Tag Archive for: social justice

Q&A with Mary Matheson, British Film Director on Immersive Storytelling For Social Impact

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Mary MathesonWe interviewed Mary Matheson, an award-winning British director known for directing character-driven films in innovative ways for social impact. She was recently the lead director of the 10-part 360° New Realities VR Series 10 Young Women 10 Countries. One World, which showcases the stories of 10 young female activists across the world with focus on themes of education and fair access to technology, created for the Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset.

Matheson is currently directing a multi-platform documentary about the women behind NASA’s Artemis women-led mission to the Moon. Matheson mixes the latest technology (mobile, augmented and virtual reality) with intimate documentary techniques to bring the audience into the heart of the narrative. We spoke to her about creating impact, both through her work and in this new industry.

Q: Tell us about what has driven your career long passion for making films of social impact, especially related to women.

I started out as a journalist cutting my teeth in Latin America (in Venezuela and Colombia) when I was 23 years old, reporting on the Guerrilla War and drug cartels. My passion has always been to communicate between two different people – between characters and the audience. I’ve specialized in foreign stories, often in conflict or post-conflict zones, but what’s interested me most is the stories we don’t hear.

Even if you think about Ukraine, social media has enabled us to hear stories that we wouldn’t normally have heard through mainstream media. When I started out, those things didn’t exist. I was always more interested in what we weren’t hearing and weren’t seeing, and being able to communicate that. So leaving behind straightforward journalism, I began to focus on communication with a purpose and greater objective: communicating what life was like for the people that we often see or hear about from one particular point of view, and I’ve always been interested in sharing the other point of view.

Q: How has Virtual Reality (VR) created the platform of ‘immersive storytelling’?

Immersive storytelling is literally being able to step into the story. Instead of peering through the window into another person’s world, you open the door and step inside.

Virtual reality became another tool for me to use to communicate with audiences and try to convey another person’s experience, so they can understand what it’s like in a country they wouldn’t normally visit. What has been incredible about VR is that it suddenly opens this extraordinary door to a whole world that you can feel you’re part of, rather than just viewing.

For me, that was transformational in terms of both my work and the characters themselves being able to communicate with you, the audience, directly. In a way, as a director, I stopped being the interpreter of the story and became the facilitator between two people.

The 10 Young Women series is a 360° film series- it’s shot like a film and looks incredibly real. You feel like you’re immersed in their world, because you’ve got the Quest 2 headset on and the audio is also 360 degrees, so you’re cut off from your real world environment. Your body and your mind suspend belief, and you feel like you’re in the country with the girl you are visiting. She talks to you directly, usually looking right at you, so you feel like you’re a good friend of hers – and she’s just telling you her story.

In India, due to the timing with Covid, we ended up sending the camera to the young woman herself, taught her how to use it, and she shot the film herself. That episode has an extraordinary authenticity, like a video diary shot brilliantly from her perspective.

Q: How were you impacted by working on the 10 Young Women series?

I now try to involve and co-create the characters in the filmmaking as much as possible, giving them power in the narration of what goes in and what doesn’t. I talk to them about what they would like to do, and it means you get these extraordinary authentic moments you would never expect, and little snapshots of their lives that you wouldn’t normally get if I was imposing my ideas. It’s revolutionized my job. Even as somebody who’s traveled a lot, I’m constantly surprised by reality and the true story.

For example, I was in Germany filming with a young Syrian woman who faces a lot of racism in Germany. I had the idea to have her sitting static and have people walking all around her and use the sound to hear all the words that she hears, hear the racism she faces and feel how she feels. She was absolutely furious with me and said, why should I have to go through this again? She wanted to do it differently. She wanted a very strong image of herself (which ended up being on a bike cycling) and to talk about how supported she felt by her mom, her sister and her aunts. Her idea was to use the ululation singing of her aunts in Syria around her, and it’s such an extraordinary moment in the film.

