Breaking the Tension: The Power of Enabling Your Employees to Show Up Authentically
Summary
Last July Silicon Valley Business Journal named B. Pagels-Minor, Senior Data Project Manager at Netflix, to its 40 Under 40 Class of 2021. To quote the article, “B. Pagels-Minor is a thought leader on product and culture development within technology companies. They are passionate about creating a culture of accountability and sustainable processes that allow teams to do the work well.” Little did anyone know what was to come just a few months later. B. was thrust into the public eye for a stance they took on an issue that was important to them and others at their place of employment. A walk out ensued. So did termination. B. joins us as a member of the greater UX community, and speaks to us about a topic that fits squarely into our day 3 theme: Design People—Caring for Individuals and Teams. In this talk, B. Pagels-Minor will talk about their life, their experience at Netflix, and most importantly the things they’ve learned about the power of authenticity in both doing and enabling great work.
Key Insights
-
•
Early experiences with racism profoundly affect how individuals feel safe expressing identity in school and work.
-
•
Media representation like 'In the Heat of the Night' and 'The Cosby Show' can positively shape cultural identity and aspirations.
-
•
Physical disability in childhood can foster deep empathy and shape how one navigates the world.
-
•
Being in gifted programs brings both opportunity and high-pressure expectations, especially for marginalized groups.
-
•
Self-care and setting boundaries are crucial for mental health amid external pressures to succeed.
-
•
Navigating queer and trans identity in unsupportive family and workplace environments requires resilience and strategy.
-
•
Authenticity at work directly correlates with performance and reduces cognitive drain caused by compartmentalizing identity.
-
•
Workplaces claiming inclusivity may still enact exclusionary behaviors, demonstrating the gap between policy and practice.
-
•
Corporate communications, especially impersonal emails, are inadequate for addressing nuanced cultural issues and can cause harm.
-
•
Engaging in honest, in-person human conversations is essential to improve workplace culture and inclusivity.
Notable Quotes
"I don’t want to make those decisions anymore. I can’t compartmentalize who I am to be successful at work."
"Every time someone mentioned Harvard, my family reminded me I was supposed to be a genius, and I wasn’t."
"My mom is four foot eleven but looked like a six foot six linebacker when she stood up for me."
"In second grade, I was sent to the principal’s office almost every day just for raising my hand."
"My mom told me some people don’t like black people, and because of that, I wouldn’t be successful in that school."
"I woke up one day and just chose myself. I changed my name in Apple’s directory and it was the best moment ever."
"Being a store manager at Target humbled me because those with decades of experience would resist my direction."
"Netflix said I could be me every day, but then they released content that deeply hurt people on my team."
"Emails are terrible mediums when you’re trying to have human conversations about complex cultural issues."
"There’s a lot of different experiences that make me okay with some parts of the world, and others don’t make sense to me."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The Researcher in Residence program invites members of affected communities to use our tools over a funded three-month period pro bono."
Xenia Adjoubei Sean BruceEmpowering Communities Through the Researcher in Residence Program
March 29, 2023
"Our framework is our playbook, our single source of truth for every launch."
Tamara KartoziiaThink global, adapt local: how service design accelerated B2B market entry by 6 months
November 20, 2025
"AI tech debt has compounding interest to it."
Jay BustamanteNavigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation
October 2, 2023
"Not everyone has the same capacity to aspire to a future; this is critical when working with marginalized communities."
Nicole AleongFuture Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
March 26, 2024
"When I started out, I knew nothing about digital sustainability."
Nick LewisDesigning and building low-carbon websites independently
November 18, 2025
"UX practitioners already have the mindset and mentality needed to drive a product discussion forward and a handy toolkit of approaches and methods."
Vicky Teinaki Michele Marut Tim ParmeeShort Take #3: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"Conflict occurs when something important to us feels threatened or disrespected."
Laura WeissTurn Down the Heat: 3 Ways to Handle Conflict in the Moment
November 20, 2024
"We model context of use as knowledge graphs with tasks, sub-task goals, task objects—all linked in relations."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
June 10, 2025
"You can’t have a hackathon without free food."
Shelby SwitzerMaking Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
December 10, 2021
