Nothing about us without us. What does that mean? Well, in the case of product and service design, it means that designers shouldn’t be designing “for” the most marginalized but instead “with” them. Why do toy designers design “toys for girls” and “toys for boys”? Why are products that address the needs of people with disabilities an exception rather than the rule? Why are the most marginalized people not at the decision-making table when products and services are conceptualized and launched? In this episode, we ask product designers Reginé Gilbert, Jahan Mantin and Vanessa Raponi about what inclusive product, service and program design looks like. 

Featured guests: 

Reginé Gilbert is Industry Assistant Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. She is a user experience designer, educator, and author with over ten years of experience working in technology. She has a strong belief in making the world a more accessible place that starts and ends with the user. Reginé’s areas of research focus are digital accessibility, inclusive design, and immersive experiences. And, she is author of Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind.  

Jahan Mantin is the co-founder of Project Inkblot, a team of designers and futurists who equip people to become co-designers of an equitable world by creating and leading programs that center Black, Indigenous, and POC designers as well as leading transformative design education programs to equity-aspiring leaders in tech and media spaces. All of Inkblot’s work is in service of activating a movement of people transforming who they are, what they design, and who they design with, through their trademarked proprietary framework – Inkblot Design.  

Vanessa Raponi is a Senior Product Development Engineer at Spin Master — a Canadian founded, international toy company that created such brands as Paw Patrol and Hatchimals (meaning, she designs and creates toys for a living!). Vanessa is the Founder of EngiQueers Canada, a national non-profit that advocates for intersectional queer inclusion in the engineering profession which has brought her from coast-to-coast to present in panels, sessions, and talks as an expert in Diversity, Inclusion and Equity. 

Moderator: Sonia Kang is GATE’s new Academic Director and Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and University of Toronto Mississauga’s Special Advisor on Anti-Racism and Equity. Her research explores the challenges and opportunities of diversity, including strategies for mitigating the far-reaching effects of stigma and harnessing the power of diversity for society and organizations alike.     

Resources: 

• Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind by Reginé Gilbert 
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: https://www.gendereconomy.org/gender-analytics-online/ 

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

One of the hottest topics out there is the rise of artificial intelligence and in particular of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. Suddenly machines can pass MBA exams, write memos for you, create computer codes, and much much more. At the same time, the conversation around the potential harms, and in particular the inequities, that can be created by such technologies is also accelerating. How can we take advantage of all of the incredible things it can do without suffering from its potential harms?  And, is that even possible?  In this episode, we talk to Annie Veillet and Allison Cohen to answer these questions.

Featured guests: 

Allison Cohen is Senior Applied AI Projects Manager at Mila. In this role, Allison works closely with AI researchers, social science experts and external partners to professionalize and deploy socially beneficial AI projects. Her portfolio of work includes: a misogyny detection and correction tool; an application that can identify online activity that is suspected of containing human trafficking victims; and an agricultural analytics tool to support sustainable practices among smallholder farmers in Rwanda. She was on InspiredMinds! Top 50 Influential Women in AI list and was the Runner Up for the 2022 Women in AI "Leader of the Year" Award in the category of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. 

Annie Veillet is a partner at PwC and leads their AI and Intelligent Automation offerings. She brings extensive experience in the planning and execution of complex Advanced Analytics and Automation solutions. Her experience includes Analytics transformations (from the identification of business drivers to implementing and scaling capabilities), process automation (with embedded AI components), customer segmentation using behavioral traits, and data management. Annie co-led the development of PwC’s Global Responsible AI Toolkit and was recognized as one of the Top 30 Influential Women Advancing AI in Montreal by RE.WORK.  

Moderator: Brian Keng is a Research Director at Borealis AI, a research centre created by Royal Bank of Canada, and an Adjunct Professor in Data Science at the Rotman School. At Borealis, he leads the incubator program building out innovative AI-enabled products and capabilities for the financial services industry. At Rotman, he plays a key role in shaping data science education and research through his work with the TD Management Data and Analytics Lab and the Master of Management Analytics program. Brian's primary professional focus revolves around building scalable AI and machine learning systems to provide robust solutions to core business problems. 
    

