“Ocean of people in middle management where in tech, they happen to be a certain demographic -- a homogeneous demographic--

ROB
Which is white men. But let’s go ahead. I’ll say it for you.

NOELLE
Yeah.

ROB
That’s fine. Just stating the facts.

NOELLE
I’m always like, the last few years that… Yes. And they hold the key, right? They are the gatekeepers to leadership within all the companies I’ve ever worked for.” -- Rob Richardson and Noelle Silver

-------------------

ROB RICHARDSON
Welcome to another episode of Disruption Now. Honored to have Noelle Silver who is the founder of the AI Leadership Institute on… She is a, I guess, tech evangelical… no, “Evangelist,” excuse me. I’ll make sure I get that right.

NOELLE SILVER
[Inaudible - 00:48]. Either way… yeah.

ROB
Yeah. Either way--

NOELLE
Yeah. Just have the word “Tech” in front, you’re okay.

ROB
Yeah. A “Tech evangelist.” I said “evangelical.” I don’t know what I’m thinking there. Anyway, she’s spreading the good gospel of why tech is accessible to more people; how we need to get the process right; how we need to have more mindful leadership and systemic change within the tech and data industry. And it’s really an honor to have her on. -- Noelle, how are you doing?

NOELLE
Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

ROB
I’m excited to have you. You know, I’ve been inspired by your story. I can tell, from the research I’ve done, that you have a lot in your head. You’ve come through a lot of experiences and that you want to do more. You want to change more. So I am encouraged by your inspiration and your view on things. And I think more people need to hear about you and hear about your journey so they can know that it’s possible. I want to say congratulations to what you’ve done and I know you have a lot of great things coming in the future.

NOELLE
Yes. Thank you so much.

ROB
I want to get… just kind of an exploration question so I can kind of learn you a little better. So you’ve quite the evolution in your career. I’m curious that with the great knowledge you have now in tech and all of the challenges and barriers you’ve come over through the process, if you were talking to Noelle now when she was first starting off, if you can talk to your younger self, what advice would you give yourself, part one, and what advice would you ignore?

NOELLE
I’ve thought about this question before and honestly, I’d be a little cautious about giving myself any advice that would deter me from the path I ended up taking.

ROB
Interesting. Tell me why.

NOELLE
Because I feel like… I did get lots of advice that was not good as I was going through my different career changes.

ROB
You can start with that part of the question. What part was horrible?

NOELLE
Many, many, many times, I would… So I’ll start from the very beginning. I never graduated from high school. I went but I guess dropped out. But I dropped out to go to college. I felt like I had learned all I could learn. I had some Caucasian male economics teacher tell me like, “You'll never leave this town. You're not going to college. I’m not going to pass you. Just take your lot in life.” And I was like, “I’m never going back to school again.” That was like in the spring of that year and by… like within three months, I had--

In [indiscernible - 03:21], I had good SAT scores. I did the work. I just didn't check this box. Then I went to college and had the same experience. People who didn't look like me or understand the way I learned or understand the way that I acquired knowledge dismissed me. And again, I was like, “That's fine. I’ve got enough knowledge now that I can go get a job.”

One of my favorite kind of stories that I tell is about how I learned tech. And I didn't go to school to be a technologist. I was in aeronautics, aviation, which is technical but not software engineering.

ROB
Sure.

NOELLE
I then went to Barnes & Noble back in the day when Barnes & Noble had like the wall of books that were all computer science books. Now it's like this little TV section. It's very sad. But back then, it was a whole wall. And now I own much of that wall. It got to the point where I’d go in and be like, “Got it. Got it. Got it. Oh a new one” and I grab it and I take it home. And the way I learned software engineering was I’d go through these books. And they were all lab books, if you remember books back then. There were just sections--

ROB
Right. Yep, I do.

NOELLE
Right?

ROB
I guess I’m old enough to understand what you're talking about. Go ahead.

NOELLE
I know. Some of them are like, “What?”

ROB
I’m not old but I’m old enough to know your conversation and event… yes.

NOELLE
And this was like Y2K. So there was a bit of a perfect storm where I was leaving college. I wanted to do something in tech. I did get that advice from people in school. They did say like, “Tech is the place to be.” I didn't realize that they didn't actually mean necessarily for me-me -- like Hispanic female Noelle. But I took that anyway. I learned.

And back then, in Y2K, they needed people just like we need people today in data. Like, “We're willing to teach you as long as you can show aptitude, passion, perseverance.” People are willing to hire you on that opportunity today in data just like we did on Java developers back then. So that's what I did.
I learned in a book and I interviewed online and I got my first job teaching, actually, at IBM -- teaching object-oriented programming. So that was like the beginning. But the entire time, people told me I wasn't technical enough to do it; I wasn't capable; It wasn't the right place for me; I should probably stay in customer service -- like non-stop. The advice was like, “Stay in your lane.” And that advice has continued every step of the way till this very day.

ROB
Oh yes.

NOELLE
“Stay in your lane.”

ROB
Yeah. People want to put you in their boxes, right? I told you offline, and many people heard my story, about how people wanted to put me in the same box. “You're never going to be able to go to college. Why are you going to engineering? You're going to fail.” I think one of the most important lessons is to not allow other people to feed you that garbage and figure out… But it's hard, right? When the majority of people around you have a narrative, your brain tends to wire that way.

NOELLE
Right. And there’s not a lot of--

ROB
Do you remember what pushed you? -- Go ahead.

NOELLE
Well there were just not a lot of people like us back then, Like 20 years ago, there was no one doing podcasts that looked like me, that I could be like, “Oh okay.” Like I literally thought I was alone. Like I was the only one on these teams. And this is true. I would always maybe have like an African-American male. And so it would be me and that person. But we were like the tokens and that was it. And hiring stopped for that demographic.

ROB
Yeah. We’ve checked the box.

NOELLE
Right. Gone.

ROB
You see like our inclusion is those two. Look, you want to tell us about issues of diversity?

NOELLE
“[Inaudible - 06:45] trouble with Noelle,” you know.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
Yeah, it was really… And I just think we were… I don't know. I call us the “Suck it up generation.” I was just so interested in being successful and I just sucked it up. I didn't stand up and go, “This is ridiculous. I shouldn't have to work twice as hard, three times as hard to get the same recognition as my peers.” But I did anyway.

And now it's almost a bad habit. Right now, when I go into a situation, I over-prepare. I over-study so that I’m never caught when someone's like asking me a question that my peer knows and I don't. So I’m never caught flat-footed which is good, I guess, as an entrepreneur. It's an excellent skill to have.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
But it's sad and unnecessary.

