Anne Devereux-Mills: Female Connection, Social Media and Body Image, Inspiration vs Icon
In this episode, I welcome Anne Devereux-Mills who spent the first half of her career building and running advertising agencies in New York until an unexpected triple threat of cancer, empty nest, and job loss had her searching for what was next.
In 2012 She founded the Parlay House which is a salon-style series of gatherings which now includes over 7000 women across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Anne is also the author of the book The Parlay Affect, How female connection can change the world.
Beyond the Parlay house Anne has worked on a number of philanthropic ventures from being a mentor for SHE-CAN foundation which helps female leaders coming from post-genocide countries, was a key member in helping pass Californias Proposition 36, which helped to reform Californias three strikes rule, and been the executive director of the Healthy Body Image Program.
Today we talk about staying connected during COVID, how social media is affecting adolescent girls, and how everyone should feel empowered to make a change.
It’s more important than ever for us to meet new people and to foster the close relationships that we so desperately need at this time. Covid has made us all feel isolated and although all our lives are being impacted, each of our experiences are different. Groups like the Parley house play an important part in helping to continue these conversations and can be a great way to feel connected. While Silicon Valley and technology has done an amazing job keeping us connected during this time, it still struggles to have more female voices in leadership roles.
We have an epidemic of depression and suicide happening in adolescent girls, directly attributed to the rise and use of social media and photo editing apps. These girls are holding themselves to unrealistic expectations, brought on by the tools we are developing right here in Silicon Valley. The first generation of women to grow up with these technologies are coming into the workplace and we need to make room for them to be able to join the conversation. We need to listen, engage, respect, and ask the opinions of our female co-workers and to speak up when you see something.
No matter if you are an engineer, activist, or stay at home parent, all of us are capable of amazing change. Every single person you idolize were at some point just ordinary people, that saw something that could be made better and worked hard to make it a reality.
Show Notes
- Anne speaking at the TSU PiDay Rally in 2017
- The Parley House
- The Parlay Effect: How female connection can change the world
- Depression and Suicide Rates Are Rising Sharply in Young Americans, New Report Says. This May Be One Reason Why — Time Magazine
- Gender Diversity in Silicon Valley — Harvard Law School
- Californias Proposition 36
Full Transcript:
Brad Taylor 0:01
Today on the TSU podcast I welcome Anne Devereux-Mills who spent the first half of her career building and running advertising agencies in New York until an unexpected triple threat of cancer, empty nest, and job loss had her searching for what was next. In 2012, Anne founded the Parlay House, which was a salon style series of gatherings, which now includes over 5000 women across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Anne is also the author of the book The Parlay Effect, how female connection change the world. Beyond the Parlay House Anne has worked on a number of philanthropic ventures. From being a mentor for the She Can Foundation, which helps female leaders coming from post genocide countries, she was a key member in helping pass California’s Proposition 36, which helped to reform the three strikes rule, and has been the executive director of the Healthy Body Image Program. Today, we talk about how COVID has affected women in the workplace, how social media is affecting young girls. And how everyone should feel empowered to make a change. All right, well, welcome to the podcast, Anne how are you doing today?
Anne Devereux-Mills 1:12
I’m great. Thanks so much for having me.
Brad Taylor 1:14
I’m really excited to have you on today. Because you’ve had such an amazing career, you’ve built and ran advertising agencies in New York as chairman and CEO, you’ve done tons of advocacy and philanthropic work. And when we first met in 2017, it was right around the Pi Day protest in Palo Alto, what made you want to stand up with a bunch of techies,
Anne Devereux-Mills 1:39
you know, that day many different voices were being heard. And there was a real place to talk about women and the continued inequality, even in a state like California and a place like Palo Alto, women are still dramatically underrepresented in the corporate world, as well as in, in the political world, and in most worlds, unfortunately. And so I’m sort of on a quest to keep finding ways to have women’s issues highlighted until women actually have an equal footing in all the places where we can make a big difference and have have impact. So I, you know, I show showed up there to represent the the the female voice in Silicon Valley, which still isn’t heard as much as it should be.
Brad Taylor 2:29
Right? I think you’re absolutely right about that our industry does have a lot of work to do in that area, in particular, and one of the ways you’re helping females around the globe, have that voice is your work with the Parlay House, tell our listeners a little bit about what it is and how it all began. I think it’s amazing.
