#ILookLikeAnEngineer, but my Mormon community hasn't always thought so

Speaker 1

Good morning. Welcome. Welcome to Berkeley. Thanks everybody for getting up early to come out and hear the best that Mormon culture has to offer. It’s a high bar.

Speaker 1

It’s my great pleasure to introduce Michelle Glosser. And I don’t know if this has happened to you, if you’re members of the online Mormon communities. you know, any of them. But sometimes we see people’s names online and we think, All right, that woman’s in Feminist Mormon Housewives or that woman’s in the Hub, which is the Facebook group. attached to Sunstone. And we think of us as just inhabiting this little pond, this little place on the Internet. And then sometimes you open your computer and you see Michelle Glauser’s name on Yahoo Glouser’s. Sue, Sarah Glouser. on Yahoo News, and you think, oh, she looks just like the woman that I know from Feminist Mormon Housewives. the person that I know online must think it’s really neat that this other woman is doing this thing that’s in the news. And then you realize that your little puddle, your little pond is in the news, and that the women of FMH, the women of Of the hub and the exponent are out there doing these really amazing things. And I’m so glad that she agreed to come and talk to us about them. Today, so we can be brought into her little pond too. Welcome, help me welcome Michelle Glosser.

Michelle Glauser

All right. Thank you everyone for coming. This is my talk. I look like an engineer, but my Mormon community hasn’t always thought so. I’m Michelle Glauser, as Sarah just said, and I look like an engineer, more specifically, a software engineer. However, if you had told me this 10, 15 years ago when I was in a Mormon majority high school in Salt Lake, I wouldn’t have believed you. Looking back, I wish I had discovered the tech industry earlier because it seems like a pretty clear fit.

Michelle Glauser

When I was in primary, I loved playing with DOS, and I played Fexter and Tetris and all sorts of games on my computer, and I fiddled around with MS Paint. and basically hogged the family computer. I was in the multimedia computer club at school and uh I memorized all of the word perfect keyboard Shortcuts because I like to write stories and I loved all those shortcuts. And as soon as Word took over, I was so mad because there weren’t all those shortcuts anymore.

Michelle Glauser

And then, when I turned 11, I found out about this giant DVD thing called a laser disc, and I was like, oh, that’s so cool! I should use that in my book report. So I convinced the school librarian to teach me how to use it, and then I borrowed it so I could show one digital photo of an animal.

Michelle Glauser

Once I was in Young Women’s, I had the chance to get on the Internet at my uncle’s house, and I was supposed to be playing with my cousin, but instead I spent hours on the Internet looking for Tamagotchi stuff. And I found a Tamagotchi cemetery. Does everyone here know what a Tamagotchi is? It’s one of those Neopet things from 1990. Eight or nine, and you feed it, and it poops, and you’re supposed to clean up after it and make sure it doesn’t die. So I was so excited to find stuff about that. That on the internet, apparently. After that, I got pretty addicted to free cell and solitaire on the computer, and then I ended up teaching my grandma how to play these games so that she could. Learn to use a mouse so she could do family history. And after that, she would call me whenever she had a computer question.

Michelle Glauser

And at the junior high, I was in the X filers, EXE filers. Club, and we learned Visual Basic, and I thought that was pretty awesome. I also got the chance to go to this Girls in STEM workshop. Called Expanding Horizons, and I made this my first HTML page called Michelle Glauser’s Fun Page. I called it F-O-M-G, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. It’s fans of MG. That was before all of these shortcut words on the internet. I think. Anyway, then I signed up for my first email account and I was amazed. Hotmail was so cool.

Michelle Glauser

Then I realized that I really wanted to have internet at our own house, but my mom and My dad said, no way. They didn’t want it. And they didn’t want to pay for it. So I sneakily got a disc with Juno on it from my uncle, and I got the internet working at home. And we hid it from our parents for like six months. Even though there was that dial-up sound at the start, we’d put a pillow over it. And you know, since it was free, it had like this ad that would show up, and you could never get rid of it. So you just have to push it to the side and then check your email, and it was so exciting.

Michelle Glauser

We got Print Shop, and I loved playing with that. And once we got a color printer, I printed everything you could find on there. And then in high school, I was the first person I knew to get a digital camera. And when my class, my AP art history class visited San Francisco Everyone was amazed that I could take pictures and delete them and check them. And they were horrible quality, but I still have those pictures, and it’s pretty awesome to look back at those, especially now that I live in San Francisco.