The technology and this industry is at such a wonderful, innovative and creative place. We all know how to shoot a sequence in a film smoothly and the techniques to use to create a certain feeling, whereas with virtual reality, we’re at the dawn. Even though I’ve done a lot of 360° filmmaking now, I’m still trying out new techniques every single time. So it’s really liberating and very experimental and invites co-creation.

Q: Tara Brach, Ph.D, talks about creating ‘unreal others’ – how when distanced from someone, we project into their world, making them unreal. The more distant a group, the easier it is to do that. What role do you think immersive storytelling plays in making others ‘real’ and creating empathy and compassion?

Even from the beginning of my work, I was really committed to trying to reduce “othering” and for me, this is just such a powerful tool that’s indescribable until you get in there. Once you do, you suddenly feel that you’re there and it does take you to a different level of empathy.

We talk about something called presence, which is like where you feel present in a different place, and the goal for me as a Creator is to make you feel present in that world. That’s what creates the feeling of empathy, or perhaps a different feeling, but it’s strong because you feel that you’re present. There’s examples where the headset technology has even been used to help people with trauma, to help opposing sides come towards agreement through empathy, and in peace building.

Q: How has virtual reality impacted upon and changed your creative process and sensory awareness, as a director and a creator?

Suddenly I have a toolkit at my fingertips that is extraordinary and has multiplied. I am now using techniques from theater and from gaming. I’m 53 years old and I’m not a gamer or technical person – but I’m using gaming techniques all the time now. It’s just blown my mind. I’m learning and using new skills with every experience.

For example, sound is transformational. Because as a director in VR, I can make a sound behind you and you’ll turn and look behind you. So, now you can use sound as a tool to direct your viewer’s gaze.

I have had to also learn about techniques from working with immersive theater – how to draw an audience in and do blocking, a technique that you use in theater and fictional filmmaking, not in documentary. In virtual reality we talk about creating a world you’re setting up for somebody to step into, not necessarily a scene as in film, and I’ve learned about that from working with immersive theater groups.

Q: What would be an example of a gaming technique you find compelling?

I never realized gaming is so extraordinary in the sophistication of their storytelling. It’s complex and layered. Branching narrative is a classic gaming technique I’m using.

For example, I’m working on a project on NASA, about the new Artemis mission, which will put a woman on the moon for the first time in 2024. There’s a main storyline, but you’ll also be able to go off and discover more about the astronauts if you want to dig deeper into their narratives, and then come back to the main storyline.

But there are also other ways of using branch narrative where you take a choice, go down a storyline, and don’t necessarily come back to the same ending.

For example, female director Gaëlle Mourre created this experience called Mechanical Souls, examining the difference between humans and avatars. As the viewer, you didn’t know you were making a choice, but your choices were made by where you looked in the scene. If you looked in a particular direction and were more interested, then the storyline would go along in that direction. Whereas, if you were looking over here at this person, then you’d start to follow a different storyline. At the end of that experience, everybody took off their headsets, started talking and realized they’d had different experiences based on where they’d put their attention.

Another experience I had was in Northern Iraq, where I was creating an experience about the Yazidi people, who were attacked by ISIS in 2014 and lot of the women were taken as sex slaves. The way I branched the narrative was that, as the viewer, you could choose whose perspective you wanted to hear about – whether from the young woman who had been taken as a slave, from her brother who had survived an attack or from the perspective of an ISIS fighter. These were all documentary interviews, but you as the viewer can choose whose perspective you want to listen to about a particular moment in time. And you could go back and listen to all of them, too. That’s not how I would structure a story if I was making a regular film – it would have incorporated the different viewpoints or come from one particular viewpoint.

Q: What further creative possibilities are you excited about in this industry?

I’ve just taken up a job as Professor of Practice for Arizona State University’s new center for Narrative and Emerging Media in Los Angeles. What I find really exciting is helping other people to learn about this technology and making sure they understand what they can do. I’ve had students build completely different immersive experiences. It builds on my knowledge, and then I say see what you can do and they go off and do something extraordinary.

I love film, so I personally get really excited about photo-real stuff. Animation and CGI are dominating the space, but photoreal is getting there, little by little. It’s not going to be long before you can have holograms in VR that will be live – you’ll be able to talk to somebody in Kurdistan or Northern Iraq, in photo-real 3D embodiment.

