In the Room Where it Happens: Oregon Trail, a Room Full of Davids, and Taking Personas Personally (original) (raw)

Oregon Trail is my ‘origin story’.

The first time I played the game on the Apple 11e in my elementary school’s media center, I was transfixed. Always an avid reader, in my eight year-old mind, playing Oregon Trail took the thrill of ‘choose your own adventure’ books and amped it up by 1,000. I was entranced at this idea of ‘computer games’ actually being used for learning. Today that idea seems antiquated, but for a little Black girl in an under-resourced elementary school, that very idea felt revolutionary. Learning didn’t just have to happen through reading and listening. Through technology, we could be immersed in experiences that made learning feel as if we are a part of it, and not just recipients.

Much like the adventures in the Oregon Trail game, my professional life has been full of unexpected twists and turns. From a Political Science major to a Masters in Accounting and early career as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers, my path to becoming a marketing strategist in ed tech is layered and varied. Underneath it all is an imperceptible, enduring thread to that tiny elementary school library in metro Atlanta and those quaint green pixels on a black Apple 11e computer screen. And, I love it here. Here are four lessons I’ve learned along the way:

Take a Chance on the Longshot

Throughout my career, rarely have I been the typical, expected candidate. When I was hired into my first role in educational publishing, I was a new mother returning back to the workforce after nearly three years on ‘the mommy track’. I had never worked in the industry before. And at 28 years old, I was already a bit older than the typical new hire.

The person who hired me took a chance on me over more obvious or typical candidates. He saw me for who I was: a person eager to make an impact, passionate about education, generally unflappable, and wholly authentic. Despite how different I was from the ‘ideal’ candidate, he seemed to intuit that who I was and how I showed up in the world would connect with our customer base. He took a chance on a (relative) longshot because he had the foresight to understand that instead of being a hindrance, my departures from the norm could make the team better, the products we created better, and help the organization win more. And we did.

Every once in a while (and probably more often than we think), it pays to bet on the longshot.

In a Room Full of Davids, it’s okay to be a Phoenix

Years ago, I was working on a project with a mid-sized team (about 20 people) that had more guys named David (five) than there were people of color (three). There were so many Davids that we had to use initials to clarify who we were speaking to or about. Actually, we had two Davids who had the same last initial, so we started using last names to differentiate them!

More often than not, I am the only Black person in the professional spaces that I am in. I never take the responsibility of that kind of visibility lightly. I continually invest in understanding both the theory and best practical applications of effective marketing strategy so that I am prepared, knowledgeable, and can quickly make meaningful contributions to any initiatives I am involved in.

Albeit slowly, our company and industry are becoming more racially diverse. At the moment I am the only Black woman Vice President at our company (and one of only a handful at comparable companies). To whom much is given, much is required. Much of my drive to excel is rooted in a desire for Black women and people from other underrepresented groups who are aspiring to bring their talents to fulfilling work in ed tech, or corporate spaces, to see me and feel that they too are welcome in these spaces and that their talents and insights are desperately needed.

It’s important to note that each of the Davids on that team were lovely people: considerate, helpful, sharp, and good at their jobs. Moreover, they continually affirmed that a Phoenix in a room full of Davids made our organization, as well as the experiences of the teachers and learners we serve, better.

Be Precious about Personas

While I can be pretty laid back and flexible about a lot of things, I, admittedly, can be a bit ‘precious’ about personas. Used in software development for more than thirty years, personas are fictitious, specific, concrete representations of a target audience. Based on an aggregate of shared characteristics of target audiences, personas are specifically developed to create a precise understanding of a target audience and what they wish to accomplish.

Specific. Concrete. Precise. These words matter. A lot.

According to 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, only 20% of software developers are women and about 85% of software designers are white or Asian. So when product development decisions are made by people with strikingly similar demographic backgrounds, there is an immense risk of not incorporating the necessary perspectives, motivations, and experiences of the end user. If we are striving to improve learning outcomes of all students, it’s critical that there is a deep understanding of the user, many of whom have very different needs, perspectives, lived experiences, and motivations than the people developing the learning solutions.

The power that personas can have in mitigating bias in technology development piqued my intellectual curiosity so much that it became the focus of my doctoral dissertation: ‘Personas and the Pursuit of Persistence: A Grounded Theory Study to Construct U.S. Undergraduate Engineering Student Personas’. My research resulted in the development of a framework for constructing research-informed personas. I passionately believe that through the use of well constructed personas, U.S. engineering programs and educational technologists can create curricula and learning resources that improve student persistence in engineering studies, particularly among students from underrepresented groups like Black women.

So when it comes to developing personas, I can be a bit insistent that they be created with intentionality, using research-informed methodologies, and deployed with cross-functional alignment, understanding, and commitment to how they will be used.

Diversify the rooms where ‘it’ happens

As powerful as personas can be in helping to instill empathy and deep understanding in the product development process, they cannot be expected to carry the weight of an organization's lack of diverse talent. There is longstanding research on the competitive edge of diverse teams, particularly when it comes to identifying opportunities to innovate. It’s been shown time and again to be true in nearly every measure of innovation.

One recent example of the power of having diverse talent, in particular diverse marketing talent, is the launch of the Institute at Macmillan Learning. Over the past few years, our marketing department has become increasingly more diverse, including the addition of Symphonie Swift, a Black woman with immense talent and drive. After listening to the feedback from a marketing thought leadership campaign on teaching with generative AI that garnered more than 10,000 webinar attendees and views, Symphonie identified a very specific educator need for a more in-depth, hands-on professional development opportunity that offered enhanced support and community. By asking a simple question: ‘Is there something missing here?’ Symphonie identified an unmet need and went on to pitch and lead the launch of the company’s first direct-to-consumer professional development business model that in four months has already helped more than 220 educators learn to teach with generative AI.

To be clear, Symphonie is a singular talent who brings insight and clarity to any space she’s in. We are fortunate that she’s decided to share her myriad talents with us. The truth is that she is going to be successful with or without our company. However, Symphonie’s Institute launch reveals three critical takeaways for people leaders:

1. Create and nurture environments where all talent, especially those from underrepresented groups, feel a sense of belonging and of being valued.
2. Encourage curiosity and new ideas by empowering your teams to feel free to ask the, ‘what if…?’ questions that lead to new ideas.
3. Move beyond mentorship to sponsorship of talent from underrepresented groups. Advocate for opportunities for them to demonstrate their talents and ability to make an impact to the business. Sponsorship opens doors in ways that mentorship could never.

Opening doors to rooms from which people have historically been absent, can make teams better innovators and creative problem-solvers. To diversify the rooms where ‘it’ happens you may be required to take a chance on a person who is not the typical or expected option. But remember, sometimes it pays to take a bet on the longshot.

Final thoughts

Educational technology has undergone significant transformations since the launch of the Oregon Trail game. Gone are the days of simple graphics and text-based scenarios. We’ve learned a lot more about pedagogy and the science of learning since then. Innovative, immersive learning experiences can turbo charge student engagement and lead to better outcomes for all learners. Creating these types of learning technologies require partnership of product, research, user experience and marketing teams who design, build, package, and market with empathy and a deep understanding of the needs, motivations, and desires of teachers and learners.

Because when we listen to our customers, and they see themselves represented in our products, and we can bring our authentic selves to this shared work -- that is when the magic happens.