Anne Devereux-Mills 2:47
Absolutely. So if you pedal back in time to the last economic crisis, which you know, fortunately, didn’t include a pandemic, but it was, you know, directly related to the decline of the the fall of the mortgage backed securities market. And we faced in 2008,9- 10, a incredibly difficult economic environment, I was running a turnaround agency in New York, where we were really trying trying to build a build it back to its Old Glory. And at that time, I got word that the cancer that I battled a few years before, had come back, and I needed to have more surgery. My youngest daughter was about to leave for college. And when I went to my boss and said, Hey, gotta take a couple weeks off during this tough time, but I’ll have my surgery, I’ll be back. And, you know, I’ve been through this before, and I can do it. He said, Don’t hate me for this, but I’m going to have someone else run the company. And at that moment, yeah, at that moment, I lost my health, my job and my role as mother. And I also realized when I was without that tower, that I lost most of the people that I’d been spending my days with, because when your connections are focused around work, at least in my world, I found that those had been very transactional relationships and with my loss of power, came loss of connections and relationships and a real eye opening moment that the that my friendships, real friendships are the people who would be there for me when I got sick and times were tough. We’re not enough. And so it was sort of a devastating moment and really hard to figure out if you aren’t defined by what you do when you aren’t, you aren’t defined by whose parent you are, that you don’t know who you are. And so I didn’t want to spend the second half of my life defined by what I did for a living So I happen to be dating this awesome guy who, who Funny enough, teaches at Stanford in Palo Alto where that protest happened. And and we decided to sort of begin a life together. And when I moved to the Bay Area, and really was aware that I was so alone, other than Him, because I didn’t have friends, I had just sort of picked up and decided to start my life, the next chapter of my life with him. I thought about what do I really want. And I wanted what I call four quarters instead of 100 pennies, I wanted a few deeper, better relationships, where, yeah, where I could be, you know, vulnerable, and I could say, Oh, my God, I got, I got fired. And I’ve never I’ve been a high performer my whole life, that feels awful. And without my role in the work world, I don’t know who I am. I mean, I wanted to be able to have those conversations and admit those things in a safe space. But I didn’t have anyone to be in that safe space with. So I literally started this crazy social experiment. I asked friends of friends who were in the Bay Area, who do you know, that might want to come over to my house, and have conversations about things that we don’t have safe spaces to talk about. And sure enough, I had about a dozen women, strangers, ranging from 20 years old to eight years old racial diversity, diversity and sexual orientation. And we all just were in my living room, drinking some champagne and having some nice snacks, and talking about real stuff. Now, this is before the Me Too movement meant what it means. But we would be having conversations where we would express things and those women around the room would also reply, oh, my God, me too. And we started creating connections. After the first gathering, everyone said, that was phenomenal, that’s unlike anything I get anywhere else in my life, I want to be part of part of the next one. And I’m going to bring a friend and so 12 grew to 30 grew to 100. And we’re now in 12 cities around the world with 7000 Members — meeting, pre COVID on a monthly basis. And now post COVID on a weekly zoom basis, to talk about the hard things and the wonderful things and the scary things and the joyful things, and the helpful educational things. And it’s just been phenomenal.
Brad Taylor 7:26
Wow, that’s that’s such an amazing story. And I know when I first heard your story, it was like hearing my worst nightmare come true. I myself wrapped myself in my work and my family. And I couldn’t imagine going through all of that at the exact same time. I mean, even also too with all the health scares that you were going through,
Anne Devereux-Mills 7:48
yeah. And I think and also being the only parent, you know, my my daughter’s lost relationship with their father many, many years before, and I was actually fine. Being a single mom, I didn’t mind having the weight of the responsibility, because I could do it the way that I wanted to. But when they’re dependent on you, they’re not fully launched. And you’re feeling volatile. That’s a really scary time.
Brad Taylor 8:15
Yeah, I can’t imagine how scary that was. One of the things that you’ve mentioned in past interviews, and that I know about you is that you’re very shy. I myself am very shy. And I’m not the type to just invite 12 people I don’t know, to my home, what led you to the decision to go against your fears and to invite 12 strangers to your home that, you know, you don’t know that you may
Anne Devereux-Mills 8:39
not? Well, first of all, I didn’t at that point have much to lose. So how we behave when we’re not trying to protect something comfortable, I was in a very uncomfortable space already. And I think, you know, you can take an uncomfortable moment in your life. And you can either use it to be protective, or you can use it to try to jump somewhere else. And I was in it, I was in a jumping mode. But the second thing I did was build from things that had worked for me in the past. And I was lucky enough when I was running my last company to be made a fellow of the Aspen Institute. And what what that experience was like it was a two year program, sort of a leadership values based leadership training program, where there were 20 people in a class. And it was male, female, it was public sector, private sector. It was American, non American, liberal conservative, but by sharing content, whether either it was a reading or a poem or listen to a piece of music or an article, you know, a Harvard Business School review piece, whatever it was, it allowed us a common topic and grounding for us and then to have have conversations that got vulnerable, and got authentic and where we could be supportive of each other. And I really wanted to in a non business format replicate that, which is why every time we had a gathering at my home there, there, then continues to be To this day, there continues to be a speaker who’s willing to share their story for the first time or an expert, who’s willing to give us skills that we might need in some aspect of our lives, or, you know, someone who’s doing something heroic that inspires, inspires us of our own ability to make change. Because, you know, I find that at this moment in history, between, you know, politics and poverty and COVID. And all the things that we’re facing, it’s really easy as an individual to feel like, what can I do? I’m just one, one small person with systemic problems that were facing. And you know, what, what we really found was by featuring people who had made who would move the needle on the issues that they cared about, it inspired many of us to feel like A) we’re not alone and B) we are capable of small changes that have a cascading effect, that that have much greater impact.