Michelle Glauser

So in the tech lab class in my high school, which was Olympus High, I was the only girl. And I didn’t think that there was anything weird about that. I thought it was quite fun. I think I probably wondered why there weren’t other girls there

Michelle Glauser

And then at church, I was the only young woman who opted to do the family history Sunday school. Class because I wanted to learn to use Path. So I was the only non-adult in the class, and I picked it up really quick, and after that, they were all dazzled by me.

Michelle Glauser

So once I got into Relief Society after high school, I started blogging. This was 2003. This was pre-blogging. I was using JoeUser, a really old blogging platform. And I thought that was pretty awesome, that we could blog online. I got my first jump drive. It was 64 megabytes. Bytes, and that was great for all of my essays at college.

Michelle Glauser

And then I started working at the Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake. And while there, I realized there were a lot of Things that could be more efficient if we use technology wisely. And I ended up implementing a plan to use BlackBerries to have better customer service to get books out of high density. I thought that was pretty awesome. And it was the first time I’d been able to look up internet on a phone. So that was pretty awesome.

Michelle Glauser

So then after that, I moved to Germany and I while there, even though I was pretty far away from Silicon Valley, I was an early adopter of a whole bunch of Google apps. I had Gmail. I spent 30 minutes every morning reading my scriptures, and then I spent an hour reading Google Reader, all the blogs I had on there. Mostly mommy blogs, Mormon mommy blogs. And then I used Google Voice so my American friends could call me. And I used Google Docs to work with my fellow students. And Google Analytics on my blog.

Michelle Glauser

And even though I didn’t know much about coding, I was able to make a new blog template for my blog. And I even finagled a dropdown menu, which I thought Was pretty awesome because I didn’t really know what I was doing. I would just Google things and stick them in and see if they worked and play with them.

Michelle Glauser

So I ended up writing my master’s thesis on autobiographical acts on the internet. Internet. And I now point to that as like my link to technology, right? I was looking at technology just from a humanities standpoint. But the problem was after my master’s, I was floundering. I had two humanities degrees, but I was rejected by the PhD programs I wanted to get into for digital Humanities. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do anyway since I’d always had this feeling that I could have these career goals to be a professor, but I really would. Just get married and have kids, and that would be that. Because that’s all I heard, right?

Michelle Glauser

And also, I was working at a startup in San Francisco, and I wasn’t making enough money. To pay rent. So I was definitely floundering. And this frog that looks like it’s floundering is actually the mascot of that company I was working for. I think that’s kind of funny. Um anyway, so there was this big turning point I was coming up to.

Michelle Glauser

I was working with engineers and it rekindled my passion for learning new Technologies. And then, as the person in charge of social media for the company, I wished I could build things myself so I’d have content when I wanted it. So I went to Google, of course, and I googled how to build a website. And I found a way for me to learn software engineering without having to go without having to go back To college, and it was Hackbright Academy, which is a 10-week software engineering program in San Francisco for women. And it was so awesome. It was like I had found my groove. I didn’t know what Python was, and within ten weeks, I was a Python programmer. Um I was able to make apps that I had always thought would be cool to have that maybe no one else wanted, but they were useful for me. And um

Michelle Glauser

I learned about negotiating. I learned all sorts of things that I had never heard before as a girl growing up in Utah. And I thought, wow, if only I had found the tech pathway sooner. And I started thinking, there were all these missed connections, right? So there were no church activities about tech or career. Even though I think the boys probably had that, and it felt a little bit sad to me. So when I was a young women’s leader, I said, let’s do a career.

Michelle Glauser

And then my precalculus teacher was my dad’s best friend and we had dinner with him once a month and he taught a CS course and programmed for Texas instruments, but we had never once had a conversation about It and I just thought, oh, I could have learned that from him, but I didn’t. And then there was a strong CS program at the University of Utah, which I did not know when I attended there.

Michelle Glauser

So I started asking what can we do to help Mormon girls and women find their paths? I’m a little biased, and I like to tell every woman I know that they should become a soft Engineer, but I realized that there are a lot of different paths, and mine is different from the one that is usually prescribed by young women’s lessons, I would say. But there are some other ones. As well, that might be good for people. So, these are some ideas I came up with.