ROB
It's funny… to interrupt you. We had this conversation about the narrative that Black people, people of color say, “You have to work twice as hard to get half as much.” I don't have a problem with the “twice as hard.” I have a problem with the expectation in the “half as much.” So the issue is like, “Okay, maybe if we have the mindset where we have to work hard, that's fine.” But then our mindset needs to be like, “White people are… They're like, “If I work hard, I expect to get doubled.”

NOELLE
That's right.

ROB
And I think changing the expectation of… And we got to change the expectation of ourselves and we got to change the expectation of the greater society who thinks like, “Okay, well they're the exception.” And they kind of know that when they get here, you're going to work twice as hard because to be a person of color--

It shouldn't be this way but to be a person of color, you know that you're an over-performer, that you need to pay and appreciate and reward and incentivize and have a culture that… make sure that people like that want to stay and you empower them to want to stay, not to say “twice as hard and expect half as much.” And your organization gives half as much like that's okay. No, it’s not okay. You had to suck it up.
And you went here closer than I thought you would. And I want to come back to your journey at some point. But let's go here while you're here. You talked about experiences that you had where you would--

You're kind of a disrupter. I don't think your goal is to go out and disrupt. But your goal, from what I tell, is to try to improve things. But you try to improve things… Here's a challenge. You try to improve things which require change which is inherently disruptive. And people, from what I can gain from my research of you, they then take that on as a threat and then you get these kind of microaggressions, what I think you called “Wing-clipping.”

NOELLE
Yeah.

ROB
Can you give some examples of what that looked like and then how you dealt with those situations?

NOELLE
Yes. And fortunately, I feel I’ve now been able to more accurately attribute this wing-clipping to kind of middle management. There's this ocean of people in middle management where in tech, they happen to be a certain demographic -- a homogeneous demographic…

ROB
Which is white men. But let's go ahead. I’ll say it for you.

NOELLE
Yeah.

ROB
That’s fine. I’m just stating the facts.

NOELLE
I’m always like, the last few years that… Yes. And they hold the key, right? They are the gatekeepers to leadership within all the companies I’ve ever worked for

And my challenge has always been… I go in and I am very transparent, especially today, about my ambition. I’m like, “My goal here is not to do the job you are hiring me to do but to show you that I can do that and manage the team that I’m currently doing that for and manage teams of those teams.” I give them the lay of my future ideation of what I want to do for that company in the interview because I don't want there to be any confusion because I’ve learned that lesson.

And even when I do that, I have the conversation… and I very recently had this conversation where they sit me down and they say, “I hired you to do this job. Just do that job. I don't need you to be a leader. I don't need you to represent or speak or say when you see something. I don't need you to say something every time you see something.” And it shocks me because I keep searching for the perfect kind of company that has a culture, that would accept someone like me, right…

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
…why wouldn't you want someone who's ambitious and wants to serve people and create a product that the users need and love? Why wouldn't you want to help that person do more as opposed to be like, “Sh. Be quiet. Sit down. Don't do any more podcasts. Stop blogging”? “What?” Like nothing I am saying is offensive. I mean I guess you could perceive it as such. But it's happened continuously.

And unfortunately, I’ve actually had people of all types come to me and say, “Oh my gosh. I’ve had this conversation” -- not just women in tech which is where I tend to focus, specifically, African-American; men in tech that happened to be the one engineer.

I have a friend of mine who is a doctorate. He did his doctorate on African-American engineers and how it's very similar to what we just said -- how difficult that road is but how much worse it is when you do do twice the work or four times the work?

ROB
Yep.

NOELLE
And you’re actually told like, “That's fine. Good. Glad you did it. But it doesn't actually matter because I don't need you to do that one.”

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
But my golden boy who just got hired, right, passes me, get a promotion within six months when I’ve been here three years. That’s why it's wing-clipping because some people don't have their wings clipped.

ROB
I understand what you mean. To the extent that you're comfortable, talk about a situation how it played out and how you… If Noelle was in charge of said corporation, how should it go in order to actually create the culture that you want because we can have these ideals. I can say, “Tech, like Hollywood, paints this picture of being this ideal place where everybody is included. We are so high and mighty and open-minded and liberal and progressive and…” -- Choose the adjective you want to choose.

But when you look at the numbers, they don't look different from anybody else except… The language sounds different but the results look the same. I know I’m making generalizations but I think the facts back up what I’m saying.

NOELLE
Yeah, absolutely. And I will give you a very specific example around hiring. I have always been in a position to build teams where I’ve gone so that has been wonderful because I do have a different lens. However, every time I go to build a team--

Most recently, I want to build a team and I say that I’m looking for a symphony in this team. When I look at the Zoom call today, I want to see colors, shapes, sizes, introverts, extroverts, people who learn differently, people with ADHD, people who maybe are hard of hearing, who have special physical disabilities or needs. If they have the chops, I want them to represent especially someone building data science and AI solutions. I want to make sure that my constituents--

The entire world is my constituents when I build an artificial intelligence machine learning model, so I need to make sure that my engineers are empathetic to those perspectives.

And I will tell you that the conversation has been… and even I have people who would be considered diverse recruiters, right -- African-American recruiters -- and they say the same thing to me which is, “I can get you a person who is qualified and you should take the person who is most qualified. It doesn't matter what color they are.”

ROB
Oh my god.

NOELLE
Right? And it's the story we've heard before.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
Of course, all developers matter. And of course, all people with the skills worked hard to get those skills. But the reality is, is that… And I know this from a very specific situation. I walked into a company… a media company and there was someone there who had been there 12 years, had led teams but never got promoted to leadership. Just sat there taking it, sucking it up, right…

ROB
Yeah.
NOELLE
…while someone comes in six years later and is moving up the ranks and eventually becomes this person's director. And people don't understand that when I’m now recruiting for someone, like this person who's got 12 years of seniority leading engineering teams, he'll never show up on my radar because I’m looking for a director and he never got a director promotion.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
So I’m trying to teach CEOs now like how to look for different things.

ROB
Yeah because if you want to include, you have to be intentional about how you do it. And to know that if you're looking for inclusion to look like it's always… Look, it's not going to look that way so you have to look for… Search for talent. It's funny… I mean search for how you would your network and your friends to say that you see potential in these people and view them for the potential that they have. But that's certainly not done.

So a point that I really, really agree with you on… I’ve talked about this before. We've talked about the diversity and inclusion, whatever you want to call it -- the “diversity and inclusion tokenism,” the “diversity and inclusion…” you know, the “Check the box” approach where there's someone there but they're there to… Not always true but generally, this tends to be true, that the D&I person has no power, no position…

NOELLE
No budget. No people.

ROB
…no budget or the budget is very little. They get to throw one party a year and they get to put out a really nice report and make it look like they've done nothing but nothing's really changed. How do we go about moving diversity and inclusion from just a talking point and tokenism to actual reality within these institutions? And you talked about it with hiring. But how do we put it into the DNA of decision-making when it comes to the corporations? And more importantly -- this is the broader part of the question -- how do we do it when we're incorporating technology which has a whole bunch of impact we can go through?