Brad Taylor 11:15
Right, yeah, I mean, we’re all capable of making that change. And it’s great to hear that you’re featuring those speakers. However, 2020, has not exactly been a great year for having in person social gatherings. How has COVID affected your ability to continue to meet and support each other, through, you know, these these types of social decisions.
Anne Devereux-Mills 11:38
It’s funny when, as we were all scurrying into our safe spaces, in March, I had just come come off the beginning of a book launch tour, where we were, I was launching a book that I wrote, came out in January, called the “parlay effect, how female connection can change the world”. And I the very last event we did before COVID, shut everything down was in Seattle with our last city that we launched parlay house. And we all kind of thought, Oh, you know, there were 100 people at this launch event, including many doctors who didn’t necessarily understand, you know, the, the rapid pace of the spread of this and the danger for certain populations. And everybody was kind of enjoying this time together and rolling our eyes not understanding the serious nature of what was about to unfold in the world.
And at that moment, we sort of felt like we were unstoppable. And so when we then were stopped, and it was impossible to meet in person, because the last thing we would want to do is put anyone else at risk. My chief relationship officer, for parlay house, Arielle Fuller. And I sort of said really, really early, well, how are we going to keep the momentum going, and we quickly shifted to what we call parlay from away, which has been a weekly recurrence of this exact content, but we’re now doing it virtually. And instead of having, you know, between 40 and 80 people at any given event, which is what a person’s home, can, can usually hold, because we’re all about bringing strangers into your home, we opened it up broadly. And we now have people accessing us from Europe and from Japan and from Latin America. And we do it every week. And our membership blossomed from 5000 members to 7000 members just in the last few months. And so it’s just it’s been phenomenal, because we’re offering four times the content, sometimes as much as six times the content, because we have one or two events a week with women who might not have had the time to join us if they had been leading, they’re incredibly busy lives and they know, you know, make time to lift other women. And it’s just, it’s awesome, we’ve developed this format, that is super great. So we open every event with a dance song. That’s that’s themed, themed related to the topic that we’re addressing. And everyone kind of has that smiling moment where you scroll across screens and screens and screens of mostly women dancing to whatever the song is. And after our expert has spoken, we then create a chat environment so that like if you were sitting in the living room of one of our instigators, you could be having conversations with the person next to you who’s a stranger saying, My story is so similar or I’ve never heard anybody speak so openly about this before and it’s all happening in the chat among strangers around the world. And we’ve had a mom raising a transgender child talk about her experience. And the women on the call who could relate for the first time were able to talk openly about their similar experience or A young woman who was the daughter of undocumented immigrants talk about the realization that your parents are hiding for a reason and what she did to go on and help support that community. And you had many others who were listening in who had that similar experience, but thought they were the only ones and had been hiding it. So once we start seeing that we can actually replicate a lot of the energy and dynamism, virtually, it’s given us a whole additional outlet that that, you know, we’re flying, it’s just great.
Brad Taylor 15:32
That’s awesome to hear that you’re able to kind of pivot and make virtual work. I know that some places or organizations have have struggled with it, I love the fact that you do a dance. And that’s a dance that sounds like so yeah,
Anne Devereux-Mills 15:48
we can dance out in and out. Yep.
Brad Taylor 15:51
That’s a that’s, that’s amazing. Um, so you mentioned that people are kind of chatting in the in the side chat? Well, you know, speaker, maybe talking about something has the virtual aspect of it made it easier to talk about harder things harder to talk about the hard thing? Like how is that conversation evolved through the virtual sense,
Anne Devereux-Mills 16:14
you know, we’re still honing our craft. So I think in some ways, it’s easier because you have the safety of a little more anonymity and control over the environment. By doing it virtually, you know, you’re not sitting in a room of 80 people trying to talk about something for the first time. And so I think, especially for our speakers who are not experienced speakers, or for shy people, like you and me, I think it gives it gives a little more safety. When you’re able to do it that way.
Brad Taylor 16:46
I feel like I’m attending actually a lot more events virtually than I would have in person, because it’s easy to kind of go up there show up and yeah, be shy, it’s hard to totally,
Anne Devereux-Mills 17:00
totally, I mean, I’m the kind of person if I go to a crowded event, I will find one person to talk to deeply rather than 10 people to meet and never really connect with. And so I think that this, this format allows a much broader range of people to attend, we also record them and for members of our organization, and it’s really easy to be a member, you just go to our website, the parlay House website and and ask to join us. You know, if you if you couldn’t make it, because five o’clock on a Thursday afternoon is when you got to make dinner for the family. You can log on the next week, or whenever you have time and be part of the conversation. And, you know, we do a weekly newsletter that summarizes the key takeaways. So if you know we had a couple weeks ago, we had Dolores Huerta, who, at 90 years old, she was Cesar Chavez, his partner in getting rights for farmworkers, migrant workers. And you know, if you want to hear what she has to say, because she still is dynamic, and 90, you pour yourself a glass of wine, when you have a moment and you go online, and you listen to that piece, and you can still dance in and out with us if if if that feels good.