Michelle Glauser

I think we need to have more intellectual, encouraging conversations with girls and women. Women. I feel like conversations with young women, for example, center around looks and dating. I think we can. move to more towards more intellectual conversation. I think we should also expand the focus beyond just motherhood and spirituality so we can feel more fulfilled. And find our place in the world, I think. And I think we should regularly educate girls and women about different life options and support them. In those, provide challenges and leadership roles, all of which can be done in young women’s, I feel like, and give visibility and voice to strong women role models.

Michelle Glauser

So after I did Hackbright, ever since then, I’ve been really passionate about helping underrepresented people feel more comfortable in tech or to join tech and I’ve been organizing workshops. Right now I’m focused on coding workshops for low-income women and genderqueer adults in the tenderloin. Of San Francisco. Thank you.

Michelle Glauser

But last August, my husband’s co-worker, who is a woman software engineer, was on an ad for their company. And people started taking pictures of it and writing on social media. She must just be a model. She’s too hot to be an engineer. She doesn’t look like an engineer. And she so she wrote a Medium post about this saying, I look like an engineer and I reached out to her because I found out she Been getting a bunch of negative emails as well, and people asking her out just because of this ad. So I said, we should do something about this. Let’s put up a response billboard. Just showing a whole bunch of different faces that aren’t the stereotypical software engineer. So she came up with the hashtag I LookLike an Engineer.

Michelle Glauser

It went viral in a couple of days because I showed It with a whole bunch of women in tech groups. And it resonated with people worldwide. And we were interviewed by a whole bunch of news outlets, and it was a crazy feeling. Days. But anyway, we put up an Indiegogo and raised $47,000 to put up billboards in the Bay Area.

Michelle Glauser

And these are some of the faces we put on the billboards. And I yeah, I feel so happy to see this. I feel like anyone can look like an engineer. Anyone does look like an engineer and anyone can be an engineer. You just have to have the motivation and you have to work hard and learn. So that’s all I have to say, and I’d love to answer any questions. This is my contact information if you’d like to reach out to me. Thanks.

Michelle Glauser

Um yes, mostly online from people I haven’t directly personally been in touch with. And mostly I just ignore those because trolls are going to troll, and if you respond, it just gets worse. I did go to a Python data science meetup, and this guy At the table across from me, he was like, Oh, I heard about that. That was really controversial. And I was like, What do you mean by that? And he just hemmed and hawed, and I said, I don’t think it’s controversial. I think people should just be treated as people and be seen for their potential. And he got really quiet.

Speaker 3

How to um how would those of us uh who have uh kids, how do we encourage our local communities, our local wards and those sort of how do we encourage them to find a way to to make this thing possible. I mean I can go and say, hey, we’d like to have a career here for the girls, but are there resources I can point them to? That they can make that easier?

Michelle Glauser

Absolutely. I can mostly speak to the coding side of that. I recently went to a ward in Hayward for their Young Women’s Night, and we just built. A website, and I’m going next month, and we’re just going to have a contest to see who can build the ugliest website. And there are a whole bunch of free resources online. If you look Up my name on my blog. There’s an open source spreadsheet for learning to code, and there’s a kids tab, and you can find all sorts of games that kids would enjoy, as well as some more hands-on projects. Type things for adults. But yeah, as far as encouraging career, I would just find a wide spectrum of people to come talk to people. Talk to young women or kids, just let them know what’s out there. I had no idea I could use this interest I had in tech for a career and enjoy it so much.

Speaker 3

So I live in North Deto County and one of the counselors there, her very first conversation with the young girls that come in during high school is, a man is not a plan. And that’s how she starts her conversation with them. You might also want to check out Technovation.

Michelle Glauser

They do high school competitions. where girls form a group, decide on an app, and they have an advisor, and then they have a national competition. So they build this app under the guidance of a mentor and learn a little bit. Bit about that. And you can set it up at any high school. You just need to find a mentor. In Utah, there’s the Women Tech Council. They’re on Facebook. And they have something coming up soon about great companies for women in tech in Utah. Check it out. You can probably find some good panel members. Yes?

