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CASSIE’S READING LIST: Between the World and Me  | Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race | The Wretched of the Earth | A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race From the Colonial Era to Obama’s America | The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness



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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

⚖️Why Cassie chose to speak about privilege and dealing with it rather than user acquisition.

🤓How Cassie started thinking about her privilege, and understanding it.

🤝What does it mean to be an ally?

🧠How Cassie suggests that people educate themselves about privilege.

📚Cassie’s reading list.

🤷🏻‍♀️What does privilege in the workplace look like?

👯‍♀️What exactly is culture fit — and Cassie’s take on it.

⚡️Culture add vs culture fit.

🔄How both women and men must change to create a more productive conversation and workplace.

🗣How Cassie cultivated her outspokenness and directness.

🤔What Cassie recommends thinking about and confronting behind-the-scenes decision making in a company.

⚠️What Cassie recommends about the phrase: ‘work hard, play hard’. 

👎🏻Shortcomings of the tech industry with regards to the expected culture.

🙅🏽‍♂️A mentor does not have to be someone above you – and how Cassie suggests finding mentors.

KEY QUOTES

Acknowledge that privilege exists

For me, it started where I started understanding the privilege that I had. I started understanding that not everybody had college essay classes when they were growing up or an SAT tutor or all this crazy stuff that I had that got me to the point in which I got my first job. It happened a couple years ago when I started really educating myself on understanding my privilege.

The way to be an ally

For me, it’s taking each piece that you find in your privilege and then saying, “Okay, someone doesn’t have this. What can I do to fix this?”

How culture fit is a backdoor for racism

I think culture fit is another way to be racist. Going back to when your first day of work, in your interview, you’re going to get along with someone who has a similar background to you. I’m always going to be able to chat with someone better who experienced the same things that I experienced. So my back and forth, my, you know, that flow that you want in a culture fit is always going to be better in someone who is like me, but that doesn’t create diversity. 

Agreeableness is a barrier

For me, women feel like they can’t speak up because we still have this ingrained societal expectation that we’re supposed to be this agreeable, quiet person. Then at the same time, men expect us to be this agreeable, quiet person. For me, it’s coming from a long standing expectation of women to act like, “Oh, I agree with you. I’m going to take your notes, and I’m going to schedule your meetings. And I’m going to do this.”

Amp up the volume

Women need to be loud. I don’t want to change people’s personalities. I don’t want to say that you have to change your personality and who you are, but I do think that we need to be louder.

It is important to change expectations as well as perception

My recommendation usually is that it’s not just on women to change how we approach a conversation. It’s about men’s expectations in that conversation. 

How to make voices heard

The way that I would go about it is talking directly to them — “I wasn’t at this conversation. When did this conversation happen? Why are we having conversations then? And how can we make this more equal?”

The reality of being a woman in the workplace

Last year, I held a Women in Mobile Summit on one of the last days at MAU. We went around the circle and almost every single person had an inappropriate male story to tell from the last 3 days.

Work-life balance

“Work hard, play hard” is another catchphrase made by white men. I’m sorry. I actually prefer to have a work life balance — treat yourself well and do what you feel is right. That’s my reality. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth: I’m very excited to welcome Cassie Chernin to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Cassie, welcome to the show.

Cassie: Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited that we finally get to do this.

Shamanth: Absolutely. I’m thrilled to have you because you’re not going to talk about mobile user acquisition — that was a choice you prefered to make, and I was glad that that was something you expressed a preference for. I think a good place to start would be to ask you why this is important for us to talk about, and why you chose to talk about this rather than some of the amazing work you are doing in UA, which I’m certainly cognizant of.

Cassie: Yeah, thank you. Every day working in UA, I think we can get a little bit bogged down by not thinking that we’re doing amazing work, so I really appreciate that. Ultimately, to me, there are much bigger issues going on in the tech world than figuring out how to lower Facebook CPMs. Obviously, that’s very, very important to our day-to-day jobs and the way we succeed in the world, and obviously Facebook CPMs are a huge problem right now. But on the level of problems for me, on a day-to-day basis something that I’m really, really passionate about is fixing the startup tech world’s lack of diversity. It has become a huge problem that it’s a very male-dominated industry, it’s a very male-executive-led industry — and when I say male, I mean white male. So for me, when I get the opportunity to speak, I really like to speak about something that I’m incredibly passionate about, which is creating equality in the workplace and really changing the way that we think about the pipeline and hiring, and really bringing diversity into tech, or dealing with it as people who experience micro inequities or just full out racism on a day-to-day basis. So when I do get the opportunity to speak, I really choose to focus on this most recently because it’s something that I’m really passionate about. So thank you again for having me.

