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 life experiences with racism profoundly shaped Be's understanding of when and where they could be authentic.
-
•
Be’s childhood eye injury and blindness fostered deep empathy for others with disabilities.
-
•
Gifted programs offered validation but also added pressure to succeed academically and professionally.
-
•
Experiencing microaggressions and bias in education reinforced limits on authentic self-expression.
-
•
Coming out as lesbian and later trans involved navigating fears of acceptance, especially within family.
-
•
Working as a Target store manager taught Be humility and the value of listening to experienced team members.
-
•
At Cars.com, Be faced discrimination about pronoun use, showing challenges of trans inclusion in some workplaces.
-
•
Joining Apple marked a turning point where Be experienced more authentic recognition of their identity.
-
•
Corporate responses to culturally sensitive issues like the Chappelle special often miss the mark and harm employee wellbeing.
-
•
Compartmentalizing identity to fit workplace expectations leads to mental strain and reduces productivity.
Notable Quotes
"I don’t want to make those decisions anymore. I can’t compartmentalize who I am to be successful at work."
"When I compartmentalize who I am at work, I am absolutely not successful because it creates too much brain drain."
"My mom is four-foot-eleven but she felt like a six foot six linebacker when she confronted the school principal."
"Maybe we’ve been betting since you were eight that you were lesbian, and I was like why didn’t you tell me? But she said that’s not her place."
"Being a Target store manager humbled me within 20 minutes of showing up to a store where people worked for 20 years."
"At Cars.com, a senior director told me I wouldn’t get anywhere asking people to use my pronouns."
"At Apple, I just changed my name in the directory, and engineers came up to ask if that was what I wanted to be called. That was one of the best moments of my life."
"The Netflix memo implies people don’t understand the jokes, but it felt like they haven’t done the work to understand their audience."
"Emails are terrible mediums when you’re trying to have human conversations about identity and culture."
"I spent a lot of time trying to figure out when can I be black? When can I be a lesbian? When can I be trans? And I’m done with that."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"A kickback is a free flowing and life giving gathering that transforms and electrifies throughout the night."
Zariah CameronReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace
September 23, 2024
"Ownership means belonging to the person who anticipates, observes, or monitors the prioritization process—not distributed ownership."
John Cutler Harry MaxPrioritization for designers and product managers (1st of 3 seminars) (Videoconference)
June 13, 2024
"Inviting people from other disciplines to experience user research helped Felipe see why user experience matters."
Nick CochranGrowing in Enterprise Design through Making Connections
June 3, 2019
"I often lock a process against changes for one to two months unless a major issue arises."
Deanna SmithLeading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
September 23, 2024
"Meeting stakeholders where they are means understanding their language and prior knowledge, not just the physical location."
Magdalena ZadaraZero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late
November 16, 2022
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so."
Nova Wehman-BrownWe've Never Done This Before
June 4, 2019
"Artificial intelligence is about building human-like intelligence. This has opened up a golden opportunity for all of us to make a big impact."
Liwei DaiThe Heart and Brain of the AI Research
March 31, 2020
"The DDN shortened the network distance between any two government staff who found themselves thrown into COVID response work, making coordination faster."
Gordon Ross12 Months of COVID-19 Design and Digital Response with the British Columbia Government
December 8, 2021
"Sharing my story with the engineering director opened something; vulnerability builds trust."
Tutti TaygerlyMake Space to Lead
June 12, 2021