Equality By Design

We are only a few years away from self-driving cars, but according to Mercer, 217 years away from closing the gender pay gap. Jillian discusses her journey from escaping civil war to experiencing an incident of sexual harassment in London where the idea of Safe & the City started. She shares her compelling story about how we can bridge the gap of equality through our everyday technologies in order for humanity to survive and thrive.

Transcript

With great belief comes great responsibility.

But how far has our belief in a fair,

Just,

And equal world truly advanced us?

Was it as you imagined when you were a child that every opportunity was ahead of you and that your ability to reach your potential would be based on your merit,

Passion,

And drive to do so?

Wasn't this what our parents and our grandparents worked so hard to leave behind for us?

Humanity as a whole is rapidly progressing despite its hardships,

Especially over the past century.

After the devastation of World War II,

The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Rights,

Recognizing the fundamental rights and freedoms of every man,

Woman,

And child around the world.

Yet it was only in 2015 that the last country in the world,

Saudi Arabia,

Gave women the right to vote.

We've now entered into the information age where about 50% of the world is connected to the internet.

This has propelled radical social,

Environmental,

And political changes.

There is no doubt that there has been progress made,

But then how does it compare to the rate that we're progressing in other areas like technology?

We are only a few years away from self-driving cars,

But according to a report by Mercier,

217 years away from closing the gender pay gap.

Are our time,

Energy,

And resources truly invested in the things that we claim important to us?

I'm lucky to have found my path to becoming an entrepreneur,

Which means sharing my dream with others,

Solving problems that matter to me,

And surrounding myself with talented and supportive people.

But how I arrived here started first by getting lost.

And when I eventually found my way,

This solidified my belief that now,

More than ever,

Each one of us is capable of changing the world.

It was a cold winter night when an ordinary walk led to an extraordinary idea.

I was going to meet a friend in a vibrant part of London using my navigation app to get me there.

I was running late,

Wearing heels,

Tired from the commute,

And just wanting to be there.

I checked my navigation app,

Which showed me a route through a narrow,

Dark,

And empty alleyway.

A flash of fear rose,

And my heart rate quickened,

Thinking,

What if someone malicious appeared down this walk?

The quickest route had put me through plenty of uncomfortable spaces before,

So in a sense,

I was used to challenging my intuition and adapting myself around these technologies.

But about halfway down this walk,

Two kitchen staff appeared on a smoke break.

They quickly noticed me,

And I them.

And trying not to be startled and keeping my pace ahead,

I remember seeing in their eyes what little they thought about me.

In a matter of seconds,

They physically blocked my way and told me I was helpless should they want to sexually assault me right there.

This wasn't the first time something like this has happened,

Nor will it likely be the last.

So I was reminded about a time where I deescalated it and felt confident I could probably escape.

But before I tell you how I did,

I want to share with you how the other paths in my journey were able to lead me to share my story with you.

I was privileged to be born in Canada during a booming time for the oil and gas industry.

After a few years,

A few years after I was born,

We moved to a very different country and place,

One of the poorest countries of the world at the time,

Yemen.

This exposed me at a young age to a whole other identity,

A way to look at myself and other cultures.

We traveled frequently during our time there,

Which propelled my curiosity and insatiable love of people.

So much so that my mother had to keep a close eye on me when I was young as I had a habit of running up and hugging strangers just to make them feel happier.

They were blissful times with the desert and the rock piles as some of our favorite places to let our imaginations paint anything we wanted to on nearly blank canvases.

But we were unaware of the cultural and political tensions soon to erupt.

My childhood innocence was shed when the Civil War began,

And I had my first experience of survival.

The local airport was bombed and the roads were unsafe because of the ceaseless gunfire,

But we were lucky to escape in an overcrowded boat with hundreds of other refugees to Djibouti and then later my family to Canada.

But even that brief encounter of war changed my life forever.

I saw the other side of mankind,

The destruction,

The aggression and the hate.

Moving back to Canada,

I felt displaced even though I looked the part.

I would think back and be haunted by these memories,

The Yemeni people I loved and what kind of life they had to remain living in.

This grew in me a sense of injustice about the inequalities around the world,

And I questioned why we all had to act in a certain order or behave in a certain way when it felt like in a split moment it could all be gone.

It wasn't a surprise years later when I selected psychology as my degree to study because I wanted to better understand people and ways I could help them.

But at 19,

Thinking I had a grasp of understanding of life,

My mother,

Who had been battling cancer since I was young,

Passed away.

Only a month after that,

My remarkable grandmother died in a tragic accident,

Leaving me feeling alone with no direction.

I reverted back to my childhood years,

Travelling and living abroad.

At the very least,

I could be on an unstoppable quest to squeeze everything out of life before I died.

Moving from country to country,

Job to job,

Paycheck to paycheck,

Relationship to relationship,

Took me on the most incredible journey.

I got to experience the breadth of life and try out many versions of what it could look like with different types of people,

Cultures,

Work and lifestyles while coming to understand who I truly was.