Another passion of mine is getting this technology out to the underrepresented voices. It’s about making sure that those people have access to the technology and there are no obstacles in the way. That’s often what the problem is – not that people don’t want to or don’t know how to do it – but that they’re blocked. We just need to make sure the obstacles aren’t there. Maybe not everyone can afford a headset, but we can make them available, such as in libraries or community centers, so there’s not a block to entry. We’re in the middle of working that out at a grassroots level in LA.

Q: What are the opportunities to create more equitability of voices in this industry?

We’re right at the start, it’s a whole new medium, and we can set the new rules. For example, I’m passionate that this is not for young people, but everybody. Why shouldn’t women in their fifties do this? There’s a lot of cultural prejudice against middle-aged women, that we won’t be able to keep up with technology. There is a myth around VR being techy or gaming, that it isn’t our world, but actually why shouldn’t it be? We can simply use it for what we want it to be.

In terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, what’s really interesting for me is who’s creating and distributing these narratives? How do we, early on in this game, meaningfully create an industry that is equitable? How do we really change the structure so it becomes an industry that has proper representation? It’s still white and male, and there’s yet also a strong female directing presence. But where the money goes is the big thing. When it comes to venture capitalists and female run businesses, that’s where we’ve got to really put in a lot of work – both bottom-up and top-down.

From the bottom up, that means looking at the big companies – who they’re hiring, who they’re giving internships to. Looking at people’s potential as opposed to necessarily their qualifications is a really interesting and different way of hiring people, not necessarily through traditional routes. It also means making sure funding, not only venture capitalists, but other types of funding both within business and also foundations, goes towards women, BIPOC communities and other marginalized voices.

We have an opportunity now to ensure that it’s really a representative industry that is being created and built in a way that reflects society, so it’s not one singular point of view that we’re seeing. That’s what I’ve always been excited to be a part of, and the possibility I see here, too.

Interviewed by Aimee Hansen

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Using Our Experience, Skills, and Power
 to Advocate for Social Issues That Matter

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Tania HaighIn honor of Women’s History Month, it is important to take the time to understand just how much women have contributed to modern society. Of course, it’s easy for most people to identify those “superhero” women who juggle childcare, home duties, education, and work. In reality, though, many of these women also contribute to making the world a better place by pursuing their dreams, careers, and personal aspirations.

To achieve their goals, women have also fought to shatter the glass ceiling by finding corporate success as leaders of Fortune 500 companies. For example, Susan Wojcicki took the helm of YouTube in 2014; but long before her rise as the video-sharing platform’s CEO, she was already an entrepreneur paving her way as one of today’s highest-performing female CEOs. Similarly, in 2012, Ginni Rometty was announced as president and CEO of IBM, becoming the company’s first female chief in its 108-year history.

For certain women leaders, however, achieving professional success and recognition is simply not enough. That’s why many of them find ways to use their corporate influence to impact change—and some even transition away from the corporate world altogether and, instead, use the skills they’ve gained to start social impact programs that truly make a difference in the lives of others.

Take Melissa Lightfoot Levick, for example. Lightfoot Levick is the executive director of ONEHOPE Foundation. Through the contacts and experience she gained in her prior leadership roles in tech businesses, she now uses her knowledge and skills to connect nonprofit organizations with commercial companies, which then enables customers to support brands with charitable affiliations.

It’s no surprise, either, that we see women leaders dedicated to improving children’s lives—such as by better protecting their online experiences, for example. The KIDS TOO Movement was recently launched to further this goal. KIDS TOO works collaboratively with other nonprofits to drive legislation that protects children from online predators, child sexual abuse material, and sex trafficking. The organization also provides parents with helpful information about how to spot warning signs and how to educate their children about the appropriate use of digital devices and platforms.