NOELLE
So I am a big fan of this term “Inclusive engineering.” Hiring is part of that -- building the engineering teams. But also, actually, in the teams themselves and in all of the stages of developing a piece of software -- it's called the “Software development life cycle” -- and understanding--
So I’m in AI. I’m in data. So understanding what it means to collect… For example, diverse data for a problem, what it means to then get testers, right -- beta testers -- that represent a diverse collection of people.

So this whole concept of changing the DNA of our engineering teams, it starts with hiring. Then I found out it really doesn't. It actually starts in education because a lot of these people, just like you and I, were actually told, “This isn't a path for you,” right?

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
Like, “You grew up in this city? Oh no, no, no. You go to vocational school. You can work at a mechanic…” It doesn't matter how smart you are or what you got on your SATs. They might not even take the SATs in some of these communities. I think a lot of it was me realizing hiring is hard and then once you're in a team, creating a leadership organization that recognizes this diversity and it empowers those individual engineers to pull the chain on the train and stop something from happening.

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
Right now there's a lot of people like me… And actually, there was just recently a Facebook article or an article about someone in Facebook who was on an engineering team and uncovered bad things happening, right -- bad decisions that were being made not on purpose, not intentional, of course, but that were happening because everyone asking the question were all the same and therefore agreed with each other. There were no descending opinions. And the only descending opinion, which was hers, ended up getting… Basically, she was moved out of that--

ROB
Marginalized.

NOELLE
Yeah, moved out of the company.

ROB
Moved out of the company.

NOELLE
There’s kind of both sides. Like, how do we make sure we're using the pipeline with people that will diversify the engineering teams themselves? But that doesn't even matter if we don't have a leadership team that empowers their ideas because they will be the lone voice of reason many, many times. And today, that's what they call us… you know, “Oh you're just an emotional Hispanic” or “You're just [crosstalk] [inaudible - 19:13]--“

ROB
Of course “emotional.”

NOELLE
Yeah. Like they can write off a rational… A perspective can be written off because we're an anomaly. And that I think is the bridge we need to tip, right? We need more people like me, like you, in leadership roles where we control the hiring and we control the policies in those companies.

ROB
You discuss this a lot about mindful leadership and what that looks like and why it's impactful -- if I can remember some of your points. The reason why people… Some recognize the need to have diverse talent. Some recognize the need to have a process that is not so short-term results but it's more about making sure we go through the process, test things out a little better.

One example I could think of clearly, we discussed when Microsoft created the racist bot. I mean it wasn't intentional but you know when you don't have people and ask obvious questions, you're gathering stuff from Twitter… Yeah, Twitter. Have you seen what goes on on Twitter? I mean it's really easy to figure out… People would have told you like, “You might want to think about this and that.” What does mindful leadership look like if we wanted to do that, making sure that our culture does that because I do believe you've said you worked with some great CEOs. The issue is something didn't reach between the CEO’s vision and what actually gets implemented here at the manager level? Am I right on saying that?

NOELLE
That's right. That’s that middle management that I’ve uncovered is really cut and… I’ve had one person say something that kind of broke my heart which was, “There's an entire generation of people who have to retire or die or leave in order for some of these problems we're trying to solve to be solved because they sit in positions of power and they are literally the--”

Like Satya Nadella says amazing things for Microsoft. I’m so on board. I saw a BusinessWeek cover. He had a halo like he's the savior. However, the middle management of Microsoft, it's very difficult for what he's saying to show up in an engineering team because there's A] a bunch of layers. But also because the people in the middle have been there longer than Satya -- embodying values that are different than that new leadership team.

ROB
And those old values, my guess would be, Noelle, and then finish… Those old values are the ones that are actually reinforced and incentivized versus the more aspirational ones, the longer term. It's probably like, “Well yeah, yeah, yeah” and all that. But what are we doing this quarter? Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that. What did you bring in this week?” I mean is that wrong?

NOELLE
That's right. Someone recently wrote an article about it and they called them the “Untouchables” because they are this kind of, I don't know, layer within the organization and they've been there longer than most of the new leadership coming in. They're like untouchable. They will stay and they will influence decisions just like that. When it gets to a certain point, you have a bunch of minority leaders rising through the ranks, awesome, saying the right things, calling out bad behavior and then it gets to this literal glass ceiling--

ROB
And it stops.

NOELLE
Yeah. And they’re like, “Thank you [crosstalk] [inaudible - 22:32].”

ROB
Right. I still blame that on leadership though. I’ll tell you why -- because I think the greatest thing a leader can do is get real feedback to know when they have spinach in their teeth. So I try to encourage my team to say what did--

NOELLE
Like [shows teeth].

ROB
Exactly. Like, “I know I look stupid. I want you to feel encouraged to say when I did something stupid.” And this unwillingness to be vulnerable as leaders is really, I think, hurting organizations and institutions and frankly, countries.

And I’ll say that I don't want to accept the fact that we have to wait for people to retire. I believe in disruption.

NOELLE
I agree.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
If anything, it fired me up.

ROB
Yeah. My definition of “Innovation” is different from most. I believe innovation is a rebellion against the status quo. It’s those who are willing to fight for a better future and they're willing to take some risks to do so. I think we have to make these organizations, institutions and sometimes, our country, understand the consequences of not being inclusive.

If you look at what happened in this country, particularly in the south -- and I want to bring it back to this moment and ask you a question here -- but if you look at what happened in this country pre-the Civil Rights movement -- of course, during slavery -- the south -- people don't all often make this argument -- the south did worse economically because of how they treated, obviously, Black people at that point in our country because they had a repressive, non-inclusive economy. The economy did not thrive. They were holding on to an old way of thinking and preventing innovation, preventing economic growth.

Go back and look at the numbers from, whatever, 1880 to 1950 -- the south trails. And the reason for that is how they treated Black and brown people. And that prevented white people, too, from doing well.

So I think the message here is that we have to figure out a way to win the war of idea and ideals and be more… I think we have to be more aggressive about it and understand that this is not just about including, which is very important, including African-Americans, people of color, women, but it's also about making sure our nation can be prosperous. The two are together. That's my thought.

NOELLE
Yeah, I agree. And I think part of it… That's why I’m so passionate about like this concept of mindful leadership, is like elevate… “When you see something, say something” is kind of the core. But how do we elevate the voices of people who already know that bad things are happening?

And even today, I have sat in rooms where there was openly racist behavior and the person who was being offended didn't say anything and the person who was offending was kind of arrogant about the fact that they could do it. This is 2020. I don't understand. So that's why now, I’m like, “Do I just need to say out loud, “You're not alone”? Like you will not--”

That was one thing that I did feel at like other companies -- Amazon. Microsoft -- when I was in these moments where I was feeling kind of being… I was discriminated against, I guess.

