WP Includes (feat. Francesca Marano and Siobhan McKeown)

Welcome to the Underrepresented in Tech podcast, hosted by Michelle Frechette and Allie Nimmons. Underrepresented in Tech is a free database built with the goal of helping people find new opportunities in WordPress and tech overall.

Michelle Frechette:
I don’t have Allie with me here this week, she’s traveling, and so I have other people. I know that just a few weeks ago when I interviewed Anne on this, I did the sing-song to her, so I will do… If you ever listen to Underrepresented in Tech, you know that I start every episode by saying, “Hi, Allie.”
Instead of that, because she’s not here, I will say… I have two guests, so you have to listen to me sing even more, but I’ll say, hi, Francesca and hi, Siobhan, because today my guests are Francesca Marano and Siobhan McKeown. I want to make sure I say it properly. I probably butchered your name, I’m sorry… From WP Includes.
I’m laughing at my singing and I can’t pronounce your name then after I already asked how to, so it’s a fail on my part, but I am so grateful to both of you to be here today, especially since it’s 3:00 in the afternoon here in New York, it’s much later for you in the UK. Are you in Italy still, Francesca?

Francesca Marano:
Yes.

Michelle Frechette:
Okay. So yes, it’s much later in the day, and so I even more appreciate your time to come here today and speak with me. Thanks for being here.

Francesca Marano:
Thanks for having us.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Francesca Marano:
Do we need to sing back? Are we supposed to back?

Michelle Frechette:
Only if you want to. Allie doesn’t usually, but you can if you feel so inspired.

Siobhan McKeown:
I can have a go. Hi, Michelle.

Michelle Frechette:
I love it.

Francesca Marano:
That’s good.

Michelle Frechette:
That was good.

Siobhan McKeown:
I’m a terrible singer. Francesca’s raising her eyebrows like I am not doing this.

Francesca Marano:
I think we’re good with this.

Michelle Frechette:
We’re good? Okay, we’ll move on from the opening. You all have recently launched a new project. I’ve written about it briefly at post status and I am super excited about it, and I’m trying to figure out how to make time in my own schedule to be involved with it because it is absolutely something that’s not only noteworthy, but applause worthy.
Oh my gosh, it’s Thursday and I can’t think straight today, but this is absolutely worthy of our time. It is wpincludes.me, and I love that because WordPress does include me. I love that. Good on you on that URL. It’s a project for women in WordPress.
I’m going to turn it over to you. If you could each just tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do with WordPress, because I know that this is not your full-time job, just like the projects that many of us do are not our full-time jobs, and then also tell us a little bit about the history of how this came to be. Francesca, I’ll start with you.

Francesca Marano:
All right. I’m the Director of Engineering, Learning, and Growth at XWP, an enterprise agency in the WordPress space. We are about 70 people, we do big projects for news publications and all sorts of businesses that need big scalable WordPress websites.
Despite having the title of Director of Engineering, I don’t write code and I think everyone is very thankful for it because I haven’t been writing code in many, many years, but I do support our engineers in their professional growth. I’ve been working with WordPress for many years, I’ve been contributing for many years. I’m currently one of the release leads for the WordPress 6.4 release. That’s it for me today, I think.

Michelle Frechette:
Before I turn it over to Siobhan, I do want to say Francesca, I have interviewed you in the past for [inaudible 00:04:40], and you called yourself the shouty lady and I love that.

Francesca Marano:
I am.

Michelle Frechette:
Is that still what you would say is your unofficial title in the places that you work?

Francesca Marano:
I shout less. I have to say that with age, I have matured and I’m less shouty, but I’m definitely still very noisy.

Michelle Frechette:
There you go.

Francesca Marano:
Loud.

Michelle Frechette:
That’s great. Over to you, Siobhan.

