Podcast Of The Week: Overcoming Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Bias By Turning Adversity Into Advantage

Laura Huang’s new book, Edge: Tuning Adversity into Advantage, is about overcoming disadvantages based on race, ethnicity, and gender. Currently a Harvard Business School Professor, she has an impressively diverse background ranging from investment banking to electrical engineering to teaching. Her own story is about how smarts and hard work aren’t enough, we have to understand how to advance ourselves within the system we exist in. So many modern systems are biased and unfair. If we can’t just press reset, we all have the power to do at least something. Her work is about the tactics steps we can take to advance ourselves, advance others, and make lasting changes along the way.

Huang’s advice is practical and focused. She is pragmatic and driven and it is infectious. Jason Calacanis, representing the successful, white male demographic, conducts the interview on the This Week in Startups Podcast. He gets deep into her own life experience and the realities of current structures, how they are changing, and what we all can do to play a progressive part. If we are interested in seeing big, long-term changes in institutional biases surrounding race, ethnicity, and gender, we probably couldn’t have two better people having this conversation.

Huang’s work really is important and inspiring. Do check out this interview and her book.