A Conversation About Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice at Mathematica and Beyond

[PATRICIA A. KING]

It's no longer just diversity and inclusion. It's got to be diversity, inclusion, and justice. And justice means we have to figure out structural impediments to equity, and we have to be willing, when we do that, to have a different set of priorities. That is the challenge.

[J.B. WOGAN]

I’m J.B. Wogan from Mathematica and welcome to On the Evidence, a show that examines what we know about today’s most urgent challenges and how we can make progress in addressing them.

My guests for this episode are Patricia King, LaVerne Council, and Akira Bell.

We recorded this conversation in April, which happens to be Celebrate Diversity Month, and I couldn’t ask for a more insightful panel to lead a conversation about diversity, inclusion and, as Pat says in the preview clip at the top, justice.

Pat, LaVerne, and Akira are all members of Mathematica’s Board of Directors. They each bring a unique combination of perspectives, personally and professionally, that influence Mathematica, and through Mathematica, the larger field of evidence-based public policy. They are all leaders in their respective fields of law, science, and technology, and they happen to be Black women.

Pat’s expertise is at the intersection of law, medicine, ethics, and public policy. She was the first Black woman to receive tenure as a law professor at Georgetown University. While there, she has worked on legal and policy issues related to biomedical research and ethics, including informed consent, stem cell research, euthanasia, and genome editing.

During her career, she has advocated for the perspective of marginalized communities who have an earned mistrust of the biomedical research community. Notably, she served on the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which was formed after the revelations around the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which Black men were led to believe they were receiving treatment for syphilis when they were not. Pat’s final term on Mathematica’s board—after 30 years of service—ends in May of this year.

LaVerne’s expertise is in transformational leadership, information technology strategy, and executive coaching. She is a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Emerald One, a management consulting firm that works with mission-driven leaders and organizations to create and execute business and technology strategies that enact positive change.

LaVerne has executive experience as some of the largest and best-known companies in the world, including Johnson & Johnson, Dell, Ernst & Young, and Grant Thornton. In the Obama administration, she served as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. LaVerne also hosts a podcast called Brilliant in 20, in which she chats for 20 minutes per episode with bright and brilliant leaders in the private sector to learn about their careers, their greatest lessons, and their practical approaches to leadership. She joined Mathematica’s board in early 2020.

Akira is a senior vice president and the chief information officer at Mathematica. Like LaVerne, her expertise is in business strategy and transformation through information technology and she came to Mathematica after working at several Fortune 500 companies, such as Aramark, PWC, IBM, and Hess Retail. Akira is an employee board member.

We talk about how Pat, LaVerne, and Akira got connected with Mathematica, how they’ve tried to influence the organization through their respective roles, and what they see as the challenges and opportunities for realizing Mathematica’s vision for an equitable and just world in 2035.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

How did each of you first get connected to Mathematica?

[PATRICIA A. KING]

I guess I should start because I've been around the longest. Actually, I was connected because an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law was already on the Mathematica board, and one day he stopped me in the hall and asked could we talk, and we did. And he asked me would I be interested in Mathematica, which I had never heard of. But he told me a little bit about it, and I was interested right away. I had just spent ten years on the Russell Sage Foundation board, which dealt with social science research and a nonprofit, and I had been on the board of a woman's organization, so I had always been focused on public policy.

I had been focused on what organizations could do, and I was focused on sort of the mission of the organization. And Mathematica was right there. It was just a for-profit, as distinct from some of it will nonprofits that I had worked with the past, so I got interviewed. At that time, there were five major shareholders, so it was a different company, and so I've been here for quite a number of years, and never regretted it a minute. It's a really terrific organization.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Well, that's great to hear. All right, Akira, you're up. How did you get connected with us?

[AKIRA BELL]

Like Pat, I had never heard of Mathematica until I received a phone call, and that phone call came from an executive recruiter that I had worked with before, and at the time, he called me and said, "Hey, this company, Mathematica, is going to be look for a CIO." He didn't have a job description yet, but he wanted to talk to me about it. My first question was, "Who is Mathematica?" So he started to give me some information. Of course, when I Googled, I first landed on the Wolfram site, and then I got redirected. It redirected me over to Mathematica dash or MPR. And that's when he and I and in my own research started learning quite a bit more about the organization. And I think the work and the mission of the company was attractive to some of my non-professional interests, aligned there, so I started leaning in and wanted to know more about the company, and then my academic background is more in kind of the data science area, so where data science meets social science was a very increasing opportunity to me, and then that led to many actually coming in and sitting in for the interviews, and I started just loving the people and loving the work, and I just celebrated my third anniversary.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Terrific. I think it's funny that none of you've ever kind of heard of Mathematica before. But it's not that surprising given that -- I mean we have a lot of statisticians and economists at Mathematica. I think it's probably well known in those spaces. But that's one of the things I think you all have in common is that you come from different areas of expertise and fields. So, Laverne, tell me how did you get connected?