Shamanth: Absolutely, and this is certainly a very important topic and theme. You did allude to how a lot of the tech startup world can be quite male exec dominated, and as a woman, that’s certainly something you have navigated. From what I’ve read, you’ve certainly had strategies that have been effective in helping you navigate this as a woman. How does your personal experience navigating this world as a woman inform the way you think about privilege — specifically about folks from races and ethnicities that may not enjoy the sort of privilege? How does it inform the way you think?

Cassie:  For me, it starts within. I started to realize that I was privileged, and that is the starting point of this. I think what’s happening also right now with a lot of people is understanding your privilege and then fixing issues where we see people aren’t privileged.

For me, it started where I started understanding the privilege that I had. I started understanding that not everybody had college essay classes when they were growing up or an SAT tutor or all this crazy stuff that I had that got me to the point in which I got my first job. It happened a couple years ago when I started really educating myself on understanding my privilege. 

As I started to better understand my privilege, which I think is a lot of the work that needs to be firstly done is to ask, “Who am I and what have I benefited from the system?” Once you understand that privilege, then you can understand so much more about everyone else who has not been afforded that privilege. How I’ve navigated this space is that as I’ve understood my privilege, I’ve started to use that privilege. For me, that’s what me talking here on this podcast is about — as I understand my own privilege, I need to use that privilege to speak out for more people who are underprivileged. An example is that I am a white woman, so I’m protected by my whiteness. So, in a situation where maybe a person of color or a Black person or an Asian person would not speak up about racism in the workplace or would not correct micro inequities. For instance, a silly thing of getting someone’s name wrong, which I find very offensive — I correct them. That’s how I think of my own privilege. 

I am able to accept that I have privilege, I am able to accept that my whiteness protects me from a lot of everything going on, and I use that privilege as much as I can. I think that’s part of being an ally —

an ally isn’t really speaking for the underprivileged, but it’s about speaking when the underprivileged does not feel comfortable speaking up or does not feel protected. I think it’s also about how you approach a situation. But for me, that’s how I’ve thought about my own privilege is that I have it and now how can I use it to help everyone around me?

Shamanth: Yeah, and I think it’s certainly something that’s easy to forget that as somebody that has privilege, even if you don’t speak up, you can get on with your life and nothing would happen. A lot of people wouldn’t even notice that. I think it’s important to just be cognizant enough to know that you have that agency to make that difference. You did speak about how you started to educate yourself about your privilege. How would you recommend that let’s just say somebody in a position of privilege says, “ Oh my god, I had no idea I had a blind spot. I would like to be a little more cognizant about my privilege.” How would you recommend that they educate themselves?

Cassie: I think there’s a couple different ways that I went about it. I think, one, read books — read, read, read, read.

Shamanth: Anything you could recommend?

Cassie: There’s so many. I want to try to not recommend ones that are written by white authors, although white authors have really helped me a lot. I have a book, it’s called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I think even reading books not on the topic of privilege can help illuminate your privilege. So this book, by Michelle Alexander, is about how basically mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. By reading this, you understand that you are privileged just by walking out every day and not feeling unsafe by seeing the police. You are privileged by not ever having your family ripped apart by someone getting arrested for nothing.

So, my first thing is to read books. There’s tons of book lists going around right now. I recommend that you read and as you read, you’ll understand all the different ways that your privilege affects what you do. As I mentioned, this stupid one that I talked about in high school, but there’s so much more. I think one that really helps my parents that I talked about that helps a lot of the hard conversations that we have within the workplace, but also with our parents is, “Did you ever feel scared when I went out to a party where I was underage drinking and being a fool in high school? Were you ever scared the police were going to come, and you were scared for my life?” That’s privilege to me. And that, to me, is the highest level of privilege. There’s also the privilege of when your first day of work at a tech company, did you feel that you were going to be the one person represented? Or did you feel like the workplace was going to be cohesive, like everyone was going to be like you.