Siobhan McKeown:
Hi. My name is Siobhan. I am Chief Operating Officer at Human Made, also an entrepreneurs agency, also about 70 people who does work with newspapers and banks, and other big international organizations.
Despite having chief in my name, I’m not actually a chief, you’d be surprised to know. Not chief of anything. I’ve been involved with WordPress since about 2010, 2011, I can’t remember, somewhere in the deep and distant past. I’ve been involved with the project for a really long time, involved with WordCamps, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp London.
I’ve done a lot of documentation and writing and that side of things, a lot of community stuff, and not being so involved with the project for the past few years due to making babies and having to focus on raising them until they can fend for themselves somewhat. I’ve been getting back involved over the past six months, I would say.

Michelle Frechette:
Very nice. It’s really great to have you both here and it’s really exciting to see what you’re doing. Here at Underrepresented in Tech, we really do try to highlight the different things in WordPress, in tech, but my heart is in WordPress of course, but that really try to help underrepresented groups, and women in WordPress has certainly always been one of those groups.
We’ve seen a lot of strides in the last few years for sure with the first, what we were calling then was the all women non-binary release, and right now we’re in the midst of the underrepresented gender release team, of which I’m part as well. It’s exciting to see that things have been moving forward.
What I love about your project is that it’s specifically about elevating women in their companies. Can you tell us a little bit about where did the idea to do this come from? How did you both align on it and what are your plans with this? How are we getting started in all of those things?

Francesca Marano:
This is for Siobhan, I’m along for the ride.

Siobhan McKeown:
You’re certainly not along for the ride, but you’re definitely… I guess you’re in the passenger seat when we’re being Thelma and Louise, when we’re driving off a cliff together.
Francesca and I are both involved… We’re both quite senior in the businesses that we work for and involved in this WordPress business community. I think both of us have found, through our interactions, that actually a lot of the groups, particularly the leadership groups within that are very, very male dominated.
This is especially true in the agency space. I think a lot of product companies, especially the smaller product companies, SMEs, they’re just dominated at the top by men. We realized, as we tried to collaborate in spaces with these groups, that we felt all of a sudden that we were in a minority.
It’s quite frustrating actually to then feel, oh, I’m in this male space once again and I’m having to assert myself as a woman amongst all these people who don’t even know what it feels like to be in a minority within that, and who aren’t even thinking that they have to take that extra step to make an inclusive space, to create diversity within the groups that they’re in.
We wanted to not just be annoyed about that because it is easy to just be annoyed about that. I love being annoyed about things, being annoyed about things [inaudible 00:09:03]. I love complaining, it is so cool, but I think there’s a point in which it’s not enough to just complain. You have to do something about it, and so I always try to turn that negative energy of complaining and venting into something productive.
I can’t tell all of these companies, “You must employ women at these levels,” but I can support women to get to the point that when these jobs open, that they are ready to step into them. I think that’s a really important thing for us to do within the community and to raise one another up together.

Francesca Marano:
I will add that yes, there was a lot of ranting before this became a reality and it actually became a reality. This is why I’m saying that I’m along for the ride because Siobhan and I haven’t met for a very long time due to COVID, and then we met again in Athens and we had lunch together, and at some point Siobhan goes like, “I’ve been thinking about a mentorship scheme for women to rise to the top of the company.” Like I’m in. [inaudible 00:10:29] Just you said the magic word.
It’s already hard to have women in leadership positions and company. In engineering, it seems impossible. I know that there are many, many talented women in the tech space that are also incredibly technical, but where are they? I don’t see the CVs coming in when we hire. I have used the Underrepresented in Tech database to reach out directly to candidates. We are definitely a minority in the WordPress space and an uber minority in the technical space within the WordPress space.
Hopefully we can help other women because we got here. We got to the director position, we got to the CEO position, and we did this thanks to other women that helped us along the way. We did it, of course, thanks to ourselves, because I might not be shouty anymore, but I’m definitely persistent to get something, so how can we help other women join us?