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

I became aware of them through an FFRDC role that I had, and then Akira showed up at this thing called Mathematica, and I said, "What's Akira doing?" And I started reading about what they do. I said, "That makes sense. I think that would be cool," you know. I said, Now how is she going to transform it?" She knows that's how I sort of start. So, I thought it was a neat organization.

I did not think about being on the board or anything at that point. But as I started looking at what I wanted to do with boards and when I had myself unencumbered, the opportunity came up for a board seat, and I was so privileged to be interviewed by Pat, as a reference from Akira. And it was so wonderful to embrace Pat. You know, I was sort of tongue-tied meeting Pat, because she's like, you know, she doesn't realize it, but she's like a superstar, and she didn't know I knew who she was. But I knew who she was, and I just was so enamored and excited that she was on that board. I won't say anymore.

I knew the company was good, but I knew the board was better, because Pat was on it. And, you know, she answered every question I had about the board. She talked to me about culture, which is really important when you're making these kinds of decisions. And so I've been on the board now for a year, and really enjoying it. But I'm bringing a point of view from the technology world, and, frankly, I think since everybody's not a digital company, a technology company, it makes a lot of sense, so I'm really enjoying my time.

[J.B. WOGAN]

What interested you specifically about serving on the board at Mathematica, that specific role, and influencing the organization in that way?

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Well, one of the things, you know, I've all been very focused on not-for-profit roles and I chaired the board of trustees for the March of Dimes. I've always felt it's important to give back. I'm on the board of Girl Up, which is UN Foundation board, and so I understand and value policy, because I know sometimes that's the only way people will do what's right. It's sad to say but true. And I think where Mathematica could really help to drive and reinforce the right strategies, I thought would be interesting to see how that's done and how you do it through fact-based analysis. So, it made sense for me.

It was a different fit. When I looked at my public boards, I sit on very different, but at the same time, I chair the ad hoc Innovation and Technology Committee, and I hope that I'm adding value. I think we are, as a committee. We're having different conversations. And the objective is just to help Mathematica do what it does well but do it even better.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Pat, what about back in 1991 were you were recruited to be on the board, what were you thinking? How did you hope to make a difference?

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Well, to be honest, this was a long time ago, 30 years, to be precise, and so I really can't say. It was an entirely different company. When I say, it was much smaller. The board had outside directors, but they were really shareholders who were the directors, because they founded the organization and because they were the big shareholders. So, I thought that when I joined the board, the one thing that it would be useful for me to do would be to push on questions of diversity, because when I joined the board, there were no real array of senior female executives.

The board was all male when I joined. Anita came the following year, so there were two women on the board. I was the only African American on the board. So I saw my role as can we increase diversity among employees for example, and we do the work on that in the early years. Mathematica actually engaged with a Black women's college to do internships. This was long before a lot of companies were doing that.

After we became an ESOP, I was involved in helping to create the governance structure, and after Harold [Bebop] left, I became chair of the governance committee, so I played a big role in recruitment of board members, and I continue to try to work on those issues that were close to my heart, which is I deeply believe companies needed to be more diverse in many ways, and Mathematica was responsive. They could have been more responsive. The battle is not over. But people cared. They listened and we made progress, and I think that's a terrific thing to be able to say about an organization like Mathematica.

[AKIRA BELL]

And, Pat, look at where we are today, though, based on those early efforts. I know when I first started looking at Mathematica and understanding who we were, seeing so many female officers was one of the reasons I was intrigued. I have not run into many companies that have such a large number of women officers. And then even now, as I was nominated to be an employee board member. We have three black women on a board, and that's rather unique. That's special.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Yeah, and yet, and those conversations are alive and well about the job’s not done, we need to be mindful about the diversity and inclusion. Akira, so what about your interest in serving on the board? Maybe that is one reason to make good on that goal about diversity, but, yeah, tell me a little bit about what you were thinking when you joined.