ROB
Yeah, I’m sure you were.

NOELLE
I would say to myself like, “Maybe this is me. Maybe I misunderstood,” which is what we all do in these moments where our value is being questioned.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
And even though I am a rock star, like I had 600 million in revenue that I had pushed. I had an award… Like I had data. And even with that data, I left thinking, “This must be me. No one else is doing it. No one else has this problem. No one else is getting fired unfairly. No one else is…” Like I don't see… And a lot of it is because there's this ridiculous shame associated with it. So when we're the one who's being offended, we crawl into the hole.

ROB
Yes.

NOELLE
We're the one who go… you know, not so much… At least I’m hopeful, less now. I see more and more people speaking up now.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
I almost see that horrible thing that happened in the ‘90s where we all spoke up for a while and then we started just… You know, I can already see it now. From the middle of the summer, we're starting to sit back and go--

ROB
Oh yeah, yeah. Now we're getting a little tired of this. “We said “Black lives matter.” What else do you want us to do?”

NOELLE
Exactly. Right.

ROB
Let’s move on. Can you please stop making us feel this way? [Inaudible - 26:59]--

NOELLE
Yes. And you get tired of fighting which is where I’ve been--

ROB
You do. I mean I’m already… Look, I’m a fighter and I’m tired right now. [Laughter]

NOELLE
I know. This is the problem we have to solve because people… especially I think Hispanic and Black and brown people, they're not going to put up with that forever. And eventually, they’ll just be like, “You know what? I’m out.”

“Reboot Representation” was a report done by the Gates Foundation and they found that we're doing a good job getting people into jobs. We're doing a horrible job keeping them because people will just not put up with it which is good but it's bad because it doesn't solve our problem. It's just like Amazon and Facebook… Was it Facebook? No -- Amazon and IBM giving up on facial recognition because it--

ROB
Because it’s too hard to actually solve the problem, that you can identify Black people not just white men?

NOELLE
Can we just like make that happen as opposed to be like, “Oh it's broken. We're just not going to fix it.”

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
You know, it's the same thing. Are we going to just not fix it then and just call [inaudible - 28:04]?

ROB
I want to talk to you about this moment right now in the United States of America. Obviously, we just got done with the most contentious election of our lifetime. And that's saying a lot because there's been a lot of contentious elections in our lifetime. We've had plenty of them, right -- nothing quite like this one. Nothing quite like this moment of anger with Black and brown people, people that are allies of Black and brown people. People that say they are -- some.

I haven't seen a moment like this. I’ve never had more conversations outside my race or outside of person of color discussing… I’ve never had more conversations about that, more, I guess, outreach. I think some of it is genuine. I think some of it maybe is not. But I’ve never seen more attention put to the issue of equity and equality than I have at this moment in my lifetime.

But as you said -- I heard in another podcast -- some people deal with it as I think out of just complete anger, which is understandable, and people see you dealing with it and if you don't deal with in the same way, it's like, “Are you not really for the cause?”

I had the same…. then I’ll let you finish. I was on the board of trustees at the University of Cincinnati. I became chairman of the board and I have a whole lot of stories. But one major issue we dealt with was one of the officers of the university at that time, right when I became chair, shoots an unarmed Black man unjustifiably and I had to do a whole, whole lot of stuff.

When I think about what I had to go through in that moment, how many times I had to… We did create change. We pushed out some of the… The structure of those officers changed, the infrastructure. I did a lot of stuff. But I had to deal internally with a board that was all conservative, all very just not used to dealing with issues like this and would say a lot of offensive things. And I had to figure out how to have that conversation. But I had it directly with them to make them understand it.

And then I had the challenge of dealing with members of my own community that assumed because I didn't get up and put my fist up in the middle of the meeting and stand on the table, that I wasn't fighting hard for Black people or inclusion or equity when I spent my entire career doing that. And so I do think it's important… And I want to get your thoughts about how we should go about viewing systemic change in this moment and understanding that there's a broad perspective and approach to doing that.

NOELLE
Yeah. I think this is such an important point because I’ve also been in that situation. I’m not an aggressive type of fighter.

ROB
I actually am and I still got called out. -- Go ahead. [Laughter] I was pretty aggressive. I was like--

NOELLE
Well I’m not. So I definitely have people who are confused or who are like offended at the fact that I’m not angrier about what's happening or that I’m not taking more action when actually… I think part of it is having empathy for the ways that people can be impactful. And systemic change is not… It’s not the riot that we had that was good and momentous and created immense momentum but systemic change is decades in the making, right?

ROB
Correct.

NOELLE
And the work I’ve been doing my entire career since the ‘90s is all… I am, at least in my mind, thinking those things are what are contributing to the changes that I’m seeing; that I am encouraging others to think and act the way I do; that I’m sharing with them the challenges, increasing awareness, so that when somebody's in a room… It all comes down to… Another mindful leadership trait is self-awareness and just knowing that into--

When you get that gut feeling, it's not that you ate something bad for lunch -- like something bad is happening and you need to say something. And I’ve just watched too many people judge either the person who was trying to implement systemic change but not in a mechanism or way that they felt would be more effective--

And I actually am like both end. Like, bring it on. If you were going, like raise your fist and yell and protest, good. I’m going to go… All right, I’m going to quit my cushy executive job and go work for a startup that's changing education. That is my level of impact.

ROB
Yes.

NOELLE
But everybody's level of impact is valuable. And that's one thing… I mean that's the actual… the mission of inclusion. So we have to be careful not to tip to the side of the oppressor.

ROB
Yeah, exactly because we have--

NOELLE
Non-judgment of each other.

ROB
As long as our North Star… This is not always the case. There are some people I will call out if they're defending things that are clearly wrong. I think that's different than what we're saying. But if our North Star is about expanding access and opportunities and you've seen that people have done that, I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

When they say something that might not agree with everything you say… Particularly on Twitter. It’s easy at every moment, people judge something you say -- one statement. People don't look at the whole record of things you've done. It might be one statement and one context, that they're not viewing in the full context and people have this now emotional reaction. But I think, and I’m going to talk… I think there's also part of a reason for that. I think it's part of how social media is doing things. This is why we also need a space. I’ll talk about that in a minute.

But I do think that is what's going on. And people have to realize that there are… I look at this as three kind of basic layers -- I’ll say four, actually -- of change. One is… Protest is a part of the process, right?

NOELLE
Yeah, exactly.

ROB
I’m not doubting protest. Protest is absolutely necessary. It's necessary to bring attention. Then that has to follow some type of policy, right? That’s also a longer process. But if the protest doesn't connect the policy, nothing happens.

