Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / Episode 240 | Maxine Williams

Transcript

Episode 240 | Maxine Williams · Corie Sheppard Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: How are you, ma'am?
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Good thank you.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm taking a last look at my notes here.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I've lent you notes.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, you are lucky to be in Trinidad.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: This is a real coincidence, right?
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, Was this vacation, you know I came for the AmCham conference.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: It was a tech conference, so I gave a keynote there and did a panel all about AI.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, that went Very good, very good, oh, that went.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Very good, very good, yeah, full room.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: You know a lot of CEOs, some startup people, technocrats, just people interested in how we leverage AI to do more in the region, and you know what the concerns are and how you do the better.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I always wonder, when we say AI and when you hear AI, if we're hearing the same things.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: You know, I think we are hearing the same things.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: We're talking about technology which is more intelligent than we have seen before and, at this stage, we're talking about technology which can understand natural language and look at images and audio in context and produce things.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: So generative AI.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Right, there's different forms.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: I think we're talking about the same thing.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: What people seem to be thinking about here is how we use it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Do we have the skills to even apply it?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: What would be the situations in which we would do that?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: What do you guard against?
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: So it's new, it's early days, but moving very, very rapidly.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So there was also a concern are we're going to be left behind?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Of course, I remember one of the discussions being will human employment be a thing still?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: You remember them days.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Well, that's still a discussion.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: And proponents would say no, it's going to augment, and that was a theme yesterday in the conference as well.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: It will augment human productivity.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: You can now focus on higher level things and not do repetitive tasks that the AI could do for you.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: But there are still some people who are concerned.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: It will make change.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course that is for sure We've seen it right.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Like.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: One of my examples is and I'm not moving near the leading edge of technology or anything but the podcast host that I use creates a transcript for every episode it says what was most impressed by at the time was how it understood our accents.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I always feel as though sometimes our accent couldn't get left out of these things, but it's pretty accurate.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: So that depends on what it is trained on.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: For instance, we have an open source AI model called Lama.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And we've done two things in our training One in relation to what you're talking about, with accents and language, et cetera.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: One is called Casual Conversations, where we went out and took video data from people across many different countries, across many different characteristics, looking at different skin tone, different yes language, different genders, different disabilities, even bodily adornments.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: You have tattoos and training the models to recognize all of this difference so that it has the context, so that it can relate to you on that difference.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Then we have something called massively multilingual AI, where we have put 1,100 languages into it, including languages which are disappearing or languages which are not the dominant ones.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So Haitian Creole is in there, so it's trained on that, so that if you speak h and creole, you might be doing what you just did, which said I couldn't believe it understands me right, of course but you have to train the model on that.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So part of the concerns people often have is is the ai going to be biased?
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Right, you know, depends on who builds it, and who builds it does matter.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: But if you're building with intent to represent the world, then you can deliberately include the world.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by design.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: So I have to tell people your role.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Tell me if I'm saying it right.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Vp, Head of Engagement and Accessibility how I do.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, Accessibility and Engagement All right, all right, all right, not bad, not bad.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So what is really the role of your mentor?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: What does that role encompass?
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: with your method.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: What is that role in Compass?
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: It is to make sure that we are building products that are accessible to everybody and bringing value to people.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: So accessible typically means in this realm, you're looking to see that the products can be used by everyone, and then value is that.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Is it bringing value to people?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: So I might say well, these Ray-Ban glasses, right, have we made them such that people with all kinds of disabilities can use them?
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: And then are they valuable to those people?
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: This, for instance, people who are blind or low vision are in love with these glasses.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Oh no, you're talking to me.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: No, it's revolutionized people's lives.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you the messages I get and things people say, because you put on these glasses and with the integration of the AI, they can tell you where you are.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: What's in front of you Is there a curb there at the side, what is the room?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Think of it.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: If you arrive somewhere, you notice you take a ride share and they drop you off.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: You say you've arrived, but you don't know which door.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: That happened to me today.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Right, all right, and they drop you off.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: You say you've arrived, but you don't know which door.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That happened to me today right, oh right.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: With the glasses on.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: It will tell them there's a grey door in front of you.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: It says XYZ.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you're audibly it'll tell you.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, oh yeah, yeah, and you're asking it by voice.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Tell me what's in front of me.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: But also again imagine read this mail to me, summarize this text for me.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: And you just have the glasses on like no, you go to a restaurant.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Tell me what is vegan on this menu right, if you've ever I've had lunch before with six blind people and me and it's me saying, y'all, there's some extra fries over here, or they do have chicken.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Now, independence with these glasses with the ai in them.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: It's telling them everything in their surroundings, I see, and giving information ai in them.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: It's telling them everything in their surroundings, I see, um, and giving information.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: This is just, it's revolutionary technology, right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: So when I say bringing value, I understand that's real value.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I was looking up on wearables like.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: My area is marketing, so a lot of times when we lecture in marketing, a big part of it has to do with what the future is going to look like you know you're trying to anticipate what the needs are, to deliver on them.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And wearable technology was an interesting area for me in terms of how much health benefits You're talking about vision.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: But for people who might have issues hearing, like I had Glenn Niles here recently, he's the head of the Down Syndrome Association, but a strong advocate for people with disabilities in general and some of these things is, you know, so helpful.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Like somebody like him, I'm sure he'll be taking this in.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean and across different disabilities, right, so closed captioning.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: So you just talked about transcription, transcription powered by AI, which makes it very easy to do now Think of that for people who have ADHD, and focus and attention is that now you get the information in a different format where you can process it differently.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: With wearables, we are working on something called EMG, which are wristbands that respond to your muscular signals and it's so sensitive that it can respond to people who don't even have five fingers, don't have a hand, but it knows from the muscle signals what you want to do and we can use those to help you navigate a computer.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: So people who have spinal cord injuries or people who have tremors and can't use it in the way you can now can have a different human computer interaction.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Of course, using this wearable, so inputs that we might need me to detect oh, you can't, yeah exactly so matter is now in its own way.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Hardware is a big part of what you're committed to it.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, very committed.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I see think of the.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It's a form factor, right, if you're trying to get to presence.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: So we started with we want to connect the world.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I mean that's happening right, With 4 billion people using your product.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: And then into this area now, with metaverse and presence being a very big thing when I describe deep glasses.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: If you put the glasses on, there's now no barrier between you and what you're experiencing, whereas if you hold up your phone think of if you go to your son's football game when you hold up that phone to record what's happening, it kind of interrupts the experience for you, with the form factor of the glasses carrying the AI and recording and all of that.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Whatever you're looking at, you're telling it record this for me and now you can be completely present in there.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: I'll get my one.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: It's my wife.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: We just come from vacation.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: That's all you dealers want I just went to Malta by myself.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: And I use these glasses to navigate the whole place Was this church.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Was the history of that, was it?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: But Was the history of that?
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: But I could be present in this space while that was happening, and so the hardware is a means to arrive in the present.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Same thing for you know, the Quest headsets.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: You're immersed in this space.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the headset's starting to become one of those things now, like my son has been asking.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: He's like you know, he wants to get a headset.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: I think a part of the hesitation for me and you'll tell me if there's something that you hear a lot like.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: As a parent, I feel like you know I could see the TV and I could see the phone and the other thing, but when you put on this headset, I know what's going on.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand that Now you upload apps into the headset the same way you might on a phone, so you could also control.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know I can.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Well, you don't know how to do that.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: okay, he's gonna be left to his own devices, literally yeah, well, right, yeah, and sometimes the children are leading the way like they are more tech savvy.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good though.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I like that, look it is a tool for us.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: It is a tool to again augment, to help us live lives which are different.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: I don't have space where I live for a table tennis board.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: My son likes to play table tennis.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: We have two headsets.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: We knock in all the time.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: In a space this small, we are able to play table tennis with a table tennis app in the metaverse in the headset.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It's so real.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, some of it.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I always feel I'm a.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You know they used to have this thing called diffusion or innovation.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I'm a laggard.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Anything come out new, I'm way, way behind.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, you're not an early adopter, not.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: By far, and a part of it for me is, I guess, not understanding or the, I guess, fear of it or whatever it might be.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: So, even when you talk about these things, before we started, when you said they had the Ray-Bans, I was asking is that a prototype or something?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not realizing that we're here and how is it doing Like people are?
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: adopting it Incredibly.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, flying off the shelves.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Now it is not in every market yet Got it, so it is not sold in Trinidad yet for instance.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: And we just launched in India in May, right, because, yeah, it's new, you think?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: it will get here eventually.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're still building our business model and you know looking at sales.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: And then, as the AI is getting better and better, you know, it's surprising us as well.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Of course, all of the use cases I'll imagine, I'll imagine.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So I was telling you before we started that.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I remember back some time ago.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I saw this article and they say somebody from Trinidad, big in Facebook I can't remember the headline, but read something like that and everybody was like, yeah, you know, once you have it, it could be Olympics, it could be business, it could be music.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Once Trinidad accomplished something somewhere, we feel proud.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: We feel really, really good and I remember the announcement at the time being about diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, I would say in the local market.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Still a very new term at that time.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: What year was that?
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: 2013,?
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: 12, 13?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, 13.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Let me talk about the academics, right?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: No, I see, there's no class.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I do, particularly at master's level, at MBA level, that they don't have some discussion around it, even if the case, like for last time, we had to do a marketing plan but the company was a DEI consultant, so they're starting to be and those programs are from England, right, but I don't know that in 2012, 13, there was a big discussion around this happening here, and when you all pointed, I think if anybody else was like me, it's like okay, so what, what is this?
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: What is this thing?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: so you know that's my broad question, you know what is DEI when we talk about DEI?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: yeah, that's a charged question right now.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: So here what it is for me?
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Sure, it is a means to identify spaces where we are losing the opportunity from the potential of everyone.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: If we have created systems where certain people in certain groups are left out, not because they don't have the skills, not because they don't merit to be in, but because we make assumptions about the group that they're from and, as a result of that, we do not get the benefit of their productivity, of their engagement, Then to me, we're losing out as a society.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: And what DEI was was a series of strategies, initiatives, in order to identify the value, the potential and give opportunity to everyone.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: So you want to take away the things that are barriers to entry, such as bias, stereotypes.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I worked with Sheryl Sandberg for a number of years, who was the COO of Facebook and one of the most brilliant lines she ever delivered.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: She would say often, only one of two things is true.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: You have to believe one of these two statements Either you have to believe that women are not as smart as men, or you believe that something is getting in the way of women being in equal leadership positions to men.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Only one of those two things can be true.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Right Of course, of course.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: So maybe you believe they're not as smart as men, and that's what explains the fact that only you know 19,.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I think now it's gone up to 27% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women Okay.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And don't ask me if we got into race on that.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah sure, way less.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: And you say, well, that's because they're not as smart.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: But if you believe them to be as smart, as then what is getting in the way?
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: And it tends to be a system which is biased, which assumes that men are more, you know, they're stronger leaders, or they're smarter, or they are more effective, or whatever.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And what DI was doing was getting strategies in place so that it was merit, in fact which led the way, so that it was merit, in fact, which led the way, and I could put that on different categories, whether it's women or race or sexual orientation, disability, right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: A lot of things get in the way based on assumptions and not based on merit, and so for me DEI was developing strategies to clear all of that out so we could get the best people.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: But I had to ask you, so you had to go through some kind of an audit that said, okay, these are the areas of inequity, like.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: When you say race or gender or sexuality, you have to get to a broad spectrum of what where inequality is like.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you do the audit yourself or you know you're looking for research, you're looking for data.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And there are many different sources to that.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I can look to see how many women are graduating with computer science degrees.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: I work at a tech company and you know, at that time we were hiring 2013-2014 is really the period we were hiring fast, heavy growth and we're looking for anybody who could do computer science.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: Who could do data structures and algorithms is our particular thing.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: But and you're looking at the graduation rate and seeing that, okay, only 18 percent of the graduates are women.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Boy, that's a problem, because 50 percent of the world are, and I'm looking to serve the world, and so the other piece of the dei is yes, you're clearing the way so you can get all the good people who are otherwise held back by bias, et cetera, but also two other things.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: One is that we know that cognitively diverse teams will do better at problem solving.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: You get to cognitive diversity by having people who think differently.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: How you think is, in part, influenced by who you are, background you come from, the skills you have, the identity, all of those things.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: So you're trying to take away barriers, so everybody has the opportunity and you're looking for diverse sets because they're going to produce better for you.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: In that mix, when I look at okay, 18% women graduating, but who am I serving?