[AKIRA BELL]

So, Paul approached me about being nominated to serve as an employee board member for a term, and I was definitely interested. I had already had some exposure to the board by that point, because we do regular conversations on technology and the strategic position of technology with regards to the overall business strategy, so I saw it both as a good professional opportunity for me to flex some non-technical muscles, and being a better steward as an Mathematica employee and shareholder, but also a way for me to continue to have different conversations with the board about digital and transformation and how we can leverage technology different as an accelerant and a solution step as part of our strategy. And, wonderfully, we now have an ad hoc committee that's focused on innovation and tech.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. All right, so I wanted to talk a little bit more about your personal experiences and perspectives and how that informs the work that you do with Mathematica. And as a few days ago, I was picking up a podcast, I heard an interview with Tishaura Jones on the radio, and you probably know, she's going to be the mayor of St. Louis. She'll be the first mayor of the city that is-- she'll be St. Louis' first Black woman mayor, and she was telling Michel Martin that being a mom and being in public service, she felt like it would be a bring different viewpoint that was valuable for the job she was doing.

She also referenced that she thought that her experience as a Black mom would be important, based on her conversation with her son about how he felt safer knowing that she would be overlooking the police department. And like her, I know each of you are trailblazers, and you have been the only or first in a lot of contexts throughout your career, so and I'm thinking not just about demographic characteristics because, Laverne, like you talked about, information technology and how that can be rare on a board and, Pat, I imagine your biomedical ethics background and civil rights background are differentiators on the board as well. So, take this in whatever direction you want, but how has that perspective of being the only or the first informed the work that you do with Mathematica?

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Pat. Do you want to?

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Well, I've already said some of the things I thought I brought, because it was at a time when -- this was in 1991, and there weren't that many women or Blacks on boards, so almost any board. There were some. But it's the same experience in every organization when you're the first. So Mathematica was not the first organization that I was the first. And so, you have to slowly educate people about, that's the way I think about it. We are educating other people while we're attending to the business off the organization, and you do that by making your points about what you think is required to have a successful organization. I thought that Mathematica had to represent what it preached. It was a public policy company. It was a very good public policy company, and influential in the areas in which it worked, and my view was that it had to look the part. So, at that time, we started keeping data on who worked in the organization, what levels.

As I tried to explain before, you know, it has to come from the board and board members if you're going to try to bring about change in an organization. So that was my approach. We had to build trust with other people in order to do it. But in that sense, Mathematica has always been open, so it's a little bit like what I said before, that was my area. My other area was, as you know, I do ethics in biomedicine and science, and I approached Mathematica the same way. What's the right thing to do, as opposed to -- the right thing to do, I'll leave it at that. What's the right thing do in this set of circumstances? And ethics and public policy goes with what Mathematica does, so I didn't have to make a big transition from where I started, if that makes sense.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. Great.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

I think, for me, starting off in technology and then probably breaking a lot of glass ceilings, I was the first Black woman partner anywhere in consulting for strategy, the first executive to handle worldwide technology for Dell, the first global CIO at J&J, who happened to be Black. First, first, first, first. One of the things you mentioned was, you know, the feeling of being an only, and the feeling of being first. I never, ever, ever could give that too much air space, because if I was so focused on being an only, then I probably was less focused on what my leadership needed to look like, how was I going to get people to see the vision that I was painting, and how was I going to get them to follow me?

I had decided quite a while early in my career that I wanted the same thing that white guys had. I wanted that executive job. There was a book written by a gentleman who has died now, but it's called "Why Do White Guys Have All the Fun?" And he was the big entrepreneur. He became very wealthy, and he died very early of a brain tumor. And I read that book, I said, "He's right, why do white guys have all the fun?" I think I can do this. I think I can do this on a global level. I think I can run businesses outside the U.S., which had a chance to do. I think I can lead people regardless of race and sex and preference, you know. So why shouldn't have I chance to do it? And, for me, the most important thing was that nobody hindered me, you know. You might not like me. You might not feel that I should be there. All that's okay. I didn't spend much time worrying about that. Just don't get in my way was my philosophy. Don't make yourself a burden to me. Don't try to set a barrier for me. I wanted what everybody else wanted, and I believed in the American dream.