The third part is actually has to be power -- like you need power to do any of this stuff. And there is an automatic criticism I think of people when you get to be in positions of power. And it's, unfortunately, seen as an anomaly because it is in America when you see Black and brown people in positions of influence. And when people don't see instant change across the board, they assume the worst from any leader that is in those positions. Until you've held one of those positions and leading a large institution and fighting hard… Again, I’m a hard fighter but I’m also a strategic fighter. If you just fight one way, you're not going to be an effective fighter.

NOELLE
Yeah.

ROB
It is hard when you're in these positions of power and leadership. And this is why we're going to create the app and why we're doing and finishing the app. There has to be an understanding of the relationship to power and how to actually move it and how we do that as a collective whole because there's not a full enough appreciation. I think once we get to that, that's how we, I think, have the disruptive change. That's how I kind of feel about it for this moment.

NOELLE
You know, I’ll share with you a shocking thing that happened as I moved into more and more senior roles. I moved into an executive role and in this role, I was like, “I am the leader that I always wanted,” right? So in my mind, I’m like, “I’m going to do so much. I’m going to support. I’m going to listen. I’m going to implement.” And what ended up happening in the first few weeks of my tenure in this position is that literally--

You know, we all have these channels, slack, teams, whatever. I start joining the channels that as an independent contributor, I realize a lot of ideas come from, right -- so the people of color channel and the Latinx channels and all this. So as an executive, I can go in and hear and then implement. Like I am there to serve.

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
And immediately, I was cut out of those organizations. They were like, “You can't play here because you're an executive and therefore the enemy.” So to your point around-- It’s one thing to have power but it has to be holistic. You have to, as the person being helped, know when someone comes in that's going to serve you and help you and then give them a chance because it was…Like you just were talking about, it was not only difficult but it was extremely lonely.

ROB
It is very lonely.

NOELLE
As soon as you get cut off from the people that you have like embraced as your family up until the point where you become a leader, to then be alone and then worse, in the den of wolves, right, of people who don't think what you say is valuable then--

I’m now in this executive room. I am all by myself. And my crew has gone. “Oh you're not one of us anymore.” I cried.

ROB
That’s hard.

NOELLE
Literally, I haven’t cried at work since like my first day on the job at IBM when I had a traumatic experience with some white men. I cried as a grown woman going like, “Oh I wouldn't want to be an executive either. I wouldn't want to be here by myself.”

I, again, of course, like “hooh,” took a deep breath, practiced some centering exercises. I was like, “No, I’m going to fix this.” I ultimately left that role because I could not… It's one thing to be given power… As you know with the diversity officers, right, you get given a perception of power. So it's one thing to be given power but it's another to even have power that you are not… like your constituencies won't let you help them with.

ROB
Yes.

NOELLE
So it's kind of both sides. And I just was shocked when that happened. I wasn't prepared for that.

ROB
The side exists. And being an effective leader requires the leader to be vulnerable but then it also requires those who are the stakeholders to be receptive to being vulnerable because--

We know where that programming comes from. That programming comes from the greater construct that tells us we can't trust each other. And we selected this person because they are different from you. No. Noelle is not different in terms of being more special than any other Hispanic or person of color or Black person, neither is Rob Richardson. And changing that narrative within ourselves and within our brains and then trusting each other… because you can't get--

What this comes down to, I believe, is having trust, to not subscribe the worst to ourselves when we get to these positions of power. I’m sure Obama went through it. I’m sure that's part of his struggle he went through as well. I mean I’m not saying the man was perfect. I think he was a pretty good president. I think he went through a lot that we can't even imagine. I mean if you think all the microaggressions and things he had to hold in, he had to be the most calm Black man to ever exist on the planet Earth because some stuff that he put up with is some stuff I couldn't put up with.

What do you advise people… Like you've been through this. You are very talented. And there are other talented people out there but I think we need to say you have worked hard. You are talented. And yet you've had these setbacks, struggles. What do you say to people as they say, “Well if she's had those setbacks and struggles, how can I continue to achieve…” or to say another way, how have these lessons or setbacks helped you develop and what could you say that's encouraging to people… to someone right now that may be struggling with the type of moments that you've had in your career?

NOELLE
I think it's true probably professionally and personally. One thing that I’ve uncovered, and we all probably at some point if we are self-aware, realize that these things, the circle of life, if you will, or seasons, right… I realized that in my life, there has been multiple winters. And just like in the real life, some winters have been horrific -- more snow than I can handle. And some have not been… like I barely noticed they were winter in contrast. But they are all cycles.

So I’ve had both personally and professionally these… I mean I kind of always say to the universe, I’m like, “All right, I feel like it's disproportionately following in my direction. I could use a little bit of a break.”

As part of that though, I’ve now come to realize that these challenges COVID, 2020, in general, a presidency, like all these things that we would consider or take on as like a narrative for us, it's really… That's not the story, right? The story is in our resilience; is in our recovery.

I kind of now, in the last 10 years, time my recovery against the winter. Like, “How soon can I get excited for spring?” A lot of us do this like naturally, right?

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
We know the day it goes above 40. Especially if you're from the northeast or New England, you're like, “Spring is coming.” You put your convertible top down. It's 42 degrees. But you know it's coming.

So now I’ve attributed that to my professional career where, yeah, bad things have happened and probably as a Hispanic female, moving up the ranks in leadership, it's disproportionately bad. I’ve also been given… because the good news is, is people are more now -- you mentioned this earlier -- more likely than ever to give me a chance; more likely than ever to make room for me at the table or not like scoop me out when I sit down.

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
There’s a huge opportunity -- the fact that we can create a platform; the fact that you have a platform, right? We couldn't do that [crosstalk] [inaudible - 41:34].

ROB
No, we couldn't.

NOELLE
Right?

ROB
No. We couldn't even do it 10 years ago, not really.

NOELLE
That’s right. That's right. We can’t get on MSNBC. And now we can build a channel that actually has more engagement than some of these larger networks…

ROB
Yes.

NOELLE
…for less money. That's why I created this organization called “LOVEfluencers” which is all about empathetic social influence. And it really is about people like me, like you. Like how do we just give people the tools to let their voice be known because I think that's the difference is that winters are going to keep coming. Bad things are going to keep happening.

ROB
It’s guaranteed.

NOELLE
You can plant bulbs earlier. The sooner you know that, “Oh this is winter” and you can step back from the pain of that situation--

The saddest thing that I hear is when someone… when I introduce myself to them, the first thing they say is like, “Oh yeah, I got divorced at X” or “My husband left me or this” or “I’m a single parent.” And they're defined by this thing that they consider [crosstalk] [inaudible - 42:32].

ROB
They're defined by a struggle.

NOELLE
Yeah. So I encourage people like, “That's a great story. But that's not where it starts and that's not where it ends. That is the hero's journey. That's like in the middle. You started with a dream. You now got the classic confrontation of like, “Are you serious about this” because bad things are going to try and knock you down, push you in the dirt. But it's the next thing you do. It's the bulbs you plant. It's the next thing you do that makes the difference.