Speaker 7

Any terms of opposition inside the church specifically for people that think maybe this is not the role of four women? It might be very bay area, but I’m not sure if I can do it.

Michelle Glauser

You know, I I haven’t heard people specifically say anything, but occasionally I get the feeling that like either they don’t talk to me as if I don’t have any career things to talk about, and they’ll just talk to my husband. Um or they they don’t really understand what underrepresented means. Um my brother texted me when when I was on uh I can’t remember, one of the big news outlets, and he said, What does genderqueer mean? And he never responded to what I answered. There’s just like this lack of conversation, like, we don’t really want to talk about it. Occasionally, I will meet a male Mormon programmer and Usually it’s okay, but sometimes it’s been a little awkward. Like I feel if I were to join their company, I would be treated a little bit differently. So I stay away from that. Yeah.

Speaker 8

Um growing up, did you face any uh stigmatization or bullying from other girls?

Michelle Glauser

Did I face stigmatization or bullying from other girls? I think probably during my most awkward phase, yes. I went to Academy for Girls at BYU when I was twelve, and I was just Ridiculously nerdy and awkward. But I learned really quickly how to fit in and how to be the bubbly Mormon girl. I have to say, though, I’ve found that that’s my default for job interviews now. And sometimes that’s pigeonholed me a little bit because people say, oh, you’d be great for a customer support engineer. And I’m like, I don’t actually want to talk to people all day. But I can’t, I don’t know how to like tone down the bubbly thing. So I’m working on that. But yeah, I don’t think there was a lot of bullying. In fact, there was one girl, she always sent me emails on Juno, and we would like be so excited to check for each other’s emails. We had fun together.

Speaker 9

So last year my husband and I taught a class on women in the church and one of the segments we did for the Institute here was on women working and it it took a little bit of sleuthing to find people in different occupation women in different occupations. Anyway, that night I shared the example of Woman whose name I can’t remember right now, but she does. I’m sorry about that. She does geneticist work. And she talks about interpretable blessing. telling her she would do something that she now interprets as leading her to this career path. When I shared that, I was interested To have young men say, one man said, Do women look at jobs differently? The message I get in church is: you need to go out and provide. This is your duty. I would I would not look at it the way this woman has, but this was my calling in life and that God had directed me to this. Any thoughts on that? That women might perceive worth In a different way, in a more spiritual way than that is.

Michelle Glauser

Yeah, I forgot to mention something about one of the pictures on here, but Carl, your password is. Back up on here. So I don’t know if you noticed that one of the pictures next to the ideas I had was just a mother with a whole bunch of children. I purposely put that in there because I felt like that was the only option I ever really heard at church. Um and because there weren’t role models, I I I just had no idea. So yeah, I think it is hard to find women who are pretty aspirational as far as careers go. There is the Aspiring Mormon Women Facebook group now, which has some pretty great advice. Oh yeah, great. Cool.

Speaker 9

But do you think, to my question, do you think you look at work differently than your husband does right now? Definitely. Absolutely.

Michelle Glauser

In fact, I talk to a lot of people about job descriptions and how little words can make women not even apply. Women won’t apply for jobs unless they reach or meet seven out of ten requirements, I think a study said, and men will do three out of ten. So there’s like this big lack of confidence. I think a lot of women struggle with imposter syndrome. I certainly do every single day. And when I got to the point where I realized that I wanted to have a career and it would make me feel much better to have a career. There was this small morning period where I realized I’m not going to be at home all day. Like, I have to get up every day and get ready and go somewhere for the rest of my life, probably. And I’m making this choice, and I’m happy about this choice, but it’s a different direction than what I had imagined for myself. So, yeah, I think men and women in the church definitely look at jobs differently. In fact, my first job after Hackbright, I was making more money than my husband, and we joked that I was the breadwinner and we were breaking norms everywhere. But yeah, It’s been such a relief to be in a marriage where that’s okay and we are able to work things out. I feel like. So, I was actually engaged when I was 18, and that didn’t work out clearly. I often think if that had, if I had gone through with it, that it I would have a completely different life and that he wouldn’t have been encouraging of me doing something that I felt passionate about. So does that kind of answer your question? Yeah?