Brad Taylor 18:15
During the pandemic, I think we’re all kind of feeling very isolated, whether that being isolated, as you know, from your work environment, isolated from family. How has this helped with loneliness? Has the parlay house been able to help with that loneliness,
Anne Devereux-Mills 18:33
if many people write to Arielle and me, saying that the one hour spent with us every week is the highlight of their week. And I think when you’re you know, if you look at the number of women who have exited the work world during COVID, eight out of 10 people who leave are women, and they’re women, because they are also holding responsibility for their kids who might not be old enough to be able to do zoom education without guidance and to do you know, get their homework scanned in and sent to the teacher and, you know, women have taken had to take on dramatically more responsibility from not only household management, but an educational standpoint, because we really don’t have in many households that that balance. So, you know, I think that we’re providing something and it really when we started parlay house in in 2012, we understood that for many of our members, they were at the bottom of the hierarchy of who got taken care of in their homes and in their workplaces. You know, they take care of the spouse and the kids and the dog and the you know, laundry and all and there was just never time left in the day or the week for them to be at the top of that, you know, care spectrum. And so, by now carving out the time to be with other women and feel like you’re part of a community And hear things that are either helpful or inspirational or insightful. I think it is, for many people providing that alternative to the walk with the friend that’s harder to do, or the dinner party that’s impossible or you know, any of those, those other chances to connect with humans.
Brad Taylor 20:18
Right? One effect that COVID has had on a lot of people, particularly in the tech communities that, you know, we’re most of us are very lucky that we can work from home, but it still is very isolated. It’s it’s remote. And you talk a lot in your book, The parlay effect about how women can be more assertive in the workplace tips to support each other, how is this new work, reality affected women’s ability to be able to do some of those things that you talk about?
Anne Devereux-Mills 20:49
You know, it’s very hard for me to know, because I think individuals experiences are different. But in my book, I offer some sort of good coaching of ways that you can practice not only advocating for yourself, but lifting those around you. And you know, the nice thing about again, this is sort of for for shy people, as well as for people who are learning how to have their voice, in meetings in places that are still, you know, male dominated, or they might not be it as, as a senior of a level, finding small ways to test out repeating, as my colleague, Emily just said, or as you know, as was brought up by so and so last week, or as I advocated before, you have have chances to sort of test out asserting the points of view and supporting the points of view of women who might be talked over or under recognized. And I do think that the distance of the virtual environment gives a chance to do that. And you can also, we certainly see this in zoom, use the private chat function to have conversations that you can’t necessarily have in a in a meeting. So if you’re in a meeting with 10 people there three women were being talked over, those women can have a conversation through the chat where they decide how to support each other, and make sure their voices aren’t lost. So it’s it, there are some some nice, nice ways that we can learn how to be better advocates for ourselves, and really build on our strengths while we’re in this safer physical environment.
Brad Taylor 22:28
Yeah, it’s a pretty good tip, because you know, if you’re sitting there in a room in a conference room, you’re not going to have your own little side conversation right here. But now you can actually talk about what’s happening in the meeting and take action on it. Yep.
Anne Devereux-Mills 22:42
And there are many people who, you know, I talk about what there’s one, one instance, in the book where I was on the board of a major global advertising agency, as was another woman, and we looked totally different. She’s tall, I’m small, she’s dark haired, I’m blonde, you know, we just there was not much that was physically similar about the two of us, except that we were both women. And inevitably, the men in charge would call us by the other one’s name as though we were interchangeable. And yet, there were 38 men who were all sort of white middle aged men, and everyone knew every one of their names perfectly. And so you know, we couldn’t at that time, we did, certainly, at a lunch at a lunch outing, or in the ladies room, talk about how mind bogglingly offensive it was. But, you know, we didn’t have a space to do that in the board room itself. And so I do think that that we have some more spaces now to have time to observe and time to support each other in time to commiserate. That’s very helpful.
Brad Taylor 23:43
Yeah, that’s a that’s a great use of technology in a different way that you may not have normally had to be able to have those conversations. So one thing you mentioned earlier, is that women’s voices are not being heard in Silicon Valley. And I definitely think the tech industry can be doing better in this area. your background is in the advertising world, which is also a primarily male dominated industry. And you were extremely successful being the head of a few major firms. What advice would you have to the women listening who might be trying to have their voices heard here? And here in Silicon Valley
Anne Devereux-Mills 24:18
know, I think the first is only be in those industries, if you absolutely love it, you know, a lot of us sort of fall into career paths. And we don’t want to get off of the path that we’re on because we’re on a trajectory. And yet it isn’t making our heart sing. I sort of think at the end of the day, you need to feel like there’s an alignment between your values and who you are and what you’re doing. Otherwise, no matter how hard you work, and how and how smart you are, you’re not going to feel sort of whole and I think that that’s it’s important, and it’s something that evolves. So if you evolve in your industry doesn’t, you might run into a point where the Best next step for you is to the side rather than straight ahead. And I think that constant awareness of your how your values and who you are, and how they align with what you’re doing, and how, you know how what you’re doing makes you feel, you know, do you feel like a perpetual outsider?Well, how is there a way to address that? And if not, you know, how much is that wearing on you and your ability to perform? And I think the more you can, can get aligned with the not only the industry, but the individual types of businesses and leadership and management teams that allow you to be your authentic self, the better you’ll do.