Michelle Frechette:
I love that. I was looking at your website and reading almost every word, I think, that’s on there and I see that there’s three major ways, and I would add a fourth way that you can be involved in this.
One is to become a mentor, one is to become a mentee, one is to become a supporter, and then of course, everybody can share the opportunity. Whichever social program or platforms you’re on, share this with other people, with other women to give them those same opportunities. Talking about those first three, the ones with those buttons on your website where somebody can click and fill out a form. What does it mean for those three different things?
I see become a supporter. Is there a financial responsibility with that? Are you sponsoring or is it a different role? How would you talk about the role of supporter? And then I want to talk more, again obviously, about mentoring.

Francesca Marano:
Right now, there is no financial involvement. We put together the websites really quickly. I have free hosting for life thanks to SiteGround, shout out to SiteGround. Every time I have an idea, I just put it on my account. Siobhan is the copywriter, so she is writing everything you read.
Right now, it’s very important that the companies that support us are committed to going along with us and are committed to make a real effort to increase the diversity of the executive board, or the leadership team, or whatever it’s called at our companies. It’s not just lip service because there’s a lot of that in the industry.
That is what it means. At some point, we might need some financial support for our Slack and things like that, but right now I think it’s very important that people believe in this with us and they commit to it.

Michelle Frechette:
I love that-

Siobhan McKeown:
Yeah, I mean… Sorry.

Michelle Frechette:
I was going to say it makes it seem like it’s easier to do, but actually it’s easier to throw money at something and not put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, to follow that up. But to actually commit to doing the things that you’re asking the supporters to do is actually deeper, it goes deeper than just writing a check or filling out a form and giving some money. Siobhan, I interrupted you. What were you going to say?

Siobhan McKeown:
What I was going to say was we definitely want to avoid, I guess pinkwashing people just saying like I support this thing and therefore I’ve checked the box. We’re all about diversity and inclusivity. We have a lot of ideas and a lot of plans and not a lot of time and not a lot of money.
For now, we’re really on MVP. Let’s see how this thing will work on its most basic, but in the future, really the sky’s the limit and we definitely can see a future where there would be financial support that we could use maybe for speaker training, or coaching, or travel grants.
There’s just loads that we could do, but we’re not doing it at the minute because time. It’s hard to make the time whenever you’ve got a job, and a family, and a life, and commitments, and hobbies, and everything else that you’ve got do.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely. How does mentorship work? What does it mean to be a mentor or a mentee?

Francesca Marano:
Do you want to go?

Siobhan McKeown:
Shall I start? I’ll give you the broad strokes of what the program will look like, which is something that I’m putting together at the minute. If you are a mentor, then you’re committing to spending time with your mentee and helping them to focus on their career goals. It’s not your responsibility to help that person actually do all of the work around them, but to coach and mentor.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to be providing a five-month program. It’s an hour commitment a month at a minimum for a mentor, so it works only about five hours. You’ll be able to take your mentee through a structured program where you can just make space to talk about what their goals are to help them find answers to questions themselves, and also address any challenges that they’ve got.
If the mentor has more time and is able to provide a greater level of support, great. If they are open to their mentee, pinging them on Slack and be like, “Hey, I’ve got this problem, could you spare 15 minutes to talk through it with me?” All of that is great, but the base expectation is that five hours across five months in which you can just be a person to guide someone along the path that they’re already on.

Michelle Frechette:
What happens at the end of that five months? Can they sign up to do it again? Are they reassigned to the same mentor? Do they graduate and they no longer need a mentor? How do you look at it at that point?

Francesca Marano:
We should do a graduation.

Michelle Frechette:
[inaudible 00:18:02].

Siobhan McKeown:
[inaudible 00:18:02] I’ve not really thought about that. Everyone will be able to say as part of our network, so we’re creating a Slack channel and people will stay on as part of that. We restricted it to five months because you can’t really ask people to commit to be a mentor in an open-ended way. If they want to continue the relationship on, that is great, but obviously that expectation is not there.
Beyond that, definitely everyone will remain part of the group and we’re going to share jobs internally and support one another to apply for those jobs and really create a supportive network of women leaders and women who are moving into leadership so that we can support one another and raise each other up.

