FOUNDER
MATTHEW J YAZZIE
I am an indigenous rights advocate and organizational and behavioral scientist focusing on workplace trauma, discrimination, and harassment with seventeen years of diversity, equity and inclusion experience in tech. Currently, I am a Strategic Director at Collective, a DEI Lab, where I am focused on bringing comprehensive, measurable solutions to the diversity space.
I serve as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Women 2.0. I also am the Founder of this initiative, Others Project*, where we are creating the first real-time, consolidated, and open-source initiative dedicated to Diversity + Inclusion data. In addition, I serve as an Advisor to the Board for Project Include and as an Advisor to Spot, a company creating AI reporting tools that makes it safer for employees to speak up on issues of harassment and discrimination.
My background includes work as COO at both Jurispect, in regulatory FinTech compliance, and also at FWD.us, working towards intelligent immigration reform. I was a Founding Team member of the Global Ethics and Compliance group at Google, where I was responsible for training and investigations, metrics, and compliance technology procurement.
In addition to these roles, I serve as an Ambassador to the United Nation's Women's Economic Empowerment Forum, where we are working to move forward women's visibility, women's economic equity, and influence. I also serve as a Thought Leader for Founder's Embassy, the world's first accelerator designed exclusively to induct international and immigrant entrepreneurs into the Silicon Valley ecosystem .
PREVIOUS WORK
In 2005, I founded the Google American Indian Network and served as the leader of the group through 2011. We established scholarship programs, partnerships with outreach organizations, and leveraged Google's technology to address issues within the indigenous community. I also served on Google's Diversity Steering Committee for six years and acted as liaison to Legal for compliance issues. In 2010, I represented Google as an entrepreneurship advisor alongside twenty other delegates to New Orleans Entrepreneur Week.
VOLUNTEER WORK
In 2008, I served on the Board of Directors of Winds of Change magazine, the premier nationally distributed magazine with a single-minded focus on career and educational advancement for Indigenous peoples of North America, with an emphasis on STEM. From 2014 through 2016, I was the Bay Area Regional Coordinator for Carl Sagan's Planetary Society, the world’s largest and most influential non-profit space organization. In 2015 and 2016, I was an active member of BRAVO, a group of more than 300 ballet enthusiasts that support the ongoing operation of San Francisco Ballet.
FEATURED SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
I have been a featured keynote speaker for NASA, American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the United National Indian Tribal Youth (UNITY) annual conference, Culture Amp’s 2019 Culture First Summit, and SaaStr 2019 — the largest B2B conference in the world. I have also spoken on diversity and corporate culture issues and have been interviewed by Harvard Business Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Buzzfeed News, CNBC, Protocol, and The Telegraph.
Culture First 2019
Panelist for The D&I Fishbowl: How to facilitate conversations we’ve never had in the workplace
31 July 2019
NASA 2018
Keynote Speaker for NASA's Celebration of Native American Heritage Month
13 November 2018
INTERVIEWS AND FEATURED ARTICLES
Women of Silicon Valley
Penji: Shades of Success
NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Being photographed for Oprah Magazine's February 2019 issue on 6 Groups That Might Convince You to Join a Book Club
Volunteering for The Planetary Society and getting to sit next to my childhood hero Bill Nye at the LightSail launch