Brad Taylor 25:41
So, you’ve lived in New York, you’ve lived in San Francisco, those are both very, what would be considered progressive or liberal kind of areas of the country yet, both of those whether it be advertising in New York tech and in the Bay Area? Why what do you think is preventing those two industries or just industries in general and those areas from evolving given the progressive nature of the people that work there,
Anne Devereux-Mills 26:11
you know, I think, at the end of the day, we are sort of wired or taught to empathize most with people who are just like us. And I’ve had a number of male speakers over the years for parlay house, we mostly have female guests, but the men have talked about why industries like cryptocurrency, you know, a tech, a tech finance industry are sort of predominantly started by and led by certain types of men, you know, high functioning on the spectrum, socially uncomfortable, what happens after they’ve a brilliant idea and have started making progress? Well, they need other people to help them and they only know people just like them, and the people just like them can sort of understand what they’re thinking about. And so that’s who they talk to, and then they feel the need to grow further. And, again, they reach out to their own networks, who are people just like them. And so I see that being one of the the challenges and reasons that it’s so hard for women to break in. And, you know, I think that there’s another key piece as well, which is when going gets tough, you empathize with people just like you. So if you have if you have to save a job, and you have two or three people who could be eligible for that job, you empathize with the person in your situation. And I think more and more, we’re seeing that men have not evolved in assuming that the woman who might be available for that job, also has a breadwinner at home. And she’s not, you know, they don’t they don’t view women as having the same financial obligations. They assume that we have strong support systems. And so they choose to save people, because they could put themselves in those shoes. And so I think, you know, as a society and I, one of the reasons that the one of the core values of everything that I do with parlay house and beyond is about diversity is that until you start to get to know people who are not the same as you by a longshot. You don’t see them in their humanity in a way that you can empathize as much as people who look just like yourself. And so, you know, breaking the cycle of familiarity is is a real mission of mine.
Brad Taylor 28:39
Where do you think that starts? Do you think it starts like high school pre college network? Because you’re right, I think that a lot of people, especially people, I know even myself like you, you want to work with people you’ve worked with before you you have this network that becomes very, very much the same. Where do you think that that begins?
Anne Devereux-Mills 29:02
Yeah, it’s very, it’s it’s hard to know, you know, I sometimes wish I was a psychologist only to understand those those human behaviors but I you know, I really do think that it’s, it’s about familiarity. And if you if you grew up in a, you know, upper middle class white neighborhood, only dealing with people who have certain types of problems and certain types of opinions and certain types of experiences. That’s how you learn to think. And you look for people who think like you. Now there are obviously, a lot of studies Harvard Business School has done some really published some really amazing papers on how much better diverse teams perform it doesn’t mean it’s easier for them to work together, but people bring it together teams with diverse experience with diverse backgrounds with different ways of thinking with different problem solving skills, who have had different life experiences ended up creating much more robust thought processes that are more effective and more profitable in the end, but it certainly makes getting there harder. And a lot of people are really looking for the easy way out. And the easy way out is the familiar way out.
Brad Taylor 30:19
You’re right it is it makes actually good business sense to have a more diverse team because you build products, they’re more for the entire world than to your to your network, or people that look like people that are in your network or believe the same things. One of the things that I saw is you did some work as the executive director of the healthy body image program. And can you tell us a little bit about that work and what you did with that?
Anne Devereux-Mills 30:50
Yeah, so that was early in my time in San Francisco, I ended up meeting the doctor named Dr. Taylor, who was at Stanford, trying to figure out how to expand access to mental health care services, especially as it related to body image and eating disorders, which he worked on the Stanford campus, he saw all these amazing, high performing women who felt badly about how they looked on whatever level whatever level very great dissatisfaction with their physical selves. And, you know, he correlated and many people have correlated that to high performing high thinking, people and the self scrutiny and comparative behaviors that are often part of that, you know, those elite environments, and he sort of realized that there are algorithms for care, including mental health, health care, that could probably translate to more digital interventions, because you know, a lot of people who have any sort of, you know, mental health challenge and, you know, sort of eating disorders is is definitely a mental health challenge, even though it’s expressed in a physical form, that there there are ways to intervene through technological interventions, and to get people to, on the on the path to not only healthier behavior, but healthier feelings about themselves and their bodies. And so I had just, you know, come out to San Francisco without a job. And because I had had this whole history, not only in, in advertising and marketing, but my specialty was healthcare, I really came on board to help him figure out how to translate his insights and clinical experience to a digital resource for mostly women. But you know, anybody struggling with body image issues and disordered eating patterns. So I did that with him for a couple of years, it evolved into a company called Lantern, which, unfortunately, because we had some some clinical endpoints for the measurement of success that the money ran out before we got before we reach those endpoints. But it continues as a lantern continues as a not for profit today, and many of the people who were part of the founding of that company have gone on to be leaders at places like headspace, where eating disorders is one of many sort of mental health support systems that these these digital organizations support. So that was Yeah, it was it was a, I had been bulimic. My freshman year of college, I have two now grown daughters who, each of whom were super hard on themselves, in their in their physical appearance. And, you know, I think it’s very prevalent among high performing women. And so finding ways to provide access to support and care and to make each of those women feel like they’re not alone in their struggle, and they have safe and private ways to get help that doesn’t require you to jump in the car and go see a clinician on a regular basis is is a positive step forward. For all of us.