For all women in the workplace, no matter what their community passions are, there are all sorts of ways for them to use their experience and skills to advocate for all the social issues that matter most to them. For example, women can:

  • Spread Awareness. Women play a key role in bringing attention to important issues and elevating these issues to national awareness. They can speak at national events and conferences to address social issues that are important to them. They can use their influence in the workplace to create social impact programs. They can serve on boards of nonprofit organizations to assist with their executive leadership needs.
  • Step Up and Volunteer. Many nonprofits rely on volunteer assistance, and women with relevant knowledge and expertise often step up to the plate. Organizations that advocate for social change, in particular, often rely on these women to roll up their sleeves and get the work done. While any woman can contribute in meaningful ways, those with specialized skills, such as attorneys and tech specialists, can add significant value to any social program that needs their expertise, driving even more impact.
  • Help Drive Funding. Many women now serve in the C-suite for leading brands. Since most corporations set aside funding to contribute to community causes, women in executive leadership can often use their influence to allocate funding to causes that matter the most to them. Social-impact organizations typically need funding in order to advance their mission; thus, when women drive funding to nonprofit groups, they themselves are playing a vital role in ensuring the success of these organizations.

Throughout the ages, in spite of regular and ongoing obstacles and challenges, women have always played a pivotal role in tackling social issues. As such, their leadership, experience, skills, and power should continue to be leveraged in positive ways to address the many pressing needs identified throughout the world today. Now, during Women’s History Month, it is especially vital to remember and honor women’s collective power and to acknowledge how successful women have been—and will continue to be—at shaping our communities in healthy and positive ways.

By Tania Haigh, founder of the KIDS TOO Movement and co-founder of Parents Against Child Sex Abuse (P.A.X.A.)

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Brandi Boatner: Manager, Digital & Advocacy Communications, IBM

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Brandi Boatner“You’ve got to remain true to yourself, because there are enough people telling you what you can’t do. I will always tell you what you can do,” Brandi Boatner tells young black women. “We’re going to make change together, but you have to be true to yourself. You have to be authentic. If you’re not, what’s the point?”

Boatner speaks to how the standards have changed for social media and social justice, owning your uniqueness as a black woman, opening the door for others and living through hard-earned resilience in New Orleans.

From People Person to PR Person

Boatner has always been a people person. Fascinated with physics, she started out as a physics pre-med major, until she realized being alone with lasers in the lab wasn’t her happy place. While she wasn’t drawn by the image of a public relations (PR) woman, Boatner was attracted to interacting with people and influencing behavior and has been enamored ever since.

“I love the work, I love the people, and using technology to impact and make the world better feeds my soul,” she says of twelve years at IBM. Boatner began when brands were just finding their footing in using social media to create awareness and drive business, and she’s been fascinated by how social media changed in the last two years as organizations had to discover how to communicate and live their values online.

“Once the pandemic happened, everyone had to shift their social strategies: it was no longer about product, but people. You had to be empathetic, sympathetic and not tone deaf to what was happening in the world,” she says. “Now you’re seeing more posts with purpose. You’re seeing the platform being used to stay in touch and informed, and to stay aligned to values.”

Brands Becoming Value Advocates

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, companies were given a wake up call to be more accountable to identifying, communicating and living their values, which also shifted her role when it comes to leading social justice communications.

“If in today’s environment, you as a brand are not sharing your values and what you believe in on social media, that’s problematic. If you are not speaking out against injustice, discrimination and bias, which we all have, that is problematic,” says Boatner. “Today, companies have to advocate not only for the brand but also for what their employees expect them to advocate for: What are your brand values? What do you stand for? What do you stand against?“

Born and raised in New Orleans, she has internalized Southern values such as approaching other with genuine friendliness, not prying on topics such as politics and religion, and looking to the brighter side for opportunity: “I say PR is the ER, because there’s always something happening. It may be easy to say ‘this is the worst thing to happen’, but I always ask, ‘what’s the lesson to be learned, what are we taking away?’ Yes, we will come to a resolution, but what can we learn and do differently?”

