While a technical approach to addressing homogeneity within the tech industry is to be expected, reducing the problem to a quota surrounding the talent shortage or establishing a ‘diverse pipeline’ needs a deeper look, according to Bosky Mukherjee – the founder of PMDojo.

PMDojo is an inclusivity-focused educational learning community for careers within product management, product design, UX research, and software development. Currently, over 90% of fellowship participants successfully transition into a product role and receive a promotion.

“Within entrepreneurship, tech, product space, we are building products for consumers where we don't know what intersectionality they belong to,” Mukherjee explained to SDxCentral, identifying herself as both a first-generation immigrant of color and a mother.

If the people designing products don't understand the perspective of who they’re selling to, “you're going to end up with all of the problems that we've been seeing in the tech world,” she continued, citing issues of AI screenings not being able to detect nuances of non-white, male language.

A health product by Apple "received a lot of negativity because it did not account for how a woman's menstrual tracking app can signal other health issues besides conception. This was largely attributed to the make up of Apple's engineering teams," she explained.

Mukherjee left India for grad school and has now been in the tech sector for 22 years. “We all know the lack of diversity is a problem in tech. But over the years… I've always worked with old white men, always, even in the exec room, and flicked through a whole bunch of biases and discriminations,” often times just quietly observing, she noted.

But Mukherjee’s two decades within the industry doesn't just illustrate overcoming patriarchal prejudice, it tells an important reminder on burnout, the consequences of climbing the ladder to cope, and what being in a position of power now means to an immigrant mother who didn't have the resources or access for help in her journey getting there.

While climbing the ladder in 2014, Mukherjee’s expected son was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect called TGA [Transposition of the Great Arteries], and they were informed he would need an immediate open heart surgery after birth to be able to survive.

The ultrasound was one of many challenges Mukherjee’s family would endure. But two years after returning to work in 2016, her son having recovered successfully from his third open heart surgery, Mukherjee immersed herself in every work challenge that came her way – and accepted every promotion.

“I think I got so much into the humdrum of just having him survive not one but three open heart surgeries,” she explained. “Seeing him go into a cardiac arrest in my arms as a newborn – barely a few days old – I think I did not take time to get better, and the toll finally took over me.”

In 2019, she described having supposedly hit the glass ceiling: “president of a company, everyone was cheering ‘women of color’ – I got to a stage where my entire life collapsed mentally, emotionally, physically.”

Skipped meals, insomnia, throwing up at the office, frequent breakdowns – she continued to take on one challenging project after another and watched the strength she valued her whole life become her weakness. But Mukherjee made a critical choice to reclaim what that strength actually meant in her position.

“I decided to step down and get better – lots of medical help – and then kind of really reflect on what I had become, what is important, what I really want to do, where I can make an impact, what I have been truly passionate about over the years... and it all came to be how PMDojo was born in 2019.

Mukherjee explained how her experience has molded her approach to decoupling the layers and solving the lack of diversity in tech: by looking beyond the issue as a need for a ‘pipeline’ of diverse candidates, and seeing the need for empathy and conversation.

“People who are going through all of these challenges, they don't have access to mentorship, relevant experience, and role models… it's not the pipeline problem, necessarily,” she explained.

While the empirical, practical benefits of DE&I are abundant, the dialogue surrounding diversity as a ‘business imperative’ can endanger the underlying purpose behind the work: creating inclusion. “It's been more of a quota and a checklist. It needs to be more of a human conversation,” Mukherjee noted.

That means looking at the hiring process to understand the ways in which it perpetuates antiquated and homogenous workforces and is unable to promote the intersectionality needed to solve industry challenges.

“It starts with having that language internally to understand, how do we work and how are we different in thinking and processing information, and what does that difference bring in? As opposed to making it a pool: we have to have this many people from this many different backgrounds, just so that we can get a check at the end of the day.” Mukherjee explained.

Since taking a position of power, she says she has made the initiative to hire people new to the job “because that's how I got into the job in the first place.”

From social work to literature, Mukherjee has seen how people from diverse perspectives have brought dimensional work to the company. “Many of them are leading teams right now,” she added.

“When you start peeling the layers of diversity – because every company talks about gender, race or whatever is visible – there are lots of other traits of invisible things that make us different. My son is neurodiverse; I'm still learning how to navigate and provide support, enable him to thrive. I've worked with a whole bunch of neurodiverse folks, never knowing the nuances,” she explained.

[caption id="attachment_121476" align="alignnone" width="300"] The Mukherjee family from top left: Bosky, Kaustav, and Taneesh[/caption]

This often overlooked demographic has become an increasingly important role in Mukherjee’s work. PMDojo recently announced a new Product Accelerator Program to advocate for the underserved talent within neurodivergent communities.

She noted that inclusion doesn’t need to be a massive operational overhaul. It’s “more about creating a safe environment, making sure that the rest of the folks also develop empathy, and how to work with people irrespective of what your team members have,” or what they have to work through.