Brad Taylor 34:23
Yeah, I mean, one disturbing trend we’ve been seeing recently is a huge uptick in eating disorders, depression, suicide, especially for younger girls. What role do you believe social media has played?
Anne Devereux-Mills 34:41
Goodness… Well, you know, I have a I have a good friend, a millennial, named Marissa Mae who started a fabulous social media campaign which is now a movement called “Half the Story” and I think she’s in her mid 20s, mid to late 20s, she recognized when she was in college that the images portrayed by her female peers on social media created the semblance of a amazingly beautiful, perfect life that really was only capturing one, you know, one 100th of their actual experience, and that their actual experience was nowhere near as gorgeous and perfect. And, you know, enviable, as everyone was portraying. And so her movement is really about, you know, if you’re going to use social media, do it to tell your your full story. And I think it’s much easier said than done, because we still want to filter and, you know, find ways to make sure that whatever we’re portraying is the best possible outlet of ourselves. But of course, what that does is lead to perpetual disappointment for anyone who is human. So I think it’s a huge, it’s a huge problem, a huge challenge. And if you saw the documentary, called the social dilemma, it’s not only physical image that’s impacted by these social media sites, but all sorts of feelings of self worth, and you know, even even addictive behavior, where we’re taken further and further from real experiences, and more into the impossible. And, you know, that’s, that’s why I’m so excited about everything we’re doing with parlay house and parlay from away is worth talking about. Not it’s not always about the struggles, it’s not always about, you know, the things that are hard, but it’s very human and real in allowing for imperfections. I think women are so women, women, especially women who are on a success track tend to be so hard on ourselves harder on ourselves than other people are on us. You know, I think we’re often our own worst enemies or biggest scrutinisers. And, you know, it’s that’s dangerous behavior. And least when you start to hear that other people have the same worries and the same, you know, same challenges, all of a sudden, it feels okay to be imperfect. And when it feels okay to be imperfect, you can then be human and see other people in that humanity. It’s a very positive cascade to break away from that.
Brad Taylor 37:20
Yeah, it’s not even to that. They’re showing only small pieces. But sometimes even with, you know, there’s apps out there that will remove every single blemish, or make them look thinner, or people that are actually even getting surgery now, to make themselves look like they’re their profile picture. It’s
Anne Devereux-Mills 37:41
mind boggling.
Brad Taylor 37:43
Yeah, I know, I think that I had a daughter a couple of weeks ago, and I have to ask myself, Well, one, I’d have no idea what it’s gonna be like when she even thinks about social media. But do I even want to allow her to use social media? Would you? I don’t know, how old are your daughters?
Anne Devereux-Mills 38:04
Oh, they’re 29 and 27. So they long but you know, they use Facebook, when there were still age restrictions, and they just change their birthdays. So you know, I that an interesting thing about parenting older kids, and I know yours is not there yet, is that this idea of allowing them does not mean they will be prevented, because they will find ways to do whatever their peers, and they want to do. And I think it’s less a matter of restrictions and more a matter of talking about values. And, you know, the limitations of some of these apps and sites and, you know, for for knowing really knowing people and but you know, anytime I ever tried to say, No, you may not, there’s just a workaround for that. I
Brad Taylor 38:54
think my mom would agree with um, yeah, given the type of teenager I was, I think that, yeah, that’s a very good point, because you really can’t prevent I mean, they’re, they’re their own people, what conversation would you have? Or what conversation Did you have with your daughters about social media and, and how it’s portrayed,
Anne Devereux-Mills 39:17
um, you know, I did a good job, and I did a bad job, so that I did a good job in trying to sit with them when bullying was happening, not only intervening on their behalf if I needed to, but having conversations about, you know, the kinds of human beings we are and how we make other people feel, and, you know, just trying to be as candid about that as possible. But, you know, I was also the only parent and the only female role model and so I did a pretty crappy job of talking about my fears and mistakes in a way that would give them the freedom to be human too. And, you know, I think that’s, I learned that lesson too, too late, but I talk about it a lot. Now. That the more Are we who are parents, without scaring our kids to death or making them feel they don’t have a stable foundation, talk about our humanity not getting a promotion or making a mistake with a friend, or not getting along with a sister. You know, it allows for our kids to be comfortable that that’s part of the human experience. And that’s really what I worry about in terms of social media. And, you know, a lot of the celebrity influences that our kids for whatever reason look up to is that they’re not really showing their humanity, and therefore they’re creating a false sense of what the ideal life is like, and then that that ideal life doesn’t exist as portrayed through those channels.
