Ideas change everything

How do we bridge the "anxiety gap" at work?

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Erica Joy Baker |

TED@BCG Milan

• October 2017

When was the last time you felt like an outsider? Now imagine if you felt that way every time you entered your workplace. This is what many women and people of color feel every day at work, especially in the tech industry -- they have to overcome the anxiety of being treated like an outsider before they can do the work they were actually hired to do. This isn't good for company morale or productivity. So what can employers do about it? Erica Joy Baker shares her first hand experience with overcoming the "anxiety gap" and advice on how to close it.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

When was the last time you felt like an outsider? Now imagine if you felt that way every time you entered your workplace. This is what many women and people of color feel every day at work, especially in the tech industry -- they have to overcome the anxiety of being treated like an outsider before they can do the work they were actually hired to do. This isn't good for company morale or productivity. So what can employers do about it? Erica Joy Baker shares her first hand experience with overcoming the "anxiety gap" and advice on how to close it.

Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

About the speaker

Erica Joy Baker

Engineering lead

Erica Joy Baker is a Senior Engineering Manager at Patreon where she leads the Infrastructure team. Baker's career in technology began 15 years ago at the University of Alaska, before she joined Google in 2006. She then joined Slack in 2015, where she originated the Build and Release Engineering team. Baker is an advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech, and is a member of the Girl Develop It Board of Directors, the Code.org Diversity Council, and is on the Advisory Boards for Barbie, Atipica, and Hack the Hood. A founding member of Project Include, she was the 2015 Level Playing Field Institute Lux Award winner, a nominee for the 2016 Crunchies Include Diversity Award, and was included in WIRED Magazine’s 2016 Next List.

About TED Institute

Every year, TED works with a group of select companies and foundations to identify internal ideators, inventors, connectors, and creators. Drawing on the same rigorous regimen that has prepared speakers for the TED main stage, TED Institute works closely with each partner, overseeing curation and providing intensive one-on-one talk development to sharpen and fine tune ideas. The culmination is an event produced, recorded, and hosted by TED, generating a growing library of valuable TED Talks that can spur innovation and transform organizations.

Read more about the TED Institute