Kai Miller
Nicole. Josh, thanks so much for joining us on this special episode of brilliant in 20. And thank you for sharing this story. I mentioned in the introduction, the Pronoun project started out as a really simple thought. Josh, I’m wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the inspiration behind the project. Where did it all start?

Josh Seefried
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people love to put their pronouns and say their signature block and things like that. But during Covid, we realized that, you know, when you go on, Microsoft Teams, you may not know how to address that person, so you just can’t look at someone’s signature block for that. You want to know how to actually address someone.

Josh Seefried
And so we looked at, how do we actually change this? How do I see you on teams and how do I address you? A lot of folks also think this was just LGBTQ focused, but it’s not true. It’s actually focused for a lot of folks with, say, gender neutral names. And I think that’s really something that we saw.

Josh Seefried
That’s kind of surprise to me is that, yes, it may have started with the LGBTQ community, but we realized there’s such a passion for us to need to do this for other folks as well. And so that’s what kind of started was, we saw it as a basic respect issue. And then Covid drove it to a whole different, kind of playing field there.

Kai Miller
Wow, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t even I hadn’t even considered the as someone with a gender neutral name. I had not even considered that that was a a helpful thing to, Can you talk to us a little bit about. So you had the the inspiration happened behind the project. What were some of the first few steps that took place at VA?

Josh Seefried
Yeah, absolutely. So I knew this was this was an idea and I knew the cinder blocks as an idea. And so I went to Nicole and I said, hey, how do we solve this problem? How do we get this basic respect to people that know how to address folks and their emails on their teams and things like that?

Josh Seefried
And so I went to Nicole and said, hey, let’s let’s brainstorm this and, and then I’ll, I’ll toss over to Nicole because that’s how it really started.

Nicole Gilbride
Yeah. And so Josh came to me with this idea of a problem, and I think there had been some email going back and forth from folks in the field, too, about like, hey, I want to do this, how do we do this? And so we sort of put our heads together and we said, what’s the policy? We did a little bit of quick research on is there policy out there.

Nicole Gilbride
How is this determined right now. And we looked at what are the rules and where are there no rules and who has decision authority. And we said, okay, we think we can solve this is technology. Originally I think the the first brainstorm idea was even to do just like a policy we would put out saying, you know, local IT administrators can make this change, but we quickly realized, well, why are we solving a technology problem with a policy?

Nicole Gilbride
Why don’t we solve a technology problem with technology? And so we sort of got the right minds together all the technical experts on our side and brainstormed what this could be and then got it piloted really quickly. I think that was something that was a big catalyst. And then we just rolled right into automation a few months later.

Nicole Gilbride
So it was sort of just how can we make it happen? How can we solve this as quickly and easily as possible?

Kai Miller
Nicole, can you give me a sense of scale? So how many people are within VA using the resources that could opt into this?

Nicole Gilbride
Yeah. So across VA we have over 400,000 employees. And this is accessible to anybody who has a user account with VA. And right now we’ve got nearly 30,000 people that are have opted in. So it it’s growing the coolest thing I think, from my perspective was when we started the pilot, we, we made a decision that from a technology perspective, piloting things, experimenting with things is always a good approach.

Nicole Gilbride
Start small, see how it works, work out the kinks before you scale. And we started the pilot only by word of mouth. Josh told a few people. I told a few people, those people told a few people. And I think we had like upwards of 2000 people signed up before we had done a single piece of like written communication about the solution so we could see with already spreading.

Nicole Gilbride
And then once we got one big message out, the floodgates opened and people continue, like every single day. There’s, you know, another handful of people that are out in the field that are making the requests, putting it in, even though we haven’t done any formal messaging about it in almost two years.

Kai Miller
And it’s it’s completely opt in, right? It’s completely voluntary. So almost 30,000 people took the proactive step to go and sign up and have their pronouns displayed. Is that correct?

Nicole Gilbride
Exactly. It’s 100% opt in. You choose if you want to participate. And when we made the shift in our phases, we initially did it where we we knew we would have a surge of requests as this first launch and as we were working it out. So we staffed up a little bit more so we’d be able to handle that level of volume of requests.

Nicole Gilbride
But once we made it through the first like month or two and that volume started to taper off, we, we started working on an automated solution. So now you don’t even need there’s not an IT person have to touch the system in order for you to make the change. We have a pre-selected list of of pronouns that are available to you.

Nicole Gilbride
And you can go into the system and and switch them. You can even change them yourself. So if you are transgender and you are shifting your gender identity, you can go in and make that selection choice yourself, which I think was really empowering. One thing that was a concern and some of the feedback we saw before we started putting this solution in place, one of the areas of concern was our system made it that your supervisor had to sign off on any changes to your identifiable name in our system, which, you know, made sense.

Nicole Gilbride
So people didn’t. I don’t declare myself, you know, unicorn princess Nicole, but that also meant if you were changing your pronouns, your supervisor was going to get an alert or they would have to approve it. And so that created like a tension that didn’t need to exist. And so the great thing about this is it’s completely automated. And any employee can go in and do it themselves.

Nicole Gilbride
They don’t have to go through any approval process to to change their pronouns or to indicate their pronouns.

Kai Miller
That’s amazing. And for those who are who are only listening to the podcast, they can’t quite see but your eye makeup actually, Unicorn Princess Nicole is is a pretty a appropriate name for you to have in the address book. Josh, can you give us a sense the change went into effect? Were there any big surprises? What was adoption like?

