Speaker: Victor Hugo Rocha, Marketing Analytics Coordinator, IPNET Growth Partner
Tell us about you, your company and your role there. Can you describe your partnership with Google Cloud?
Victor Hugo Rocha: Hi everyone. I am victor Ha. Shem, market analytics coordinator at growth Partner and I'm here to share a little bit about how we live pride independence. Yet as an openly gay and gay men and also as a member of the diversity committee, is one of the main google called partners in latin America. And we are really proud to say that diversity and inclusion are a top priority for or people experienced team. I would like also to say thanks to 200 Gallucci for the invitation. And for the first question, I guess that's it.
How does inclusion show up in your organization? For your employees? For your customers?
Victor Hugo Rocha: well, first of all I would say that uh we have a strong culture and we really encourage people to be who they are and of course we believe in diversity as a way of reaching out for new ideas and innovating, but um we also believe in diversity as a way of building stronger relationships and of course this is about our employees, but also about the relationships we have with customers and every other partner, every other partner. Um The second point is that we have, we try to build a safe space to share and we do this by some lectures that are given by the diversity committee to the whole company where people can make questions and we can share and we can be comfortable and it's a really safe space, I would say to share and to build new new ideas and to break uh prejudice and it's it's a really nice uh initiative, but my favorite one is the uh academy, which is more educational initiative focused on trans people. And we are basically taking our skills in google called and called managed services. And we are trying to make it in a not simple but easy way to learn to people who who doesn't are in the market and uh that may be in a near future we could hire. So we are trying to build this bridge between someone that doesn't have access to maybe um bachelor or something um like that and we are trying to make this bridge by bring your knowledge to those people by uh accessible channels as instagram once we know that some of them doesn't have access to desktops or notebooks. Um, so this is my favorite one, and uh, I really believe that's a way that we can improve or diversity numbers in the Net and maybe in the market in general.
How have you seen the conversation around Pride in the workplace shift? Where has ground been gained and where are we falling short?
Victor Hugo Rocha: so I would like to start with the challenges because I believe they are the mangoes that we should be looking at The 1st 1. I would say that is building a safe space in your company and in the market in general because it's not it's not only about having a diverse team, it's also about making sure that those people are feeling uh comfortable with who they are and it's a safe space for them. They don't feel threatened about because of who they are or they their sex, sexuality or their gender. So this is a really important discussion. Is a culture work is also a kind of educational work. So we should always be looking at it and this I would say that is a constant effort. Uh the second challenge and I would say the biggest one at least in latin America when we are talking about the L. G. B. T. Q. Plus community. You um we have a huge gap of access to formal knowledge and technical skills when we are talking about trans people. So um we should really be looking at it and thinking of ways of how we can overcome this gap and um helping those, those people to have more access to studies and those technical skills that we need them to have to be hiring them. So I would say this is the biggest challenge but we have of course achieved some great um great conquers. I think the fact that we are uh we are here discussing it at least in the planet. We have a really um safe space to talk about it, to propose initiatives. And this is a great conquer. And yeah, I believe that's it for now.
Why is representation of the LGBTQIA+ community in tech and in the workplace important? How are you and your organization celebrating Pride?
Victor Hugo Rocha: I like to think about technology as a tool for solving real problems. So, um, I think this question can be answered with another question, which is what we could achieve if we break this bubble that we are living in and bringing more diversity to solving those problems, to think about the solutions than to uh, innovating to create by different perspectives. I think when you have a challenge, your problem in general, uh, if you have more perspectives and more ways of looking at it, you probably will have different approaches and probably you could get to another result uh, sometimes easier, sometimes faster, but most of the smarter. So that's why I think bringing more diversity to the tech market is so important. And in yet we are actually we are celebrating pride every day. I'm part of the team of the diversity committee and we kind of make sure or we try to at least make sure that we leave pride every day. I think of course it's important to take a look at some important dates. And um, celebrating is also uh, it's always really nice. But I think the most important thing is truly living it on the daily basis work life. So I think that's at least how we see pride here
At Google our theme for Pride month is “Reconnecting with Pride.” When you hear that, what does it mean to you?
Victor Hugo Rocha: Well at first blinks when I look at it, I think a lot about looking at the past, looking uh for how we achieved so many things in the past years in society in general around the LGBT Q community and then learn and learning about all those achievements and how we made it. But I also think about specifically when I read the word reconnecting about this participation and this improvement of the diversity and the participation of LGBT Q community in the in the technology market and in this process of improving and expanding and building new connections around the road. And I think would be would be it's it's great being part of it and would be even greater to see more and more um members of the community making part of part of it.
