How will you adapt? asks Google's Gail Su
Even after almost 15 years, I can still remember the buzz of adrenaline flowing through me as I waited for my first in-person interview with a partner at a large international law firm. The door opened, right on time. The partner looked at me, tilted his head, and said, “You aren’t what I expected.”
On paper, I am an engineer and a patent attorney with over 10 years of experience. However, for the average person I meet, the fact that my background is in engineering or that I am an attorney is surprising. In their minds, I should look like James Stewart from “Anatomy of a Murder”, rather than a small Asian woman.
I have lost track of the number of times that someone has told me, “you don’t look like an engineer”, or “are you really an attorney?” let alone a competent one. When I share these sentiments with the people around me, they nod in understanding because that’s how ingrained the stereotype of a successful attorney is in society.
But what should a successful patent attorney look like? According to a publication by the American Bar Association, only 21.8% of US-registered patent attorneys and agents are women, and only 1.7% also identify as racial minorities. How can we, as a profession, hope to fully represent our clients, the inventor community, if our own community does not reflect all of their viewpoints?
Diversity among innovators leads to a vibrant sweep of innovation that is the cornerstone of life-changing technologies, and the ability of the IP community to appropriately represent that diversity is necessary to amplify those innovations.
But becoming an IP professional means navigating through a series of closed gates. At each gate, aspiring IP professionals leave, because they are shut out, or lack the support to open those gates.
For example, for a person seeking to become a US patent attorney, the journey starts with access to a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education in primary and secondary schools.
Next, that person must select a STEM degree in college, usually a four-year stop, and then, there are required standardised exams, three years of law school, state bar examinations, and the patent bar examination.
Each of these gates requires time and money. Even if a person can open all of these gates, their ability to find a mentor, a champion in their corner, could make all the difference in whether they can find the right opportunities to become successful.
How do we make sure that the gates are open and that every person has the chance to undertake the journey and is supported on that journey? How do we make sure that each and every one of us who wants to help has a path to help?
Access to information, connections to people
In recent years, we have made great progress in envisioning, implementing, and championing programmes for furthering diversity and inclusion (D&I) within our own teams.
Imagine if we could systematically scale out these efforts from our individual companies to the industry. ADAPT (Advancing Diversity Across Patent Teams) is a new D&I initiative founded by Amazon, Cruise, Disney, Google, LOT Network, Meta, and Microsoft.
ADAPT seeks to build a single, centralised platform that can serve as a go-to resource for DEI programme managers, potential volunteers, sponsors, nonprofits, and aspiring IP professionals alike.
First, ADAPT seeks to make D&I resources accessible to everyone, whether you are a practising or aspiring IP professional or you are a D&I programme manager. For companies, ADAPT will provide information on D&I issues, how-to guides for running D&I programmes, and opportunities to fund or volunteer with nonprofits supporting different parts of an aspiring professional’s journey.