That to me is also privilege — it is walking into your workplace and everyone has a similar background to you or experienced similar experiences to you. From my point of view, it’s to read books that educate you on the inequities that have happened in this world. Also, there’s tons of Instagram people at this point — that Instagram activists or activists in the space that are doing the work, they shouldn’t have to but they are on Instagram, that I would recommend following and integrating that into your daily life. It’s not about doing it just one time, it’s about a daily reminder of understanding your privilege because otherwise you’re gonna forget. For me, it’s about everyday waking up and understanding that and then talking about the things that I can change.

Shamanth: It’s hard work, if only because it’s not intuitively obvious for many of us who are privileged. I include myself in that just because I enjoy very many privileges. As I was mentioning, just before we hit record, I had the privilege to be able to move to a different country, start anew — a lot of people wouldn’t have the resources to be able to do that. This is something I’ve tried to remind myself to do.

Cassie: I think most people have some form of privilege. So accepting that you have some sort of it and then trying to fix it for everybody else that doesn’t have that sort of it. So, for example, I need to work to figure out how I can improve people’s high school experience and get them to college because I was able to afford the privilege of, “Oh, you’re definitely going to college because that’s what we do.” I need to work, and I have done some volunteer programs where you can volunteer with someone in the STEM field to go mentor, a high school kid who might not know, especially if you’re first generation US, about student loans, financial aid — you don’t know about all this stuff. That’s so obvious to people who have gone to college before. So

for me, it’s taking each piece that you find in your privilege and then saying, “Okay, someone doesn’t have this. What can I do to fix this?”

Shamanth: Speaking of cultures, within companies, which you alluded to, it’s increasingly important to you to address some of the inequities you see within companies. One area where a lot of biases do creep in is hiring. One very common way in which I’ve certainly seen this happen is the whole idea of culture fit. Again, there are arguments that “Oh, culture fit is very important.” So how do you recommend that folks think about culture fit — leaders, execs? And how do you think about this on your team?

Cassie: So I think culture fit is bullshit.

I think culture fit is another way to be racist. Going back to when your first day of work, in your interview, you’re going to get along with someone who has a similar background to you. I’m always going to be able to chat with someone better who experienced the same things that I experienced. So my back and forth, my, you know, that flow that you want in a culture fit is always going to be better in someone who is like me, but that doesn’t create diversity.

If you are only looking for people like you or a culture like you, you’re just in a place where you’re going to hire a bunch of people who look and act like you. 

It basically allows white men to create a culture that they want versus a diverse culture, so it creates a culture in which it’s just a bunch of people who look and act like you and then support you. For me, that’s something that I really struggle with. I look, when I’m hiring a team, for someone that’s going to question me. I am not an expert, and UA changes literally every second. What we were doing last year, what we were doing two years ago, what we were doing when we met three years ago is very different than what we are doing now. We didn’t have UAC I don’t think, which I wish we could go back in time. I don’t think Apple search ads even existed three and a half years ago. 

Things have just dramatically changed in the space on a regular basis. For me, I’m always looking for someone who’s going to question what I believe in. In my opinion, culture fit actually just hires people who are going to be yes people, so I don’t look for that when I’m hiring. I read a good article about this because I’m not an HR person, and I’m not an expert on this. I think the way that they phrased it was, I’m looking for a culture add instead of a cultural fit — that really rang true to me. I’m looking for someone who’s going to add something to the conversation versus someone who’s going to give the same answer as the person next to them. I think it’s really important.

Shamanth: Yeah, and just speaking of people who can add to the conversation, another way in which a lot of these biases can manifest is that privileged people can have a tendency to be louder. They can be more boisterous in the room. The fact that folks don’t enjoy that privilege, certainly women I know tend not to speak up nearly as much. As somebody that’s looking to make your team, your company a little more equitable, how would you recommend thinking about it? Certainly as a woman attempting to navigate the space for yourself, what have you found effective?

Cassie: I think that’s a layered question. Ultimately, when we think of the first roles that women had, women were secretaries and clerical workers in business, and I don’t want to get super crude, as an example, we were basically supposed to be these sexy secretaries that men would sleep with when their wife was away. That’s not a generalization. That was very, very normal — women’s roles in the companies were that. For me, that mentality hasn’t really changed. Obviously, we’re in different roles now, but from my understanding, it hasn’t changed in women, and hasn’t changed in men either. 

For me, women feel like they can’t speak up because we still have this ingrained societal expectation that we’re supposed to be this agreeable, quiet person. Then at the same time, men expect us to be this agreeable, quiet person. For me, it’s coming from a long standing expectation of women to act like, “Oh, I agree with you. I’m going to take your notes, and I’m going to schedule your meetings. And I’m going to do this.”