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: 50% women.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: The way we build will be better if we have teams that are made up of men and women.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: At 18%.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: You have some teams that are 100% men.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of research that says when you're 100%, anything it's not good.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Hundred percent anything it's not good right, because there's all sorts of confirmation bias.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: In fact, ironically, there's too much trust.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: There's research.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Looking at, like juries If you have a jury made up of 12 people who are from the same background, you're not going to get the best result.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: They trust each other too much.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: They don't ask enough questions, they don't pry.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: So we know also that diversity makes groups function better.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the evidence is there and I heard you speak about it a lot Is the belief there, like when you started off, people bought into it.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Buying is a big thing, Depending on the perspective you have and the position you occupy.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: that tends to influence whether you buy in, it could be seen as a threat maybe Correct, Correct.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I have had people say the most outrageous things to me.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I know, Richie, I know you're looking to make space for them.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: Others, Let them climb up themselves, right, Of course.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Was young, went to a cricket club here which will remain unnamed with my brother who was signing up to join the club and play cricket.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: And I went with him.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: And when I went and I look around, I say you know what, sign me up too.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: And the people watch me and say no, no, no, no, girls don't play cricket.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And I thought, well, that's a stupid game.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, what game would not have girls play?
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: What would I have to do with it?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: right um and like, there wasn't the opportunity for me to be in it, but for the people who were in it, if you occupy a hundred percent of positions of anything, let's say you know it was in the us.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Um, whites only baseball.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Major league baseball had to be white couldn't play otherwise you're good from the time they start to open up that opportunity and the first non-white person comes in that space.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: You're looking around, you're saying, but now we used to have 100% of the places, Now they're taking something from us and I could be next.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: And you continue to think well, I am the best.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: But proof starts to happen, because now you see Jackie Robinson show up and he's not the best.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: No, Jackie Robinson was the best.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: No, I mean now.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: you're finally not the best, You're finally not the best, but kind of hard to accept that, Of course of course.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And so what you program your mind to say is they're taking something from us.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: They don't merit it.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: This is about ticking boxes.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: This is about giving away to people who are not entitled.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah well.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I'm doing it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: All of that.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: So how you see it.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So getting buy-in is a different process, depending on where the person is coming from, I would imagine.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: But if you were somebody who had been traditionally marginalized or excluded?
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: You might see it as a finally.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: We're getting the opportunity to play.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I have a bat and a ball and I know I'm good.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I keep going back to this lecturing.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I started lecturing maybe 2008, 2009.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: I've never been in a class that had more men than women At any level, and I do have these statistics.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, in relation to that with the data, sometimes it's not always up to date or I don't know if you're capturing it at all, but I it doesn't.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: It's not reflected in the boardrooms and meetings.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: I have to go to work, you know.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: So again, is it because, if there are more women than men graduating, how come there's so many less women than men?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: well, you say it's either women.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: They accept that women not smarter than men or something getting in the way yeah yeah and so I look into clear.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: all those things are get in the way so everybody has the opportunity to do and that is better for us as a society, because you're leaving out the best.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Of course, Of course, and I think we sometimes skip over the idea that we, we, we are not our best selves.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: You know, the less exposed you are or the Unless you learn about different unless you talk about travel, for instance, it starts opening up your mind to the way the world could be.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: The same thing happens when you meet different people from different areas.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it shakes you to the core it's cognitive development.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Your brain is developing in a better way.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Hence why I said with cognitively diverse teams you solve problems better, more complex problems.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Of course, I remember reading one time I want to say it's 3M, and at that time they were calling it like conflict teams.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Like you used to set up these teams where people should not get along and help them to see each other, and then they would come up with much better.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And 3m at the time was known for innovation.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: So, as you say you're doing product development kind of products you're talking about exactly you're losing out if you don't have people who are from different backgrounds.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: But I wonder how contentious, because if I was to line up those issues, let me use race as an example.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a contentious thing.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: You know people not.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: It's not a comfortable conversation, I'm afraid, like that and you you dive in headfirst into that why?
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: why are you?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: It's an easier for you to.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I watch all your credentials.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: You know it's the easiest things you should be doing.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like you've picked something that is enormously difficult those conversations with people.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Why wouldn't we try to solve the most difficult problems for society If we're trying to live in the best possible place and we know that race is one of the things that massively impacts that?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Look, I operate in America.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Where the history there?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: We have colonialism everywhere, this sort of global patriarchy, all sorts of things.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Right, so we share a lot in common.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: But you look at the history and then think about what we have lost out on.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: What have we lost out on from keeping people enslaved for hundreds of years?
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: What potential have have lost out on?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: What have we lost out on from keeping people enslaved for hundreds of years?
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: What potential have we lost out on?
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: And then, what price are we paying as a society living through the ramifications of that?
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: I have looked at data comparing, for instance, progress between different groups, progress based on gender versus based on race so for instance, different groups, progress based on gender versus based on race.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: So, for instance, yes, 59% of people graduating with four-year degrees in America.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: I have the statistics for America.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I wish I did for Trinidad.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we must work on that 59% of women.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Right, hell yeah.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: But in the last 10 years the percentage of women who are heads of Fortune 500 companies moved from maybe 17 to 27.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: So it's not much different there than here, is everybody saying Because globally sexism.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Right yeah, why is that?
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: How come you could have more?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Let me say on one objective metric qualified.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Right If we're just using the graduation, of course.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: And what's going on at the top.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: So less men graduating and occupying more positions up there.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: If you looked at race, race has a 4x impact over your likelihood of getting up to the top versus gender.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: So the number of, for instance, black CEOs is at an all time high now in our Fortune 500.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: And I believe the number is eight of 500.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: And of those, two are women.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to tell you you're a double whammy.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I'm a million whammies, I'm an immigrant, I have an accent, I'm short, all kinds of things.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot's, that's a lot, that's a lot, so that that's something that you found in yourself in the earliest days, like that um I was just always very attuned to stupidity.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: I mean that thing where they lock me out to the cricket club was stupid, I was like, but this is dumb.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: I could be the best cricket player of course, all you don't know that.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Why would you, on the basis of something so arbitrary, my gender.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: But you all make no sense.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: And so I was attuned to stupidity.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I was attuned to and when I say stupidity I mean things that hold us back, I got you, I got you and injustice, and so the combination of that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: You know you look, I got you, and injustice, and so the combination of that.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: You know you look around and you see that so many places and it's just a shame what we could be doing, where we could be, how we could be living if we operated differently.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, solving those problems.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: I've been asked before okay, how are we going to solve racism?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like, well, that elephant, yeah, elephant yeah, yeah, yeah but if we don't take one bite at a time of course.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Well, you're taking the bites.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: At least you know.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: The world isn't a different place now than it was 40 years ago, 10 years ago, you know so, so, so it advanced it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: But you, you, you're a convent girl.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, now you get this all there one time, right?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: I was having a whole discussion.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: People ask I'm a convent girl who presents as a bishops one?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's why he says I need to understand that logic.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: That's my identity.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: You know them, bishops, people go and act now.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not a bishops girl.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I'm not claiming it.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: I'm being real that people tend to.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I want to say 100% of the time.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: People see me and assume I went to bishops, but in fact I went to Bishop's.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Ah, I see, I see.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: I see I was listening to the Convent Accents and I listened to a lot of things.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not there.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: That's why it's not there.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I try, I tell myself.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I saw you do something that was it was a longish address.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I in.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I say it must kick in after a little while, but it's never so from convent for you.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: What was your next steps?
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Like you have people in form five, form six now they're thinking of where we had to go with the further education.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: What was your thought process?
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: the first thing for me was that I knew I didn't want to narrow my learning in the way one would have to if you went to Form 6.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: I see.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: So this thing of choosing one thing, three things, was not for me.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: I wanted to learn a broad spectrum of things.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: There's so much in the world to learn, and so I chose to not go into this system but to go from there.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I went to the US and I went to college.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: There, I went to college, I went to Yale went to Yale.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: You say that as a person, right?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: So Yale will be one of the most difficult schools.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: You like the rough part Yale is tough to get into for anybody it is tough.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is very tough to get into.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: But who say we can't get in?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: So I went to Yale and I'll tell you a little story about that.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I applied.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about yale, I didn't know anything about any of these us colleges.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Somebody gave me a list and said based on your grades from convent, you could probably be in these.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I see, when they gave me a list and said, apply to those things I applied to them I got into another school called tufts right, which is a great school as well, and of the list it was the only one that I had seen, and I say, okay, great, I like that and I go in there.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Good.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile I then get a letter from Yale saying you're on the wait list and I had to ask somebody what is the wait?
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: List.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: And they said oh, it means they like you, but they don't like you as much as they like other people who they sure they want.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: So they're taking those and then they're gonna wait and see for you and again.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I was like but how they could know they don't like me, they don't know me.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So I got out a camcorder and I put it in a room like this and I just stood in front of it and I talk about me, yeah, and I put it in a room like this and I just stood in front of it and I talk about me, yeah, and I put it in an envelope afterwards, a little cassette.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I put it in an envelope and I mail it to the Yale admissions office and that went its way.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: In the course of applications, you have to do an interview.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: I did an interview which began very poorly because I didn't know the specifics about Yale and what you know.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: What did you want to study there and how was it, you know, and why this college over that college?
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: And I wasn't from there and I didn't really know the things.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: But basically, when I was done and leaving the interview, I said to the man, what kind of place is this?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And he said, oh, it's a research institute for euthanasia.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, so you study euthanasia?
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: What do you think about the morality of people terminating their lives?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: And we started to have a whole conversation about that.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now we could talk.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know about this thing.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not from here and I don't know about that, but we could talk about things in the world.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: The combination of that video I sent in and the recommendation from the interviewer in a thing that turned around is what got me into Yale, but in both occasions it wasn't an obvious win, right?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I mean it was both.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: You know, be who you are, bring what you can.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Show them who you are.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Evidently Isn't it the first like cool going into them rooms.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: It's something like I ain't never going to survive that you will survive.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I don't be out there so fast.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Euthanasia before they euthanize me.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I don't be like in the wrong place where I gone.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: No, that's not you.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: No that's not you.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know, I don't carry that, like, people are people and we did, and what?
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: What was there to lose?
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I don't go to yale, I'll go to tufts, I don't go to the states or stay right here and I make something of myself, or you know?
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, we also have to be conscious of the privilege we have, um how privilege word is another one of them.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Words now that people.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: It makes some people uncomfortable.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: You know it's one of those things when you talk to people about the privilege and those things people get.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: But I'm sure you see in that life all the time I mean for most of us, there is some privilege there.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: There is privilege in you because you're a man and because of the assumptions that are made.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: So you might be a poor man, you might be a black man, you might be all kinds of things, you might be a disabled man, but there's still some privilege in there.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: I think people feel uncomfortable based on, again, perception of reality and ownership.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: You could own your things or you could live in a space where you create a different narrative.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: We often see ourselves through our lowest or weakest points and we are less likely to claim or own, maybe because we feel guilty about having some privilege, maybe because people think if they own that it will discount what they've achieved.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people climb up a little bit when you talk about it, but the reality is most of us have something.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I think something you said makes me realize why it might be, because the idea that I have privilege over somebody else might be one way.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's something that I could lose if we equalize this playing field.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: If you admit it, if I admit it, they might take it, that's right.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: They might go with it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I don't defend it, you know yes, yes, whereas I think we could think differently.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: We could think, if we admit it, that gives us a leg up in which we could know how we use that privilege to help other people yeah, yeah um, we're conscious of that, and we all have other things that we're working on too.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: We we all have weaknesses, of course, of course.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: So acknowledging your privilege shouldn't take anything away from you If you are also bringing with merit.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Now, if you know that the only reason you have this job is because there's no such thing as staying quiet in life.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Correct, it's correct.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: It's because nepotism or something.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: So now you're a little nervous.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Now I think to hide Correct.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Of course, correct.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: But I heard you say something about admitting and acknowledgement.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I heard you telling a story about moving into an apartment and you said this lady came and to me.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I expected it to go all the way in the next direction, right, so I'm going to take you.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Correct me if I'm wrong with the story.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: But you said, um yeah, surprised that you are here.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I don't know if I'm upset at that point.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I am upset because I think I, going into that building, knowing if I going into an area where I know mostly white people live or mostly rich people live, or whatever the thing is that I feel I'm not and I am the outlier though don't say nothing, not making me feel you know I would be uncomfortable.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: I'll be real and I was paying them bills yeah I was earning my money, working hard and paying the bills, so I did not have any sense of discomfort to be in there it was in switzerland, oh it was geneva, yeah and it was a nice apartment in lake, geneva, and the day after we moved in the cleaning lady is who came to the door right to see if we wanted to keep her on as a cleaning lady.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, right, right.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: And when I opened the door, she looked at me and said oh, I didn't expect you.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: And those were her only words.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And I immediately knew what that meant and I said to her you mean, you didn't expect black.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you dive into it Right away.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: We had to live in the same reality.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I guess Because you don't know me.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah so what do you mean?