My mom told me, you go to school, you get an education. Nobody can take that away from you, and you can do anything you wanted to do. My mom said that, and I can tell you, I believed it from the bottom of my toes to the top of my head. I believed it. I believed it like I was fed on it. And society, once I got home, tried to beat that out of me, they couldn't. They couldn't, because she had told me so many times, you can do anything you want. You can do anything you want. She never caveated that women don't do that, Black girls don't do that, you know. If you want to have a man, you can't do that. You never heard that, none of that. I so, I didn't have any of that baggage. And fundamentally, I know that was the secret sauce. I know that was the secret sauce. I know that's why I've had a career people only dream about. Because at the end of the day, she said, you work for it, you got a right for it. The interesting thing, even on my mom's death bed, I was getting ready to make a huge career change and leave J&J, and it was on my mom's death bed, and I said, "Mom, I'm going to leave." She said, "Oh, honey, go ahead." She's like, "You got that one, you'll get ten more. You don't have to be anywhere you're not needed. Go ahead. You'll be successful wherever you are." So, you know, only this single, no, no, just do what you feel like you have the right to do, and if you're willing to put in the time and the effort, you have every right to it.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Akira, what do you have to add?

[AKIRA BELL]

Well, first I'll say I did not consider myself a trailblazer. Clearly, I am a woman who is in the wake of other brilliant women who came before me, Pat and LaVerne being two of them. Sadly, though, that means in a career in technology, I'm still very often, only. And like Laverne, I had very strong voice in the back of my head, which was my mom who always said, "There's no room you don't belong it. And, you know, she was in the first class of women to integrate Princeton with women, so she was very accustomed to being an only in a room where people thought she didn't belong, and that was one of the values that she gave me, there's no room you don't belong. And so that was something I still had to be comfortable with.

Throughout most of my career in tech, I was often the only woman and often the only person of color. But that is one thing that I am very clear about, that we all can do better. I was so grateful, when LaVerne became a CIO, that she took my phone call, and I will continue to be someone like that to other women and other African Americans who are entering the technical field, and that's really important to me.

And then additionally, that is part of why we've done this partnership with Howard, to increase the pipeline of social scientists with tech skills coming into the industry. They may not come here to Mathematica, but that's our gift back into the world, is more African American social scientists who have a computing background. And it's also part of why, I think even in my internal work in Mathematica -- and Pat mentioned this already -- ethics have to be a part of our strategy in creating digital trust with our clients. We have to have means and best practices and thought leadership around how advanced technology can be used in an ethical and trusted way, especially when we're using technology to provide insights and decision supports to policies that impact vulnerable communities, which are oftentimes people who look like us. So, those are some of the things of why I came here and why being part of this community at Mathematica are important, but how we have to also keep the movement going. As Pat says, we can do more.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

I also just want to, after I'm listening to the two of you, for those who hear this, I think I have to talk to those who were not so fortunate as to have mothers like you two had. I had a very strong mother, but I'm from the South, and she always supported me, but she didn't know enough -- she never herself had been in environments, other than a Black environment, so she couldn't tell me to go forth. And I don't think I'm alone in that. So, my message is, in addition to what I heard from you all, is that for young Black women who are coming along, you can do it.

[AKIRA BELL]

Absolutely.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

It may be a little harder for you. You'll have to figure out your own way to inspire yourself, but it can be done. And if you're fortunate, like the two of you, then go for it. I just noticed the really interesting background. That was really wonderful to hear you talk about that.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

And my mom, Pat, was from Mississippi. My mother did not have a high school degree, and she was a teen mom. So, you know, she had lots of stripes, but she was really smart.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Yes, my own mother. I understand.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

She was very smart in a different time.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Right.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

And had she had a different way, I don't think there was nothing she couldn't do. She was very well good with number and very smart in recall and adding and all these things, so she really just gave me some of her stuff, you know, and kept me from being burdened, and striving to burden with. At the end of the day, it wasn't that that made everything easy, because it was never ever easy. What it was, was that I always had some place to go that I knew I was love and I knew I would not be rejected, and that would restore my energy to fight another day.

[AKIRA BELL]

Absolutely.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Absolutely. The one thing my mother did tell me was, the only thing, you should always try, because nothing beats a failure but a try. And I remember that on one specific occasion when I almost failed, did fail. But it's the attitude that inspired me. And all of our mothers were clearly very strong mothers.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Yes, very much.

