What does a Head of Product Inclusion do?

Hey everyone! A few weeks ago, I caught up with Giselle Mota, an inclusive tech leader (who also happens to be a great connector and talented musician). Giselle is the Chief of Product Inclusion at ADP, a human capital management company, and the creator of NFTY Collective, an initiative to ensure people with disabilities are represented in emerging tech such as AI and the metaverse.

In the interview, we talk about what it’s like to have a job that’s focused solely on making products more inclusive, how it’s different from a DEI role and why you might be seeing more people with her job title in the coming years. I learnt a lot from our conversation and I’m sure you will too.

TS: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you're up to these days?

GM: I'm the founder and creator of Versd. An offset of that is a project called NFTY Collective, which is all about bringing disability inclusion into the spaces where technology wasn't really made with people with disabilities in mind, especially things like spatial computing, which comprises augmented reality, virtual reality experiences. What we wanted to do was think about ways in which we could represent on purpose people with disabilities into those spaces, make these experiences more accessible and more representative. 

And my day job is that I'm the Chief of Product Inclusion at a human capital management company called ADP. I apply a lens of thinking about inclusion - whether it's somebody's different languages, their culture, gender identity, anything that makes people who they are, I make sure we take those into consideration when we're designing products. 

TS: How would you define product inclusion?

GM: At a very basic level, I'd say we're being considerate of human beings, what makes people who they are and how do we take that into account when we're designing for them. And at a more granular level, we're looking at all these aspects from a product design perspective. I work with data scientists, user experience designers, developers, architects, all different types of people who are actually touching the technology and thinking about applying these considerations into the design. 

TS: Are you the first person at your company to hold this position? How did you end up doing this? 

GM: Yes. It’s the first of its kind at this company. ADP is a company that's been around for 75 years. I was working on building a business case for the role for two years. And it just so happened that some of the leaders at the time were also thinking of something similar. And when I shared with them what I had in my mind and what I was wanting to bring to the company, they were like, “have you been sitting in on meetings? Like, how in the world do you know that we were actually thinking about creating the same exact function?”

And in fact, today there's not a lot of these types of roles that exist in different companies. You might find some similar roles at Google and Salesforce. But usually this type of work is done within groups in an organisation. You wouldn’t necessarily have someone who's leading and working cross-functionally across the business in this way. But I'm starting to see it rise up a little bit more.

TS: So one thing that I'm curious to get your take on is how it's different from a DEI role.

GM: DEI roles tend to focus a lot on the internal aspects of the company. So for example, who are we hiring? How are we extending the talent pool to be more diverse? How can we make our policies more inclusive? For example, in the United States, there's legislation called the Crown Act which is meant to prevent discrimination based on a person’s natural hair textures or maybe the way that they wear their hairstyles or even people who use headdresses. For a long time in the United States, people were told wearing an Afro or dreadlocks or a head scarf was unprofessional. Now, DEI officers have to apply the Crown Act internally to ensure they’re not out of compliance or subject to a discrimination lawsuit. 

Then when you think about product inclusion, it's more how do we enable technology to do some of that? So in that same example of the Crown Act, I would make sure that any facial recognition that is being used to perhaps clock someone in and out of work can also understand different hairstyles, somebody wearing a headscarf, someone who has a beard, and respecting whatever that looks like on an individual without creating any harm or discrimination in the technological experience.  

TS: I imagine that a big part of what you do is also educating people internally about your role and why it's needed. What has that process has been like? 

GM: That's one of the most important parts of the work. When it comes to education, awareness, getting people excited about a change and just change management in general, it's tough. I mean, the people who build technology haven't always been taught about inclusion. If you’re a software engineer, I'm not expecting that you're reading up on the latest cultural trends and changes that are happening within certain communities. But there is an expectation to be flexible in the design and to create something knowing that we might create this today but maybe in a year's time or five years down the road, we might have to revisit that because there's a new, fresh way to consider people. 

TS: How do you deal with scepticism that you might encounter from people who aren't necessarily thinking about these issues of inclusion on a day to day basis?

GM: You know, that's a good question, because especially now where any topic relevant to diversity and inclusion, especially in the United States, people either politicise it or they'll diminish it, or it's confusing and they just don't want to potentially do anything that could create more harm than good. And so I approach myself and everybody else with a certain level of grace, because we're all learning. I don't expect everyone to know everything. So I go into these conversations with a lot of research, statistics, examples, and not leading so much with the emotion of it. Because this work is the right thing to do, but we also have to say it's the right thing for business. And I show them why, I show them what the competition is doing, where the trends are heading. And I think that all helps. 

TS: Any final words of advice for companies thinking about hiring a product inclusion person on their team?

GM: Look for someone who can work cross-functionally and collaborate with several different stakeholders, who understands and is ever curious and innovative around both product and humanity, and is in it for the long game. The change management aspect, grace, and patience required for leading such an effort are paramount. 

Learn more

If you’d like to follow Giselle or learn more about NFTY Collective, you’ll find her on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Hope you learnt something new from the conversation! If so, feel free to share it with others who might like it. (Or if it was forwarded to you, sign up below).