Resources: 

• Check out GATE’s report on An Equity Lens on Artificial Intelligence 
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: https://www.gendereconomy.org/gender-analytics-online/ 

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

Why do we call the Men’s World Cup in soccer just “The World Cup” and for women, it is the “Women’s World Cup”? Why is the NBA —the National Basketball League—just for men, and the one for women is the “WNBA.”? People think they are an add on…a niche market…But, they would be wrong. What would happen if we thought about women’s sports and women in sports as equally valuable as men?  In this episode, we are going to hear from two accomplished entrepreneurs, Meghan Chayka and Jacie De Hoop, on what using a gender lens in sports analytics might do. 

Featured guests: 

Meghan Chayka is co-founder of Stathletes, a sports analytics and insights business that provides industry leading data precision within the sport of hockey. Meghan was named in the 2018/2019 season Top Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Top 40 under 40 by the Athletic NHL, and the Top 100 of Power & Influence by Hockey News. At the Rotman School, she plays a key role in shaping the data science education and research through her work at the TD Management Data and Analytics Lab.  

Jacie De Hoop is a co-founder and head of revenue at The GIST, a sports media startup that makes sports more accessible and inclusive to all sports fans. She leads the company’s revenue generation, growing revenue from $100K to over $2.5M in 18 months through partnerships with Under Armour, the NBA and FanDuel. Jacie and her team were named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Media 2020 and have been accelerated through programs with Facebook, Comcast NBCUniversal and Techstars. GATE wrote a case study on The GIST which we’ll post in the show notes.  

Moderator: Adil Sethi is Senior Manager of Business and Content Strategy at Bell Media. As a former professional athlete himself, his experiences include franchise and athlete management, sports marketing and more recently plying his trade in the sports betting and online gaming industry. Adil has been an ardent advocate of equality in sports. It was his time as a sports agent to some of India’s top women athletes—when he witnessed first-hand, gender-based discrimination and disparity in the sports industry—that gave rise to his research, as a GATE MBA Fellow, that focused on assessing the biases that exist around corporate sponsorship in women’s sports and how they can be overcome.    

Resources: 

• GATE Case study on: The GIST challenges gender inequality in sports media  
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: www.genderanalytics.org  

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan, Lechin Lu and Carmina Ravanera  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

The topic of this conversation is about creating inclusive contracts. You might be thinking that this is a bit obscure. Why should we be talking about the law and contracting in a set of discussions on designing for everyone? In this episode, we are going to hear from Joy Anderson, Charlene Theodore and Sara Wolfe about how we can explore the potentially biased impacts of the legal infrastructure in our economy and how to make it better. 

Featured guests: 

Joy Anderson is a prominent leader at the intersection of finance and social change and has been instrumental in shaping the fields of gender lens investing and innovative finance. She is founder and president of Criterion Institute, the leading think tank on using finance as a tool for social change, which demonstrates new possibilities through its ground-breaking research, innovative trainings, convenings and institutional engagement. In 2021, she authored a seminal report, “Disrupting Fields: Addressing Power Dynamics in the Fields of Climate Finance and Gender Lens Investing.”  

Charlene Theodore is Chief Inclusion Officer at McCarthy Tétrault. Committed to concrete action in advancing the Firm’s core mission to accelerate diversity, inclusion and corporate social responsibility, Charlene oversees McCarthy Tétrault’s award-winning Inclusion Now program. Charlene has a unique understanding of the interconnection between the legal profession and EDI, and how to achieve tangible results. As the first Black president of the Ontario Bar Association, Charlene designed and implemented a series of initiatives for law firms and Corporate Canada to reimagine workplaces.  