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: you didn't expect me, you didn't expect a short person?
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you didn't expect a woman.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: No, I know what that means.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: And she said yeah.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: And then she said if the owners knew it was because the whole application was on paperwork, right.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: They'd never met me.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And she said the owners knew a Black person was living in here.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: That would be a problem.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: They wouldn't.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: In fact, they had.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: The embassy of the Congo wanted to rent this apartment for more money and they turned it down.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: They said they'd rather get less money than rent to Black people.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So she had worked with them for 20 years and she knew the deal and I said well, this is what it is, this is what you get.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: And the next day the owner showed up because the cleaning, and so she showed up and said there's been a mistake.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Oh my God, you can't live in this apartment.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: But what are you feeling at that point?
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Because you said that I just say embrace the woman.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: You was happy that she admitted it, because I was happy to.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I was thrilled that the cleaning lady said it, because most of the times they gaslight you, right.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: They make you think you have a chip on your shoulder, you seeing things where, things not there, why you have, why you think they do it on everything, right, they'll do it on racism.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: If you say, boy, it's because I'm a woman, why you think it have anything to do with that, right.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: But you know, inside of yourself there's only one or two things, and so it was wonderful that this woman said yes, it's because you're blessed.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So now I don't have to deal with the cognitive load of trying to figure out.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: What is this madness happening here If you go to a restaurant and you see them serving other people and then serving you?
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: The other day I was in Amsterdam and there is this irony.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Now too, right, where I look, the way I look, nobody in the world out there knows it's like the.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: you know Obama can't get a taxi to stop for him, but now Obama's famous enough that probably the taxi can recognize him, but let me, go level down from Obama and no matter how rich you are, no matter how successful you are, they're still seeing one thing and you don't have the same opportunities.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: And so I will be in an airport I was just recently in Amsterdam and I am traveling first class for business or something and come and you know the security, tell me you, you have to go over there.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I said, but why me and why you?
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: And tell all these other people.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: I said to go, don't question me.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: And I said because I'm black, why you have to do that.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: I said well, because look at the evidence here Now.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Engaging it makes people uncomfortable, of course, of course, but not engaging it makes me uncomfortable, worse than uncomfortable, it makes me lose out on an opportunity.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: So I will go through the discomfort to guard the opportunity.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: I have a right to rent this apartment.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I pay for this.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I have a right to be in this line at the airport.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I have you know.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the same rights as everybody else.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: This is the thing about equality equity Like.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I am human.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: You know, in the civil rights movement there were placards that people would walk around with just would say I am a man.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Now there's a gender issue there, of course.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Of course, just to say I am, I'm a human being and we're all equal and we're entitled to equal treatment etc.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: But that road to get there is a challenging one if you are on the wrong side of the power I appreciate that you said that, because it's almost like we came from a time where those things were openly said, correct?
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: This fountain is for you, this fountain is for me, and you know, I was looking at this movie.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's the green book was the name.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it was a good um, a good way of shedding light on that, how things change when things get covered on nuanced, or you know, it's very different yes, and in other places sometimes things are unsaid.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: And you know, when I was growing up here there were clubs here where I knew I couldn't show up and get in because is this night correct remember god, we walk night.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Everybody used to say that and this is a black country of course, of, of course of course of course.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could only imagine.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I want to dive back into where you were headed when you went to Yale, right, and what that experience was like.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But I had to find out.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: What do you do with the apartments?
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: What do you tell your lady when the owner comes?
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: So the owner came and said I made a mistake.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: The owner came and said I made a mistake.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: I didn't plan to rent this out.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: It's too valuable, emotional, sentimental value with my family.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: We really shouldn't have rented it out to strangers.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: I said I know it's 20 years.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: You're renting this apartment out now because it'll lead to me.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: But I didn't sell her out right.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I wasn't looking to sell out the kidney lady.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: But I said that's not true, it's because I'm black.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Blah, blah, blah blah.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: She kept denying, because that's what they do, you know.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: And I made a decision.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: She said no, you have to go.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: This can't continue.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: I made a decision that I was not going to fight to give a racist the money I'm working hard to earn.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: So I could have said I'm staying here, I ain't going nowhere.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: That was an expensive apartment and, yeah, I didn't feel like doing that.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: So what I said is I will go when I'm ready to go.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Now it was hard to find apartments there, so I used it to my advantage, took my good time until I found something that was a third of the price, right, and you're gone, twice the size, and then I could give one day's notice.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Normally you'd have to give three months notice, right?
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, you want me to go?
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I used it in my mind.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: She did that.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I wrote her an email to document.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, yeah that she was a racist.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's part of the email too.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: So where do you study?
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: At Yale.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: So I get to Yale and it's wonderful, very Wonderful.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: And just curious people and you know great learning and everything, but I notice that there are.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: It's a liberal arts college, right?
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: And you get to study lots of things, which is what I wanted, sure, but then you have to choose a major, mm-hmm.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: And I noticed that there are options.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: You could study American studies, you could study European studies, of course, you could do math and science and English and the data, but I said, how come they have no Caribbean studies?
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Why is it good enough to study European studies and American studies and all of this, but not Caribbean studies?
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: So I applied to create my own major in Caribbean studies, and that is what I did.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: How was that process?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: just introducing that.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I had to lay out what a syllabus would be, what the materials would be, where I would study, who I would study with, who would supervise that, to have this independent major.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: But I figured all of that out and did it, and so I graduated with a degree.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I feel like a running team through to life in a maximum, a little bit.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Because that song I don't know that I would have the confidence to.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: I might think it, but that might be where it ends the confidence to even think, even to think that I can create another major Like where's that thought coming from?
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: From seeing that cricket club?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Do you just have this?
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: You cutting through it?
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: If I I mean it's a combination of things, if it making sense.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Not stupid.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: When you try something, it makes sense, right.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: And then, yes, inequality, why American studies is worthy and European studies is worthy.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: What we are?
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Nobody.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: But this is worthy.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: There's intellectual pursuit, so I studied literature from across the region.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: I studied Haitian revolution.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: In fact, when I graduated, I went to live in Haiti, that's another story, but there is so much richness, and what we're pursuing was intellectual discovery.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: There is so much material for intellectual discovery.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it can't be finite, Right, so it didn't make any sense to me, that that wouldn't be an option.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: And so you go what's the worst?
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Again, I keep saying what is the worst that could happen?
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: they say, no, okay, I don't have a big ego no that's the other thing and so they know you're going for it no, and also I don't take no for an answer if it's the first answer yet.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: So with yale you could say I got no for the first answer, right?
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: No, we like other people more than we like you and thing, but as long as there's still a little door you could push, going back has never hurt, of course no, you don't want to be stupid and, like you, keep going going banging your head on a door at some point you have to realize you're crazy.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, this door ain't opening, we could go in the next door.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: But what a privilege to have a second door you could go in yeah, I suppose what true.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have the option yes got it.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Got it, so who teach you if you make this thing you went?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: What class you went?
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: When it come down to to specialize in, who was electros?
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: um, a whole bunch of different ones and again like, if you're looking for it right, you can find it.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: So I was able to combine things.
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: I studied under Nguyu Atheongo, who is like a foremost writer from Kenya, kamau Brathwaite, a poet from the Caribbean, from Barbados you know we bring in some Derek Walcott.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: I found people who understood and had expertise.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: But then it was also part of it was like economic development.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't just literature, classes, economics geography.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: I went from my junior year abroad.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: I went to Uemona and did classes there.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: So I just sort of you found there's enough and you find it the threads.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: There was a jamaican professor who was at yale at the time.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: I did some stuff for them.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I did things on black women's they have some faculty there who were caribbean.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: I see, I see a couple, but they weren't always teaching caribbean things, but again like they're all these strings that connect us, so I could do some african history and bring that in I could do some some African history and bring that in.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I could do some Indian history and bring that in.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: I could do right.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: All of that contributes to the Caribbean, right?
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I did some Latin American studies classes, looking at politics and you know different movements.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Economic development is a big one.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: You know which way do you go.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: We could see different models.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: What happened in Argentina?
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: What happened in Venezuela?
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: What happened?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: All of that relevant for us as well, so you had a degree before you had a degree, because my father was telling me this thing, where the first man who grants somebody a degree didn't have a degree, he had to create it.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: He made me talk about you, you see.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Because that's, and when did it when?
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: When did it uh turn into interest in law for you?
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I didn't have an interest in law.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: No, never did uh.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: I applied.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: So I graduate from yale and I go to live in haiti oh, haiti was before.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, it was just after you.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, so why?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Because the caribbean studies, what?
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: What led you?
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Because I felt Caribbean people the world owed Haiti.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Haiti is the country in our region that has suffered the most and the one that has done the most for us.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Haiti is the only place where people were able to liberate themselves, to fight for their freedom and look at when they did it and how they did it, and then they were punished for it.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: And, as a Caribbean person, I felt I needed to contribute to.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: You know, put your lot in where um it might be useful.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: And so I went to haiti to contribute in whichever, whatever way I could um wherever the need helped the most, whatever problem is the hardest to solve.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Let me go there and try and do something.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: So I just I went to haiti.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a job or anything, really yeah, so you said you were teaching there.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: You didn't go with the intention to do that.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't know what I would do.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I knew I could find a way to be useful somehow.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: I'm confused.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: This is a lot, you know.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: That's brave.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: No, I remember I was living in Jamaica at one point and we were working for Sony Ericsson, which was the brand that had hired us to do their trade marketing at the time, and we had to go to Haiti for something.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: I guess it was a digital promotion or something like that but when I see the list of things that they have in Haiti, including things like what to do if they have kidnapping- I only saw that in Haiti and in Bogota one time.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like I hope I'm not going, you didn't go, I didn't go, I didn't go.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: You're missing out man, really you to miami?
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: You know one flight remember we talked about this before.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: He's had no connecting flights, no, sir.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: So what's the experience like?
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Amazing yeah amazing I love haiti.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Haitians, my gosh.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: You want to know about resilience.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to know about power.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: You take a day there yeah and see how people live in, what people living through and what they're producing out of it Haitian art, haitian music, haitian food, I mean.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: So I went to Haiti.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: While I was in Haiti, there was a coup and I had to leave.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: That's a next story for the next podcast.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: How I got out of Haiti, that's another story Anyway.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And at that point then I was like well, to you, that's another story anyway.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: And at that point then I was like well, and so I applied then for the Rhodes Scholarship and got the Rhodes Scholarship.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: And with the Rhodes Scholarship you go to Oxford, you get, you know, up to three years paid it's wonderful, it's like having rich parents for the first time in your life, uh.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: But you have to study something at Oxford, and I applied to study international relations.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I see, given what I was interested in, that makes sense.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: I did not get accepted to do it.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: No, I was rejected.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: No spot for you here for international relations, and so I had to find something else to do.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: And I did law.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I like how you say these things.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: It's a matter of fact.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: First, lemaz, if you get this, scholarship acceptance not already granted is.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: This is separate, it's separate, I see, I see you're more or less going to get into oxford, but you're not guaranteed.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: I see and you.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: there's a kind of small separate application and then you, certainly for what you want to study, have to make an application, and some courses, like international, only took 16 people or something.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: I wasn't one.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: Law takes more people and law was in the end.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I loved it Because it was intellectually interesting.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: But at that point all you know is you're going to Oxford, so you had to pick something else, correct.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: So how come you decide?
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess law and IRA.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: You tend to find out some people might.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: No, it was more random than that.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of random things that lead you in different directions.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: The fact that I applied for the scholarship was random.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: I was walking down the street one day and saw a friend still at Yale.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: And I said I haven't seen you in a long time.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: A friend, my friend, richard Drayton, from Barbados, and he said yeah, because I went to interview for the Rhodes Scholarship.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: He was some years ahead of me and I said what's that?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: And he said it's a scholarship where you know they pay for you to go to Oxford, you can study blah, blah, blah, blah and you should apply when it's your time.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: And I said no, no, I think I had enough, I think I'm good.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: But then, when it was my time and I got kicked out of Haiti, I'm like I'd spent my whole life planning that, and similarly with law in Oxford the person who was the head of my Rhodes committee at the time.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: So you have to do interviews for the Rhodes and that's a competitive thing to get the scholarship.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: He was a lawyer who had studied there, and so when I didn't get an internationalization, he said ah good, because I don't know what you were studying that for, what job you're getting with that.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: You know, they were always like that, right.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's college.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: They were always like that, right.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's college.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: No, go and do law, Get a trade where you could do something.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, when I did Caribbean studies my mother nearly died.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: She was shamed for her whole life that I had done this thing.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: You reach all the way you go and study Caribbean studies.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: What are you going to do with?
