tending much more toward Western languages.
29:23We wanted to include other people.
29:25If anyone is familiar, Cohere Labs, they have an AYA, A-Y-A, I'm not sure how to say it,
29:31project happening right now where they are focused on the world's least spoken languages,
29:38which is just really outrageously cool.
29:40And they've got paid contractors from all over the world helping them with this open source
29:44project.
29:45I'd recommend you take a look at it.
29:46And these are just great examples of like more resourced companies like partnering in
29:55a way that makes sense with folks who are leading in their own right.
29:59Yeah, absolutely.
30:00And what I love about this aspect of having paid contractor or having players even in their
30:07own home countries, and I like, take a moment to think about it.
30:12And I like what you said about, even though I don't always agree on what we share together,
30:17and that's I like actually, but on the aspect of working with people even where they are.
30:22You know, like Hugging Face is a company of 200 and something people.
30:25They are all remote in many, many countries.
30:27But guess what?
30:28You can let people live in their countries, contribute to a company, to their growth, live
30:33in their country, trickle down economics in their own area in a way.
30:37And that's actually working one while empowering the local ecosystem and helping potentially
30:41ingrain that culture of speed, Silicon Valley-style startup way of moving fast, et cetera, or
30:48New York-style, whatever, Paris-style, in their own countries.
30:52And that's actually a net positive in their local economies as well.
30:58And that we don't always think about it.
31:00And this is really, really crucial.
31:01Second point is actually the West doesn't have a choice.
31:05And I don't mean it in an arrogant way.
31:07But innovation, more and more, we require data, we require AI, obviously, and that requires
31:15the diversity of points of views, both on the innovation standpoint, but also on a very
31:20technical, basic thing.
31:22Like, for example, even iPhone, when they first had their camera, didn't know how to recognize
31:29Asian people.
31:30And it was, like, assembled in China.
31:32Like, it's crazy.
31:33Like, this is dumb.
31:34But this is, like, the obvious dumb.
31:36But now we're going into the nitty-gritty of nuanced aspects that are actually required.
31:42And there are countries, like, for example, I was talking about OCP earlier.
31:47They have UM6P, that is, like, a university around science and research.
31:51They have a campus here in Paris.
31:53Shulai Sinai.
31:54AI, agriculture, climate, et cetera.
31:57But they're also opening in Canada now.
32:00So those countries, and Saudi and others, like, I don't know everyone very well.
32:05I'm from Morocco originally, so it's easier for me.
32:07But even countries like Morocco that are connected with Africa are coming to the West, want partnership.
32:13So to your point of, like, extractive, I think we have a beautiful opportunity for true, genuine,
32:19mutually beneficial partnership.
32:21And we have countries from the global South who actually are building those bridges.
32:26So I hope that the West, in a way, and I think that we are.
32:29A lot of leaders, and especially now, now that the noise is left, we have the real leaders that are
32:36left to actually do the work
32:38and build that bridge back to Africa, et cetera.
32:41And I see it on a day-to-day basis.
32:42So I'm very, very, very hopeful about what's coming up.
32:49Maybe, like, just to finish on that, like, what would you like to see now that there is no more
32:55policy pushed through the throats of everyone,
32:58now that we have potential partnership, and I think between France, in Europe, Canada, in North America, Africa as well,
33:10what would you like to see the audience who take home, potentially, as an action?
33:15Just one action, not like 30.
33:17Like one example of action that they could potentially bring home.
33:24I don't know if I have an action, but I have a conviction, and I want to share it with
33:32everybody here.
33:34Diversity is not a matter of, it's not a question of charity.
33:40It's a question of justice, equity, and business.
33:47So think about it, and you will see the things differently.
33:55Coming back to the decentralized DEI, I would encourage folks in their own organizations,
34:01especially if you're not working in a DEI-related job,
34:08look for allies in your company or on your team and start to build that web that we talked about
34:14a little bit earlier.
34:15Because the more folks that you can have who are talking about DEI, who are sponsoring colleagues,
34:21who are supporting hard conversations, the more impact that you can have regarding these topics.
34:27And so I think the action could just be as simple as finding a friend at your company and saying,
34:32hey, let's start having some hard conversations, and we can support each other through this.
34:36Because two becomes four, becomes 12, becomes 100, and then you build your own organization's movement.
34:44And make sure that when you reach out, you reach out in diversity that goes beyond just gender and color,
34:50culture, rainbows, and neurodiversity as well.
34:53And for me, one of the aspects, and I really believe that it's a multi-trillion dollar opportunity,
34:59this connection with Africa, Middle East, and the beauty in most of the teams here is that you have already
35:07diversity.
35:07So take the time.
35:09We did that with Elentech, the organization where I work, where we are a small organization,
35:13eight people, not 200, but it's seven different countries, and that came naturally
35:17because of the way we are, the authenticity, the work, and we help founders connect among each other.
35:23So in Canada, and now more and more in Europe, in Morocco, et cetera, but that connection,
35:28leading the hand and sharing with someone with humility to learn and to share,
35:34helps us actually have a better understanding of that multi-billion dollar opportunity,
35:40or multi-trillion dollar opportunity.
35:41So do that in your own teams, do that with your own folks, and go around.
35:45If you're a founder, find another startup that has founders who are diverse,
35:49work with them, learn from them, and you'll see that you understand better markets
35:52that you may not have seen the insights and opportunities there.
35:55Anyway, thank you very, very much, Emily.
35:57Fatihai, it was a pleasure sharing today, and I hope that we learned towards action together.
36:02Thank you.
36:03Thank you.
36:04Thank you.
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