Speaker 10

A little story that kind of goes to what she’s talking about. My home teacher, many years ago. was in his early eighties and he had he adored geology. He would plan car trips so they could go and study the sedimentation and he had a huge collection. Of rocks and books, he kind of educated himself as though he were going to become a geology professor. But what he had done his whole life was sell insurance. And I think that might be what you’re talking about. He was raised to think you have to provide a fashionable profession and not what you love doing what you love. Yes, that is what was being expressed by this kid is I can’t do what I want to do.

Speaker 9

I have to do something to provide for my family. It appears to me that women have more flexibility if they choose to work to do something they love to do or want to do as a passion because they weren’t programmed from the time they were young.

Michelle Glauser

Yeah, I think there’s something to that for sure. Your story actually reminds me of that poet who was an insurance agent and he wrote poems on the side every day. I can’t remember who that was, but yeah.

Speaker 6

I’m just wondering, you’re doing such great work and I’m hoping that we can’t So we can take what you’re doing and teach it to young men also, not as like this is a way to empower women, because if you don’t teach it to in Mormonism, if you don’t teach it to all sexes, then there’s no way to do that sort of egalitarian like marriage ideal. So even if you empower women to like see themselves intact and see themselves as a engineers, if they get stuck in a marriage where the, like you said, your husband is finding fit, my husband’s been finding fit, I’ve been able to do My dream career because my husband has no problem with it. But there are a lot of men who grew up in the church thinking that women shouldn’t work. So you kind of have to be able to appeal to both sexes. in this empowering movement, don’t you think? Definitely.

Michelle Glauser

There was an article this week where this woman wrote that we have to stop victim blaming as far as women in tech goes, and that we are helping women instead of confronting the men who are making it problematic for women to be in tech. So you definitely have to work on both sides. I do know there was a little bit of pushback on the I Look Like an Engineer billboards. Some people said, well, how come you didn’t include any white guys on there? Shouldn’t you include everyone? And I was like, this is about giving face to people who don’t usually have one. So, yeah, I think I feel a little torn about that because I feel like the boys are going to get it somehow. There are several guys from my high school who are now computer scientists, and I just wonder, how did they get there? How come I didn’t know? Right.

Speaker 6

Teach the boys that women can do anything. Yes. Like, teach the boys that the women are as valuable, as equal, as well as the music. So instead of just focusing on the women and raising them up, focus on the women raising them up in the context of the larger like warming community. Because like you said, if you go to a job interview and men see you one way All these like white Mormon men see you one way, you’re not gonna get hired. But if these white Mormon men have also been taught that you’re just as smart, and they haven’t been taught that you’re less because you’re Female, you know, like it’s gonna. If you want to change like the larger structures, you have to sort of like include everyone in that. Absolutely.

Michelle Glauser

Um, I think I think the idea I had for putting girls in leadership roles would be great, especially for activities that are young men’s and young women’s. And they need to learn to work together. I’ve noticed since living in the Bay Area that it’s so much better to work with men now because they treat me like a normal person When I was working at the Family History Library, there were problems all the time. I had a really great relationship with my boss, and one of the employees reported us because she thought something inappropriate was happening. And I was like, we’re having meetings. Is that inappropriate? So it’s, yeah, we need to figure out ways for us all to work together so boys can grow up seeing that girls can do what they can. Definitely.

Speaker 7

Can we apply this to besides just in career field within the ward setting as far as anyone who’s been in leadership knows that not every calling is extended is based on Inspiration, but it’s more about a need in the ward. But yet I found the time I was in the bishopric that people, they’re vast on top of resources of mostly women that aren’t being used. Who helps fulfill the needs in the ward, often because of this, you know, they don’t have a priesthood. Well, I don’t think the athletic director in the ward has to have the priesthood. They just have to be someone engaged in sports and Likes to oversee that. And that’s a real frustration, I think, where there’s just so much potential untapped just to get the basic needs of the ward met. So I know you’ve talked about doing something. For young women, is there something that we can do amongst leadership to tell them, hey, how can we allow these people to shine in the Lord’s Heaven?

