Tamika Curry Smith

There has been a worrying trend recently (more specifically, since Donald Trump got re-elected for a second term) of tech vendors distancing themselves from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategies – the very same strategies they were so keen to showcase under the previous administration. So it was very welcome to hear from British chip company Arm about why DEI should still be a core facet of all technology businesses, and exactly how Arm puts this into practice in its own organization.

Tech vendors aren’t just building products, Tamika Curry Smith, the firm’s Chief DEI Officer argues: 

That future must be anchored in what I call the three Is – intention, inclusion and impact. Building an inclusive future in tech requires us to be intentional about how we show up to keep inclusion at the core of how we operate and to drive meaningful impact in our work.

Smith says that time and time again across her career she has seen that when companies operate through an inclusion lens, they build better products. She is certainly well-placed to give a view on this, having taken her first diversity role at Deloitte back in 2002, followed by DEI leadership positions at Target, Mercedes-Benz, and Nike prior to joining Arm.

When it comes to building a business case for DEI, Smith says the research is clear: diverse teams are more creative, better at problem solving, and perform better. She adds:

When people feel like they belong, that’s when they do their best work. When teams include a variety of lived experiences, perspectives, and problem-solving styles, they’re more innovative, more adaptive, and ultimately more successful.

Growth 

Smith is adamant that inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a growth strategy and performance accelerator:

When we think about topics like corporate responsibility and sustainability and DEI, we have to re-frame the focus of those efforts and help people see the tangible value that those efforts bring to organizations.

Equity needs to be a part of the DNA of how companies design, build, and scale technology, and should touch every part of the tech lifecycle. This starts from who gets hired and who’s at the table during brainstorming, through to how user personas are built, and how user impact is measured and tested. Smith states: 

I’ve worked with teams that have realized after launch that the product didn’t serve entire communities because those voices were never in the room or never even considered in the process. That’s not just a missed opportunity, it’s a risk to your brand, to your users, your integrity, your business.

This isn’t just theory, she advises, it’s true in practise. She cites the Google Pixel’s Real Tone camera technology as an example. Historically, camera technology has been calibrated for lighter skin tones, often without consideration for the full spectrum of human complexions:

I would often have to edit photos taken by my smartphone because they did not capture the natural complexions of black skin effectively.

To address this challenge, Google put together a team of engineers from a variety of backgrounds to develop the Real Tone technology, which shows the proper complexions of people across all types of skin tones and photos. Smith notes:

This technology was included in the camera for the Google Pixel 6, and that delivered tremendous sales for the company. Not only did this help show Google in a positive light to potential customers, it also led to business growth.

Furthermore, it started a much-needed conversation about how the tech sector can address similar topics around representation and image equity, Smith points out.

Real world

At Arm, the business is putting all this into practice in various ways, with the aim of embedding equity into its systems and ways of working rather than treating it as a separate initiative. This includes everyone at Arm setting a DEI goal in addition to their work goals at the beginning of each fiscal year, which has helped cement inclusion as a core expectation for all staff, not just a ‘nice to have’.

The company also carries out an annual employee engagement survey, including questions around DEI.

At leadership level, leaders across the business, including hardware, software, GPU, CPU, Finance and technology, are asked to share specific examples of how they have leveraged inclusion to drive performance. Each quarter, a different team gives their story in their own words. Smith explains:

They talk as a team about what they’ve done, how they’ve included new voices in the conversation, how they reevaluated their processes to make sure they were inclusive, how they scheduled meetings across time zones to make sure everybody could have a voice, how they did tear-downs after projects to say what could we have done better, what did we miss, did we fail in terms of including certain perspectives in the work along the way? And how do we fix that?

More importantly, it’s not the DEI team driving this series. Smith adds:

It’s more powerful when a leader and a business group talks about this work than me. People expect me to be passionate about it and to talk about it, but profiling our business leaders and the work that they’re doing has been really powerful.

Smith encourages those at leadership level to use their position to foster change, especially women in tech. She doesn’t view leadership as about having a big title; instead, it’s about choosing to act even when it’s hard, she says: 

In my own journey, I’ve had lots of moments where I had to choose – stay silent or speak up, go with the flow or challenge the system. Challenging the system is literally the embodiment of my job right now. What I’ve learned is that when I lean into courage over comfort, it’s always created real impact, sometimes on a small scale and other times on a massive scale.

Personal 

This work is deeply personal for Smith, as a first-generation college graduate who grew up in Detroit, Michigan with people from all walks of life and many different backgrounds. As a result, she has always viewed difference as normal and not something to be feared.

However, when Smith joined the business world in the 1990s, she didn’t see that same level of demographic diversity around her, which she found rather jarring:

I became passionate about changing that. I’ve also had many twists and turns in my career. I joke that I’m a recovering accountant, because I started my career in auditing and management consulting, and I would have never imagined that I’d be doing HR and DEI work for the bulk of my career.

Smith points that out as a reminder that careers rarely unfold exactly the way planned. But she concludes:

There’s always opportunity for impact, no matter where you are in your career journey. If we want to change tech, we have to start by changing culture. That starts with small, intentional actions. It’s not the work of a few, it’s the work of all of us.

My take

While Smith is keen to promote the business value of a strong DEI framework, Arm’s most recent UK Gender Pay Gap Report reveals that women only account for 21% of the workforce, similar to the tech industry average. 

In the most recent Life at Arm engagement survey, Smith notes that the firm scored over 85% on its DEI index, which she says is well above the tech industry and high-performing company benchmarks. Smith views this score as a signal that its inclusive culture is working, but the proof will be if and when the number of women on staff starts to edge closer to their male counterparts.

Although the numbers are moving in the right direction – the number of women at Arm grew 17% year-on-year, compared to 13% for men – CEO Rene Haas acknowledges:

We recognize there is more work to do, and we continue to take proactive measures to help more women succeed at Arm and make significant contributions.

For her part, Smith advocates everyone committing to taking their own small, intentional action – ask a question no one else is asking; point out who is missing from the meeting; check who benefits from this technology; consider who you offer to mentor or be an advocate for – is it only for people like you, or do you reach across difference to share your insights?

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