#11: Building bridges

A Q&A with Loyce B. Witherspoon

Apr 14, 2021

Pass It On is a bi-weekly newsletter bringing the tech and non-profit sectors closer together through knowledge sharing, written and edited by Lauren Crichton.

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It’s Q&A week, meaning the knowledge share is coming from our notable guest, Loyce B. Witherspoon.

Loyce is Community Engagement Manager at the Internet Society, a global non-profit organisation working to keep the Internet a force for good. It’s thanks to the Internet that she and I met, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Through her eloquent and perceptive answers, Loyce reminds us of the value in building bridges: between our organisations and their communities, the tech and non-profit sectors—and perhaps most importantly—between our past and present selves.

🌉 Building bridges with Loyce B. Witherspoon

Tell us about your background and what sparked your interest in social impact, international affairs, and technology.

I’ve grown up at the intersection of many different cultures, countries, and spaces. My father is from Liberia; my mother from Ghana. I was born and eventually raised in Switzerland, lived in Djibouti, and spent half my life in South Africa. I attended university in Canada and currently live in London. With multiple identities comes the constant sense of belonging and not belonging. These early experiences made me want to understand the past, the whys, and how that shapes present realities.

It’s been a whirlwind of a journey: understanding one’s family history is a privilege that minoritised bodies, especially Black bodies, are often denied. Last year I finally learned that my paternal ancestors were freed Barbadian slaves who boarded the CORA Ship in the 1800s to start a new life in Liberia. It took over a decade of research to figure that out.

As someone who's always been curious about many different subjects, a multidisciplinary degree like International Development and Politics was an easy choice. After graduating, I was drawn to the tech industry for its paradoxical ability to solve and exacerbate big societal challenges at scale. My work at the Internet Society is about bridging those realities.

A few of your roles have involved bringing together many different kinds of organisations (private, public, non-profit, etc.) to solve complex problems. Why is this range of perspectives important?

We need to close the longstanding gap between those trying to regulate and shape the future and those building it. Just as startups don't sufficiently understand the emerging policy and regulation landscape, policymaking is not always conducted with a nuanced understanding of how the Internet works. When you consider the current debate around Section 230 in the US, it's clear how much both sides need to learn from one another.

Knowledge sharing does exist but tends to be one-way: we're more likely to read about what Tech can teach non-profits and how governments should become more agile. I suspect this is because the public and non-profit sectors have a reputation for being outdated and bureaucratic. Just as you’re trying to do with Pass It On, we need to move away from this unidirectional approach and create space for more cross-fertilisation and collaboration. I’ve experienced the positives first hand in my work at the Internet Society, where we have such a diverse range of members (governments, Big Tech, non-profits, internet service providers, etc.). All of them come to our mission from a different angle yet still arrive at the same conclusion: our collective action is necessary to build, promote, and defend the Internet.

The Internet Society’s vision is that the Internet is for everyone. Why isn’t it already?

Those of us living in global cities like London or who grew up with the Internet as a sidekick are blind to how embedded the Internet has become in daily life. We ask Alexa about the morning weather, catch up with friends over FaceTime, learn a new skill on Coursera. We work remotely, earning our living, participating in never-ending Zoom calls. Consider our shared experience of lockdown: if it weren’t for the Internet you and I would have never met, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation!

These possibilities are not the reality for so many people: roughly half of the world is still unconnected to the Internet today. Why? Partly because internet providers have little to no profit incentive to enter rural or mountainous areas and inner-city neighbourhoods with smaller populations. It's no coincidence that these groups have been historically marginalised—whether it’s indigenous communities in Northern Canada or mountainous regions in Georgia, inner-city neighbourhoods in New York, and even closer to “home”, parts of Wales and Scotland.

How can the Internet become a greater force for good?

All too often, technology is deterministically thrown at different societal challenges—from teacher shortages and online education to violence against women and climate change—without identifying and addressing the root causes. When this happens, technology negatively impacts marginalized communities by amplifying pre-existing biases and inequalities. That's why we see Google Photos misidentifying Black faces as gorillas and Robert Julian-Borchak Williams wrongfully accused by an algorithm. For technology to do more good than harm, we need more diverse perspectives at the table. We need to pay closer attention to unintended consequences. We need a more human, holistic approach.

