Janeen Uzzell: Full Interview

Machine Yearning

This week and for the next couple episodes, we’re taking you to the VOICE Summit - the largest single gathering of the conversational design ecosystem. 2 thousand people swarmed the New Jersey Institute of Technology July 24th through 26th. The team at MODEV crushed it and they took great care of us. While we were at VOICE, we spoke to tons of technologists and entrepreneurs, but we also met people who are living at the front edge of creating a more inclusive culture in technology product design. We’re not giving away family secrets when we point out that the US technology sector is not covering itself in glory by creating diverse, inclusive workplace cultures. Enter Janeen Uzzell. Janeen is New Jersey native who is on a mission to use her influence and voice to lead significant work that changes lives, communities and the world. Most recently, Janeen was the Head of Women in Technology for GE. There, she worked across the 300,000-employee community leading a culture shift to accelerate the number of women within GE’s technical female workforce. Janeen spoke with conference organizer and friend of the pod Janice Mandel. In this conversation, they take a half step back from voice, and dig into the process of human-centric design on a global scale. How you design for kids. And how you build and lead inclusive, diverse teams - so you can attract and serve a diverse customer base. You’ve been in meetings where these topics come up. It’s hard, we get it. Today’s a chance to be a hero and part of the solution. Take a second and share this one around with your boss and every. single. person. in your group.