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Making Diversity and Inclusion Work

GDC 2025
532K subscribers
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5.1K views 7 years ago
In this 2017 GDC talk, Riot Games' Soha E explains how after her first 90 days at Riot Games, she implemented key values to frame how she can approach diversity in the workplace in order to make it authentic, valuable, and an integral part of the company. Register for GDC: http://ubm.io/2gk5KTU Join the GDC mailing list: http://www.gdconf.com/subscribe Follow GDC on Twitter:   / official_gdc   GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives. ...more
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Dropping out of Grad School

8:34

Understanding Marginalized Communities and Their Voices

9:46

Implicit Biases and Stereotypes

12:30

Meritocracy

16:42

The Intersection of Meritocracy and Diversity

18:39

Diversity and Meritocracy

19:27

Diversity Policies Rarely Make Companies Fairer and They Feel Threatening to White Men

22:12

Fostering an Organizational Mindset That Embraces Diversity

35:10

Embedding Diversity of Thought

37:04

Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset Principle

37:32

Fixed Mindset

37:50

Kind of Mixed in that You Have To Be Aware of and When You'Re Thinking of a Global Mindset if It's a Global Company You Have To Understand that the the Problems That Affect North America Are Not the Problems That Affect Brazil They'Re Not the Problems That Affect Turkey You Have To Really Think Deeply and When You Embrace a Growth Mindset That Means that like as More Data Is Uncovered about How to You Know Diverse Diverse Can Keep Diversifying Leaders in the Space Can Develop alongside those Changes and One of the Examples Is the Way that Hiring Managers Think about Candidates like if You'Re Prioritizing People Who Want To Hire if You'Re Prioritizing Learners Not People Who Are Self-Proclaimed Geniuses or Rockstars You'Re Creating a Possibility for Growth Learners Don't They Know They Don't Have All the Solutions but They Will Do Whatever It Takes To Get Them and They'Ll See Failure as Part of the Process

39:32

In How Our Values Manifest from the Inside Out so that Means Thinking about How Do We Work Together How Do We Collaborate How Do We Make Decisions How Do We Communicate and Share Stories with each Other and Also with Our Players and Also with Our Peers We Take Culture Extremely Seriously and We Believe that Being Deliberate about Who We Are that Will Help Us Grow and Evolve in the Right Way and We Want To Hold all Rioters Accountable to Upholding Our Culture and the Fact that Dni Is Now a Part of that Team That's a Significant Shift

44:12

And We Want To Hold all Rioters Accountable to Upholding Our Culture and the Fact that Dni Is Now a Part of that Team That's a Significant Shift Forward because It Doesn't Actually Change about whether or Not I Consider Programs and Trainings and Policies Etc as Potential Outputs these Are Things That Can Still Happen but We'Re Actually Thinking about It Not as a Pocket That Influence Is Part of the Organization but as Something That Is Deeply Embedded in Our Values Which Fuels Our Passion

44:39

It's Part of Everyday Life and Public Discourse and When It Becomes Integral to Your Organization's Success People Start To Buy In on Their Own You Don't Have To Convince Them because Now Everyone Knows that They Have a Stake in It that They Have a Stake in Improving It and They Have in a Stake in Making the Company Stronger So I Hope that What I Shared Today about Learning To Build Bridges to all Types of People and Having a Belief System That Welcomes Growth and Flourishes under Challenges Is Helpful Keep in Mind It Is a Very Hard Thing To Do

45:21

So I Hope that What I Shared Today about Learning To Build Bridges to all Types of People and Having a Belief System That Welcomes Growth and Flourishes under Challenges Is Helpful Keep in Mind It Is a Very Hard Thing To Do You'Re Not Going To Wake Up One Day and Just Have all of these Things Sort Of Clear and Cut It Takes Patience It Takes Time and Constant Action and It Will Be Messy and It Will Be Awkward and It Will Be Frustrating but My Bet Is that if We Learn To Do this if We Learn To Unite and Work Together Not Only as a Company but as Part of an Industry

45:41

But My Bet Is that if We Learn To Do this if We Learn To Unite and Work Together Not Only as a Company but as Part of an Industry We Can Make Diversity and Inclusion Work So I Want To Thank You for Listening and Gdc for Having Me and Just a Reminder You Will Get a Survey To Say like How'D She Do and You Can Be like Oh God Finally She's Terrible and There Will Be a We Have 10 Minutes for Questions and There Will Be a Wrap-Up Room that We Can Move Over if We'Re Going Overtime There Is a Mic in the Middle of the Room

46:10

And It Kind Of Always Feels like I Have To Like Explain on Behalf of the Billions of Billion of Muslims across the World of like this Is Why We Might Think this Way or this Is Why this Thing Might Have Happened so It Really Depends on What Is Being Asked like I Think Healthy Criticism Is Crucial but if It's Kind Of like a if It Further Read if You'Re Trying To Go for Nuance but You'Re Actually Furthering or Reducing the Problem and Making It More Binary that's Where I Think It's like You Need To Step Back and Just Understand What You'Re Trying To Achieve

51:14

I Can Try and Help You Understand Why People Would Feel a Certain Way but I'M Not GonNa Sit Here and Justify Why I'M Upset You Just Need To Accept that I'M Upset about this Thing and I Find that that Kind of Like Sets the Tone of the Conversation That Not Only Helps Them Understand that They Don't Have To Like You Know Be Sort of a Devil's Advocate They Don't Have To Play that Position but It Also Helps Me Look at Kind of Distance Myself and Be a Bit More Anthropological When Trying To Talk about My Problems and that's Kind of What I'Ve like Being Very Intentional and Setting a Tone from the Very Beginning Is Pretty Crucial like I'Ve Seen a I'Ve Seen Conversations so We Actually Have like an Internal Selection

54:20
Making Diversity and Inclusion Work
N/ALikes
5,195Views
2017Dec 13
In this 2017 GDC talk, Riot Games' Soha E explains how after her first 90 days at Riot Games, she implemented key values to frame how she can approach diversity in the workplace in order to make it authentic, valuable, and an integral part of the company. Register for GDC: http://ubm.io/2gk5KTU Join the GDC mailing list: http://www.gdconf.com/subscribe Follow GDC on Twitter:   / official_gdc   GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.

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GDC 2025

532K subscribers