So the more that I can tell people, as bad as it is and I… Again, if you go and look at some of the sessions that I’ve done and my YouTube videos, you'll see like some TikTok videos really bad crap. But I can't let that define me.

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
There were days I didn't want to get out of bed where I was like, “This is ridiculous. I have four kids I’m by myself. My dad lives with me. Everyone's yelling at me at the same time and I’m trying to keep a full-time job and there's a pandemic.” It's enough to just lay you down and [crosstalk] [inaudible - 43:27]--

ROB
Yeah. That’s a lot. Yeah, I agree. That’s a lot.

NOELLE
And ever so often, I cry over my dishes and I’m like, “What am I going to do? How is this going to work out?” But it is in those moments that I’m like, “What seed can I plant?”

So what I do now is every single morning, I have a Moleskine little notebook, and I write down three goals -- a personal one, a professional one and three years from now. So I see myself three years from now and I write these statements as if they were true today.

ROB
Amen. You plant the seed in the planet and the planet plant the seed.

NOELLE
That's right. And it starts in the mind.

ROB
It does.

NOELLE
You’ll be surprised… Like this conversation we're having, these things start to pop up. It's called like your “Reticular activation system,” right? Your mind starts looking for things that ratify and support these statements that you're saying every day.

ROB
Yep.

NOELLE
And that's how the world works. So the more people I can encourage to like, “Tell your story but then set your goals. What do you want as a result of this?” I always tell people--

ROB
Don't be defined by your circumstances in front of you.

NOELLE
That’s right.

ROB
That’s it.

NOELLE
Part of your story. And it makes a great story. Like the horribleness that you're in right now will make a great story when you're out of it. You're going to look back and be like, “Oh my gosh, listen to what happened to me.” And people will be inspired by it.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
So you have to plant those seeds and move forward.

ROB
That's awesome. That’s your life. One of my questions, you got to with your life hacks, your routines to keep you grounded and… because you deal with a lot, right? I mean the fact that… four kids and your dad is there, and you are holding down the fort, first of all, wow, that's… But most importantly, you've been able to keep a positive perspective and keep faith in the future despite the current circumstances in front of you. That’s awesome.

What do you think, in terms of your career pivot… I know you your largest pivot seemed to be when you left NPR. Is that right -- your largest pivot in your career?

NOELLE
I would say that it came at a time when I was willing to speak the loudest about what had happened. But I would say that it's probably the same pivot I made when I left Amazon. It was the same thing.

ROB
Tell me the similarities between the two -- why you made the pivot and what you learned from those pivots.

NOELLE
So when I was at Amazon, I did a bunch of things. Some of it were like the golden age of the things I love to do.

ROB
Yeah. You created a voice… I didn't say this before. You were one of the beginning founders of creating Alexa and voice and teaching Alexa how to do all that.

NOELLE
Yes.

ROB
You can thank Noelle Silver for a lot of that, right?

NOELLE
Yes. I’m like the mother of like seven or eight champions. They heard me speak about Alexa first and then their journey started. That was, like I said, the golden years. I was like, “I love this role.”

Now there were two other people on the team that were white and male and they did not live in Seattle and I said to my family, “We don't have to live here because no one else lives here, so we're going to go home.”

And when I presented that option to my leadership, they're like, “Sorry. If you want to be an evangelist, you have to stay here.” And I was like, “That doesn't seem to make sense because no one else is here.” And I’m exceptionally good at this. Like, I’m exceptional at this.

So it's not like I’m just like a middle of the bell curve, right? I am over-performing. And this is where I was like, “Oh this is where the glass ceiling or the systemic differences where we're like…

ROB
[You just did - 46:56].

NOELLE
…”Why?”

ROB
The wind-clip… Sorry.

NOELLE
That was the beginning of the end, right? So I ended up moving anyway. I took a new job on the other side of the country so I could be closer to my family. And it was a good move at that time.

I moved away from evangelism which is where my heart and soul is and I moved into project management which anyone will tell you like I can do it and I’m actually good at it but I don't really love it. I love building other project managers but I don't love the work the way I do evangelism. So that was like the beginning of the end.

And I was pregnant so… Oh, and get this, like as the universe would have it, in that move, the movers somehow got lost in the mountains and the axle burned up and torched all of our belongings.

ROB
You’re kidding.

NOELLE
So now I’m in a new place with no stuff and nine months pregnant.

ROB
Wow. That’s a lot. Hooh.

NOELLE
Yeah. So I get a new job. I’m now working on a job I’m not super passionate about. As a result, which you should know this, if you're a hiring manager out there, right, if people aren't engaged, it's probably because they're not doing something they love or they don't feel like they have the power to do things that they're there to do and I felt both.

And I started to feel the resistance of my leadership team. And they ultimately gave me the wing-clipping conversation. “Stop doing the evangelism work even if it's on the side, even if it's in your spare time and focus on the lane before put you.”

ROB
Yeah, I hate that.

NOELLE
Like it was a kiss of death. Then I started to go around to other organizations at Amazon. It's a huge company. I remember Jeff Bezos saying, early in my employment there, “You never have to leave Amazon because if you don't get along with your current team, you can find another one because we hire you for you, not for the functional role.”

So I took him on his word. I started going around. I got a verbal offer from a team. And my Caucasian female manager went to that team and encouraged them. And here's how they did it which is what I am very passionate about -- expressing to people that this happened. She didn't say, “Here's the data supporting like poor performance” because there was none. She didn't say, “Here's the performance plan she's been on” because I noticed that she was not performing because there was none. What she said was, “Oh Noelle, I’m not really sure that's a good fit for you.”

ROB
Yeah, I knew. Cultural fit, yep.

NOELLE
Yeah. I mean I can't really put my finger on it but there's something just not right there. And he called me. His voice was shaking. He called me and he was like, “I have to rescind my offer” and I quit because I realized that one person has the power… And that happened to Microsoft, too. I had someone fire me, unfairly, but because they had the power of… A white person had the power to write that check and my career had to cash it. And I was like, “This is so messed up” because… And I’m a performer. What happens to these people that are just good at their job?

ROB
The problem is you're a performer but you're a disrupter -- and I say that in a good way.

NOELLE
Yes. I do make people uncomfortable on occasion.

ROB
Yeah, you do. I would not be good in a corporation. The one job I did that I absolutely hated… I came out of law school and worked for a corporate law firm. It was an awful fit for both of us. It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit me.

I’m an evangelist as well. I’m an evangelist about empowering people around… not only technology but just empowerment and changing the infrastructure to make sure more people have opportunities. So I didn't fit within a structure that… I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But people come down, they get something from a corporation, they say, “Figure out how--“

NOELLE
No. I’m definitely that square peg, round hole.