Elevating Social Justice and Action on DEI

Boatner is proud to have led the catalyst Emb(race) pledge, working with senior leadership, which launched on June 1st 2020, in which “IBM and IBMers stand with the Black community and call for change to ensure racial equality”- a campaign for policy change and opportunity creation “to help transform this moment of clarity into lasting change.” The effort has expanded to support other race and ethnic communities, including AAPI.

Launched in September 2020 to transform workplace dynamics, she’s been supporting key initiatives for the Transformation and Culture function, focused on growth, inclusion, innovation and feedback. The function’s mission is led by Obed Louissaint, one of her mentors and a black executive at IBM whose role became the SVP of Transformation and Culture.

“HR is a huge juggernaut,” says Boatner. “So how do you carve out a role specifically looking at organizational culture? I have the distinct pleasure to support Louissant’s team with external and social activities and help drive culture change within the company.”

Honored as a changemaker in 2021 by PRNEWS, Boatner observes 2020 brought an impossible-to-unsee reckoning: “It was time to have the uncomfortable conversations around racism and things that happen every day, like microaggressions, code-switching, as well as privilege, which I don’t see as a dirty word. I’ve been taking about D&I for a long time, but we weren’t having those conversations in this context before. People had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable to address these topics.”

In the past year or two, Boatner observes the game has moved from talk to a focus on tangible actions to drive change: “I do believe that we are making the right steps, but there’s just so much more work to be done because after 400 years, there’s a lot of areas for improvement and it’s not going to be ticking a neat checklist,” she notes.

Opening The Door For Others, Wider Yet

Since becoming the first black woman to serve as the National President of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), Boatner has been attuned to what it means to have either the presence or absence of those who walk before you.

“I was the first one, which confused me for an organization that had existed for over forty years,” says Boatner. “At the same time, there were several black women who had led the professional society, so that told me that when I graduated, if I ever wanted to PRSA president, somebody had laid the groundwork before me. I wouldn’t have to be the first this time.”

Boatner feels representation is so important and is inspired, not dissuaded, to be the change: “Whether a lot of people look like me in Corporate America leadership, it has to start somewhere – such as talking to historically black colleges about why PR is a viable career. My attitude is when I am in a position of power, there are people to open the door for, because a bunch opened the door for me to be where I am.”

Among those who have inspired and empowered her, she includes black female executives Judith Harrison, Renetta McCann, Helen Shelton, Debra Miller, and more trailblazing women: “Let’s leave our mark, they showed me, so that’s what I am trying to do. But I’ve never wanted to be black Brandi. It’s Brandi, rockstar and badass, and she just happens to be black.”

Outside her organization, Boatner has had her moments of confronting thinly veiled racist interactions – such as having to make her position in the room clear (and it’s to speak, not get the coffee) or tolerate being handled with kid gloves (such as being presented negative news in a way that seeks to pre-empt or manage the angry black woman stereotype).

When it comes to allyship, she says you have to stop playing safe and stop sitting on the sidelines: “If you’re not an agent of change, you’re literally just a spectator. You won’t roll up your sleeves. It’s great you want to be an ally, but I would really love an accomplice – somebody who can get me into the spaces that I can’t yet get in and can change the way people think and look, because they’re already in that space.”

Being Your Authentic Whole Self, Above the Challenges

Boatner is more at home speaking to a crowd of thousands than a room of a dozen people. She wants to be seen as the Beyoncé of the business world: “I want people to be like, she is a force, she is effervescent,” she says (which she is). “But at the end of the day, I am the epitome of realness. What you see is what you get, and I’m a lot for people to take. I know I live at a twelve on a ten scale, and I’ve tried to come down to a six but that feels uncomfortable, so I decided I’m going back to twelve. That’s who I am and that’s a leadership quality.”

She also values realness and aliveness in those she works with: “I like people who work towards a common goal. I don’t want the naysayers – the we can’ts or the woulda, shoulda, coulda’s. I like people who inspire and empower.”

