Each generation has its own biases surrounding Baby Boomers, Gen Z, Gen X and Millennials and we should all be challenging those biases to build stronger teams and a better world, according to a panel of women who work in the entertainment technology industry and spoke May 23 at the Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS) at The Culver Theater.
During the Women in Technology: Hollywood (WiTH) Connection Corner session “Challenging Age Stereotypes: Creating Synergy and Building Stronger Teams,” panelists said we have likely all experienced it: being judged or judging someone for being too young or too old.
As workplaces today often consist of people from four distinct generations, it is important to acknowledge and overcome the challenges inherent in cross-generational cultures.
The goal of the panel was to transform generational friction into an inclusive learning culture, enabling attendees to gain increased self-awareness of their own sentiments toward other generations, as well as practical ideas for fostering unity and promoting positive change. In the process, they can discover how to turn communication challenges into learning opportunities that strengthen teams through experience-sharing, curiosity and asking the right questions.
Moderator Beate Chelette, The Growth Architect at Chelette Enterprises and co-chair for programming at WiTH, started the session with a survey question: As a woman in technology, how often have you experienced bullying?
“Often seems to be so far the winner,” noted Chelette, followed by a few times a year, a few times and never dead last.
Next up was the survey question: What is the bias you grew up with or have been told about yourself?
Responses included that they were called slackers, bossy, intimidating, unqualified, a go-getter, aggressive, not ready, stubborn, mean, loud, entitled, opinionated, not supportive and too serious.
Chelette then asked the panelists to discuss their viewpoints on how they experienced age and their careers? She asked Niamani Knight, founder of S.T.R.E.A.M., who was representing Gen Z, if there was a bias toward her because some felt she was too young.
Knight, who pointed out that her organization’s “mission is to connect the dots between education and career,” said she often told the story that when she was 13 and in eighth grade, “My mom voluntold me to go into a program. That is my mom right there sitting in the front. So she’s still voluntelling me. The program was really focused on teaching middle school students how to create physical products to sell and learn business principles.”
As a result of that program, she said: “I ended up creating this program called S.T.R.E.A.M., focusing on science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, manufacturing, predominantly serving students in communities that are either underserved or underestimated. So communities that don’t often have access.”
Related to that, she recalled: “Probably one of the funniest stories is I ended up calling California Highway Patrol one day, asking if they would participate in, I think, our second expo experience and our expos are like these interactive trade shows where all these companies come out and show students in an interactive, fun and engaging way what careers are available to them. And they kind of laughed at me. I was 13 at the time, so they laughed on the phone. They said that they don’t talk to kids and asked for my parents. At first they thought that I was playing a joke on them because they just didn’t understand what was happening. Fortunately, to this day, [however,] California Highway Patrol actually sits on our board.”
She added: “That is definitely one of the scenarios where my age played a factor. I had to go get my parents [to work] out the situation.”
iAsia Brown, a producer at Xbox Game Studios Publishing and WiTH board member, noted that she joined the military at 17, “did 20 years somewhere and then, when I show up at Microsoft Xbox, no one knows how old I am, but I go, ‘I did 20 years in the military,’ and they try to do the math out loud…. So people really don’t know how to gauge me. And, when I show up, I just show up and I ask questions, I make demands.”
Additionally, she explained: “Being a woman in gaming is very much” like being in the “boys club…. So when I show up, [people are saying]: ‘Who are you? What games have you put out? What have you done?’ Like you have to show your worth every single day. And me, it’s to the point where I’m just like, ‘I don’t care what any of you are all saying, how you’ve been doing it is dead. It is over and is done. The bro club is coming to a stop. Like there’s a new generation taking over.’”
Chelette then asked Linda LoRe, CEO of InJoy Global and Linda LoRe Consulting, representing Baby Boomers, how she experienced her age at work.
“I’ve been an executive for about 40 years,” noted LoRe. “What’s really interesting is I was too young until I was too old. So I’m ageless. That’s the way I look at it. What I experience most of the time is a massive guessing game.”
But the “words that are often used” to describe women in the tech sector “if you are assertive, if you take charge and if you want to get shit done, we’re called intimidating; we’re called bossy; we’re called aggressive,” said LoRe. “That is ageless. That has been forever.”
LoRe added, referring to Brown and Knight: “I am like in awe of these two women that are sitting to my left. I’m just in awe of both of you. I was around when reproductive rights were not a right and I fought for them, and I never thought I’d see the day that I had to fight for them again. We cannot take anything for granted. Not our age. Not our sex. Not our industry. We are human beings that need to continue on a quest to develop ourselves and be the best that we can possibly be inclusive of each other, regardless the age and regardless the industry, regardless the sex. Because we are part of this incredible ecosystem called the human race. And I am loving every minute that I see people achieve something there is enough to go around. And I’ve learned that in my life.”