Michelle Frechette:
You’ll be looking for people to mentor continually. If I mentor for five months, I’m not committed to five years worth of five months at a time then [inaudible 00:18:58]?

Siobhan McKeown:
Absolutely. No. We’ll have a rolling program. We’re only aiming for five or six in the first cohort, and we want people to be able to step in and step out again, maybe do it for five months, maybe not do it for them for a year, maybe then do it for a year. We want that flexibility for people.

Michelle Frechette:
That’s nice because it won’t overtax any small group of people and it will give other people opportunities to have that experience as well, which I think is wonderful. I can foresee today’s mentees being tomorrow’s mentors as well, which is a beautiful thing.

Francesca Marano:
That’s the hope. I like the idea of a network of women. I’ve been part of a network of women in tech in Italy for many years and it’s actually been a really good experience. It’s not a structured mentorship program, it’s an association, you pay a fee every year, but I’ve seen a lot of great interactions over the years. Also, they’re informal ones, so someone is looking for a job, they ask someone else to review the CV and things like that.
Obviously here, it’s a little bit more… Not a little bit more. It’s absolutely focused on your path to leadership, but definitely the idea of a group of women lifting each other up, I think it’s the main goal here. I’m looking forward for the first cohort. We do actually have quite a few applications, and I promise that tonight I’m going to look through them because I finally have a computer.

Michelle Frechette:
What happens if you get say eight people applying as mentees, but you have five mentors? Are you going to be looking for more people? Will you have to have some people wait for five months? I can see people wanting to be mentored, but not necessarily having enough mentors to go around, at least at the start. How will you address that potential issue?

Francesca Marano:
I think we haven’t done a lot of outreach so far.

Michelle Frechette:
But you will, I’m sure.

Francesca Marano:
Yeah, so right now, the applications seems to balance out but definitely, we said that this last 10 days of September, we’re going to do more outreach both to mentors and mentees because obviously we know a lot of women in the WordPress space that can fill both roles.
I don’t foresee the need to turn people away because we do have a list of women to connect to to ask them to mentor, so that’s not something that I foresee, but I don’t know. Siobhan, How do you feel about this?

Siobhan McKeown:
It might be that we don’t have enough mentors for the mentees and then we have to ask people to wait until the next go round. That’s possible. Like I said, we’re trying to do this minimum viable mentorship scheme, and so we won’t necessarily be able to fit everybody into that.

Michelle Frechette:
There could be a waiting list.

Siobhan McKeown:
Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Frechette:
The truth is a waiting list of five months is not long.

Francesca Marano:
No.

Michelle Frechette:
Realistically. I don’t think that that would be… If somebody said to me, we definitely can get you in the next time. It’ll be a six-month wait. I don’t know if you’re looking at a month in between. I’d be like cool, so I’m going to be starting in May or whatever. That sounds [inaudible 00:22:53].

Francesca Marano:
Yeah. We are planning two cohorts a year, so if you’re not in this round, you’re going to be in the next one. So far, I’ve gone through the applications and I’ve gone through the list of the names of people that we need to reach out to, and it seems like it’s a good balance for a start.

Michelle Frechette:
I love that. One of-

Siobhan McKeown:
I think… Sorry.

Michelle Frechette:
No, please go.

Siobhan McKeown:
I just wanted to say in terms of being a mentee, I think something we’ve tried to stress through the website is that we want people who are actively thinking about leadership and wanting to move into leadership, and either have recently moved into leadership role and they’re trying to figure out how to make an impact or who are getting ready for promotion or applying for leadership roles.
If you’re just wanting help to do better in your job more generally, it’s not really the scheme for you, it’s to solve very specific problem, which is to get more women into leadership roles.