Boatner makes a point to reach out to black women to encourage owning their roots and raise their vision beyond the possibilities they see for themselves: “I always tell young black women that your blackness is part of your uniqueness. No one can take that from you. I feel as a race and ethnicity, we have a unique set of characteristics and traits as black women that are all our own. And that is something to be proud of and that is something to be shared and that is something to be recognized and valued. No one, I mean no one, should take that from them, including themselves,” emphasizes Boatner. “They are sometimes their own worst enemy.”

She notes that many things are and will feel stacked against you and you’re going to run into hard days, racism and bigoted people, but she urges young black women to let none of that define their possibilities.

Resilience in The Wake of Trauma

Boatner’s greatest passion in her life is her family in New Orleans, and it’s together with her family that she has faced her most difficult challenges.

Sixteen years ago, her family lost their home in Hurricane Katrina, after the roof blew off their house and they were forced to flee and hunker in the storm, salvaging ultimately only what had been stored in a fire-resistant lockbox by her father, such as her birth certificate. And just last year, and exactly sixteen years to the day of this first devastating life-changing experience, Hurricane Ida struck New Orleans and again took her grandparents family home (where her mother grew up) and flooded her mother’s hometown.

Watching in horror from New York and praying not to see her family turn up on CNN, Boatner felt helpless, triggered by the past trauma of Katrina, and desperate to get her mom to New York: “It was incredibly difficult to go through that, and if it wasn’t for my colleagues and best friends, I don’t think I would have been able to get through it. Here I am the woman always trying to make things happen, and I couldn’t do anything. It was crippling and suffocating.”

Boatner had to “dig deep” and being a mindfulness leader supported her, but she reflects it would have been easy to go down a very dark path: “Talk about resilience – my family and the citizens of New Orleans are made of tough stuff because we’ve been through something terrible, now twice.” She notes that people often want to glamorize the survivor story, but when you’ve lived it, you don’t want to relive, dramatize or be defined by it.

“I love my family, I love my Louisiana, I love my tribe,” she says, grateful today that despite the impossible loss, everyone is here and well.

By Aimee Hansen

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Caroline Samponaro: Head of Transit & Micromobility Policy, Lyft

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Caroline Sampanaro“One thing I learned through my community organizing training with Midwest Academy is this idea of leadership: that giving power away is how you grow a powerful movement,” says Caroline Samponaro. “I focus on imparting that message to those I manage: how are we giving away power to build a strength of team and community that can be that much more successful?”

Samponaro speaks to how social issues led her to transport and the journey to feeling confident in her voice.

Social Issues Led Her to Transit

An epic bike ride through Japan is what first set Samponaro, an anthropology major at Colombia University at the time, on the unexpected trajectory of working in transportation.

While writing a thesis on the topic of bike activism, she then began to ride around New York City. She discovered an intriguing intersection between social issues and transport. While working as a paralegal, she started to participate in monthly Critical Mass bike rides on Fridays, an action to create safety in numbers for cyclists by reclaiming the streets.

After challenging an arrest while on a bicycle, she co-founded a group, with other law students and lawyers, called The FreeWheels Bicycle Defense Fund, that raised funds and provided legal support to help cyclists challenge their charges.

“I didn’t come into transportation from a planning or policy perspective initially,” says Samponaro. “I was intrigued about the way that it was an intersection point into cities and government and social issues.”

Though she gained entry into law school, she instead began in a working in transportation in a non-for-profit and never looked back. After twelve years at Transportation Alternatives across various advocacy roles, feeling her impact was limited in scale, she decided to move to the private sector with Lyft as the company expanded its scope to include micromobility.

Affecting Inclusion through Transport

Transportation is a pervasive industry because it touches most people on a daily basis, and Samponaro’s work is disrupting the norms we take for granted that weren’t always norms.

“In the U.S., we’ve spent more than a century building the private automobile into everyday life,” notes Samponaro. “There are New York Times articles from the introduction of the automobile era which reflect the public’s uproar over the invasion of these automobiles onto the streets, which traditionally had been used as gathering places, stickball locations, parks, food markets and all the things.”