ROB
I’m not that person, right? And you just have to realize that it's them and you. And that's also not a bad thing.

NOELLE
That’s right.

ROB
That's not a bad thing because they were right to say you don't culturally fit. And it's their loss because they're not open enough to be disruptive. Like we ought to have… I think Malcolm Gladwell described the best environments are ones that have constructive rivalries, one that people can go and have the safety to say, “This is how it can be done better.”

I hear it used to be like that at Apple. I’m not sure if it is. I know for Microsoft, things changed after Bill Gates left and Steve Ballmer took over. I know he has a very fixed square point of view. If you just look at how he discusses things, it's very clear.

And I think that is the single biggest problem in this country… in the world right now -- leadership being so finite, so limited in their perspective that they only see next quarter instead of what's best long-term. They only see what's next. They can't see what's actually best for the institution and have a long-term vision. I believe that's the central issue. I mean I know it sounds vague but that's what's going on in this country. And that's why I think it's so important what we're doing with technology.

A couple of things I want to talk about and give some rapid questions. There's some technology in terms of AI that's rather scary. I know one is the Deepfake. I want you to talk about that and if we get a chance, we'll put and show what a Deepfake looks like so that--

NOELLE
Yeah. Well you can go to my TikTok. I just had two go viral.

ROB
I will put what you put on there. You send me that. I’ll put it on there. The Deepfake and what that is is you're able… It looks like someone is who they are, who they're presenting, who they're talking but it's not actually them.

I look at that and I look at the use of AI to reinforce the worst of human characteristics. I believe that's part of the reason why we are also so divided right now is that if you live in a world… You can live in a world that is totally make-believe. It’s sunny right now outside but what you see is… It will tell you it's raining and you believe that because that's the thing you're presented with. And when the human brain sees something over and over again, and that's all you're presented with, it becomes fact.

How do we deal in this world of Deepfakes and artificial intelligence and what should we be doing about AI? And why should we not be worried about AI and facial recognition? And if we should be worried, what should we do about all this like? What do you tell people as the optimistic evangelist?

NOELLE
That’s right. That’s right. I’m on both sides. I’m a realist but I’m like a pragmatic optimist or rational optimist. I understand but I also feel like education and people just understanding how this technology can be used is a huge part of it.

So we'll start with Deepfakes. Deepfakes is definitely… The more I demonstrate it on my social channels, the more people write back especially people who are not technical and they're like, “That's terrifying that that exists.”

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
To give you a really interesting horrifying example, it would be like… You know, we've all remember a certain time where we get like an email from the prince in Nigeria who needs like $7000 and some people in this world sent money to those accounts, right? That actually happened. And it was just a scam. And now we try to tell, especially with older people… we try to tell them like, “Oh my gosh, nobody needs that. Nobody is really asking for that money. Please do not send it.” That happens.

However, with the Deepfake, the reason it's so unnerving is that now that voice could come to you on a phone and that phone call could come from your mom or you, like me to my kids. Because there's so much open audio of Noelle, someone could go and train a model on all the YouTube videos that I’ve done, on all the Instagram Lives and Facebook Lives that I’ve done and they'd be able to create a sound that sounds… I was able to build a sound that sounded like a person who had passed away – J. Edgar Hoover who was the head of FBI--

ROB
Yeah. I know J. Edgar Hoover is.

NOELLE
So I created his voice and all I did was train it. And if you, we don't have a lot of audio of him. It was like 500 words that he had said. And it picked up the fact that he was from New England because he was like, “I’m J. Edgar Hoo-vah.” I was like, “That's amazing.” And I was saying it was amazing because it was awesome but like I said it's terrifying because now I can, as a hacker, or as somebody who wants to use this power for evil could create sounds that in a business, you think is your boss telling you to wire this money or telling you to release this check and you wouldn't because--

Malcolm Gladwell also said this: “We default to truth as a society.”

ROB
That's true.

NOELLE
And we have to because that's how we are wired.

ROB
Otherwise, it'll drop us crazy because [inaudible - 55:46].

NOELLE
Yes, or I’ll be paranoid, right? Yeah, it's tough. However, let me just present the optimistic side of the story which is… We have the same problem in cyber security, right? And we have red hats and blue hats. We have the attackers and we have the ethical hackers that are defending those attacks. The same thing is true in Deepfakes. There are people that are building… And I should say universities are building Deepfake detectors today. But there's also things you as an individual can do. There’s Deepfake tests you can take. It'll show you two things and you kind of test out your skills and it'll give you tips. But most importantly--

Let me just give you a use case. Imagine me, right… I’ve got all this content of me, all of me talking about my career, my personal life. Imagine, 200 years from now, my great-great-great-great grandchildren being able to put on a VR headset or put on Bose glasses and be able to see a 3D representation of me and then be able to ask me like, “What was it like when you got pregnant for the first time” or “the fourth time” or “What was it like to be married? What was it like to not be married? What was it like to be a single parent?”

Heaven forbid, 200 years from now, we're still having this brown people in tech challenge, right, and they're like, “Seriously, how did you continue to deal with things like this?” And they could ask and they would hear me authentically answering from the things I’ve already said about myself.

What it requires though is that we remove the rose-colored tinting of Instagram and like the makeup and we're just real so that we can use this information as a time capsule in the future. And I think that's a truly authentic and useful use case. But yeah, there's a lot of terrifying things behind it, too.
ROB
Yea. That’s awesome. I would say that, to add to your point, we can't opt out of technology. We can't stop innovating.

NOELLE
That's right.

ROB
That leads to less opportunities, less results. And it never leads to a good place when institutions--

NOELLE
That’s right. And it empowers those who are misinformation generators.

ROB
Right, exactly. So we can't do that route. What we have to do is make sure that we are… The blacks are the good ones. The blue hats outnumber the red hats. And that we have to make sure that as this technology is implemented, we have to demand the inclusion. We have to demand an ethical consideration of how these products are done. And it's something that we expect.

And I do think there will be a revolution and a differing perspective on how our data should be used and what method it should be used. And I think that is the beginning of those conversations. But it's not that we stop AI; we stop facial recognition. First of all, that's also Pollyannaish. That's stupid. It's not going to happen.

Secondly, we ought to make sure that it's done in a way and guide in a way that is for good because if it's not, it'll be done for wrong and evil.

NOELLE
And the last thing I wanted to mention about that was just this one concept of explainable AI because black boxes--

ROB
What's it called again?

NOELLE
“Explainable AI” or “Interpretable.”

ROB
“Explainable AI,” okay.

NOELLE
So it’s the idea that Facebook has an AI model. And I can't tell why it shows me the newsfeed that it shows me or why if I have two devices both logged in as me, I get different stuff in my feed. It's a black box to me. I don't know why those decisions are being made. And worse, Facebook doesn't even know why those decisions are being made because their network is so big.

