JupyterCon 2020 keynote speaker announcement

JupyerCon Keynote Talk

Tackling Toxic Culture in Tech: Racism and Its Legacy

Tema Okun has spent over 30 years working with and for organizations, schools, and community-based institutions as a trainer, facilitator, and coach focused on issues of racial justice and equity. Dr. Okun currently co-leads the Teaching for Equity Fellows Program at Duke University, which works with faculty seeking to develop stronger skills both teaching about race and racism and across lines of race, class, and gender. She also facilitates, coaches, and consults with leaders and organizations nationwide.

Tema was a member of the Educational Leadership faculty at National Louis University in Chicago and has taught undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral level students in educational leadership and education. She is the author of the award-winning The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don’t Want to Know (2010, IAP) and the widely used article White Supremacy Culture. She publishes regularly on the pedagogy of racial and social justice.

Tema is a participant in the Living School for Action and Contemplation and a member of the Bhumisphara Sangha under the leadership of Lama Rod Owens. She is an artist, a poet, and a writer. She lives in Durham NC where she is fortunate to reside among beloved community. Her current project is deepening her ability to love her neighbor as herself. She is finding the instruction easy and the follow through challenging, given how we live in a culture that is afraid to help us do either or both.

Tema Okun at JupyterCon 2020

Three years ago, I was searching for career advice and discovered the Transform Your Workplace podcast with Brandon Laws and Megan Leatherman. I connected with Megan Leatherman and signed up for her newsletter. In Megan’s June 2020 newsletter, she included a reference to Tema’s podcast which really resonated with me.

The JupyterCon leadership had a vision for this conference to invite us to come together as a community, and think how we can make it better. We have strived to focus our attention on diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our programming. We also decided to accentuate equity and social justice in a dedicated keynote speech, and we are delighted to host Tema Okun in this role.

Podcasts

Love and Humility: Finding Refuge (Sep 2020)

White Supremacy Culture at Work (Jul 2020)

Unleashing Social Change: Tema Okun (Jan 2020)

Resources

Dismantling Racism