Brad Taylor 40:49
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point to realize that everyone has flaws. And everyone, no matter how many followers they have, or how famous a person is that there’s always a part of you you never see. And you actually make a similar point, one of your recent newsletters you were talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actually. And there is one quote that I wanted to call out here it says, I worry about elevating people we admire from human to divine. For many of us who can make human scale change, our efforts will likely feel small or potentially irrelevant, compared to someone with a near godly stature. I think that’s such an important point to make. Because we do elevate people we do, you know, put people on these pedestals, what did you mean by
Anne Devereux-Mills 41:42
you know, I, I knew her for example. And she was a brilliant mind, and a relentless advocate, and through hard work, and some luck, made it to one of the highest positions in the land. And yet she was fundamentally flawed, because she’s human, not because she was a bad person. But because she’s human, and whether it was her only hiring one, law clerk of color during her entire tenure on the Supreme Court, to her passions, or personal passions, which were like opera and things that were incredibly elite. And, and not integrated. You know, I saw her as someone who has made major changes and yet wasn’t always warm and fuzzy, or, you know, universally well rounded. And I think that that’s true for so many of the people we admire. And what happens then is, when we put them on a pedestal of idyllic and godlike, we can never achieve anything close to that in our ability as humans. And so, you know, I’m not saying I don’t admire Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I, I would not be where I am, are doing what I’m doing if she hadn’t laid important groundwork that then I could build on. But you know, when I see her as a human, and in that same newsletter I talked about, I was invited a few years ago to an event with Stacey Abrams, who is somebody that I really admired greatly and could learn a lot from, but I saw her as such a badass as such a person that I admired that when I was physically standing next to her, I lost my words, I was so overwhelmed by the presence of somebody that that was that I idolized that I became shy and sort of tongue tied, and I kind of like like you would in middle school went fleeing out of the factory. And, you know, that happened to I happen to be at the White House. And I didn’t notice that President Obama had walked up right next to me, again, somebody who I admire on a level that is disproportionate to his human status. But once again, you know, I could I could chit chat with anybody except somebody that I put on a level of godliness. And then you just, you know, you don’t know, you don’t know where to start, you know, don’t know what to say. And yet both of those people are quite approachable and human, once you talk to them and see them on those levels. And so I’m, you know, that that entire newsletter was about being sure to see each other in our humanity, because despite sometimes being able to take quantum leaps that, that society benefits from, we’re all still the same people who go home and, you know, use the bathroom and have dirty hair and are struggling and COVID and all of the things that everybody’s facing. So it was it was it was just that to urge us to see each other in our humanity.
Brad Taylor 44:51
Yeah, I feel in in the tech industry, I think we have this kind of Cult of the founder and I’ve been in that same position where I’ve seen Met founder that I really look up to, or an activist that I really looked up to. And I’ve kind of tensed up and, and kind of felt that. But I think one of the really good points that you make here in this article is to talk about by putting someone on a pedestal, it kind of diminishes, like our own ability to be able to make substantial change and to make progress.
Anne Devereux-Mills 45:25
Yeah, and you can have people as your role model, I mean, there’s, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have people that you admire and look up to, but when you see them as someone you can learn from, it’s really helpful, because you know, if you might not be able to view them as a peer, if they’re a founder that you admire, or if they’re, you know, somebody who’s accomplished things that most people will never accomplish, admire them for it. But learn from them use it as a chance for them to be the teacher. And, you know, it’s very likely that somewhere else in your life, there’s someone who’s looking at you in a similar way, and use that as an opportunity to, to be the teacher. And I think we all can be students, and we all can be teachers in life, when we look around us and see what skills we have that might benefit someone or what skills someone has that could make us better by by watching them and learning from them.
Brad Taylor 46:23
One of the other things I wanted to chat, talk with you about was you’ve done just an amazing amount of philanthropy and activism. You’ve been a mentor for the she can organization, you’ve, you did a lot of work to help pass California’s Proposition 36, which helped reform California’s three strikes reform. Tell us a little bit about the work that you did on that project.
