Interview with Wordle Creators Palak Shah and Josh Wardle

Palak Shah is a strategy, policy, financial, and data consultant. She supports youth, communities, and K-12 education systems with a focus on racial equity. She has worked with Oakland and Berkeley school districts and College Track.

Josh Wardle is an artist, product manager and engineer. He was named one of TIME’s most influential people of 2022. He has worked at several tech companies, including Reddit as a Senior Product Manager where he created a social experiment called The Button. He now works at MSCHF, the company that co-created Lil Nas X’s Satan Shoes.

Matilda  

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I really appreciate it. First of all, what is your definition of including somebody?

Palak  

My definition of including someone is making sure that they feel heard, mostly, and listened to even when that may be hard for you, as the listener.

Josh  

I don't think I have a definition for it as much, but I try to remember the moments in time where I felt excluded. I try and use that negative feeling to imagine what the positive feeling must be like, or what the opposite of it must be like, if I'm in a situation where I feel like maybe I'm forgetting to include someone.

Matilda  

How do you make sure that you can include other people or that you are included?

Palak  

For me, it's noticing maybe when someone needs some support and like being a part of a group, like someone is, you know, not talking as much so you can like try to bring them in. Something like that is what I usually try to do at work, for example.

Josh  

I do the same, trying to notice, when there's a imbalance. I see it a lot in meetings where one person's talking a lot, and someone else isn't. Trying to ask a direct question to the person who isn't being included is a way to bring them in to the to the group.

Matilda  

What do you do when you're not being included? Or you're being like discriminated against?

Palak  

Oh, it depends on the situation, but I try to be vocal. Often it's something you don't even notice in the moment; you think about it afterwards. If you don't notice in the moment, or I don't notice it in the moment, and I think about afterwards, "Oh, hey, you know, I didn't feel like I was very included, and I didn't notice it." Then I'll probably, talk to some close friends about it and think about how I want to approach it the next time I'm in that group or another group where I can notice when that's coming up. And I think it would be just trying to assert myself in the space next time, trying to be more vocal about my opinions.

Josh  

I'm trying to think I think, quite frankly, I'm not in situations where I feel like I'm excluded. A lot of things are default set up for me. I do remember times, though, especially when I was younger, where I didn't feel included. I didn't know how to respond. I just felt frustrated.

Matilda  

That's really interesting. Because I, I've never really heard of, well, it makes a lot of sense. But, like talking to other people that are close to you, I've never really thought about it that way. That's really interesting. What would you tell other people about discrimination? Especially younger people, like middle schoolers? What would you say is important to understand?

Palak  

When I was reflecting on this question, something that came up for me, it was like, when you experience discrimination, and you speak up about it, there's a lot around calling things out when you see them happening, and making sure your voice is heard, and you're advocating for yourself or for others around you. But I think the thing that's important to remember is, a lot of times, even when you speak up, you might not see the change for a long time. And that's something to like, hold on to. In times when I experienced some discrimination in the workplace, and or seeing it and bringing it up, even if it didn't directly affect me, I was seeing it and so I was bringing it up. Things didn't change right away, that felt really frustrating. People didn't take my comments seriously. But I think down the line,  I saw change happening months later, even years later, even after I left the company. I would see that sort of change. I think I directly contributed to that sort of change, even though I didn't see it right away. But it's hard when you're in the moment and you feel really upset and frustrated that things aren't moving, that it does just take time. It can take a long time, but your words will have an impact.

Josh  

When you're younger, there's the period of where you're figuring out who you are, and everyone around you is doing the same thing. And through that process, there are going to be moments where you are excluded, like you are no longer part of the group that you thought you were part of what you want it to be a part of. Then at the same time, there'll be moments when you are making that decision about somebody else, right? You decide that maybe you don't want to be friends with someone or that you're just not aligned with them anymore. Going back to like my first answer, I think encouraging people to remember what it's like to be excluded in those moments where you are excluded, remember what that feels like. Think about that, and try and use that in situations where *you* are deciding who should be included or not. Think about what that experience is going to be like for others, how bad it felt for you, and how you might like to change the experience for others.

Palak  

That's empathy, right? It's like, can you put yourself in this other person's shoes? How would you feel? So much of it is, how would it make you feel if you were treated the way you're treating someone else. Does that make you feel good? Does that not make you feel good? Ultimately being kind and being empathetic is the root of it, especially at a younger age.

Matilda  

How would you help others notice that they're not being inclusive or whether it's consciously or unconsciously? How would you make sure that other people also continue to include others?

Josh  

Ideally, you feel like you can have a conversation, you can talk to someone. There's the calling out and calling in. If you go up someone and say, "Hey, I noticed you weren't including other people," they might become defensive. Try and use language like "Hey, you said this thing, and it made me feel this way that you didn't include these other people." If you talk about your emotional response to their acts, then it makes it easier for them not to be defensive and not to push you away immediately. Because often it's kind of hard to hear that you have been excluding other people, whether you intended to or not.

