Seen Yet Unseen

A Black Woman Crashes the Tech Fraternity

Bärí A. Williams

• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9798212631266, 9798212009881
• eBook ISBN: 9798212009904
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Development
• Index: Business

Part memoir, part searing revelation, Seen Yet Unseen takes readers behind the scenes of some of the world's biggest tech companies and exposes the way their exclusion of and, at times, hostility toward Black women have lasting impacts on the technology we use every day.

Over the years the products of big tech companies and Silicon Valley have become indispensable to our lives. They impact the way we socialize, make purchases, and even our medical decisions. But what happens when a major segment of the population—in this case Black women—isn't included in these companies?

For over a decade, Bärí A. Williams has worked to carve a space for herself as a Black woman in the incredibly white male sphere of major tech companies, eventually becoming a lead counsel at Facebook and architect of their supplier diversity program. However, she also experienced the peculiar feeling familiar to Black women in the workforce: being both unseen and too seen. In raw and personal stories, Williams recounts balancing on glass cliffs while battling the burnout that so often forces Black women out of these companies, and how the industry's lack—and loss—of Black women not only harms the businesses themselves but has troubling ramifications for their products, particularly as the promises of AI and the Metaverse loom large.

In a tone both forthright and revealing, Williams dissects how a culture that has largely excluded Black women—and people of color more generally—is at a tipping point and that only through embracing and listening to Black women can we prevent the further weaponization of these technologies against marginalized communities. From fledgling in-house diversity initiatives to gentrification and the rise of AI, Seen Yet Unseen takes the reader inside the obscured machinations of big tech companies and makes a case for why diversity is essential to the future of technology.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Blackstone Newsletter
• Praise for Seen Yet Unseen
• Books by Bärí A. Williams
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Nobody Sees Me or Everyone Sees Me: When They Do, They Are Surprised I’m Here
• 2. This Is How They Actually See Me: A Token . . . and a Threat
• 3. The Myth of Meritocracy
• 4. Paying Lip Service
• 5. Black Three-for-Ones: Employee Resource Groups as Support Systems, Free Company Labor, and Public Relations
• 6. This Is Why I Feel Like an Outsider: And Leave Once I’ve Worked Long Enough to Put You in My Résumé
• 7. This Is What True Allyship Looks Like
• 8. This Is What Happens When We Don’t Have a Seat at the Table: Technology Gone Bad
• 9. Blind Spots and Big Dollars: People and Profits
• 10. This Is What Tech Is Doing to My Community: You Can Disrupt without Gentrification
• 11. This Is Why I (and Other Black Women) Leave
• 12. We Would’ve Stayed Had You Done THIS: How Tech Companies Could Have Made Us Want to Stay
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author
• Blackstone Newsletter