Sara Wolfe is Anishinaabe with family roots in Northern Ontario. She is a Registered Nurse, a Registered Midwife, and holds her master’s in business administration from the Rotman School. Sara has been the Director of the Indigenous Innovation Initiative at Grand Challenges Canada, one of the largest social impact investors in Canada, whose work is dedicated to supporting innovators and communities to identify and solve their own challenges, drive inclusive growth, and improve all life through Indigenous innovation that is by and for Indigenous peoples.    

Moderator: Sarah Kaplan is a Distinguished Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the Founding Director of GATE. She is a co-author of the bestselling business book, Creative Destruction. Her latest book, The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation, is based on her award-winning course at the Rotman School.  

Resources: 

• Introducing Standards of Practice for Gender Lens Investing, by the Criterion Institute 
• The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation, by Sarah Kaplan 
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: www.genderanalytics.org  

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan, Lechin Lu and Carmina Ravanera  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

Financial services is one of the most important sectors in our economy. This is an industry that touches everyone—whether it is saving for retirement, getting a housing loan, financing a new business, or using a credit card—and with that comes the potential to exacerbate or remediate inequalities. And, we probably all know that still so little investment goes to women-owned businesses relative to their male counterparts. And, what about the fact that women are more likely to live in poverty after retirement in part because of the gendered nature of savings and investment?  

In this episode, we are going to hear from Kelly Baldoni, Stephanie Kelly, Sylvia Kwan and Myan Marcen-Gaudaur about how a gender lens, an Indigenous lens, and more broadly an equity lens on financial services, can create new business ideas, identify new opportunities for improved returns, and achieve a more inclusive economy.  

Featured guests: 

Kelly Baldoni is Head of Global Women’s Strategies at Impax Asset Management LLC, the North American division of Impax Asset Management Group and investment adviser to Pax World Funds. She oversees national sales and marketing initiatives for the firm’s gender lens strategies and is a product specialist for the Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund.  

Stephanie Kelley is an Assistant Professor at the Sobey School of Business at Sant Mary’s University in Halifax and was previously on the faculty at the Western University’s Ivey Business School. Her research focuses on the ethics of analytics and AI in organizations, including in bank lending.  

Sylvia Kwan is the Chief Investment Officer at Ellevest, a technology-enabled financial services company built by women, for women. In this role, she is responsible for creating the investment solutions, strategies, portfolios, and proprietary algorithms that drive Ellevest’s investment recommendations across both automated digital and customized private wealth advisory services. She guides the firm’s investment philosophy and leads the development and due diligence of Ellevest’s impact and gender forward investments.  

Myan Marcen-Gaudaur is Director of Social Impact at Scotiabank where she leads strategic investment initiatives related to Economic Resilience, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Reconciliation. In her previous work at CIBC, Myan's mandate supported the socio-economic empowerment of Indigenous Peoples through the development of equitable policies, processes, products, services and educational tools. She has had a 15 year+ career in film, sponsorship and marketing before shifting her professional focus toward corporate ESG and Social Impact.  

Moderator: Jackie VanderBrug is Head of Sustainability Strategy at Putnam Investments where she leads a host of key ESG-focused business functions. She came to Putnam from Bank of America, where she most recently served as Head of Sustainable and Impact Investment Strategy in the Chief Investment Office for Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank since 2018. She is also author of the book Gender Lens Investing: Uncovering Opportunities for Growth, Returns, and Impact.  

Resources: 

• Gender Lens Investing: Uncovering Opportunities for Growth, Returns, and Impact by Joseph Quinlan & Jackie VanderBrug 
• Read our case study on Ellevest 
• Check out GATE’s other resources on gender capitalism  
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: www.genderanalytics.org  

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan, Lechin Lu and Carmina Ravanera  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

The so called “nudge theory” as popularized by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their bestselling 2008 book “Nudge,”—is about how to use behavioural interventions to get people to act in their best self interest. But, what does this look like when we think about this in the context of government policy? And, how, in particular, can this concept be mobilized to achieve more equitable policy outcomes? In this episode, we talk to Dilip Soman and Alia Kamlani to answer these questions.