Palak  

A lot of what people talk about, which, which I sometimes agree with, sometimes don't, is that--especially for people of color, for marginalized folk, for women--we shouldn't have to educate everyone, right? We shouldn't have to do that work of educating people who are harming other people. Pick and choose when you feel like you can and have the energy to but then also finding people who can support you. That's what I was getting at earlier. When I have experienced discrimination, I go to my close friends, and I talk to them, and I get support. If you experience something at school, is there a friend that maybe it wouldn't be as personal for them to confront this person or to have a conversation with this person in a way that doesn't make them feel unsafe, but might be for you, for example. Finding the people that can support you and not having to hold it all yourself. You don't need to be necessarily the only person that's talking to and confronting or educating this person that maybe has done some harm, but thinking about it more as a collective, your friends, your support, who else can you bring into this?

Matilda  

Do you have any ideas of how, as you were mentioning, just now, a lot of people of color, and women, and just people that are generally like discriminated against are the ones bringing up all of these issues of discrimination? Do you have any ideas of ways where there could be less pressure put on marginalized people and more on everybody?

Josh  

Well, a lot of this is on folks who aren't marginalized, stepping up and speaking up in those situations, but people find it hard to do, and it's the difficult thing to do at the moment, it feels like for a lot of people. So it takes extra effort from people to call it out when they see it.

Palak  

That's what a lot of people are struggling with right now. If I experienced something like racial discrimination as a brown woman in the workplace, how do I get my white colleague to say something? And that's still me sort of having to go to them. It's something I haven't quite figured out yet. To be honest, I'm not sure.

Josh  

For me, trying to normalize those discussions with my other peers or coworkers is a big part of it. Like, we can talk about these things in a way where people feel it's okay to have messed up, and trying to make people not be defensive and less likely to change, but also normalize that this is something that we can just talk about. That is a practice, right. It's just something you have to keep on doing. And there are times where I won't do it because it's too uncomfortable to do and I have to think about why didn't I do it? Can I do it again the next time? And it's just going to be an ongoing process.

Matilda  

Do you have anything like any other like ideas or strategies on how to like bring more diversity into communities or more how to foster conversation with your peers about how to be more inclusive.

Palak  

One of the things that comes up for me is, it's okay to for marginalized communities to have their own space. And that's not something that is exclusive. For example, I think there are folks that have privilege that don't feel like they they have access into certain spaces, and that's okay. That's one of the things we can talk about. It's okay for there to be, for example, just be a space that is just for queer people. And if you're a straight person, it's okay for you to not even understand that space and not be a part of it. That's actually okay. Some of that can and then should be celebrated. Inclusion doesn't mean everybody gets access to everything all the time. That's not actually what inclusion is. Inclusion celebrates differences, specifically of marginalized people as well.

Josh  

That's a great point, I think, like differences that you may not understand. You seeking to understand them may be not what that group needs in that moment in time. That's a very interesting point.

Matilda  

Anything else you'd like to add? How do you feel diversity is in the workplace, because you have a lot less control over what you do unless you're independent and running your own thing, or the boss of your company. In a situation where you don't have as much control as you would like, how do you make sure that you feel included and you feel welcomed?

Josh  

What I have observed is, with a company, people are brought together, and there's an objective. The company is trying to do something, is trying to make a product, make a website, whatever. What I have observed is it's very easy for people to make decisions in service of that goal, what the company is trying to do. Companies will often struggle if inclusion isn't stated as a core part of one of their goals, because when it comes down to it, and we need to make a decision here, people are like, "Well, I'm at the company to do the company's goal, and if that means that we just need to ignore inclusion, let's just do it for now." And then invariably, that results in just repeating that action over and over again. It's really important for, for it to be a company-level goal. That's the only way I've seen it be effective. That's someone at the top caring deeply about it and saying, "Hey, this is something we're going to talk a lot about the company," and then it makes its way into all the decisions that get made at the company, or at least it's been discussed further down.

Palak  

I am fortunate enough that I do work for myself, but I have to work with companies. I've been fortunate enough to work with companies where they just are really explicit about talking specifically about race. I work a lot in education. But they don't always talk about everything and that doesn't by any means make them perfect. 

Sometimes, if you feel like you are being discriminated against or you're seeing it in a way that's harming you, ultimately, you need to think about whether it's the best space for you to stay. There's no shame in calling things out but then feeling you need to walk away at some point, because it's just taking too much from you, especially if you have the ability to walk away. I know a lot of people don't have that privilege of being able to leave a company or something like that. That is not giving up on any sort of fight. That is not making you not valuable. You can fight and you can also step away from it, and fight discrimination in a lot of different spaces as well. 

What's important is when you get to a company is finding the people with whom you will feel safe. I've found that to be so helpful. There have been times where I felt really alone in a company trying to battle discrimination. Then I find one person where at least there's someone you can lock eyes with across the room where you're both like, "wait a minute, did you hear that, too?" And then you can talk about it. 

I can imagine the same thing could happen in a classroom. I've talked to students where they're both like, "oh, we both heard the teacher say this thing," or "we both heard this kid say this thing." You and I can talk about it before you have to do any sort of computation or decide what you need to do. The theme of everything I'm talking about is, you don't have to do anything alone. Everything with people you feel supported by and can support.

Bios adapted from linkedin.com/shahpalakn and powerlanguage.co.uk.

Images from linkedin.com/in/shahpalakn, linkedin.com/in/joshwardle, and vox.com