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: that?
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: What job are you getting with that Exactly?
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: What work are you going to do with international relations?
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: And they come and do law and so I did it and they fell in love with it somewhere along the way.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: I like learning.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a wonderful learning process, lots of curious questions in there and you're learning history in it.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess law is one of them.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Things right, you get to learn about a lot of a lot of things and jurisprudence was my favorite class, which is the philosophy of law right.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: So that's you know, we think you will.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: You know, does universalism apply?
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: Is there subjectivity in the world, I mean?
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: so it was interesting, but I didn't plan to be a lawyer because when you look at, if you just look at your life on paper, going back, it looks well planned out and by parents who said, okay, we'll have this daughter, we'll get her to condo, we'll get to law, you'll get to yale, get to do.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Oxford is none of it, none of it.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: None of it.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: I was just always pursuing learning.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you had intent to become an attorney at a five-month time?
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: No, no, you had no intent.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: No, I was learning and when I left Oxford, I went to run a human rights organization called Caribbean Human Rights Network Right, based in Barbados but serving the whole region.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't practicing law.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: I had a law degree, but I was doing human rights work across this region.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess the combination of the two must be real helpful the exposure to Caribbean history and then law yeah.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: I could see where that would come from.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: So that's what you spent some time doing at the point of time.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah working on things you know indigenous rights in Suriname and a lot of prison reform stuff and trying to end the death penalty and disability rights and gender across the region, right From Puerto Rico, cuba, all the way down.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: You see, Guyana Suriname.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'll come up with more questions, you know, because that's topics that, like jail, is interesting to me as you bring it up Me too.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: That topic's Jail is interesting to me as you bring it up Me too.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Because I never knew there was a thing called abolitionists or whatever you call it right, but I don't think that people should be in jail.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: So when you say the death penalty, I'm very.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I remember that time when there were three hangings, nine hangings in three days here as a chedi.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember feeling physically sick over the days.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: It's like I can't understand and for me in my mind at the time I couldn't understand how it could be just for a few people to decide whether I'm on the liver.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I just find it's crazy to me.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: It's tough for me to reconcile, yeah, and to know that I know what the feeling in the country was like at that time.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: And if that's a collective feeling, I don't know if it could be right at our time.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: And if that's a collective feeling, I don't know if it could be right yeah, and a feeling is not always a fact, so I think that feeling comes from fear.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're living in a hard time and people sadly living in fear there's a lot of bad things going on and so people get a feeling that, nah, man, we gotta end this.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and ending it.
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: In one way, they think it will be a deterrent If you kill these people, less people will kill you.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: All the data shows that it's not there.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Because, sadly, when people are doing the things they're not.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Look, we could get into cognitive development, which is something I'm very interested in now, and doing work here to try to get us to understand what is getting in the way of learning.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: Sure, of many of the children in schools here we have a crisis yeah, because, people, when something is interrupting your learning, you're not developing cognitively well, and then you're stunted, your judgment is off, you're more impulsive, you're making good decisions, but not because there's a fine line to not say it's not choice.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: You haven't developed your brain in there, understand, um, and then we all suffer any consequences of the negative choices of course and actions and decisions.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: But in the end, yes, hanging, those nine people did not stop.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: Look, look, we have our own data right.
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Did it stop the murders?
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Did it stop gangs?
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Did it stop extortion?
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Did it stop kidnapping?
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: It didn't.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: So I'm not saying I don't understand why people want vengeance or want to feel like they're doing something to make things better.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: I get that.
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: I just know from the proof that that isn't the way to do it.
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm trying to see what was the other way and I feel like if we could get closer to the source, what is interrupting the learning that is making people end up there?
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: If we don't investigate that and if we don't invest, we end up prosecuting.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an expensive society as a whole To all of us, and living in fear of us living in fear, yeah, yeah, let's talk about that now, the work that you're doing now, because I don't know how much you keep up with local news.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: You still follow, like, everything that's going on here yes, sometimes not 100%, sometimes for my mental health yeah, yeah, it's something else I have to lock off sometimes I just don't not see it yeah, because the headlines right it's all.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: I'm looking in the papers from there and it's just like there's destruction and that's hard, it's tough, it's tough.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: But one particular story that I've been following and the debate going on debate going on by you going on facebook all the time now about about Roger Alexander reading in Parliament, and I saw his first address.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: It was he was fumbling, you know what I mean.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: He had a rough time getting through a written statement and I saw how people came at him.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Now, granted, there's a political thing to it, right?
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Because if you're on one side of the defense, it don't matter what you do.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Once all our heels in on either side, it don't matter what you do.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: I go and say it's the worst thing ever happened.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Man, look at you, you can't read it, unfortunately.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I find it to be real unfortunate because I was telling a story here with one of my recent episodes where that thing with not being able to read, I struggle with that a lot that if you ask me to read a paragraph here, all hell break loose, really.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: It's hell break loose.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Really it's tricky.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I want them glasses.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: You don't know.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: You tell me where I'm glasses, so I wanted to get a loudspeaker so when I see something it could read for me, because stuff is difficult.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: So I was really happy about his response when he said um, because there were some school children in the gallery at the time and he said I want to encourage you all.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: If you're having issues with this or if you're struggling to do something, don't let nobody tell you nothing and make it that that's not the be all and end all.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I don't let nobody tell you nothing that does not be all and then.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think there's any one skill that you could say make you less of a human or less potential or anything like that.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: So when I saw the work you're doing now, I felt like it's so aligned with what happened today yes, and just to mention on the technology using ai, building on open source platforms like Llama that we have, people are making interventions, apps where, for instance, if you have dyslexia, this will summarize for you.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: It will change complex text into dyslexia-friendly text.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, it will.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I see, so that you can understand, because what we want to get to is the understanding.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: That is the outcome we want, of course, for people that have more comprehension and more understanding.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Reading is one indicator, but it is not the only one.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes people have hyperlexia, so they're reading but they're not understanding.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: You really want to get to the understanding, and all of the tools we have that can get there are ones we should be using.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: But you know, I know CEOs in Trinidad who are severely dyslexic and say to me Maxine, growing up, if I didn't come last, it was an achievement in class, but nobody was looking into why this was so Of course they thought I was skylarking.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: You're lazy, that's right.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: You're dunce.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: He ain't good at his school thing Right and they just that's it, or you're problematic.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Well, you're going to be problematic if you're put in a situation where you're among people who they're telling you you're supposed to be equal to Because you're in a stream and it's supposed to be doing great.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I was just telling my father that class had 40 people.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I good for 38.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: If I do get 38, I'm in the game, and then one time I come home with a report 28.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: He said what real progress we got to cut down class to 30 people.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: So it's the same damn.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Same damn.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: But the thing about him is he never, I guess never, I guess you limited, you know where?
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: No, and the language has changed now because I don't know that when I was in newton, the word dyslexia.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: I never hear some of them words, you know, you know what words?
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Still today people tell me oh adhd, we don't have that here yeah at all.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: here, we don't have it.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: In the caribbean, no, no, that's a foreign thing.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: They like the amada and people suffering.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: I was just speaking to somebody who himself was incarcerated here.
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: He spent many years in jail here because he killed somebody at 17.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: Impulsive, he stabbed the boy to death.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: His cellmate, he was saying, was very aggressive.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: But he spent years in cells with the man and he came to realize that the fellow would act out whenever there was something which would bring light to his lack of learning.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to read something and he would act out, unless you were watching.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Well, he may not have been conscious and that was his trigger.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: And in the cell he started to work with him to help him to learn how to read one word and another word and another word.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: That kind of development.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: So reading looks like the vehicle, but really it's just a way of developing the brain.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: He took time with him, but that was too little, too late Of course yeah.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: And what people saw was an aggressive, impulsive man was an aggressive impulsive man.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: What I understand is somebody who did not get the investment from Uli to identify what was getting in the way of his learning and to have an intervention to help him develop to his potential.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: You know I talk about like.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: It's all about like getting people opportunities based on their potential and their ability, but we have to invest.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: All of us have something we're working on, of course, but if we don invest, all of us have something we're working on, of course.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: But if we don't first identify what it is, you are left in the class.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: You know you're the dunce.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: In the case of the CEO I mentioned, I'm thinking of one in particular, the big shot CEO here and he said that ultimately, because his family had money, they sent him away and it was there that he was then diagnosed and, you know, was able to get some intervention.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Reading is still very hard for him.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: But he has ways around it Now with technology as well.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Right yeah, there are ways where you can have voice, right, things can be read to you, or even if you're one of the youths now.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Like my son, he learns so much more watching videos and doing things.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: There's a call for the amount of reading, Right?
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: You know it's different, Right?
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: But then some people Of course will.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: That's reading.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: They're not.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: They have auditory, there's auditory processing and there's visual processing issues and you could have one or the other Right the auditory processing.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: People don't understand it from that, but write down the words, I'll understand it.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Gotcha Unless we know what is getting in the way of your learning.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: We relegate you, we don't invest in you, and now we're afraid of you.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: There are statistics from across the region.
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: In some places they're saying 75% of the people convicted of 95% I should say people convicted of serious crime do not read beyond the level of a three-year-old.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: I know in the States 70% don't read beyond elementary level.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: I do not know the statistics for Trinidad.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I know through the work we're doing with Cotton Tree Foundation that when we went to speak to schools and principals to say we want to figure out a way to get more children assessed so we can find out what's going on and then give them learning plans, work with the parents, we were looking across 10 schools doing a pilot, one child from each school.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: The teachers say one child, 33% of my class, easily I can send to y'all.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: So I don't have the hard data.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I know anecdotally we have a problem.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: I know from people who work in prisons here that they say, oh my God, the vast majority have learning issues but those were not addressed.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: So one of the things I think that we would greatly benefit from as a society is investing to identify what is getting in the way of learning and then figuring out.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: And now we have technology to help us.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: I just tell you about all kinds of interventions that scale what each person needs to help them to live up to their potential.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Human beings want to grow.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: We want to develop in a healthy way.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: That's a survival thing too right, like that's a natural thing.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: We want to learn how to navigate this world, et cetera.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: So to assume that people harden don't want that.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: There's a reaction to a challenge.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: Right, if you know it is in a relationship and you know you're doing something wrong, I will have a fight here.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: Of course that's a distraction and sometimes it's a lack of opportunities.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I didn't learn, so now I have nothing else to do.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: So if we can intervene earlier, if we can figure out what is happening with the learning and we get these plans.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: And what you need for that is for people in schools to get learning assessments.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: There are psychologists who do psychoeducational evaluations.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: You can get one done privately.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: It costs money.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: This is where we would like people to contribute.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: We started something at Cotton Tree.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: If we had more people investing, we could hire more.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: We hired 10 psychologists to do this first round, working with the parents, working with teachers, etc.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: And yes, they identified oh, this is what this child has, this is what this one has and this is what they need.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: If we had more people contributing, we could do more of that.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: That's, you know, nonprofit work.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: You could pay privately and get that assessment done.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: The government there is a student support services division that if you, I think you come, maybe through the principal, whatever you get a referral, you would go in and you could get each other's ass.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: Now there's a long wait list.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, I'm sure.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: Capacity, right Capacity.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: We have to build the capacity to do that.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: But it starts with the parents first seeing the children differently, making a different assumption.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: Let's put it there let's assume that something is interrupting the learning here, as opposed to assuming that they're bad or they're done so they're whatever.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: And then, if we start from that angle, we may discover things that will help us ultimately help that child and help society, of course.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: And then the second part of it is that we need to find the ways for the children to then get the support.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Once we identify, so across the nation, in the schools, how the teachers would teach towards, if they knew you were dyslexic, what would they do?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: Right, do we have the training to do that?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: But again, in this day and age, technology, which is available and free can also be helpful in that, With Ishii School, which is a school in Port of Spain but an excellent school for people with special needs, we started a scholarship fund to help cover half of the costs for a certain number of students, If we had more people contributing to the fund we could cover for more.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: And it don't have to be your child.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: I don't have no child in school here.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: But, it's a society I care about.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: And I know we could live in fellowship.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Of course, if all of us doing better, we go better.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: All of us, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: Taking them gates down.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Of course, leave your gun home, mm-hmm.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, don't have no gun, of course.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: Because we don't need it.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: You can't say do I know gun right now, it's true.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: So this is what I'm saying, but I want to get to a place where I understand fully.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: We don't need it.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: No, where we being productive, and I mean what that would do to lift the whole country economic output, like all of it.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, A question around that right.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: When you say intervene, so y'all do some great work with cotton tree.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: What would be the age for a parent to start that intervention?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: Any, yeah, I see any age.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: We were working with primary schools in this pilot right, but you could get a diagnosis autism from as early as three.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: Um, you know sometimes what happens to children here.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I know people here who said, yep, I was a dunce child.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: When I was 12 I got a pair of glasses and for for the first time I saw and I thought that's how you all been seeing all this time.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: The child couldn't see, you don't know.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: You think everybody else experiences what you're experiencing.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: That's right, so sometimes it's that.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: And I like how you put it.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: You know that is gaining the way of your progress.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: So that child did not do well all through this time.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: If somebody had tested their eyes, do well all to the same when if somebody had tested their eyes.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: So the intervention looks different.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: But these psycho-educational assessments are going to do a holistic.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: You know 360 what.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: What's happening here?