In a relatively short amount of time,

I've been able to work in over 30 different industries,

Base myself in seven countries and travel to nearly 200 cities while making friends from all walks of life.

Although this was an exceptional time,

It was equally challenging.

I had to grow up fast,

Be street smart,

Adaptable,

Sense who and who I could not trust.

As a young foreign woman,

Sometimes barely able to speak the native language,

I was at a higher risk of experiences like sexual harassment and sexual assault.

I became stronger from these experiences and I held on to the belief that most people didn't realise the impact of their behaviours.

But after hearing the painful stories from male and female friends,

Colleagues,

Classmates,

Even strangers made this belief even harder as it felt like there were very few untouched in some shape or form.

But like many of my own experiences,

I only shared them with the people that I trusted as it was often better to minimise,

Bury or hide these experiences,

Whether that was self-blame,

Shame,

Embarrassment,

Fear of retaliation or escalation of an incident.

But like their stories that changed us,

They were in a sense invisible to the rest of the world and therefore more difficult for preventing to other people.

But I wanted to understand why,

What was the common thread here and what kind of solutions,

Especially around taboo topics,

Could start to address these epidemics in a faster way.

This led me to London to study my masters in public health and epidemiology.

In that alleyway,

Confronted by those two men,

I stood my ground,

Did not break my gaze or show my fear.

Their sexual threats ended up being empty and they let me pass and as I ran out of the alleyway,

Their laughs and calls becoming more distant,

I reached my friend to tell her what happened.

She listened and sympathised,

Recalling her own experiences of being at the wrong place,

The wrong time and a victim of sexual harassment.

But again,

Outside of this conversation,

Who would really know what happened to us?

What difference would it really make if it was known?

How many others would walk that same route,

Even that night?

What if it was a young girl or more vulnerable person who may not have been as lucky as me?

I didn't want to stop travelling,

Having a positive view of others or be haunted by the people left behind when this time there was something more I could have done.

But as Sir Winston Churchill said,

To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere.

A lightbulb moment happened which merged my journeys together and pointed me to my north star.

I founded the company Safe in the City on a mission to becoming the world's most responsible data insights provider to enable the design of safer and smarter communities.

We built a free navigation app to not only just look at the fastest routes but safer ones.

We equipped people with information on crime,

Lighting and others' experiences of harassment so they can inform their safety,

Be able to reach safe site locations if they need help and also feel empowered that now their stories can start to impact the wider networks.

In only a year since our launch,

We've been able to make huge progress,

Capture thousands of these stories,

Create new found partnerships like with the Metropolitan Police,

UN Women UK and the Commonwealth Business Women's Network so that their stories can also impact workplace environments,

City planning,

Police intelligence and national and international policies.

When we can vote with our everyday movements,

We can begin to lift the scale on the veil of these problems,

Identify and stay ahead of these trends and feel empowered that it won't just affect our journey but maybe someone else's on the other side of the world.

The climate for acceptance on sexual harassment is changing.

With the explosion of the hashtag Me Too movement,

Time's Up and other high profile cases in the media,

The tip of the iceberg is beginning to surface.

But building on the shoulders of everyday technologies unlocks the opportunity to do so much more.

This UN Women's International Women's Day theme was innovation and technology to advance gender equality.

A new day is on the horizon for technologies addressing issues of equality as entrepreneurship with a purpose has the opportunity to be the great equaliser of our time.

Tech for good shouldn't be a small subset of the digital revolution as we need technology and social change to accelerate at the same rate.

We need in order for humanity to survive,

The solutions need to be as diverse and representative of the people,

Problems and perspectives that we seek to change.

We need more women in tech,

More ethnicities,

More abilities,

More ages,

Balanced by human centric businesses,

Impact investors and socially conscious consumers.

What if the tech unicorns of tomorrow looked more like black and white zebras uncompromising on values for profit because there's always a way to do both?

I embarked on the most incredible journey of my life as an entrepreneur,

As someone who knew very few people,

Having little resources and much to learn about building a company.

But it was an idea worth spreading that through our everyday movements,

We can progress equality.

For those of you who have experienced or witnessed sexual harassment or sexual assault,

Report and share your experiences to count on the difference it can bring to someone else's life journey.

For the current and future entrepreneurs listening,

Build your product,

Team and business around more than just a commercial gain,

As changing the life of one person can never be seen as a failure.

And let us all invest our time,

Energy and resources towards equality as we will not be able to thrive without it.

Dreams can come true if your belief is as strong as your responsibility to follow through with them.

It is with that that I want to leave with you that even in your darkest journeys,

You can shine your light onto others and be the change you wish to see in the world.

Reviews

Amazing...Insightful...
Intuitive...Thought Provoking...Heartfelt...
All these things and something more that I can't quite put my finger on. Your life has been exceptional and has so many different lessons wrapped up in it for any who would choose to listen. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and understanding of life so that we may learn from it. NAMASTE 🙏🙏👏👏☮☮🦋🦋💚💚💐💜💜🤗🤗🌲🌻