Allyship, Part II – An Interview with Claudia Hopkins
How White Colleagues Can Create Space for Women of Colour
Claudia Hopkins (she/her) is an independent product and service designer. She is driven to decrease barriers for people accessing services by using evidence-based and co-creative approaches.
Across her experiences in the UK and Canada, she has created interventions that can scale within complex systems. She also founded the Inclusive Design and Research Conference, Magnify, and now facilitates a community of practice events. In the past, she worked on the end-of-life care team at Helix Centre, Public Health England Digital, Ontario Digital Service, Vancouver Coastal Health, and the University of British Columbia’s Division of Continuing Professional Development.
She received her Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, which is situated on unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. Beyond work, Claudia loves gardening and cooking.
Claudia Hopkins | Designer
As a designer, I am creating services or digital experiences for people. If I don’t think critically, these design solutions can easily exclude people. I also advocate for inclusive design approaches and try to help other designers implement these methods.
“Allyship” has become quite a buzzword in recent years. What does it mean to you?
I agree that it has become a buzzword. And this makes me a little uncomfortable. As a white, cis woman, I don’t see myself as an ally because that isn’t for me to judge. Instead, what I focus on is pushing for and seeking equity, and that is my main goal. My goal is not to be a ‘good ally’ because that would be me centering myself. However, I am not sure whether we have a better term so I understand the need to use this word.
How do you see allyship show up in your work?
For myself, there are two ways to advocate for equity. One is to try to make the workplace itself more inclusive and the other is to bring more equitable practices into our work. I am a designer in the healthcare and tech space, but I think these two approaches apply to other environments too.
For workplace inclusion, I challenge systems and senior managers when I notice instances where we can do better. This means recommending various EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) training to all team members, sharing best practices with the team and managers, and challenging hiring strategies that are exclusionary. This also means advocating for colleagues’ access needs when they aren’t being met, or when running my own meetings, actively trying to make those inclusive to the team. Lastly, giving space to team members, especially if they are from an underrepresented background, highlighting their work, and offering positive meaningful feedback.
The second way is looking at the work you are doing, and thinking about how it can be more inclusive or accessible. As a designer, I am creating services or digital experiences for people. If I don’t think critically, these design solutions can easily exclude people. I also advocate for inclusive design approaches and try to help other designers implement these methods through community events that are open to anyone.
How do you think we can move from performative allyship to real, purposeful, and intentional allyship?
At the top of my mind, I can think of 4 steps, but there are probably more:
Critical thinking about the workplace
Listening and learning from others
Thinking of those beyond your lived experience
Being courageous
In the past, I have been in workplace meetings about diversity where I have expressed some hard truths that made senior managers uncomfortable. I myself felt uncomfortable, but it was important to say. A few people in the meeting spoke up to support me but some were nodding. After, I got direct messages from colleagues saying I was courageous and that they agreed. Although this was nice to hear, I realized how much people hold back because they are scared to say something. They are scared of confrontation. I don’t think it’s possible to move towards change without speaking up, adding your own voice, and also supporting colleagues who do speak up too is part of the difficult work we have to be willing to do.
What are some ways white colleagues and leadership can create space for WOC?
There are so many things that can be done!
Amplify voices by making space for WOC to speak and really listen to what they are saying. And when they share their thoughts and opinions, referencing that they said this rather than using their words as our own. In some workplaces, I have created a community of practice where people can share learnings among the team. By doing this, I am trying to elevate people’s voices and experiences. I think that this is particularly important as it's a way to share skills, and be credited for our work; however, we must commit to creating a safe space where folks can share their work and ideas. This is also a reason why I created Magnify, to share strategies, methods, and challenges about implementing inclusive design but also tried to ensure its speakers were diverse.
Give helpful and actionable feedback. In Hanieh’s Magnify talk, she discussed imposter syndrome which really stuck with me and reinforced some of my workplace experiences. I noticed that some of my colleagues who are WOC lacked confidence despite being incredibly talented, hard-working, and having amazing ideas. I think low confidence in the workplace likely develops over time but can be reinforced by an absence of meaningful feedback about their work - positive or negative. Positive feedback is of course essential to confidence. Especially when you are in a workplace that isn’t inclusive or the environment isn’t built for you, you can then develop a lot of self-doubt. When giving positive feedback, I try to give really intentional, thoughtful feedback that is concrete and focuses on workplace skills so that it can easily translate into tracking professional development goals. Negative feedback, or rather, feedback for growth is important too, but needs to be given in a constructive way. To give this type of feedback, I try to implement a clean feedback method, or provide a balanced perspective of a situation to show what they did well and what can be improved.
Share institutional knowledge as a way to decrease gatekeeping. For example, a colleague who is a WOC confided in me that she was job hunting. Our workplace did not offer her opportunities to grow or progress (tip for leaders - make sure this doesn’t happen as you will lose talent!). I knew that the types of jobs she was applying for had quite a unique application process, so I talked her through how it works and shared my approaches to applying for those roles. She had no idea that this was the case and without knowing this, she probably wouldn’t have gotten the role or it would have been a lot harder to get. This is not a reflection of her (because she has all the skills and talent required!), but the process was not transparent and different from other processes.
What are some gaps you have noticed when it comes to allyship?
I think one of the areas we don’t talk about enough in the workplace is self-reflection and the unlearning process. Here are two observations that informed my perspective:
People find it hard to look outside of their lived experiences. In the UK, classism is highly acknowledged compared to North America. When sharing articles or resources on equity which has an intersectional lens, I’ve noticed that white people from the UK will more likely comment on classism over racism. When teaching students about inclusive design, I have seen that they will more likely focus on excluded communities that are more like themselves as they can more easily empathize with that group.
At diversity or inclusion meetings, microaggressions can still be expressed. This is extremely uncomfortable, especially when sometimes they are the moderators of the sessions. In these cases, these groups are coming together because it has been mandated by a wider organization but the people leading it are not necessarily the best informed.
In these cases, I think that people have not questioned some of what they have learned over their lifetime, and have not begun the unlearning process. This then affects who they empathize with and who they centre. I am currently reading a book called Four Pivots : Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves by Dr Shawn Ginwright. In the first chapter, he talks a lot about ‘Awareness from lens to mirror’ (the book explains this better than I ever could so I highly recommend it!). In the book, he discusses the steps we need to take to make sustainable systemic change through a process of healing.
“In the past, I have been in workplace meetings about diversity where I have expressed some hard truths that made senior managers uncomfortable. I myself felt uncomfortable, but it was important to say.”