[AKIRA BELL]

Brilliant in their own right.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Loved our moms. And I love being a mom. That's right. I think it's my whole self. I don't think everybody has to be a mom, but I can tell you, I love being a mom.

[AKIRA BELL]

Yeah, learned a lot being a mom.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Yes.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Does your experience as parents inform or make you more interested in the work that Mathematica does? Because I know I think about the stuff with childcare or child welfare or education a little bit differently now that I'm a parent.

[AKIRA BELL]

Yeah, for sure for me. I think I mentioned in another conversation, you know, my experience with a high-risk pregnancy, and premature birth and that really opened my eyes to inequities in health care. And then having two preemies, twins, who were born two months early, and then also just understanding how neonatal care and early childhood development resources, how important they were, but also how difficult it is to navigate through that system; that if you don't have the time and the money and coverage to do it, that it's lost to you. And that ecosystem was just so rife with inequities that it just forever became something that was important for me to play a role in changing.

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Yeah. Akira and I have that in common, because I'm also a mother of a preemie, a sob that continues in the health system, and I see the inequities, seeing them right now. So being a part of Mathematica, you know, I listen very closely, especially to those things that affect Black men, and especially those things that are in the area of health disparity and what we can do to provide better insight to that, and then make sure that people get heard and seen is just so important.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

Well, I was a late parent. I didn't give birth until I was 41, at a time when nobody thought you could be that old and have a child and not suffer as a result. It was tough, because it took a lot of energy. But in some ways, it was easier because I had more wisdom at 41 than I would have had at 25 or 31, so it helped a lot. But I was very conscious about being a parent because the areas -- I'm a law professor, as you know, and I managed to get out of standard law school courses, so I taught for law children and I taught family law in a period of when we went from no divorce to easy divorce, when we went from single women could have children, et cetera, and those issues meshed with Mathematica. I discovered that pretty early, once I was on the Mathematica board, and I retain an interest in those issues. And I'm watching my daughter now with two young kids, I feel like I can continue some of those, and have with her, some of the concerns that I had about being a parent, what happens to minority children.

But in addition to that perspective, my work was also involved in health. So, I have been working in the area of Black health care historically, and what happens to African Americans in slavery and reconstruction and on down to now, that has been the kind of work I have been involved in. So, I also connect that with Mathematica and what I have learned. And my daughter will tell you that I drive her crazy about her health, getting her to take care of herself now, as opposed to waiting for something to happen. So, what I hear from all of us is that it's a whole life, our children, our work, and our identities contribute to the whole thing.

[J.B. WOGAN]

One thing, I know Mathematica has a 2035 vision, and I understand that the board of directors had a role in crafting that vision. One component envisions a more equitable and just world in 2035, so in, roughly, 15 years. Given your backgrounds in biomedical ethics and information technology, what role do you think advancements in science and technology will play in helping or hindering or arriving at that more equitable and just world?

[LAVERNE H. COUNCIL]

Well, I would just say right away, you know, not having people in the room who write the algorithms, who understand AI, who understand machine learning, who define it openly without having their own biases drawn into it is one of the biggest myths that I see, because I continue to see disparate technology. We see it in some of the biggest search engines that we're aware of and use, that there is disparity in it.

I always share with people, a few years ago, I had to go to Beijing, and in China they had put -- I guess it was three years ago, they had put facial recognition as the way to get through your passport; right? It couldn't see me. It couldn't see me. And so everybody's going through. Everybody's going through. Finally, the machine just gave up. Go; right? I get to the next one, and I see this trying to figure me out. Well, what that clearly said was the people that developed that software never thought about a face like mine, never positioned that a pigment would come through or a nose would be that place or an eye would be that place, and that's sort of the state of affairs sometimes. You're left out until you're not.

I remember the original iPhone with facial recognition did not see people of my hue or darker, could not see them. That phone, that phone was not going to work for you. How does that happen? How does that happen, especially in the human world? You know, if you're a human being, you want to be inclusive. You know people come in different shades and sizes and look all kinds of ways, and some people are blind; right, so they wear glasses. So, what do you do? Do they have to take their glasses off that facial recognition? So those are the things that require diversity in thinking and engagement, and the people that have differences are the ones that remember that people with differences have to be considered.