It comes from, I think the great example is when you’re the only woman in the room and they point to you to take notes. And I think, yes, I’m actually going to take better notes than all of you in the room because I’m organized, and I’m a better employee, but I shouldn’t be the one that you point to. 

I think what I’m trying to get at, and I’m losing my train of thought because It’s so multifaceted, is that we need to change both sides.

Women need to be loud. I don’t want to change people’s personalities. I don’t want to say that you have to change your personality and who you are, but I do think that we need to be louder.

I think I’ve said this a lot of times in blog posts that I wrote and other webinars that I have led, and I’m screaming — I’m not physically screaming — but I am screaming for change. And that’s so, so important. I think the same thing is that we need men on the other side to recognize their privilege, understand their role in this whole system that’s been created for 60 years, and then change the system. If they change their expectations, and we change the way we approach a situation, that becomes a better, more productive conversation. 

My recommendation usually is that it’s not just on women to change how we approach a conversation. It’s about men’s expectations in that conversation.

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback in my career that I’m aggressive and defensive and confrontational, and that is because of the expectation from my perspective. Maybe I am a little bit, I’m not gonna lie, but there’s also that expectation of women to just be agreeable. I think for me, It’s about women who feel comfortable setting an example for other women, so other women feel comfortable doing it. Then men recognizing that when they think that a woman is being defensive, it’s not — it’s just a woman having a conversation with you. 

Shamanth: To follow up, have you always been outspoken and direct? What are things you have to do to cultivate that?

Cassie: No, and so that’s the common misconception, I have not been this outspoken and direct. I think it’s twofold. One I mentioned reading books — educate yourself. We do the same thing when we give a presentation, we make sure we know all the facts. I make sure that I know everything that I’m going to be presenting, so that I feel confident in what I’m presenting, and I can answer all the questions. We do the exercise, and we do this on my team, we ask, “What do we think they’re going to ask? We have the answer in the appendix, we have the answer in the deck. Do you know the answer?” Do that same thing when you’re thinking about inequality in the workplace. If you’re going to speak up, you want to feel confident. People who are not understanding what’s going on are not going to speak up. So my recommendation, which is so exciting, with what’s going on right now, which is why I want to speak about this is that so many more people are adopting this and so many more people are understanding this and so many more people are understanding that I need to get educated first before I speak.

Shamanth: Something else that tends to happen in companies is that women or minorities aren’t even at the decision making table. I’ve been in companies and teams where a lot of the decision making happens somewhat informally where the senior leaders just go out drinking. Of course, some of these decisions happen at about one in the morning. Obviously because not everybody likes to go out drinking at one in the morning, some voices just aren’t going to get heard. For somebody that’s finding that they’re out of the loop in situations like this, what would you recommend? How do you think about this?

Cassie: This is a hard question because it’s really again on them. For me, I’m tired of hearing that we, as women, or people who don’t drink or people who don’t participate in these activities need to change these other people. But, if that’s the case, and we’re stuck here, I can’t change other people because they won’t change.

The way that I would go about it is talking directly to them — “I wasn’t at this conversation. When did this conversation happen? Why are we having conversations then? And how can we make this more equal?”

I don’t know the answer, and I think it’s accepting that too, is that I don’t know the answer to everything. 

The thing is that I do it — I feel the pressure to go out drinking, and not anymore because of COVID thankfully. I think it’s actually created a very interesting perspective of that decisions are actually being made over Zoom, so people are more clued in and more conversations are happening versus the hallway conversation versus the sit at a desk and have a one off conversation. From my perspective, I think that Zoom and work from home has created a more engaged and more conversational and more communicative environment. However, I do participate in this because I don’t currently see a way to change it. I think it’s about continuing to push on people who are participating to say, “Hey, I don’t think this is the right time. Hey, I think that we should probably talk about this tomorrow morning when x is here, I think that they would have a bigger voice.” 

I think it’s about people who are there taking a leadership role in making those decisions, but not a great answer. That goes back to the culture fit question. Are you looking for someone who drinks? It’s a huge problem. I’m not a huge drinker anymore. I used to be, and I would always feel a lot of pressure when I would say, “Hey, I don’t actually want to go. I’ll go to the QBR, but I don’t want to go to the dinner. I’m an introvert, I’m tired, I want to go home.” There’s this huge amount of pressure to have to go socialize.