So what we're now seeing in the industry is a call for explainable models which means that you have to be able to tell how every decision in the model was made because that's exactly where we go, “Oh right here?” There's this huge amount of bias that says if you're 60% in one direction… And by the way, all those people happen to be Black. This is the decision. And if you're 40% in this direction, and all those people have to be white, this is the decision. And then a bunch of decisions get made off of that one false error. And so explainable AI gives us the ability to get visibility to that.

So that's just a little hopeful moment in AI that we are looking at disintegrating black boxes and having companies be owned up. And it goes back to our policy discussion. We have to require companies to make sure that their AI that they build, we understand every decision that it makes.

ROB
I think that's part of the role of government, honestly. So that’s my bias there. I think there are some… You have to push--

NOELLE
Yeah. There’s no way we'll do it unless we get [crosstalk] [inaudible - 01:00:13] left behind.

ROB
Yeah. I think there has to be some policy that pushes for full informed consent and transparency.

NOELLE
Yep.

ROB
I think that has to happen. I’m for innovation. I’m not against the collection of data. I’m just for making sure that we have informed consent and people know how these decisions are being made because I think we deserve that. I don't know what the argument around that. And I think that should be the framing of the policy, not being anti-tech, not being against big tech or whatever you call it. We’re for the transparency--

NOELLE
Pro-agency of the user.

ROB
Yes. It’s pro-user, pro-transparency. That’s what this is about.

Final three questions to wrap up. You have a committee of three, living or dead, advising you on life. Who are these three people and why?

NOELLE
Oh boy -- committee of three? So my dad who is living. So that's great. And he lives here with me. He's the one who got me into tech, not really into tech software-wise but into science fiction which bred my love for using technology to solve problems. And to this day, he always introduces me to new books that were written in the ‘40s, that are phenomenal. So my dad would be one.

I suppose Jesus would probably be another one, the gentleman from Nazareth because I totally appreciate in my life now as a change agent, understanding that I can't go back to my hometown, if you will, and preach what I want to preach, and talk to them because they see me as the 16-year old girl who couldn't finish high school.

So I really resonate with a lot of the perspectives that He had to take as He had the courage, right, to start saying things that most people thought were crazy. And that's kind of what we do now as people who are in the minority. We're constantly preaching the good news but at the same time, even those closest to us have this systemic understanding of what we should do and how we should act.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
And it actually feeds the problem. It doesn't create the change.

ROB
Absolutely.

NOELLE
And so having to distance myself from the very people I would have embraced otherwise, that's been a challenge. So Jesus has helped me with that seeing that example.

ROB
That’s a good point, the fact that people around you, they literally rewire your brain if you stay there which is why you do have to distance yourself from people that don't have the same mindset. They don't have to be in the same place but they need to have a mindset that's aspirational or positive or otherwise, you'll be like them. I think it's a good point. Thirds person – Go ahead.

NOELLE
I guess I have to say Michelle Obama. It's like Michelle, Oprah -- someone like that. I just really love the idea of someone who is optimistic, positive and creating massive change and demonstrating extreme levels of success. That’s who I want to be. So I want somebody who can speak into my life like, “You're not alone. You could do this. Keep going. Get out of bed. Get on your peloton bike.” I feel like, yeah, she could do that for me.

ROB
All right.

NOELLE
And it would be nice to be besties with Michelle.

ROB
What's an important truth you have that many people disagree with you on?

NOELLE
Oh goodness. I don't think they would say they disagree but their actions speak louder than their words and that's that “Mindset is everything and that your thoughts become your experience.”

So my mindset is that what I think about becomes my experience and that I’ve proven it… You know, I’ve proven it to myself so many times. I don't even think about it anymore. But so many people say like, “Yeah, I appreciate that” and then I hear them describe their life in a way that they don't want. Like, that's not the life they want.

ROB
Sure.

NOELLE
They don’t take action towards what they want; they instead relish and wrap themselves up in the blanket of their despair.

ROB
Yeah.

NOELLE
Yeah. So I think that that's probably the biggest thing that people… They say I’m lucky or I’m blessed or I am special but I’m not. The only difference is that I write down what I want and then I stay laser focused on it until I get it, and I’m willing to wait. I’ve got a lot of success now but I’m 20 years in the making. Right?

ROB
Right.

NOELLE
I’m like a 20-year overnight success.
ROB
It's the difference between… Well first of all, to go back to what you said, to paraphrase how my mother says, she’s says, “What's true in your mind is true in your reality” -- similar about your mindset becoming your reality.

When you talk about success, it's a journey and it's a… I think there is this tension between being persistent and wanting and moving towards it but also having patience during the process. And those things, I have struggled with because I’m a person that--

You know, I write it down, too or see the vision in my head and I go… And then when it doesn't go according to how I think it should -- by the way, it never does -- sometimes, I get impatient. But I think it's that tension. There’s a tension -- you want to be persistent. Sometimes, that's the opposite of patience and figuring out that balance to life is something I haven't figured out yet and we probably won't figure out yet in this podcast. But we can have a lot of conversations.

NOELLE
We’re working at it every day.

ROB
Yeah. So the final question -- you kind of answered this. But if you had a Google billboard ad, a slogan that summarized your belief in life, what would that say?

NOELLE
I actually just posted this. I found it… I don't know who said it. I think it was either anonymous or some blogger. But it was, “Work hard in silence and let success be your noise.” I used to say, “Let success be your revenge,” and I even still think that way. So it's a little dark.

ROB
[Laughter]

NOELLE
And I like rather, “Let success be the sound that you make…” because so many people have told me, “You can't do what you're doing. It's not possible. You're not technical enough. You're not…” whatever. They make up a boundary in their mind and they project it onto me.

And I’ve always just been like, “I appreciate your feedback.” When I go heads down and I do it… And I never go back to those people and be like, “So you see what I did here?”

ROB
[Laughter]

NOELLE
[Inaudible - 01:06:19]. l feel my success is my best representation of like, “Yes, I believe what I say and I do what I say and it shows up in the work that I do and in the success that I get. So yeah, that’s probably what my billboard would say.

I just posted it like on LinkedIn, I think, “Work hard in silence…” because nobody needs to know how hard I’m working.

ROB
No.

NOELLE
We talked about it here, I worked twice as hard than my peers or three times or four times as hard sometimes. No one needs to know that…

ROB
No.

NOELLE
…because all I want to know is that what I’m doing, which I feel like will change the world, if I’m successful at that, I actually don't care that I have to work double or triple.

ROB
Yeah. -- Noelle Silver, it was an honor to have you on Disruption Now. I definitely want to have you on more in the future. This was a great conversation. I appreciate you.

NOELLE
It was awesome. Thanks so much for having me.

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