Michelle Frechette:
I love that. One of the things that I have experienced personally, in perhaps I would say my former life before working where I am now, but when I was at Higher Ed, things like that is that as women, we tend to self-doubt a lot.
If somebody is thinking right now, I’m not sure that I would be a good mentor, and they have all of these reasons of that self-doubt creeping in, what would you say to those women to counteract those feelings of inadequacy when it comes to mentoring others? I ask the hard questions.

Francesca Marano:
Mentoring is a skill. It’s not for everyone. I don’t think that just because you’re the CEO or the director at a company, you are necessarily a good mentor. First of all, I understand the self-doubt. Gosh, I feed off of it, but basically, we are planning to do interviews with all the people that have applied as a mentor to see if it’s a fit, if we’re aligned on what we want to achieve with the program.
If anyone is having doubts about applying as a mentor, definitely ask yourself if it’s a doubt because you don’t enjoy mentorship, which is absolutely valid, or if it’s really self-doubt, and then in that case, just talk to us and we’ll figure it out together. This is also I think part of the whole process.

Michelle Frechette:
Mm-hmm. I agree, absolutely. Will there be some kind of guidance or support for people who are mentoring? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Francesca Marano:
Yes.

Siobhan McKeown:
Yes. My previous role, I was in people operations and put together a lot of material around mentorship and coaching, so I’m going to put together a program based on a model called Grow, which is like a coaching model which we’ll be using as a framework for the program.
You’re not just going to be expected to go into conversation without any sort of structure or framework, you’ll have something that you’ll be able to take people through that will ask the right questions and help people to reflect on their own practice. I think by participating, you’ll also be able to get those tools that you can take back into your own role as well.
There will be structure and support and also, there’ll be a private mentors channel so that we can discuss things together and Francesca and I will be available to support, and I’ve got other people who’ve expressed interest in supporting in a more operational way as well.

Michelle Frechette:
I love it. I think this is great. I’m very excited to see how it all comes together and how empowered women feel through the process, both as mentors and mentees, and the opportunities that might become afforded to them because they have gone through relationships like this, because really mentorship is a relationship and you build that trust with that person, the other person in that relationship.
It’s very exciting and I’m very excited for you. I’ve asked a lot of questions, but is there anything you want to talk about it that I haven’t asked yet, or am I just so good?

Francesca Marano:
You are very good. You asked all the tough questions.

Siobhan McKeown:
You’ve asked really good questions. I would say just on the other side of it, I do a lot of hiring and I find that there’s some roles, it’s very hard to find senior women because senior women, companies want to hold onto them really good. I would find in sales particularly or engineering, it’s a big challenge.
I’m definitely keen especially to speak to mentors within that area because it’s probably somewhere that we have fewer contacts, but also from a hiring perspective, I’m really excited for whenever a leadership role opens up at Human Made for me to be able to go actually, I know a person who’s a really good fit for this, because that will make a massive difference to me as a hiring manager and a leader within my own company as well.
I am excited for my peer companies for them to open up roles and for me to be able to say to them, I know this person who’s going to be a really great fit for you and for me to be able to facilitate that conversation. I’m excited for the next stage of that, which is whenever I go to events that I am not one of the only one or two women in the room and I get to collaborate with other women in different companies. That is a very exciting feature as well.

Michelle Frechette:
Absolutely.

Francesca Marano:
Definitely.

Michelle Frechette:
Francesca, anything else you would like to add?

Francesca Marano:
No, I think we covered everything. I’m very excited about it. I found that it’s very lonely for women in senior leadership roles. I’m very lucky, even though I am part of the director’s group and they’re all men and they’re great men, but yet it’s still always me and it’s like this is getting old.
I think that when Siobhan proposed this to me, I was really like yes, also from a very selfish perspective of having another woman in my team and being able to steer the engineering department at XWP with another woman.

Michelle Frechette:
I love that. The website is wpincludes.me, if people are interested in learning more or talking to either one of you, how can they get in touch?