I think a great example actually that I had is MAU. I’m not an MAU fan because I prefer not to get wasted with coworkers, and I prefer not to get wasted with people of that industry, it’s just not my gig. I have actually rebooked my flight 3 times every time I go to MAU to leave early because I feel incredibly awkward.This is an incredible conference in which I have had a ton of value out of it, and Adam has done an amazing job — It’s the forefront leading mobile conference. But because it’s in Vegas, it has a lot of drinking, there’s a lot of gambling, and there’s a lot of staying up late — that’s just not things that I want to do in a work environment. 

Last year, I held a Women in Mobile Summit on one of the last days at MAU. We went around the circle and almost every single person had an inappropriate male story to tell from the last 3 days.

Drinking with your co-workers and drinking with tech is what tech has turned into. So not only do I not feel comfortable in that environment, but I don’t actually think that that’s productive for me. I think it’s about thinking about how are we looking at this industry as a whole? How has tech become this kind of emphasis on socialization versus work? Why is it required of me to go out drinking with you for me to have a good relationship with you as a partner, outside of the execs going out drinking? That to me is also something that we need to start talking about.

Shamanth: Definitely echo what you expressed about MAU, I have certainly felt pressure to go out. I’m not a drinker, but I’ve certainly felt pressure to at the very least stay up late — if not be drinking. It’s challenging. I’ve also been in companies where there has been almost a company-wide culture of going out and drinking, which I think the shorthand that a lot of people use for that is “we work hard, party harder.”

Cassie:

“Work hard, play hard” is another catchphrase made by white men. I’m sorry. I actually prefer to have a work life balance — treat yourself well and do what you feel is right. That’s my reality.

“Work hard, play hard” is definitely, I think, outdated.

Shamanth: Yeah, so we’ll just switch gears a bit. You’ve spoken about and written about the role that your mentors have played in your career. I would imagine that for a lot of people that are underprivileged in different ways, that can be a shortcoming — just being able to find mentors, being able to get advice for what to do in day-to-day situations, but also longer term career choices. How do you recommend that for somebody that feels like, “Oh, I just don’t have anyone to ask for advice.” How do you recommend they think about this?

Cassie: I think there’s a couple things. One, I think the idea that a mentor has to be someone who is above you, to me, is also antiquated. I find a lot of mentorship with people who are on equal footing with me. Some of my direct reports I find provide different thinking and what I would consider mentorship to me.

I think it’s about redefining what you define as a mentor. It doesn’t have to be the CMO of the company or the VP of the company, which I’ve previously thought in my early career was that a mentor has to be someone who’s a hyper-successful woman in the industry who I need to kind of hitch my wagon to. 

The way that I’ve thought about mentors has changed. The way that I think about mentors now is finding your circle of women or people of color or whoever you feel you want to talk to and you feel comfortable with and getting those people who align with your beliefs and then using them as mentors. Everybody has had a different experience in their careers, and everyone has a really unique perspective. It is freaking hard to find a woman-in-power mentor. It is what it is, especially in product. We’re in marketing, so that’s a little bit easier, but I truly can’t imagine what people in product feel trying to find a woman executive. For me, it’s about sometimes changing the way that you define a mentor and using other people in your life to be those mentors for you. I’ve been very lucky to have those people as well.

Shamanth: Certainly these are battles that we’re gonna have to continue to fight. I’m glad you’re starting to fight these battles. I’m also glad you decided to come onto the podcast and talk about these very, very important themes. Cassie, perhaps this is a good place for us to start to wrap up. Could you tell folks how they can find out more about you and connect with you?

Cassie: I don’t really do things on social media and not really a person who promotes themselves. Although, I am on this podcast, so really thankful again to have this opportunity. I default to the books that I recommended, so I would like to just mention those books really quickly. I think the first book that I read that I really recommend is Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me. I also recommend Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge. Also, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon and A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race From the Colonial Era to Obama’s America by Jacqueline Jones. I think starting there in books for me has always been a good place, so I can’t recommend that enough.

Shamanth: Excellent, we will link to your reading list. We will have notes from all of this. Cool Cassie, we will let you get on with the rest of your day. Thank you so much for being on the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Cassie: Thank you so much. I can’t tell you enough thank you so much for having me. If anyone does have any questions, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. I’m happy to talk about this. I’m also happy to have feedback — I’m not perfect. I’m still learning. I’m also a white woman, have tons of privilege, and I’m just happy to be here. So thank you again so much. 

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!