From Ideas to Impact: Insights from the December 2022 Product Equity Summit

By: Raena Saddler (Head of Product Equity, Meta), Denasia Pinkard (Content Design Lead, Meta), Anne Diaz (Head of Platform Equity Strategy, Airbnb), Tulsee Doshi (Director, Responsible AI & Equity Product, Google), Imani Dunbar (Head of Equity Strategy, LinkedIn), Zach Singleton (Head of Product for Privacy & Equity, Uber)

In December 2022, Meta hosted an industry-wide Product Equity Summit where product practitioners from 15 tech companies united to build community, share knowledge, and explore themes of fair, equitable, and inclusive product development.

The goal of the summit was to bring together tech practitioners who are working on equity, fairness, and inclusion issues in product, and to facilitate engaging discussions, panels, workshops, and fireside chats that centered on everything equity, inclusion, and impact. Over the span of two days, roughly a hundred product equity and inclusion specialists gathered from Adobe, Airbnb, Amazon, Cisco, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, PayPal, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, Uber, Visa, and Workday, along with experts from Beytna Design and the Product Management Center at University of Washington.

The conversations sprouting from the Product Equity Summit were both diverse and comprehensive — topics ranged from strategy and maturity models for product equity to inclusive language, assessing fairness in AI, and measuring equity and impact in our products. The result from the discussions shed light on the challenges and opportunities we have as tech practitioners as it relates to equity, fairness, and inclusion. Here are some high level takeaways:

• Equity should not be a competitive advantage: This is a newer space for the industry, and we are committed to collaborating with one another to share what we’re learning, what’s working and not working, and to accelerate the broader industry’s ability to build products with equity and inclusion in mind. Making products more fair, equitable, and inclusive should not be a competitive advantage for any one tech company — we want all products to work well for all people. Our continued openness will be critical to advancing capabilities across the industry. We plan on continuing to create spaces for us to do so with more events, starting with another summit this year.
• Focus & prioritization matters: We heard from many attendees how important it is to focus and prioritize. Because this work tends to be more nascent, there are a number of issues to address — so it can be hard to identify where to start when everything feels important. It’s clear that if we want our efforts to have impact, we need to prioritize moving the needle in focused places.
• Responsible measurement is key: Data science and measurement of success are essential to driving and understanding impact, and as an industry, we often lack important data and methodologies to identify problems. Responsible measurement and data collection approaches can be used to flag potentially problematic outcomes, allowing us to take proactive measures. Measurement approaches were among the highest topics of interest for product teams. One of our top priorities is to continue exploring options to responsibly use data. If we leverage data in our learnings and decision-making, we can positively impact the communities we’re trying to serve.

It’s encouraging to see both the immense potential of inclusive product development, as well as the important work being done to scale and standardize it. As product equity becomes increasingly common in the coming years, success hinges on continued conversations, collaboration, and action from professionals across all teams and functions in tech.

The good news is that there’s plenty of meaningful work already happening in tech. Our next step is to continue building on that bedrock: by working together, sharing the knowledge, and uniting to make equity a core factor in defining success and developing products. As we actively pursue this goal, we’ll keep sharing our insights and progress along the way.

A huge thank you to the 2022 Product Equity Summit planning team for helping to bring this event to life:

Product Equity Summit Planning Team Members

• Natasha Weinstein, Summit Planning Lead
• Denasia Pinkard, Content Design Lead, Meta
• Liane Aihara, Product Inclusion Lead, Platforms & Ecosystems, Google
• Timothy Bardlavens, Director of Product, Product Equity, Adobe
• Mallory Carroll, Product Inclusion & Equity UXR Lead, Google
• Sydney Coleman, Senior Product Inclusion & Equity Program Manager, Google
• Megan D’Alessio, Inclusion and Diversity Business Partner, Pinterest
• Benjamin Evans, Head of Product Inclusion, Paypal
• Cindy Joung, Product Inclusion, PM, Snap
• Matt May, Principal Designer & Product Management Director, Product Equity, Adobe
• Dee Miller, Director, Global Inclusive Design & Product Equity, Visa
• Tory Hargro, Director of Design, Equity, Meta
• Heather Patterson, Program Manager, Meta

Product Equity Summit Co-chairs

• Anne Diaz, Head of Platform Equity Strategy, Airbnb
• Tulsee Doshi, Director, Responsible AI & Equity Product, Google
• Imani Dunbar, Head of Equity Strategy, LinkedIn
• Raena Saddler, Head of Product Equity, Meta
• Zach Singleton, Head of Product for Privacy & Equity, Uber