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: oh, that's okay, I got you, yeah, and I mean, they may refer you to an ophthalmologist.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: I see, I see, I see, so it's broad yeah I got it.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're looking, you're looking to solve the problem.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: What's getting in?
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: the way.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's the interruption?
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know people took children just to their pediatrician for one thing.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: But a good pediatrician says you know, I don't think it's this thing, I think it could be this other thing.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: Take them to to check your hearing, right, which is another obstacle, that's right, I'm with you.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: And then discovers that, yeah, so the intervention starts with somebody assessing Of course.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, somebody to look at this child from a different lens and see what could be getting in the way.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me feel like we should get to the point where all children assess, just in case.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, case, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: You could see where the society would be better.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, and children resilient.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: So just talking from my own friend groups now, people who are experiencing these things children, it is what it is.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: They go, they do the assessment and so on.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: What happens when the obstacle is the parent?
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Because we still, as a society, deal with shame and embarrassment and they can't tell the thing because they had to hide the report book now, or this common entrance thing everybody just put all of your name in the papers.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: But you was all right, you were in contact.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And everybody looked for the name.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: But how important is it for us to sensitize.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm talking about it.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: And that's why I'm saying everybody has things that they struggle with.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Let us live in the reality.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: We don't want to hide our privilege and we don't want to pretend that we don't have struggles If we all engage on the same plane.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: Reality, we're human beings.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: We're imperfect, of course.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: Who's pretending to be perfect?
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: That CEO who couldn't read Right?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: No, everybody has something.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: But yes, you're right, we carry on the shame because I think we pretend we're in some la-la land where there is a thing called perfection and that robs us of the benefit of addressing the things that we need, or where we need support, asking for help, and so those are things, and so that's why I've been talking more.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Somebody said to me yesterday I find you hear a lot, I'm talking more, saying yes to come and do this podcast right.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: But because I want people, I want to normalize it and therefore to get people to kind of wake up and own that and it's all right.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: What are we ashamed for?
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: I understand.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: You'll be more ashamed when your son end up in jail.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me ask a little more about our cognitive development.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: I had started reading more and more, I guess, in trying to accomplish more things I started getting into.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what helped me a lot with reading.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I went to this course called Effective Personal Productivity and it was about management and leading people and the comfort of delegation and all those things.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: It was a whole lot of modules, but one of the modules was reading fast Because I say, at the executive level, there's a lot of information you have to take in.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: If all of it comes in written it's going to take you a lot of time and they had introduced this concept of skimming and scanning, you know.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: So it's not like because I felt like when you have to read you have to read word, word, word.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: If I read a book now, you know how long it's taking me to finish that page.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I will read that it's not really going in, correct?
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: It's just blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Now, when I saw skimming and scanning, it's easier for me to just kind of watch the paragraph and get a sense of what is in there and if there's something more important.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: I could pay some attention on time now instead of having to read the whole thing, and then it's easier for me to do this.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: If you explain something to me rather than having to write down and read it, it's a a little easier to grasp.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So it allowed me to make some steps in the right direction.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: So I wonder if our school systems, you know the school systems, will allow for even teachers, as you say, with the technology, like Fatima now has all smart boards.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: It's such a great step and I want to get more into that.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Cognitive development, because that led me to reading some books on habits, you know, instead of habits over this motivation to change, if you could change your habits.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: And then in reading that, I didn't expect it to be so much about cognitive development and the way the brain works and so on.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: So when you said if I don't develop by this point, by this age, it limits cognitive development, you could talk a little bit more about it yeah.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: So I don't think that there is a specific age by which we don't develop anymore, but we know that the brain is most malleable the younger you are Everything is most malleable when you're young, right you?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: learn languages like nothing when you're younger.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: Right, it's learning so much.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: So the early intervention is the issue.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: The earlier you get there, the more chance you have of positive development.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: When I gave a story about the fellow in prison and his roommate, he tried, but that was too little, too late.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: He done lock up.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: He done lock up.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: And in the end he died by violence himself.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: If we start earlier, we get more progress.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: But it don't matter.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: The CEO I mentioned didn't go abroad until he was in his late teens and they were able to identify what some people.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: I just talked to somebody last night who's 41 and just discovered that he has ADHD and said like he cried tears when he realized this is what explains these things.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: I'm struggling with my whole life.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: When you tell me that story about reading the book and you have to read it over and over, I'm thinking, oh, that could be a number of things.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: One of them could be ADHD, where it's a focus thing, but we don't know until we look into it.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: And then, once we know, then we could start to see.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: When you talk about smart boards, I remember when I went to interview at Facebook.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: I was not a technical person at all, I just am a problem solver and they had some problems and I'm going to see if I could solve this.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: But in the interview I came back and I said to a friend of mine who understood that world more, who was part of that tech world, I said why are those people so strange?
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: Why they can't just talk to you?
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: They can't talk without writing.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: You'd start the interview and everybody would get up and write something on the whiteboard yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: And I was like that's where I'd like talk to me, because I don't learn as well looking at the diagram on the whiteboard.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: So I learned that, okay, I'm more auditory.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: I do like the written word is good for me, but those visuals not so much.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: For somebody else, that visual is saving them.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would work great, yeah, right.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: So at any age you can discover.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: Once you discover now you can start to address, if anything.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: The discovery starts to reduce the shame you're feeling in yourself Because now you have an explanation for things.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: Of course, of course.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Like when I tell you when a woman says because you're Black they don't want you in a.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: I say thank you.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: You take the load off.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: That load off of me now, because I would have been swirling right that talk about shame reduced and now you're in a healthier place.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: You realize them is the problem.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: Right In California.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: The old surgeon general was a Jamaican woman who was a doctor, who had come up with this whole thing where she realized that she was, as a doctor, seeing patients who, essentially, by all the regular indicators, should have been healthy, but they weren't.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: And she came to realize that living in certain circumstances caused ill health.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: So let's say, it wasn't your diet, but she was checking for diet.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: It was actually because you lived in a home where there was violence and that was great, which wasn't the way.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: So she created a sort of kind of a metric for measuring that kind of pressure and poverty, like all of these things were impacting health.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: But weren't the obvious things once you knew it?
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: And I remember saying to her okay, but once you tell people, well, it's because you're living in a home with violence or because you're living at this level of poverty, whatever, they might not have any means to do anything about this.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: So what's the point?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: When she said, nah, the difference it makes, just to know.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Get the revelation.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: Because now you can start to figure out ways Even if no one comes to intervene.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: There's nobody on a white horse coming to save you from that You're knowing.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: You start to do self-help then.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: And just taking away the shame.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: Just having the understanding clears the way to something.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: So I believe there is some progress to be had at any age.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: Right, got it In cognitive development A from the knowing and then B, really, if you can do the intervention.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, when you said any age, I was thinking any age, child.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: So you're saying my big self Absolutely Okay, got it.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: We are all.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: I use the word learners, I don't.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: I tend to not use other words because, everybody's a learner.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it, got it.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: I'm with you.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: I even said people in school Right, but not necessarily children.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I keep thinking children, you know, but I receive that.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you when I hold it.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: I People have plenty to learn and various to be removed.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, of course, but they have growth.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: We're all growing, until we're dead.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: We're growing man.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: I'm with you.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: So I have to ask you yes, because with all this you talk about Yale and all this time in Oxford and that I see, when I pull up your bio, I see an acting.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to wonder when you get the time.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: No, I have always wanted to be an actress.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know, something in my blood and my bones always wanted to connect with people in that way.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: When I was 11 years old, I was driving down the street with my mother at the corner Carlos and Robert Street, and we stopped by a traffic light and a woman was crossing the road and she saw and she knew my mother and she said I don't even have a daughter that old, and my mother said yes, and she said I don't have a daughter that old.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: And my mother said yes.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: She says well, I have a competition going on.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: Miss Junior.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: Trinidad and Tobago is a talent competition.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Just so, yes, just so.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: And she said she should enter.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: And my mother said but she don't have no talent.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: And I was like no, no, no, I have, I have plenty talent.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I entered myself in the competition and I did a spoken word piece and I won and I was like well, this is the beginning of my acting career, except my mother was like except your books, that was very cute.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: Very Trinidadian to her Exactly Go back and study your books.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: So my burgeoning acting career was halted then, but then all throughout in college I did improv comedy.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: Like stand-up For many years.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: Well, so improv and stand-up are two very different things.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: Improv is like acting, yeah, stand-up you're rehearsing your jokes, you know your thing and it's you alone.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: Improv is a different scene.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Improv you work with a group.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: You all build something together.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: Right, you stand on stage, you have no script and you, the audience is asking for.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: That's like Wayne Brady and them used to do a lot of that.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: They had a show doing that.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: Whose line is it?
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: Anyway, that kind of thing is improv.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: And that's untrained.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: It just went into those people.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, but you mean your practice right.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: Once you're with a group, you're practicing because you're learning.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: There are some key skills, yeah how to say yes and how idea and build on it.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: And let me tell you something it is such an important skill for life, for collaborating with others, creating out of nothing and making it flow, not blocking receiving.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: It's so great.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: So I did improve for years and I did improve.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: Actually, I got into that because when I went to college and I was in the States and I wanted to do acting, I was annoyed that all the rules you had to have an American accent.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: I was in America and I was like why the woman in the coffee shop have to be American?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Why did they start?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: And so there was a kind of political piece to it too.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: I said, nah, and in improv you could be you Because, yes, the person in the coffee shop you get to create who that is.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: And so I went, went into improv, which was, as I said, the best thing I ever did.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then I came back to Trinidad and started auditioning for things and did Vagina Monologues Great.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: I remember that Vagina Monologues was my big breakout theater, stage production and Westwood Park.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: So I was a character in Westwood Park.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: My wife was like Maxine Williams in Westwood Park.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: I was like what All these?
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: years later.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: As soon as I show up, I'm custom.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: I mean people be like wait.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: I mean back in the day when Westwood Park was on air all the time it was the thing and I was an evil character.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, isis DeVeens, right is devines, and so sometimes I've been in the supermarket and the woman cashing me out to say I just have to say I find you treat that man bad.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: You had a right, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, but it's so much fun and so I've done, and then I went into doing things like what you're doing now talk shows and hosting things and I did a lot of carnival and cultural stuff, yeah, and that's how my wife described it, you know.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I said are you sure?
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: And she's like she was always on TV.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: She was just always on TV.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: And all the while I was practicing Lord during the day and then doing these things at night or on the side, carnival, messiah, but one of the biggest, most sort of meaningful pieces to me was the Dragon Countdown.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Right sort of meaningful pieces to me was the dragon can't dance, right, right uh, where I played sylvia against brother resistance yeah, aldrich yeah, that was really, really meaningful I saw that picture, like when I saw the picture just mark when you instagram a little bit when I see it, I was like what happened here?
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: this is like a connection that you're not expecting to see again in my mind when you, when you talk about maxine williams again, I always go back to this article where we have a trainee in Facebook, so it feels very corporate, and then it's like you're alongside Bruce.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: The photo itself is so powerful.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Especially I can see backdrop of this story.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: It probably could make us better, right yeah, I mean it was wonderful.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: I mean first of all, oloveless and his writing and his story and how it depicts who we, so it mattered to me to be in that production to represent us in that way.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: But you know the concept of the corporate person and the artist and I think we tend to narrow too much or expect too little almost.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: I did have times, like when I was doing vagina monologues and I was a lawyer at the same time, where sometimes I would hear, like this client not too happy, and I would be like, okay, well, I will pack up all their things and send it back.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Then Because you have a braveness.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: No, because I went in your case for you.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: You concerned about the fact that I on stage representing something doing art you know, connecting with people, bringing joy, All right well.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Like I saw, like I had.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Colin Lucas was one of those people I always admired for that.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: You know, band leader and singer and you know he out there in tights and everything in a fit, and then next day CEO of the Port Authority or CEO of Cotter and he was talking about some of that too.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: You know he said I was heavily for work.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: He didn't meet me, since he was very, very and he was conscious of it too.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: He was making sure he showed up on time.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we small up ourselves.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're fine too.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: And people, yeah, and you expect that.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: And then you're afraid to be all of the things and to show all of the parts If you're not hurting anybody and in fact you're helping, you're contributing and showing what creativity can do, why would anybody be concerned about that?