What role does community play in connecting people to the Internet? And as a community manager, what role do you play?

For groups left behind by capitalism, it takes a strong sense of local community, capacity building, and collaboration to bridge the digital divide. At the Internet Society, we don’t assume that people want to be connected to the Internet; we only work with the communities that do. One example is the Nation of Hawaiʻi, a sovereign community with whom we recently worked to build a local Internet access solution. For them, the Internet was much more than a tool; it was part of their journey towards self-determination.

As a community manager, my job is to connect the dots between the Internet Society, our goals, and our community of like-minded organisations. Doing that involves weaving together all key stakeholder groups and encouraging them to engage in everything from thought leadership and expert events to the Internet Society's governance. Ultimately, we want all of these groups to collaborate and work with us to solve challenges we could not alone and build a bigger and stronger internet for everyone.

For many organisations, Community Management = Social Media Management. What role should Community Management play and why?

Community Management is such a misunderstood function because it's still new and emerging in many organisations. We don’t have the frameworks, theories, and best practices like Product Management, Marketing, and other established fields. But thanks to groups like CMX and Community Club, we're making progress.

Done well, Community Management can serve many strategic purposes and drive business outcomes. For example, you can reduce risk by asking your customers to help prioritise what product features to build or reduce operational costs by enabling your community to troubleshoot and support one another. Successfully running these processes takes a community mindset that young organisations should establish as early as possible. The function should have a seat at the leadership table, too.

One such community-first company is Carra, a newly launched startup providing hair coaching for women with textured hair. Textured hair is still sorely underrepresented in product lines and the media. As a result, many women have developed a complex relationship with their natural hair, wrongly believing that it’s unprofessional, unattractive, and unworthy of taking care of. Carra wants to flip that script, and they're doing it by taking curly-haired women on a collective journey—creating wash-day parties and Spotify playlists so that we start to associate hair care with joy and self-care. With this dedicated approach to their community, I’m sure Carra will go from strength to strength.

How has your background and history shaped your professional self?

My experiences as an African Black woman have taught me two traits that I'm now trying to unlearn:

Likeability
Like many women, but I think especially for children of immigrants, I grew up "keeping my problems at home." I struggle to express my opinions at work openly for fear of being disliked. Framing yourself in relation to how others see you is a recipe for failure: you mirror someone else’s truth at the expense of your own. I'm so inspired by female colleagues, past and present, who have successfully unlearned this trait and can speak freely and authentically. I’m working to move in this direction.

Respectability
Respecting one’s elders is ingrained in many African cultures, even if it means repressing your true emotions and feelings. Despite being a brutally honest, cynical, and questioning person amongst people I am comfortable with, I have carried this tradition into the workplace, meaning I tend to hold back in front of older, more senior managers and leaders. I struggle to say no to superiors.

Learning more about my family’s history and my past has helped me discover a lot about who I am and who I want to be, and what I want is to be more authentic. Not only has that realisation changed what I expect from an employer (psychological safety, diversity), it’s also changing how I participate at work. For example, in a recent all-staff call, I spoke up for the first time and asked the CEO a question. I was terrified, but I did it, and in doing so, I started to undo twenty-seven years of repression. Asking a question in a group setting might seem trivial to some, but for me, these small acts are proof that I’m evolving and becoming that more authentic version of myself.

Which three books or other media have had the most significant impact on you and why?

@ogorchukwuu - an Instagram account run by an inspirational woman I'm proud to call a childhood friend. Her content and beautifully written courses support Black people on their journey through self-love so that we can make our bodies home once again.

Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami - a collection of short stories about men who find themselves alone. It's an exploration of loneliness, vulnerability, and despair—emotions we rarely hear about in the context of masculinity.

The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir, Wayetu Moore - an immersive tale about escaping the First Liberian Civil War that uses magical realism to explore the consequences of forced displacement on both childhood and adulthood.

Thank you, Loyce 🙏

Questions? Reflections? Contact Loyce on LinkedIn or email her directly at loyce.witherspoon@gmail.com. And as always, I’d love to know what you think:

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