The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Working Group was formed in December 2023 to help increase representation and strengthen the overall effectiveness of the cybersecurity workforce.
👋🏻 Would this group be amenable to providing guidance or a list of resources on how Steering Committees, Advisory Councils, and other technical leadership groups in open source can take meaningful steps to increase the diversity and inclusivity of their nominee pool? This assumes those groups have some form of election process.
In many technical domain areas, such as security, the makeup of technologists is not well distributed (gender, region, identity, accessibility). When this occurs, it constrains the pool of eligible individuals for technical leadership positions. Without active effort in identifying technologists different from ourselves, mentoring and coaching them into leadership roles, we are not expanding the pool of eligible individuals.
This is more than an awareness effort (ensuring an individual knows those roles exist and encouraging them to look into it), it must conscious and strategic.
When I am asked, "How do we increase more X in our Committee", my response is limited by my own experience and what type of engagements I pursue:
actively seek out contributors in your community different from yourself
Get to know them and their goals - a 30 minute meeting, ask them what are their aspirations for themselves within the project
Establish a mentoring/coaching relationship, support them in taking on more responsibility if they are amenable.
Identify and inform them of opportunities to become gradually exposed to more senior roles (reviewer to maintainer, maintainer to committee, contributor to project lead, project lead to technical lead, etc.)
If you are in a position to do so, and there is an alignment opportunity to nominate them, do it, be their champion to others. Don't just write a recommendation, give the voting party evidence this person is an excellent choice for the position - with specifics.
I would like to be able to point individuals and groups to some resource, guide, or other material that gives them a path to walk down in increasing their diversity & inclusivity and perhaps identifies opportunities for them to introduce themselves to events and communities dedicated to these groups (i.e. Women in Linux, AISES).
Note - I believe SDDI is intended to focus on some of this but their site is still forthcoming with content.
👋🏻 Would this group be amenable to providing guidance or a list of resources on how Steering Committees, Advisory Councils, and other technical leadership groups in open source can take meaningful steps to increase the diversity and inclusivity of their nominee pool? This assumes those groups have some form of election process.
When I am asked, "How do we increase more X in our Committee", my response is limited by my own experience and what type of engagements I pursue:
I would like to be able to point individuals and groups to some resource, guide, or other material that gives them a path to walk down in increasing their diversity & inclusivity and perhaps identifies opportunities for them to introduce themselves to events and communities dedicated to these groups (i.e. Women in Linux, AISES).
Note - I believe SDDI is intended to focus on some of this but their site is still forthcoming with content.