Agreeing, Chelette said: “You touched on something extremely important that we can never take for granted: the advancements we have made. Because the minute we don’t look, somebody’s out there wanting to take them away from us again. And whoever they are, whyever they do that, we do not know. But I will tell you this, in my experience, and this specifically to the younger women in the audience and those watching life or watching the replay, is, it is not something you can ever, ever take for granted.”
Chelette added that comments are often made in the workplace “about your age, your hair, your dress, your whatever, and this is not just women specific.” Men have “plenty to say” about this issue also, she said, noting somebody told her, “I was really knowledgeable until I turned 45, and then all my experience was worthless.”
Moving on, Chelette asked panelists if their generations owned a viewpoint on something, Brown took on the description “intimidating,” saying: “I don’t own intimidating. If you’re intimidated, that’s a you problem. That’s not a me problem…. I guess my viewpoint for this generation is you need to figure out what’s your bag and what’s my bag? Because my bag doesn’t affect you. Your bag doesn’t affect me. I get it. There are people walking around, and I say this all the time, people have backpacks, purses, U-Hauls hooked up to their souls, just dragging whatever trauma they got with the, trying to pass it on to everybody else. It’s not my problem. I drink water and mind my business. That’s my viewpoint.”
Chelette then asked the panelists if there was anything they shouldn’t talk about or were not allowed to talk about because of their age.
Knight responded: “One of the things that I’ve been taught is that life is a classroom. So there will never be a field or a topic that you’re ever an expert in because you’re constantly learning. We are constantly evolving. I could say I’m an expert in something one day and wake up the next day and everything changed. And so one of the things that I’m very cautious [about] and kind of learning specifically about my generation, typically because of our age, we are a generation that likes to go and fix problems. If there are major issues affecting our country or things around us that are important to us, we like to fix it. So I saw a break in education and so I decided to create a nonprofit to go and fix this problem. But sometimes that puts me right next to a person that may be in a generation that is wiser than me, that has had to work for years in order to get to that space. And so one of the things that I am learning is that experience is based off of what you’re going through currently.”
Brown responded by saying Baby Boomers are still making decisions for a world they won’t live in while “my generation decided that we’re just taking care of ourselves so we don’t care about anybody else.” Meanwhile, Gen Z is “catching hell for all the other generations,” she added.
LoRe pointed out that her children are now in that generation, saying: “Thank God they are wanting to fix it. But each generation has shit to fix. I just tell you, we’re all humans in this experiment.” Her generation, the Baby Boomers, she said, had felt if “you work really hard, you’re going to get ahead [and], if you fight really hard, you’re going to make changes…. We did both. And then we didn’t get out of the way because the generation right beneath us was much smaller…. Then we gave birth to [Brown’s] generation and gave them all kinds of toys while we worked. So they thought they could have anything they wanted.”
Chelette then asked what LoRe’s generation may have wrecked or shouldn’t talk about anymore.
“We get told very often that we f’d it up so get out of the way, and I’ll take credit and blame for whatever anybody wants to give credit or blame” for, LoRe responded. But she added: “The one thing that I won’t do is step aside because this life needs all of us and we need each other in order to make it go forward…. I have an obligation to continue to learn and grow. And, if I don’t do that, then I am shirking my responsibility as a human in this incredible thing we call life.”
Last, Chelette said, about two years ago, she had tried to come up with examples of women who were actually relevant and aging well. “There are not many, and so I ended up with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I looked at her [and asked]: What is it about her that she had a street name for crying out loud and a hashtag and she somehow seemed to manage it. And so I figured that she had relevance for every generation.”
But the mistake that Ginsburg made was in not passing the torch, according to Brown, arguing: “Had she had stepped aside and ushered in her successor and had a succession plan, the Supreme Court would look a lot different right now.”
Meanwhile, the current U.S. president is “creating policies for a world he will never live in,” Brown said.
LoRe agreed that Ginsburg “made a critical error,” adding: “She should have stayed mentoring and advising and counseling and got out of that specific position, which is power…. We in this generation need to do what is the most important thing and that is partner with the other generations.”
One way to do that is to tell anybody 18-28 years old, they “are the lowest turnout in voting, and if you don’t want those guys, and it’s mostly guys, to be representing you, get your butt and all your friends and everyone you can out to vote because that’s the only power we have to make changes in the government that we’re in.”
LoRe’s final words were: “We all have a place. We all have a voice. We all have an opportunity and we need to use it. Be respectful of each other and, most of all, respect yourself because that is how we will move forward. Put a positive mindset in there because, if you think you’re defeated, you are.”
And Knight cautioned that “mentorship works both ways,” adding: “Just as much as we are listening and wanting to learn from you, it’s okay to also learn from who’s coming next.”
The Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit event was produced by MESA in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and presented by Amazon Studios Technology, with sponsorship by Fortinet, Genpact, Prime Focus Technologies, Signiant, Softtek, Convergent, Gracenote, Altman Solon, AppTek, Ascendion, Coresite, EPAM, MicroStrategy, Veritone, CDSA, EIDR and PDG Consulting.