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RoadLinds

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Drop Dropbox 12 years ago

I think there are three very different questions to consider here:

1) Should an employee be held accountable for his/her political beliefs. (Heck no.)

2) If someone with different political beliefs than I runs a company, will I boycott it? Ex - Owner of Whole Foods is against Universal Healthcare, so I'm boycotting, though I approve of him running the company. In such a case we support our ideologies through capitalism.

3) Should someone who runs a technology company - a multi-billion, multi-national that shapes our future and impacts our daily work lives & culture - should someone who actively holds and acts upon prejudice be allowed to run such a powerful company? No.

That third one is important - and somewhat scary - to consider. We've crossed a threshold. Large technology companies - and many startups - are literally creating the future. We are shaping the world in a way that goes way beyond the capacity of companies in decades past. There is a far greater responsibility to consider.

It's an interesting dilemma. As a woman, my co-founder (and team mates) are quite likely to be male. I am in love with my work and our mission; having a romantic relationship with someone who does NOT share these passions would be difficult. A person NOT involved in tech startups could never fully understand me. And a totally unattractive individual becomes significantly more so when we hit a rocking work stride and build beautiful things together, hit walls and win together. Fortunately, I need my future lover to summit mountains, too, so I'm somewhat shielded from this potential conflict! (ie - very few tech entrepreneur mountaineers) ;)

Past side projects include: organizing arts festivals, and "The Canada Effect" - YouTube videos I produced after interviewing a few hundred Canadians about their healthcare - which spawned a full feature documentary "The Healthcare Movie" - narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. I then traveled to screenings and spoke on panels about healthcare.