Anne Devereux-Mills 46:51
Yeah, again, that was part of, of my belief in it that in my husband’s belief, that small actions can actually have much greater effect on people than you might think, given the size of the action. So California had one of the toughest three strikes laws in the country, as a result of a terrible crime that had been committed again, against a young girl named Polly klass who was killed in her house by a repeat offender, many, many years ago in California, and as a result of that tragic murder, and that by that repeat offender, California enacted a highly penalizing law that said, if you were kind of a kid who got in trouble, and you had two strikes against you, and then later, as an adult, you were struggling, and you wrote a bad check, you stole a piece of pizza, you did something not serious, not violent, but it was your third offense, you were automatically sentence to spend the rest of your life in prison. And, you know, the rule was so penalizing didn’t separate people who should be kept away from society, because they are truly dangerous towards people who are struggling or making bad decisions on a non harmful level. And so, you know, my my husband, who teaches law at Stanford, and his is a lawyer, really saw that by making that differentiation, changing, not changing the entire law, not getting rid of all of the important reasons that we try to protect society from repeat offenders who are dangerous to society, but finding ways to create fairness in a system. So that the penalty reflects the crime and is not just universal, we made that one little change through that proposition in making sure that that third crime that sent you away from rest of your life was serious and violent. And what it did was create a fairness in the system that not only allowed 3000 people to have their path sentences reevaluated and for them to obtain release if they had served their time with Fair Sentencing. But it also sort of created an awareness of whether you’re Democrat or Republican. You know, 70% of the state supported our proposition because they believed that fairness in society matters, that fairness and how we treat people matters. So that was a small change. That came through a lot of hard work, but was supported from the right and the left. And it was sort of an early lesson to me in making social change that we all have the capability of, of doing small things that affect great people that that change in California’s law rippled across the country. When it got to the White House, Obama also started reevaluating minor drug offenses and trying to help change sentencing for people across the country who had been disproportionately imprisoned, and you know, when you look at our prison population, California, for example, has not a huge minority population San Francisco, I think African Americans are less than 5% of our population yet represent 30 something percent of our prison population. And we have all of this disproportionate, penalizing, again, of people who are unlike ourselves, because they’re different, because we don’t understand because we judge because we’re afraid. So that that was a campaign about fairness. And it went on to become an Emmy nominated documentary called the return. Yeah. And so, you know, I continue to try to work on initiatives like that, that restore or, or, or start more fair treatment of everybody in our society.
Brad Taylor 50:51
Yeah, I really enjoyed the documentary The return, because it really taught like it really followed the societal impact and the individual impact of you know, what, what happens when you have to when when you release this many inmates know how we’re the safety nets to be able to bring these bring these inmates and these people in to be able to be contributing members of the society. I want to end it with this. So you’re, you’re you’re not in tech, but you obviously use tech, you’re using it for parlay house, you’re using it in your day to day life? What have you seen in our industry that you from from looking on the outside, that we could be doing better?
Anne Devereux-Mills 51:37
Hmm, um, well, I think I’ll answer on a number of different levels. One of them is, and I’ve
Brad Taylor 51:47
there’s just too many, there are
Anne Devereux-Mills 51:48
so many, you know, obviously, having more female led tech organizations that are funded and supported to the same level as those funded by men who know, men, you know, is is a big start, and I am a contributing member of a number of funds that are women, especially women of color, who are looking to support the initiatives by other female leaders, especially female leaders of color. And, you know, I do believe that we’ve got to make a concerted effort to change the dynamic of who launches companies who gets supported, who has the insight, what their experience raising money is like, because, you know, if it’s a product for women, it still is true in the in the venture world, that the one female partner in that venture firm is the one that listens to all the pitches by the women, she’s not the most senior person in that in that fund. And you know, we just have a system right now that is set up to support more of the same because more of the same is familiar. So you know, I love tech because so much of it is problem solving and innovation. Using really non traditional approaches people who are willing to take risks and think out of the box and you know, merge technology and psychology in ways that is potentially additive to how we live and makes our lives better. And you know, if we can take that open thought process and entrepreneurial ism, and use it to break away from some of the systems that hold women back and focus tech in to be sort of more of a male to male network, I think we have the potential to make even greater impact on the world. You know, women are more than more than the majority more more of them are working and supporting families and you know, finding ways to create tech products that are informed by those people who are most affected. Seems like it’s a win win for everybody.
Brad Taylor 54:09
Yeah, so So first off, thank you for coming on the podcast today. Really appreciate you taking the time and if anyone wants to find out more about the parlay house, how would they
Anne Devereux-Mills 54:22
just go to our website parlay house.com it’s p a r l a y we call it parlay because it’s your chance to transition to parlay one thing into another. And it’s also a bastardization of the word the French word parlay, which means to speak. And when I went to buy the website, I found that for gamblers a parlay means the stakes are higher when we’re in it together. It’s sort of about cumulative bets of people together, and I really do feel when we see our society as necessarily interconnected and dependent on Each of us to help us all rise. We’re gonna be better corporate citizens and better neighbors and, you know, even when we disagree, have better conversations that that help us know each other.
Brad Taylor 55:14
Well, thank you for your time today. And
Anne Devereux-Mills 55:17
thanks for having me so great that we’re talking again and let’s not wait, you know, three or four years to have another conversation. I appreciate it.
Brad Taylor 55:26
Absolutely.