Francesca Marano:
I think we have a getting in touch button, but I’m not sure.

Siobhan McKeown:
We do have a get in touch button and we have an email. You set up an email [inaudible 00:30:43]-

Francesca Marano:
I did set up an email.

Siobhan McKeown:
info@wpincludes.me, but I think we have a get in touch button and people do contact us through it, so that’s [inaudible 00:30:52].

Michelle Frechette:
Excellent.

Francesca Marano:
Yeah, info@wpincludes.me. Yes, that’s our email address.

Michelle Frechette:
Perfect.

Siobhan McKeown:
We should probably get a Twitter, or an X or whatever. Oh my goodness, [inaudible 00:31:05].

Francesca Marano:
We’re not going to do social media. No, Siobhan, we’re not.

Siobhan McKeown:
Why would I say that?

Francesca Marano:
No, we’re going to do from our accounts, and that’s going to be enough. It’s going to take years to build a following for a new account.

Michelle Frechette:
But you’ll also include all of the women who support you, and we will be happy to share those opportunities as well because it isn’t just the two of you in this, it’s all of us hoping that we can get more women into the roles that you’re looking to help them get into as well.
If we can support you any way through Underrepresented in Tech, or certainly through me and the projects that I do, I am here for that. I know there are other women who will step forward as well.
Thank you so much for spending the time with me today. I’m looking forward to this episode hitting the airs and then other people hopefully. What is the deadline if people want to apply for this first cohort? Was there a deadline by which to do that?

Francesca Marano:
Yes, it’s the September 30th, which is basically tomorrow.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh, coming up.

Francesca Marano:
Yeah, basically tomorrow.

Siobhan McKeown:
Tomorrow, [inaudible 00:32:20] 30th.

Michelle Frechette:
This will be airing next week, so it will be tomorrow.

Francesca Marano:
Yes.

Siobhan McKeown:
Oh, okay. It is tomorrow.

Francesca Marano:
I know, but in my mind I was saying it’s tomorrow because in my mind, everything that it’s within a two weeks timeframe right now is tomorrow.

Michelle Frechette:
Yes. I’m sorry about that, but…

Francesca Marano:
In some cases it’s like yesterday, but in this case, it’s September 30th.

Michelle Frechette:
But then in six months again, or five months again, that’ll be another opportunity.

Francesca Marano:
Yes. We are aiming for another cohort. This one to finish a little bit before WordCamp Europe, the next one starting right after WordCamp Europe more or less, so there might also be an opportunity to meet in person.

Michelle Frechette:
Oh.

Francesca Marano:
Did I do the math correctly?

Siobhan McKeown:
You totally did that wrong, no.

Francesca Marano:
Oh, did I do it wrong? Okay. Oh, yeah. We’re talking about WordCamp Asian, sorry. There are so many.

Michelle Frechette:
That would be great. In a year when you’ve had at least one or two cohorts go through, I look forward to the talks at WordCamps about this process and what has been become accomplished and what’s going through, so it’ll be wonderful to see all of that. Congratulations, I’m watching this.

Francesca Marano:
Thank you. Thank you. Looking forward to seeing the mentees and maybe the mentors themselves going just higher because the sky is the limit.

Michelle Frechette:
It really is. I love that you recognize that about the women in our community and are supporting them in such a wonderful way. Thank you so much for taking the time today, and we’ll see everybody else in the next episode.
In the meantime, wpincludes.me, and if you’re listening to this episode, go to underrepresentedintech.com. You can find this episode for the transcripts and all of the links that we’ve talked about today, everything will be there for you to be able to find. Thank you again, and enjoy the rest of your day and we’ll see everybody else on the next episode of Underrepresented in Tech.

Speaker 2:
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Thank you so much to our sponsors for this episode. If you’re interested in sponsoring an episode, using our database, or just want to say hi, go to underrepresentedintech.com. See you next week.

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