Featured guests: 

Dilip Soman is Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Science and Economics, and Director of Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR). He is also the author or editor of many books, including Managing Customer Value, The Last Mile, The Behaviorally Informed Organization, and Behavioral Science in the Wild.  

Alia Kamlani is a Partner at Deloitte in Government & Public Services. She is a seasoned public sector transformation partner and has spent her career working alongside senior executives and political leaders to develop business cases, engage stakeholders, develop strategic options, and manage numerous large-scale transformations across North America.  

Moderator: Kate Bezanson is Special advisor in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada and Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Brock University. She’s also a Faculty Research Fellow at GATE. She specializes and advises in the areas of social and family policy, gender, carework, constitutional law, political economy, and federalism.  

Resources: 

• Equity-Centred Design for Government Services: Seizing the Opportunity to Get Transformation Right by Deloitte  
• Behavioural Science in the Wild by Nina Mazar and Dilip Soman 
• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference  

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: www.genderanalytics.org  

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan, Lechin Lu and Carmina Ravanera  

Edited by: Ian Gormely 

When we think about product and policy analysis and design, we don’t often think about the colonial underpinnings of our work. Many people think of data and design as somehow “neutral” and “objective.” But if we dig deeper, we begin to understand how they can perpetuate inequalities. So, what would it mean to decolonize data and decolonize design? In this episode, we talk to Jacqueline Quinless, author of Decolonizing Data, and Dori Tunstall, author of Decolonizing Design, to answer that question.

Featured guests: 

Jacqueline Quinless is Associate Faculty at the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. She has worked extensively in Indigenous communities using gender-based analysis frameworks in the context of understanding the impacts of natural resource development on the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. She is an award-winning public sociologist recognized for her community-based research in the advancement of Indigenous welfare in Canada. 

Dori Tunstall is Former Dean, Faculty of Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD University). She is a design anthropologist, public intellectual, and design advocate who works at the intersections of critical theory, culture, and design. She was the first black person— and first black woman—to be named dean of a faculty of design. She is a recognized leader in the decolonization of art and design education. She has held faculty positions in Australia and the US, organized the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative, and served as a director of Design for Democracy.   

Moderator: Darrell Bowden is the Rotman School’s Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and has more than 25 years of social justice work in higher education.   

Resources: 

• Gender Analytics: Possibilities conference  
• Decolonizing Data: Unsettling Conversations about Social Research Methods by Jacqueline M. Quinless 
• Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook by Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall 
• Check out GATE’s other resources on Indigenous innovation. 

Gender Analytics is a way to analyze your products, services, processes and policies with a gender lens to uncover hidden opportunities for innovation and improved effectiveness by considering gender, race, Indigeneity, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other identities. Learn more here: https://www.gendereconomy.org/gender-analytics-online/ 

Want to hear more from the Institute for Gender and the Economy? Check out our signature podcast series, Busted, which busts prominent myths about gender and the economy! 

Credits:  

Produced by: Sarah Kaplan and Carmina Ravanera 
Edited by: Ian Gormely 

What do snow plowing, car safety, investment management and face recognition technologies all have in common? They all have impacts that are gendered. Yet, business leaders and policy makers often fail to consider these gendered impacts in the way that they design their policies, products, services and processes. 

To think about how to unlock innovative opportunities using an intersectional gender lens, GATE joined with our Rotman partner, the TD Management and Data Analytics lab, to host a one-day conference in the Spring of 2023 called “Gender Analytics: Possibilities” (or GAP).   We’ll be sharing exciting panel conversations from the conference with you in this limited-edition podcast series. This intro will give you an overview of the concepts. Stay tuned for episodes on decolonizing data and design, inclusive government policy, responsible AI, and more! 

Credits:  
Produced by: Sarah Kaplan and Carmina Ravanera 
Edited by: Ian Gormely