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: But we do.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: I find we do Like I was conscious of it, like starting a podcast I was so conscious of okay, I'm doing parody songs and doing things that might be out there, and now I just show up in a meeting and act serious.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: You know it's a difficult space to be in.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is Until it's not really to be honest.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Honest because now I just been doing both for so long.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: It is what it is I can talk about.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: It's just like this conversation.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: You just talk about who you are, you know your whole self, and then you give somebody else the space to be themselves when they see you show up and do that and that matters I got you, I got you.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: So at 11 you say spoken word very casually.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: Right, you were writing poems and things before no, so what had happened was I was going to sing.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: I was going to sing a song called the Double Dutch Bus Right.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you know that song.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know it.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: Double Dutch Bus coming down the street.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: It was like a popular song, right Anyhow, and I was going to sing that song and I was practicing and then, three days before the performance, before my mother again look out the window and say you know, you can't sing right, you ain't keeping a tune.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: That's sounding real bad, you're gonna lose if you're gonna do that.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: And I was like what?
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: No joke, no, mommy's no joke.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Listen to me.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: Everything I learned about feedback keep it real right.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, and that's a good skill too yeah, to know how to take feedback out yeah, receive, and oh okay, and no, be too big to take it Right.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: So she gave me that feedback and I was like what?
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: But this is my song, yeah.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: And instead of singing the song, then I took the words of the same song and I started speaking them and then adding some gestures and doing it like a like a one person acting show and say spoken word, because it was kind of like poetry, because it's a song lyrics.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: But then I was acting it out Right, and I started practicing that and she said, no, that song ain't good, I see.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, did a quick pivot, went on stage and delivered this thing and it was a hit.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: And from then, I mean, there were other times where I was like, nah man, I know I could sing, Coming back and singing Turns out, not even mother.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: I'm now getting feedback from other people.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: I have been in musicals where I have been one of the main characters and they tell me you know what?
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: You just lip sync when they're singing.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: Everybody can do it every day, of course, of course, but you gave it a shot, I did, and that is important.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: That's a running theme through everything you say, because the stage is a frightening place for a lot of people.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: You know going on stage and having to deliver.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: Are you nervous and how are you approaching those things?
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: I cannot say that I have a sense of being nervous.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: I prepare.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: Now, if you do an improv, your preparation is in the training, learning how to work with others.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: But even that, yeah, there are going to be times where things come at you.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: So, for instance, when I did improv, I did that in the United States and I had just gotten there for college.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: I did not know so many of the cultural cues and information, history, all of that.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: And again, improv the audience is giving you.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: So I remember being on stage one day and saying, can I have a profession please?
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: And somebody shouted out NFL linesman.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: I have no idea what the NFL is oh, the NFL has a whole artistic composition.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know what a linesman is either.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: And it's a lineman too.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: It's not a linesman, it's football, see that NFL line man and I have no idea what they're talking about, but I say thank you.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: And now I have to do something with it, and I started standing up and acting like I was dishing out food and saying, okay, next Come on, if you're in the natural food line, you got to move it quick.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: I only have so much broccoli and they thought it was hilarious that I took NFL and made it natural food line at the cafeteria and so and they loved it and they thought I was being clever and turning the NFL thing around, when in fact I was just pulling for something.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: It's a good lesson.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: That was the worst that could happen.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: So the nerves come out of this fear of failure and people think I'll die.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: I won't be able to get up again, I won't be able to face people nobody not on you like that seriously yeah, it's true there's so much going on in the world.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: People have so much going on in themselves.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you fall down today nobody's gonna remember that tomorrow.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Let's still have like public speaking.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: I always nervous before once I say the first couple words okay, right.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: And I remember the best advice I got was actually from a doctor who was saying the same thing.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: He's talking about anxiety and them things and he's like listen, he say when you start talking on a stage.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: He said everybody in that crowd studied the self, nobody worried about.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: If you're nervous, if you this, everybody worried if you will call on them or something like that.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: People really not paying much attention to that.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but as a as a show that we talk to calypsonians here all the time, we talk to people who in the in the arts, I had to ask about what it was like working alongside brother resistance opposite I mean just the dream of a lifetime his.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think anybody could have been better cast for Uldric than Resistance who he was, how he carried himself, what he brought to us, and so the experience of inhabiting those characters who represent so much of who we are was so powerful.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: Learning from each other and then bringing that to the audience oh yeah, I mean it was a gift.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: And where y'all did it.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: Where did it run?
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: It was in opened in Napa, rima, and then we did on the big stage once too.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, nice, big stage, savannah stage.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, these two plays on the Savannah stage.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Now and then.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: That's huge.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: No, don't seem worried by the audience.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: Actually, you know what the bigger the stage, the bigger the audience, the easier it is, why?
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: is this.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: How come I think there's something about now it's not as intimate?
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: And you can kind of immerse yourself in the whole space, gotcha.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's three people in front of you, boy, that's some real right.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's three people in front of you, boy, that's some real right.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you have to connect with each of those three, and if one of them not listen to you, you're in trouble.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: I suppose.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: I suppose At a comedian he said the same thing.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: I was so surprised, you know, you see, when it's big audiences, it's just much easier.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: He was also saying, like, because it's stand people and it's not hitting.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: You have an issue.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: You have an issue.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: So I had to go back to your Instagram.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: Right, I have plenty of McQueen to do here.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Right, heavy McQueen.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: Right, because it seems as though that working alongside resistance, as you say, would have been great, but Loveless seems to play a big role in life right.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: I'm acquainting something here.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: It says a list of books that you've been reading recently.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: Right, and when I look at the list of books, you might have 10 books here, but about four.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: So even up to now, still a big influence.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, and rereading.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: So I reread the Dragon this year and I discovered things that I I mean literally I was like, oh my gosh, that is it.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: That is the answer.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: I read that how many years ago?
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: And still I am discovering things, because it is layered, because his writing is like embroidery and you can work through the patterns and see the texture, but then there's something else going on over here and over there, and then you know I'd never read, it's Just a Movie.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: So that was a new Lovelace.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: This is the year Lovelace turns 90 years old, and so it was also for me a sort of re-immersion in his space and his writing Of course, and then having to play one of his main characters too must have been special.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: yes, because I mean they say how good resistance was on Zolric, or was it like a Sylvia?
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: you know something?
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: I moved back to Ferdinand to play Sylvia.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: I wasn't living here yeah, I was after the Queen.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: I was living in Jamaica that time look, I remember from young right.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: I had always said boy, I don't know how much time I have, I'm very, very conscious of mortality.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know how much time I have.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: This could be my last second.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: On my way here today, I had one mango put aside for me.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: I said, boy, eat a mango now, because there's only one mango I have.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: And then I thought, eat a mango now.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: You don't know if you're coming back home.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: Literally right.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: So.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: So I was living in Jamaica and saw that they were doing a production of the dragon.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: I pack up my things and I come back and I say no, I have to be nuts.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: And people were like, who are you?
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 2: And this is before.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: I had done vagina monologues and all the other things.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 2: I believe was it before.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: Forget the timeline now.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: But the point is I was not the person people would come to for that and I was like, no, trust me, I know Sylvia, I know Sylvia.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: Nobody can play Sylvia like me.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: And I went and I auditioned and I got the part.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: It meant a lot to me to play that character, a lot, a lot.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: She was a young woman who and I must've been about her age when I first read the book 17.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: And she represented strength, represents and beauty and power and an understanding of self and navigating that self in a world that gives you obstacles that you didn't create, but knowing all along that you're bigger and better than so much of what they bring to you and so much of what they expect of you.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: And you know she shines, she has a light and he talks about in his embroidery way, all that she is and to me it all adds up to love, she's love, and she's the love that we're searching for in ourselves and in others, and there's this just power beaming, this aura, and that is us, and so, yes, it meant a lot to me.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: I move, move back to Trinidad to get that role.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it, got it.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: Well, is it something that you do still Like?
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: Is it something you're still interested in now, like you would do?
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: What's your role?
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: That going to get you to fly back here now?
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: I would.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: yeah, Let me know what you have.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: I really shouldn't ask you that, I shouldn't know that.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly, exactly.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: Nothing is off limits.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what life I here living.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I got you.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: I got you another picture I come across randomly on the instagram.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Is you with peter minchell?
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: yes, yeah, that's my boy oh that's my boy earlier and how we met was that he came to something I was in, I believe he came to vagina monologues, I and he wrote me afterwards and said some very, very charitable things.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: And then he saw me in Geraldine O'Connor, did a production of Carnival Messiah, yeah, which I was in as well, and again we connected.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: So it was a.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: It was a creator to creator and, of course, to call myself a creator in line with Peter Minchell is not a thing, but he saw it that way and you know he has his form of art, which we all know.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: For me, I think, my thing is with words, it's not with singing.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: I can't draw.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: I don't paint.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: There's something about language and the way I use that to connect with people and to convey things and to you know make sense bring out emotions and stuff and that connected with him right and so we became close and to this day that's my boy.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: We talk all the time we there's not a week goes by that we're not in email communication.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: That is nice.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: It's lovely.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: Somebody who I feel like I would love to see more done for and around the legacy of people like them.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: You know, as you say, I live listening in 90.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: You know, so much times we allow legacies to go by in the Caribbean, you know.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean people would say everywhere, like I don't know if any of the great European artists were celebrated in their time.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: It's often this case with art and we have an undercurrent where we can say, intellectually art is important for the culture, right, but then we don't act as if it is, we don't invest in it in the same way.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: We don't support artists in the same way, but there is something very essential that, as human beings, allows us to grow to think, that gives us vision, right Ideas, that gives us an understanding of who we are, that then allows us to navigate this world which art brings to us.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: And if we appreciated it more in our actions, then you might see more of the legacy celebration.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, um, you know, in a way, people, everybody going about their own business and they're saying, yeah, that's nice to have, I'm glad it's there yeah, I heard lou maybe it was lou who had described it as like, sometimes you reduce the arts and you just say, okay, you just call it culture, we call it entertainment, so that it doesn't seem as though.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: But if people like your examples of it, you know there's not.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: It's not a separation between the two.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: It's not an artist who lives in this, in this place, or a corporate person, or it's just one one people, which is a beautiful thing that we have yeah, and, and we're all creative in some way shape or form.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: And when we tap into that, you know cognitive development, all of that but becoming our biggest, most powerful, beautiful selves at Facebook.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: I'm saying Facebook because I'm just framing the time, True, which is before we became meta.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: Right, we had on our campus art studios, music rooms, places where you could go woodshop, yeah, when you could go and cut and build things, and people would say what is this doing in a tech company?
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: And I said because we recognize that that creativity is going to help with innovation.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: That is a very concrete example of where you're supporting the creativity you're supporting the art, because you're understanding what it does for the whole person.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, and if they are the edge of innovation, we must benefit from it.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: That's right, gotcha, gotcha.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Now more pictures.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: I'd ask about, you know, people who are next to me, because some people who I admire greatly, I see you casually putting up posts and putting captions saying listening to Andrea Bocelli Random, random, what is coming about.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Is your friend too.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: Like Minchell, I need to understand.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: You're becoming the most interesting person I've ever met.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: What is the connection?
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: How do you reach?
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: that.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: So the connection to Andrea Bocelli is that Bocelli is a blind, of course, opera singer, who is a tech lover, who uses these Ray-Ban meta glasses, and the glasses have become a real godsend for blind people because of the integration with the AI and what it can do.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: You know describe your surroundings, read the menu, read your mail, tell you what currency in in your hand, like all of these things that blind people before would have depended on a number of human being for, or an app in their hand, and so we had a connection there and, um, I went to do some fun stuff with the glasses with him yeah, so yeah so live.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: Translation is one of the things so gotcha, gotcha he's speaking in italian and I'm speaking in English and the glasses is translating.