It's not always the folks that would like to be open-minded, but they just don't think about it. It's not in their day-to-day. It's not how they think about their day. It, frankly, is not how they think about their exposure as to who is going to be using a piece of technology or, in some cases with AI, being negatively impacted by it, because the system is making a decision based on a recommendation that's based on bias. It's a big issue. It's going to continue to be a big issue, and I really feel that it's one in which, if we don't start talking about what the students look like that do this work and what the people look like that do this work, we're going to miss the point.

[AKIRA BELL]

Yeah. But I think at the same time, that's our opportunity; right? So, with equity and public wellbeing as our target, not somebody's profitability or anything like that, but with equity as a target, we can use technology and design algorithms for equity to unpack the bias that are in certain decision systems. We have an opportunity to create models that remove bias instead of proliferate bias. You know, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of technology used in distrustful ways, but it has the capability to be used to create trust, and, you know, that's the part that I'm excited about. I mean, technology can be used to reach students, disabled people, in different ways than it has ever before. And that's the kind of technology I want us to be thinking about as a company and how to create the best practices and golden standards that would start to eliminate some of those negative implications.

[PATRICIA A. KING]

So, I'm not a technologist so I approach this in a slightly different way. I spent most of my time in areas that involve science advancements that have been controversial in particular. And that exposure has led me to fully appreciate something we all know, how deeply embedded in our culture and our structures, to go back to the point about technology and algorithms, bias and racism is. So, when I think about 2035, I think about other things that companies and organizations and structures will have to take on.

So, for example, businesses are client oriented. That's been a mass shift, and Mathematica's been a part of that most companies have. I think, in the future, we're going to have to be more user focused. I don't mean user focused in the sense of displacing client focus or that we don't think about the end users. We do. But we're going to have to think about them in a different way. And I'm going to give an example that was informative for me, though it comes from my field and not directly, but it's applicable to Mathematica, and that is, for many years, scientists have used human tissues, human bones in science. It's routinely done. When we introduced consent to having one's tissue analyzed, that was a big deal. But then we found out we thought we could deidentify those tissues and we could continue to use them for whatever purpose science wanted without being worried about how people who were original donors might feel about what their tissue was being used for.

So, today, the question for science, for example, is going to be, can we do our work effectively in economic terms and in terms of progress by not using deidentified tissue, and getting consent, or not using those tissues at all, or to go back and get consent from the original donors? Now, this is a tale that we all know, which is Henrietta Lacks. But my point is the following: It's going to cost science to give up deidentified material. It's going to cost science to give up bones they've been working on that were not donated to them for many years. Where is this impact heaviest? It's on those who identify with the person whose tissues and bones are being used without their consent.

So, if we want to bring justice, and today I call it justice, diversity, and inclusion, and I think that's important. It's no longer just diversity and inclusion. It's got to be diversity, inclusion, and justice. And justice means we have to figure out structural impediments to equity, and we have to be willing, when we do that, to have a different set of priorities. That is the challenge.

The biggest priority is that organizations want to be effective. In business, for-profit businesses, that's measured by how much money we make. Well, what about these practices that have been supporting those efforts but have been discouraging or not reaching, or those on whom we depend? So, I think in the future, we're going to have to spend more time on structural impediments, bias, discrimination. We're going to have to look at who benefits from our work, and we're going to have to look at who has access to the benefits of the work that we do.

So that's a big-picture view, but it's a big-picture view that applies to Mathematica and to other organizations, because it will require people to think differently about the pros and cons of the advancement, whether it be technological or scientific or just in health itself. We're going to have to think differently about what's important, and that is just going to be -- I'm optimistic. We are in a moment where you have to be optimistic, and you have to take advantage of the time going forward, and I'm hopeful, because I'm always hopeful. But I think that's a real big challenge.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Yeah. Okay. I heard you were talking about deidentified issue. But I know that deidentified data or personal information is a big issue for us at Mathematica. Akira, do you want to talk a little bit about the parallels with some of the stuff you're working on, and Mathematica is working on?

[AKIRA BELL]

Yeah. It comes back to the whole idea of digital trust and what that really means. It doesn't just mean that, you know, we have space to cure and we follow our regs and we pass our audits. It means are we doing things in a trusting way, and are they transparent to those users, as Pat said, and do we have permission, and are they benefitting from the use of that data? Is there a shared benefit model? So those are things that we have to explore in order to have real trust, in order to promote that equity.

[J.B. WOGAN]

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