Liz Fong-Jones on Her Journey from Google Engineer to Activist to Author

On this episode of “B The Way Forward,” host Brenda Darden Wilkerson explores what it means to be more than your job description. Our guest, Liz Fong-Jones is the perfect example of a talented tech employee who engages in workplace activism for employee rights while also excelling in her day job as an engineer.Liz began a lot of her activism while she was a site reliability engineer at Google. As a trans woman, Liz discusses the importance of workplace inclusion and why she fights so hard for marginalized groups in the workplace. Liz offers listeners all sorts of helpful tips from finding success despite an untraditional education – Liz was a college dropout herself – to how to best garner support for your own petitions and activism at work. Liz is now Field CTO at the female-led software company Honeycomb.io. “The fight is going to take various shapes over the next several years. But I think intersectionality is the most important thing that we can and should be doing. I think that means that we should reach out and build intersectional allyship, that we should think about people who sit at the intersections, who sit at those margins, right? If someone is a transgender person and they are a person of color, especially if they're black, that dramatically increases the likelihood that they are going to become the victim of violence that is transphobic. I think the number one power that we have right now is we need to think about protecting people's privacy.”For more on Liz and her work, check out...Linkedin - /efongTwitter - @honeycombio---At AnitaB.org, we envision a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it. Find out more about how we support women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups in computing, as well as the organizations that employ them and the academic institutions training the next generations.---Connect with AnitaB.orgInstagram - @anitab_orgFacebook - /anitab.0rgLinkedIn - /anitab-orgOn the web - anitab.org ---Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services.---B The Way Forward Is…Produced by Dominique Ferrari and Paige HymsonSound design and editing by Neil Innes and Ryan Hammond Mixing and mastering by Julian Kwasneski Associate Producer is Faith KroguleckiExecutive Produced by Dominique Ferrari, Stacey Book, and Avi Glijansky for Riveter Studios and Frequency Machine Executive Produced by Brenda Darden Wilkerson for AnitaB.orgPodcast Marketing from Lauren Passell and Arielle Nissenblatt with Riveter Studios and Tink Media in partnership with Carolyn Schneller and Coley Bouschet at AnitaB.orgPhoto of Brenda Darden Wilkerson by Mandisa Media ProductionsFor more ways to be the way forward, visit AnitaB.org