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: I see All that was happening, I understand.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: So whatever he said in Italian, I would hear it said in English, and when I said in English, he would hear it said in Italian.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: So, we could converse.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, things like this just could not exist before this technology.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: Imagine that right.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: I remember one time there was an app that was launched.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: It was almost like voluntary.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: You could download it and somebody could see, and somebody who was blind could like if they needed help seeing something or partial vision.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: Your girl would ring on your phone, it would come up and I could see what the person was looking at so I got one call all the time and there was somebody who was trying to turn on the PlayStation Like something was stuck.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: Do you know if it was called Be my Eyes, was it Be my Eyes?
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: It might have been.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: Be my Eyes is a partner of us at Meta, I see, and so the Meta Ray Band we partner with Be my Eyes, be my Eyes has 8 million volunteers all over the world who are sighted, and so, through the use of that hand, blind people really need use of both hands to know your surroundings.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: You might have a guide dog, you might have a cane, so having something that's sitting on your head and then, wherever you turn your head, it's going.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: Not like with the phone.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: Often they don't know if they're pointing it in the right direction.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: But with the glasses.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's what's called pov point of view calling, right, so you can just command it with your voice and say call a volunteer, yeah, and it will dial in.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: It will get a volunteer somewhere and then it will connect through and the volunteer can see exactly what they're seeing.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: Help them, you know, in the grocery they're getting dressed.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: They want to know where my blue shirt that matching yeah and so that's.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: But also with the glasses.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: Now you can call your friend, your partner on WhatsApp and get point of view calling.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: So instead of a stranger volunteer you can have a friend or family member.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: And then the AI now can help.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: The AI can tell you what's in front of you too.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Of course, yeah.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: So that gets better and better.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, getting better.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I suppose.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, we have ai that helping you on your day-to-day.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: If you need somebody to get them, yes, so butchelli and I were vibing on the glasses and you don't find out something.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: You should be cool.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: You're just cool.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: You're just because he, to me, is one of.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: I mean to the world.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: Everybody is a person everybody is a person and they have the same issues you have and they have family members that in trouble and they have family members that are in trouble and they have anxiety and they didn't sleep last night and they're going to the toilet the same way you go into it Got it.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: So they're all people and you know, some people get more famous than others.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: But Got it.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: Got it Like you.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: Me Not in that category.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: The person I fanned out on, the only one ever was Stevie Wonder.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: You met Stevie Wonder too.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: Same thing With glasses.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: We talked about the glasses, yes, but I met him at an assistive tech conference and he's the only person in the whole world I ever wanted to meet yeah, consciously, my whole life I wanted to meet Stevie Wonderanda.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to tell him thank you for all the joy he has brought to my life.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: And then, you know what, I didn't even get to say it because he was so charming and he just took over and he controlled the whole conversation and I forgot, and it ended with him and I singing a duet together really recorded and doing well, I was too in it to record it and foolishly, because I had only glasses.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: I could have recorded, but I was so lost in the moment.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: Because just as I was leaving he said wait Maxine.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: And then he goes.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: I know this little girl, her name is Maxine and the boys started singing Shakadima's Employers about Maxine and I was like whose beauty is a bunch of rubbers, can you imagine that?
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: And the next thing I know, we going murder.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: She wrote which Stevie Wonder, so that was a.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: That was an exceptional.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: You should record that and send that to mommy and tell mommy I can sing, I know, I know, All right.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: Singing was really high for you, not that it was the fact of it.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: I can imagine he's so clever right.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: I see so much with him all day.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: So he's another big tech person.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, love tech.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: I see, I see, I see I love it.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: So now I could segue into Facebook, the Facebook thing.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: How did I even end up there.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, A lot of Trinidadians say how did you end up on Facebook?
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 2: Everybody wants to know how you get through.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: I had a really bad day at work.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Right, were you working all the time?
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: I was working at a law firm in New York.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, got it.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: And came home and said now, boy, rock bottom, I can't do this, yeah, anything else.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: And Facebook had advertised on LinkedIn this position.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: So there's a kind of like step-by-step People like how to get a job right.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: First you have to be aware of its existence.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: You have to do the step, you apply right, are you qualified?
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: I was suffering from a thing that some women suffer from more than men.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: It's going to sound stereotypical, but there's research behind it which is men may be more confident, they're less likely to assume they won't get something, got it okay.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, they will think you see 10 requirements.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I have all of that yeah, regardless this time the enumerated requirements right, uh, a woman is more likely looking and say, oh no, I don't qualify because I only have six of those.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, but try a.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 2: Thing.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: Right, of course Right, so I applied.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: Anyway, I went, I interviewed.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: In the course of that I did think which is a thing people should do.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: Do I know anybody who works here, or knows somebody who knows somebody?
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: I knew somebody who knew somebody.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: Of course, and I called them and I say, listen, I apply for this job.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: You can put in a good word.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: And he said I can send your resume to them, but they ain't sentimental, they'll take a look at it, but they ain't going to give you the job because they know me, you're not that kind of party.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I said that's all right, I just want to get looked at, of course.
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: Of course I just want the opportunity.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: They did that too.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: I got an interview and even then the interview, the first round I said, well, I'll lick that up, boy, but I don't know if I want this thing Right and I like it myself.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: And then I get a call from the search recruiter woman saying, yeah, you had to go back, you know.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: I said what.
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not sure about A and b and c.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: I see, yeah, and I was like what?
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: I see I mash that thing up.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: But again, like you know, the ego thing you gotta handle that of course.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: And then?
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: okay.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: So these are the things.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things was that I mean I wouldn't even get, we don't have enough time to get into all of the elements.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: What was one and two and three?
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but she told me what those were and I said, okay, I'll go back in and focus in on those things.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: And even then I know now that they were like oh boy, I skated Once, I was there, I absolutely proved myself Got it, got it.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: What was your original position you went for at that time?
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: It was something like director of diversity.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: But I was promoted maybe every year that I was there till I was chief diversity officer in very little time.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: And you know, at the highest echelon, working in the executive Of course, in the rooms, everybody would be yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: So at that time, diversity was an attractive job for you.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: Was it the Facebook?
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Was it diversity position?
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: What was it really that attracted you?
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: I had a bad day at work.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was it, and I needed something else.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: I need to show people.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: When people see this timeline, they'll never believe how well I was already doing diversity work at this law firm Got it.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it sounds like you was always doing diversity work.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, Except when they called me for the job at a law firm and said would you come and do diversity?
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 2: I said to them what's diversity?
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: I'd never heard of it.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: I know what the word means, but I don't know what it means as a job Because, as you're right, it was like early days and they said, man, read up on it on the weekend and come in, you'll be good.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: And I did and I got that job.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: So I was already doing diversity, but I had lost confidence in it.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: I had come to feel like this is just smoke and mirrors.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: They say they want change, but not willing to do the things that would bring more opportunity, um, fair systems, all of that and so I'd lost faith in it.
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: And then this Facebook was, for the first time, looking for a person to come and start and run their diversity efforts there.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: So I had some experience in it.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: But I wasn't.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: I was a boy.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: So I said you know what?
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: I can do this for two years.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: See how it go.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: See how it go and then I wanted to to come back like move closer to home come back here yes, here, or at least close where I got, you, got you um work on things in latin america and the caribbean, etc.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: But then I got there and discovered that for all of these different ponds I have swam in my life, I didn't know there was one built just for me yeah.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: It was the place that was made for me Serious, when I'd never felt more.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is everything.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: This is my thing, this is my jam, To the point where my whole life people comment on how fast I speak.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: Right, when I was a lawyer here, I would go to court and sometimes the palantyper would go.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: What is Maxine Problem?
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: People calling in sick and thing you know, because they had to write down every word that I talk like this and slow down, and so my whole life people would do that and again I would go.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: But why I have to slow down, why you can't just think fast.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it, got it.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: Of course that was my problem and I got there.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: Everybody talking fast like me, ah, you're home, home.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: I was home home and the level of the problems they were trying to solve and the way we were solving problems and the way feedback went and innovation and it was, it was all.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: It was there that somebody very senior said to me all right, how are we solving racism?
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: Got it Right.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: The fact that we could ask that question.
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: That's an option.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: How are we doing this Of?
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: Course.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: So when you say, you know, I like I never had the mindset of no, or why, did I even try to create Caribbean Studies and I was like, well, because why not?
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a thing to be done.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: It's the kind of question you want to work on.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: And so being where that was the attitude of people.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: Why couldn't we connect the whole world?
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course.
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: Right, that didn't exist.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: I remember explaining to my mother who was like well, what didn't do at Facebook?
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: What did they do?
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: There are people working there.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: What All of them?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: people.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: What did they do there?
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: I would imagine by then Facebook is everybody have Facebook, it would seem like nothing happened.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: We were less than a billion people I was 4 billion and stuff Really and like 70 something percent of the people who are internet connected.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: Of course, yeah.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: But to be in a place that was looking to do things that had never been done before because why not?
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's my job.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: So I had this.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: I think I finished Lockjack had put out this Silicon Valley tour thing.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: So I had this.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I think I finished Lockjack had put out this Silicon Valley tour thing.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: So I said I'll go in on that.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to see what it was.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: And we went and we did several tours.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: Even with a flight connection, you went.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wow To Panama.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: You leave Miami.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: It was the worst that Panama.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: It was the worst, but we reached eventually and we stayed downtown San Francisco, but every day we would go into Silicon Valley and do tours.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: We did Google, I think Intel, facebook wasn't allowing tours at the time, so we just went to the Facebook sign?
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: Was it during the?
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: pandemic, was it?
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: No, this was before the pandemic, but there's this big sign that we went there and take pictures.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: That was the closest we get to Facebook at the time.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: But there was one place that we went to called well, two I won't talk to you about.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: One was Institute of the Future, and they were talking about it was just a research company, but they were doing these leap studies, so one of the things that they allowed us to sit in on or to observe was a session where they were talking about self-driving cars.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: This could be 2015, 16.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they were saying that by 2035, most of the world will be self-driving cars.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: What are the problems that the world is going to have then?
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: And I listened to these people talk about this thing and I was amazed that one of the things they came up with was organ transplants, because now you don't have accidents, you don't have young people dying in car accidents, and so that was they're putting themselves in there and they say, okay, that is where we want to put funding, and that was what the whole thing was about.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: But in my little again, not knowing what is diversity or anything, I watch a listing and of course, we are a little group from Lockjack.
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: It's the only people looking Black or anything in that space, and Iron Easy is like okay, so, and I remember one of my thoughts being okay so all these white people, them alone, know what's going to happen in 2035.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: Isn't that your experience when you walk into this company the first time?
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes me think we did.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: When we were coming out with the Metaverse, we did a kind of promo thing where Mark Zuckerberg and myself and a couple other leaders our avatars were in a room playing poker together and we were kind of showing people how you could be present through these avatars, were in a room playing poker together and we were kind of showing people how you could be present through these avatars.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: But it's a kind of future scene and I was there with my band to nuts in the scene and I remember so many people commenting saying black people make it to the future.
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: This was a proof.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 2: I was the one person in the spaceship, but we make it.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: At least we are one, we can start from there.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: That's our.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: This was the proof.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: I was the one person in the spaceship.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: Well, we make it at least Right.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: Right, we're good boy, we can start from there.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: That's our start.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we be natural here, I think we inside.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: So yes, there is often the experience of me, one boy yeah, boy.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: Very rare air.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: That said, I'm looking outside, so I can't see me.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: I see them, so I am conscious and I'm not conscious.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: On the one hand, I'm very present in the moment.
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: What's the problem we're working on solving here?
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: So I'm contributing to that problem to solve with me out of it.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: I ain't seen me, so I'm not carrying a lot the.
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: But should I speak up?
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: Look at me, how I different in this thing.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: On the other hand, I am conscious, but in a positive direction, of my difference and my under-representation in this space, of my difference and my under-representation in this space.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: And I'm conscious to say well, only lucky you have me, because if it wasn't for me, we wouldn't be getting this particular perspective.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: So, thank goodness, I am different because I can give a different perspective and I'm different in a way that millions and millions of people in the world are.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: They're just not in this space, they're just not in this area.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: And time and again, again, I have to say this was the place I was meant to be.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: Their attitude to my difference was one of appreciation for it.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: There were many battles I would fight and you know, I would say but we should do this, and maybe I didn't win that battle.
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: But people would say you made me think differently and that different thinking develops their mind.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: And then how you apply that in another situation.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: You know, things might go in a different direction there too, just because of the presence of my different, same things, and it's not just race and gender, but, coming from a small place, that has been an element of my diversity, because you know, look, I work at a place where a million people is a rounding error.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess.