“We also heavily subsidize single-occupancy vehicle trips to mask the massive toll this form of transportation takes on society – free parking, cheap gas, roads designed entirely for vehicular traffic. It’s not surprising that roughly 77% of Americans drive alone in their car to work. As we face big challenges like climate change, housing, and equitable access to transportation options, removing the single occupancy vehicle from day to day life is part of getting at the root of the problem,” she says. “Lyft as a company is challenging the premise of the single occupancy vehicle through rideshare, our large-scale bikeshare programs and the ways that we provide our customers with trip planning to integrate transit into a daily commute.”

Samponaro’s line of work in micromobility is focused on creating a network of shared bicycles and scooters that functions like a public transportation system. Though bike activism originally drew her into urban biking, she feels her work is helping to remove the identity politics from riding a bike, while overcoming some of the disadvantages of not owning a car.

“At the end of the day, if we’re trying to transform the way people get around, and make it more equitable and safe, it’s important that when people choose to get on a bike to go to work, they’re not making an identity decision,” she notes. “They’re making a practical one, with a tool that is available, easy and affordable.”

Bringing A More Diverse Human Element to Transit

“In the context of biking and micromobility, often the market is orientating itself towards the perspective of a young white male,” Samponaro observes. “I’ve tried to find opportunities, whether through my own perspective or bringing in the perspective of other women, to make sure we’re inserting a broader view into how we plan our programs and welcome people to our systems.”

For example, street designs generally make the thought of shifting to a bicycle both scary and implausible: “You have to be daring, and you shouldn’t have to be thinking about whether you’re risking your life in your transportation choice. That’s not logical, so I think that impacting the systems around people’s choices become the ways you ensure equity and access.”

“It’s important that there are engineers building models and algorithms to make non-driving easier and more attainable,” notes Samponaro. “I’m most excited about my work when I’m bringing the human dimension to that essential product development. Given how much this area impacts the lives of people, having a people-centric perspective on the work of transportation has been an asset that I can bring and that I find great satisfaction in.”

A Culture of Belonging

“Growing up, I just passed as someone that people assumed was straight. So I struggled mostly in the context of work with a feeling of being closeted, unless I chose not to be,” says Samponaro. “Always coming out over and over again has its own challenges.”

Working in a highly male-dominated industry, she has often been the only woman or one of few women at the table. As a married lesbian mother of 4.5 year old twins, the years have brought internal and contextual changes that have helped her feel confident in embodying her own voice.

“Getting to a place of success and building my career trajectory involved feeling bad about myself at times and being slightly insecure that it wasn’t going to go my way, whether it was the raise or the promotion,” she notes. “If I spoke too loudly in the meeting, was I going to be called out for being rude, as opposed to be appreciated for being assertive? As I became more senior, the biggest feedback I received was that I was not being considerate enough in my tone, the kind of feedback that I feel men don’t receive. So the context of being queer just layered on top of those feelings of insecurity and asking if I belonged.”

Samponaro notes that achieving successes is different than having an inherent feeling of ease and belonging: “The overwhelming sense I used to have was as hard as I was trying and as good as I was doing,” she recalls, “I wasn’t going to get asked to that drink or get added to that bike ride or get included.”

Samponaro accredits much of the belonging and encouragement she now feels to being in an environment where there is a dedicated emphasis on building an equitable company culture.

“I have personally grown to a place where I could feel belonging, but then Lyft is just a wonderful place to work in terms of the emphasis it places on creating affinity groups, recognizing people’s differences, celebrating them and creating opportunities for that to be happening all the time,” she observes. “There’s so much structure built around ensuring that the company is doing equitability, right. The intentionality is key.“

Now that she feels more confident in her voice, Samponaro seeks to become the ally that she realizes she may not have dared to be: “ln my attempts to make sure I kept my job and kept growing in the way I wanted to, did I do enough speaking out on behalf of others around me? Did I do enough ally work? I think the answer, probably up until recently, is ‘no.’”

Samponaro is recognized by those who mentor her for her focus and determination to create change through the work she does. She has learned to embrace her sensitivity and capacity for empathy, though at times challenging, as an asset which has enabled her to truly impact the communities she serves.

By Aimee Hansen

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