Michelle Glauser

I actually thought about that last night while I was going over my slides. Because I feel like there’s no clearcut way to get women into more leadership roles in the ward until women have the priesthood. Because people just believe that’s the only way they can lead. I mean, Sunday school leaders don’t really do anything that requires the priesthood, but women can’t. be in that position. Um see yeah, that’s that’s a tough one. I We’ll see what happens in the future. I do know there have been articles in the last few years of ways to make women feel more included in the ward, and that would be things like make sure the Relief Society President is always called President and make sure the Relief Society President is in Ward Council and things like that. You can I’m sure you can Google it and find more of those. We’ll see what happens in the next few years. Sarah, how are we doing on time?

Michelle Glauser

We’ve got ten minutes. Okay, wow. So let’s get jumping Should we work in the ears? Good question. I do not know. Actually, I am one of the leaders.

Michelle Glauser

The question was, how do you handle children and your career? I do not have children, but I have several friends who have done the Hackbright program or are software engineers already, and they have children. And in I’m in their hacker moms group just because I’m a moderator. And it’s tough. They were talking this week about how one of them started looking for daycare when she was four months pregnant and was told there would be a spot by the time her kid was two. And it’s really expensive. And even though both parents are working, the The mom is often expected to do more of the child care when she is home. So yeah, it’s really tough. I think the best way to deal with that is to talk to people who are doing it as well. And that’s why I think those Strong role models are so important because if you don’t know anyone who’s doing the same thing you are and you’re struggling, who are you going to turn to? So I and I think those role models can be a really great inspiration too. When you get discouraged and worn out because you’re running from work to kids all the time, I’m sure it helps to have someone who can relate to that. Yes?

Speaker 11

Backtracking a little bit to this idea of teaching young women and young programs to code, and you specifically doing that, has there been an effort to use and have other male software engineers jumped into that role because they’re male. How important would be a female in you thing leading a young man’s trip about any sort of career path. Is that important? Would it matter? Would you want to Make sure you had an eye-to-eying mix of even men and women for young men and young men, or would you want to push more of an agenda of having women in these leader roles?

Michelle Glauser

I love the idea of having women in the roles. It’s kind of what you were saying earlier, right? Because then the boys can see that women can do it too, and that they can be leaders and they can teach. But I have to say that when teaching girls, I like to keep it separate because I feel like they’re This like weird competition and imposter syndrome thing pops up. So maybe I would have women teachers for the girls and then women teachers for the guys too. But there really aren’t that many. There are I think the average now is eighteen percent of software engineers are women. So that means the women who are software engineers are asked to do diversity and inclusion work, and their jobs suffer, and they get tired of being asked all these questions all the time, right? I’m a woman of trapper, so I hear you. Yeah. Great. Yeah, that’s that’s It’d be great to have mixed teachers for both groups, I guess. Thanks for bringing that up. I’m going to think about that for my next workshop. Alright, I think we have time for a few more questions.

Speaker 12

Yes? Do you skip pressure? Some of the fourth of the top. Yeah. Do you get pressure from friends and family in Utah? Even though you’re successful in engineering and computer work, do you still get like, oh, that’s nice, but you still haven’t made it yet because you don’t have kids?

Michelle Glauser

You know, I have to say that it’s been a huge surprise to me that the pressure to have children has been more from the Buddhist Chinese side, my husband’s side, than from the Mormon side. So at our wedding or at our reception or whatever you want to call it, at our lunch. His dad got up and was like, We can’t wait for you to have grandchildren for us. And I was like, What the? I have not heard anything from my parents. I do know one of my nieces has said, when am I going to have some cousins? And her mom talked to her about how that’s probably not an appropriate question to ask. So it’s it’s been fine, but occasionally people will will assume that I am like almost ready when I may not make that choice at all, you know? And that’s something I wouldn’t have considered a long time ago: that there’s the option of not having children. And I’ve noticed that even though my husband is much, much better with children, when we go visit family, people will want to hand their babies to me. And I’ll be like, oh, you over there. So, yeah, there’s this huge expectation, and no one ever asks my husband that question. Question, right? They’ll just ask me. I’m like, it takes two to tango. So, yeah. Anything else?

Michelle Glauser

Anyway, I’m happy to answer more questions via email or in person.

Speaker 13

You gave a uh website early on to the gentleman over here and I was going to write it down.

Michelle Glauser

Was it the learning to code resources? Yes. If you Google my name, Michelle Glauser and Learning to Code Resources, it’ll be the first thing that pops up. Otherwise, I can give you the link later. That’s perfect. Okay, great. All right.