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: When you're talking billions, I guess.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: But what I see from the perspective of somebody, from what to them is a small place, brings insight Of course that they might have never seen without your presence.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 2: The talk I did at Wharton was called Numbers Only Take Us so Far, the Power of One, and I was talking then about how we had to change the way analytics is done, because analytics focuses on big data sets and therefore what you might do is say, well, unless there are X number of people in this set, we can't give you insights.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: We need a certain number to have confidence.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: What that always does is leave out the small numbers, but there may be intense things going on in there that have application beyond.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: That could help all of us.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: That's right, and we're not getting the benefit of it.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: So here's another way to do analytics to get the value from those small data sets.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: Right do analytics to get the value from those small data sets right.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: And so all of that to say that, yes, I know you walk in those rooms and you're like wow is only me, boy, and only white people in the future.
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 2: Um, no, it's not only them in the future.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, there is an over representation in terms of the people building the products, white and asian, and but where we can we find the room?
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: To bring in the different perspectives and you kind of scale the knowledge too.
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: Like everybody I've worked with at Meta would say boy, we learned so much, and now they're taking that learning.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: So they may be in a room where there isn't a person who looks like us.
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: I understand, yeah, but they have.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: I am with you.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: I am with you.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: That isn't the person who looks like us.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: I understand, yeah, but I am with you, and that only happens if you are willing to talk, of course.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: Speak up, right.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 2: Give it, and I was not a technical person.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: So there were a lot of times you're in a technical discussion and, yes, I might think, is this going to be stupid?
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: Because have I completely misunderstood what's going on here, what this operating system is?
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: Et cetera etc.
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: So that when I ask this question and I sometimes that happens and I consciously say, all right, what's the worst that could happen?
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, ask a stupid question.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: Cool people is asking questions all the time right and nine times out of ten you ask a question and maybe it's stupid, but somebody learns the fact that you're asking that question.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: Of course, teachers, yeah, of course, and maybe we's stupid, but somebody learns the fact that you're asking that question of course teaches.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course maybe we weren't as clear.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah you know, yeah, the fact that I've never thought of it that way.
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: People take away that learning.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: It's important.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: The second place I went to was you bring up young Asians is where I had a company called Plug and Play.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: It was like a business incubator.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: So when we went there they have all these people who have all these brilliant ideas and we were able to see like a pitch session where they come to talk about their ideas for whatever round of funding.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: They're doing almost exclusively young asian boy men and, um, almost exclusively white investors too.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: So I wonder sometimes if, uh, when, positions like those created and companies like those?
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: I like, mommy, sometimes I just be fascinated.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: My hair.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: Is that people working?
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: They always do.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to know.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: When I went to, when we did this one google, everybody was swimming in a pool or playing piano somewhere.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 3: I was like this way, I don't work, nobody working at all.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah but, uh, when isn't that the companies facebook and otherwise, from your experience conscious of this and they're trying to make efforts to diversify it in terms of how they hire and the ideas that?
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: they look at.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: That was part of what I was doing as the chief diversity officer at that point in time consciously looking at what is the makeup, because we want cognitively diverse teams.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: If you end up with too much of something, you're losing out on somebody perspective.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: Um, and so, yes, that that was part of oh and were trying to do.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: And you say what's doing right.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: But even when you explain your role here now, you know it feels very, very similar to me, to be honest, because you're in a space where you're constantly thinking of okay, how do we get everybody included, how do we make this available for all people to solve the different problems?
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: It sounds very, very similar.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 2: Some of the principles are the same.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: There's a different focus.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: I'm 100 focused on product now, right, when I would have been focused before on things like recruiting of course I see people make sense uh, I have a little bit still in people trying to make sure we have fair systems to support the people who are there got it.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: But now this is like how is this product working?
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: so, moving from people to product, you're enjoying it still.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: I'm learning again.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: So you will be enjoying it.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: There is a new space.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: Enjoying and then sometimes scared.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: I'm not a technical person and now you know, the people I'm spending most time with are engineers and designers and people who understand how to build a product and what is the system and what's the difference between this and that.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: So it's like a whole new area, but that's exciting, sometimes challenging.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: You know, am I going to say something stupid that comes up more often if you're in a new area?
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: And what do I have to learn?
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: But boy, I good to ask questions.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: I real good to ask questions.
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: Find the people who you know and I could ask this person this question and they're going to think I'm stupid.
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: But also try and figure it out too.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: You see Meta AI.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: Meta AI being used by more than a billion people now, which is free in WhatsApp.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: I'm having conversations in WhatsApp.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: Yesterday I was at this conference.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: Somebody asked a question in the audience.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: When I'm in the break, I ask in Meta AI the answer to the question.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: And with context, it is able to give me right and I will say give me sources that I can verify.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: So I'm learning constantly.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, because I just see this thing come up on my WhatsApp the other day.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: I was like wait, what's?
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: Happening here?
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because a lot of times like I'm not sure if it's your experience abroad, but a lot of people when they say AI, they just say chat GPC.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: So as your direct competitor, yes, yes, there's a fundamental difference in that our models are open source, which means that we give it away for free and anybody can then build on our models.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: You're not paying a fee, you know you have those tiers, Of course tiers.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you need it.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: So that's one of the differences.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's leveraging AI for contextual information and conversation and all that.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: I did a little demo yesterday at the AmCham conference where I had the glasses on Sure.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: The glasses have the AI in them, and I was talking about the fact that you could build.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: If you were a restaurant in Trinidad, you could build for free on the Lama model, a chatbot that would personalize where.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: You would feed it with your menu options and what distinguishes you, so that's a good question.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: You could give the data about your particular customers and so when customers are using this now, it feels like so much of a better experience Got it.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: And as I was doing that, I said to the glasses hey, mehta, tell me what a doubles is in Trinidad, and the whole audience could hear it saying a doubles is a food made with a little bit bara, with para, and going on about the channel and the running this.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: And then I said tell me where I could find a good doubles internet.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: And it gave me two good suggestions one on saddle road, one somewhere else.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: Right, so all of that to say that the learning am I excited?
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: Am I think it's a whole new learning space for me?
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: How does this technology work?
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: yeah how can we get it to work for everyone?
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: How can we get it to bring value?
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: And I have more opportunities of places to learn from, because the technology is helping me too.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's what I'm saying, I'm asking it questions about this new space.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: So, I don't have to go to people all the time and embarrass myself.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: There's lots of ways to learn.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: So one of my plans when I asked you to come here was so that you could tell young boys and girls in Trinidad like, how is girl working Facebook?
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: So far, my answer is religious.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: Go for it.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 2: No man Tell me Excellence buys you freedom and power.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: Everything I did, I did with 100% yeah.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: So it's not like they hired me because I was a mediocre person in a job before that Right.
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: Or I didn't end up where I was because I was a mediocre lawyer or whatever.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: Like it's a hundred percent.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: I'm learning all the time and that combination then gets me the next opportunity.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: But I'm also taking risks.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: I'm also going for things, not assuming that door is closed to me.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: I know of a tech company in the US who has found over the last two years a 14,000% increase in people applying for jobs there from Trinidad Software engineers.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 2: Really, that's right.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: So they're here in Trinidad and they're applying.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: They can do it remotely, I see For jobs from these places.
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: We have the talent.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: You have to know, like A, you're at the top of your game, right, and then B, where are the opportunities?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: So, how you get the job, you have to know the opportunities, but you have to be doing well, of course, and then you had to shoot your shot.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: I just don't think I don't have a linear path.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: You know my best friend here growing up he always wanted to be a doctor.
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: That's all he ever wanted to do, and I used to be jealous of him because he set out on that path from day one and there were so many times a long man I said but where am I, boy?
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: yeah, and I don't know where I want to go next.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: I don't even have a target.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll never think so but my thing was I know I want to learn something else sure, sure and so my thing was chasing learning and justice yes, got it.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a common thread making the world more fair, yeah but that can take you into the principles, but I didn't have a end point right so I would say to the boys and the girls looking for how do I get a job at Facebook?
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Well, what are the skills you're developing?
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: Is it the type of skills that Meta is looking for?
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, if you were coming up now and had a facility for math and data and science, I would say, boy, you see, ai, that's the way.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: What, what?
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: Everybody looking, of course, for AI specialist.
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: But then people are still looking for great everything else.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: And so you do your best at what you do.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: I would say, make it a place where, a space that you feel you are getting a reward from, and so my reward was always am I learning here?
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: Sure, somebody else it might be a subject matter.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: All right, I look at musicians and artists and I'm fascinated by them and where their end is.
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: They may not want to come and work at Meta, of course, right, so don't come and work at Meta, just because it's a.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Thing.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 2: Think about what your is, what fills you yeah, find your joy.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: That's right, gotcha, gotcha.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: I'd ask you one more question before you go, because these positions again, when I go in there I guess I see in a glimpse of what a day looks like when a trainee and of course, when we go to these companies, all the trainees would.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: They come and they talk to me and they feed us.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: Well, all these sort of free kitchens that you'll have all over the place and so on, but it's ridiculous.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: It's known for being in silicon valley in particular very, very high pressure jobs.
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: How do you manage that personally, the pressure yeah.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: I guess my pressure comes from two places.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: I work with incredibly brilliant people and you can feel the pressure of oh my gosh, am I smart enough?
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: Am I going to say a stupid thing?
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Can I keep up?
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: And boy?
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: The way I deal with that is to keep myself learning.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: The more I know, the more confident I feel, and you have to go outside of the bounds to learn.
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 2: I'm listening to podcasts on AI, I'm reading books on it.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: I need to get myself in a position where I don't feel that stress as much, because I feel more confident and competent.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing is I happen to work at a place where the impact of what we do is so significant on the world.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: Every decision we make impacts the whole world.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 3: That's a mind-blowing thing thing and I can feel like a lot of responsibility.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah and I allow myself to know that all we can do is do the best, and for me the best is making thoughtful decisions right, not willy-nilly thinking through pros and the cons and the consequences now.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: To do that you have to have enough information.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: You gotta prepare yourself to do that and then doing the best.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: And if it happened, to have enough information Of course you have to prepare yourself to do that Mm-hmm, and then doing your best and if it happened to have been the wrong decision, yeah, correct, give yourself some grace, mm-hmm.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 2: So the pressure you know some different characteristics of the pressure, for sure, and then you ground yourself in who you are.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: I'm here a lot now because this year I felt I needed community more.
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm here a lot now because this year I felt I needed community more, yeah, and so I've come back to Trinidad more this year than I have in the last 10 years, except for Carnival, where I'm always present.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, carnival baby, absolutely yeah.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: Seeing heavy soaker in Instagram and things my joy and my connection and that is the happiest I've ever been is every single Carnival.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, no matter where you work, non-negotiable happiest I've ever been is every single carnival.
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so no matter where you work, non-negotiable.
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 2: All of them tell the story of when I was interviewing and thing and I said one thing you'll have to know is if I take this job In an interview.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, maxine.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: You have belly years, yeah.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: Other people say to me too why do you post about carnival?
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 2: They're going to have to look at my work and see whether it's serious or not.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, not this.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: No, I want people to know you're entitled to joy too, yeah, yeah.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: So I've come more often because I'm at a point where, okay, I need this.
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: So part of dealing with distress is figuring out what you need.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 2: For me, community Got it Is important.
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: Community is important and this connection to this place, and so giving yourself that too, what you need.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: You know you don't have to stay in distress.
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: Just there's no honor in that.
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: Think about what you need.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 2: Ask for help.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, and you did say that you plan to be home more often.
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I have been this year.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it was.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that I kept you home.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: It was quite by coincidence.
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: I was telling them before you started that I'd just say you know what, maybe I would just ask and it was such great timing.
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: It was perfect.
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: When you said next week, I was like, why not?
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, we manifest that.
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did so I appreciate you coming to sharing so openly on these things too, and if you're back anytime, anytime, wherever, it is.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: You're tired of hearing me talk now.
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: No tired, it's only because they go pour you out of here.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: They always come in to pour me out, you know but I think it was great.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's really, really helpful.
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: You are, you know, when we see one of us national holiday, you know they say boy Maxine Day If they don't have so much holidays.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: You're not probably going to get one.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: If you do that, you're going to sink me the amount of people calling me to fix their Facebook, their Instagram, to get a blue tick.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: I ain't even going to answer.
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 1: We're going to ask you about the boys and girls coming.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: I thought you was going to say well, hey, tr that Of course I want you to have equal opportunity.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: We got to come with the goods.
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: Got it, got it, got it, got it.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks a million, maxine.
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: It was a pleasure, I appreciate it.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: We have a bountiful, beautiful country and I want people to invest in it so that we can live our best lives together.
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: Good, thanks very much.
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: Outro Music.