Josh Seefried
Yeah, I was surprised at how quickly it was going. I think I was up in New York on on leave at the time, and I just remember watching the numbers go up by, like, thousands, like, every few hours. And I was and this was again by word of mouth. And I was just I was honestly just I was touched by how many people, wanted to do it so quickly, and voluntarily.

Josh Seefried
So I think that was like one of the, the most shocked, shocked things I saw. The only thing that really, really was cool to me was I’m a veteran. I was in the Air Force and, and I use VA, services for everything that I it’s my only, my only health care. And I saw my doctors start to use it.

Josh Seefried
And when I’m watching that, sitting there and seeing their pronouns, I’m like, I helped do that. And that to me was just mind blowing because here are these people that I have no idea who they are or whatnot, but yet they’re using a product that, I care a lot about here. Central office and VA.

Kai Miller
Yeah, they’re using the product you cared about, and they’re also creating that more inclusive environment at VA where you’re working as well. So that’s that’s pretty I would imagine that was pretty overwhelming to see your clinicians and service providers adopting this. And creating the environment for their other patients as well.

Josh Seefried
And it’s so small because but it’s such a big impact because like, say, if you’re in that doctor’s office, you know, they’re logging in with their, their, their two factor. You’re going to see those pronouns. You’re going to see that your doctor is being inclusive. And and that is just it creates an environment, just like you said.

Kai Miller
Awesome. Nicole, how about you? Were there any any big surprises as you went through adoption?

Nicole Gilbride
I think the biggest surprise for me was how we were able to build consensus so rapidly. Like, we we sort of had this somewhat planned but also unplanned, targeted approach of like we figure it out, what do we need to do? Who’s sign off? Do we need to get this started? And then we spent the time while we were in that piloting phase, really collaborating with all of the different user groups.

Nicole Gilbride
And we did a lot of that in advance. But like working with them even more to make sure we had the right options available. Hear what the feedback was coming like from the field of like, was it going well? Were they hitting any roadblocks? And I think just I mean, I don’t know how much people’s exposure to government tech, but like doing anything going from idea to pilot to national release in under 60 days is unheard of.

Nicole Gilbride
Yeah. I mean, we, we like barely missed doing it in 30 days or less. I think we were at like 42 days or something from like conception to national rollout, but like that’s that we don’t normally go that fast. I think part of it was like Josh and I were committed, and Chuck, who is our our tech lead, he was like totally on board too.

Nicole Gilbride
And we were just sort of like ask for forgiveness instead of permission a little bit like we we were just charging full force ahead and we had the policy to back us up. We had legal approval to back it up. We had HR approval to back it up. And so we knew we we could make it happen. And that was really exciting to see it happen so quickly.

Nicole Gilbride
I’ve seen a lot of slow tech rollouts and so this was neat to see it happen so fast.

Kai Miller
Yeah. I’m wondering, so you were both communications professionals at heart and in practice. And to hear you share, Nicole, so that it was completely organic and there wasn’t really you know, there’s no PR budget for it. There’s no marketing budget for it. And it was organic to begin with. How does that look now? How are you? How does that adoption move forward now?

Kai Miller
Are you able to promote it in any way, or is it truly word of mouth?

Josh Seefried
I think it’s still kind of word of mouth. And I think the reason it is and why it’s still successful is that we actually took a problem and we looked at how to solve it, and it goes back to that Covid idea. We know that there’s going to be people all the time, just no one likes to put their camera on all the time.

Josh Seefried
And so you just have that name even you don’t even have a picture with them. And that’s a tangible problem that we solved with technology. And that’s why that it continues to organically grow is we don’t need to promote it because people want to solve that actual problem.

Nicole Gilbride
Excellent.

Kai Miller
Go ahead, Nicole.

Nicole Gilbride
I’m just going to say to like, I think it does. It’s amazing how often Josh or I or the email account we have set up where somebody has a request or a question, they can send something in, like it’s still surprising to me that now it’s been two years since we launched, but like we still get emails to that account, we still get questions coming in or they get these like the most heartfelt thank you notes from out in the field and those like, seriously, if you ever just need to like, get a Feel Good Friday, like all the notes, pull them up and be like, Nicole, you are making a difference.

Nicole Gilbride
You are doing something that’s impacting people and it’s really neat to see. I think that’s something that’s really cool and it’s what allows it to be organic is sometimes it’s just somebody will message me, I’m in a meeting that I’m not normally in. Maybe it’s with a bunch of VA people about communications or change management, and somebody will message me and say, how did you how do you have your pronouns after your name?

Nicole Gilbride
And I’m like, oh, I feel like I’m personally like the the person carrying the sign poster to be like, here’s how I got that link, like hot links for people so that they can quickly sign up. But it also is a testament to how easy the solution is that all I have to do is drop a link. I don’t have to give a ton of instructions.

Nicole Gilbride
I don’t have to explain what to do. It’s so user friendly and easy for them. I drop the link and then I notice like two days later they’ve updated it and they’ve got the pronouns. And so yeah, the word of mouth has been really cool. And that’s supported by the design of the solution that it’s so easy.

Kai Miller
I would love to hear from each of you. And I’ll start with Josh, but I would love to hear what’s been your proudest moment. So a single moment, if you could point to it.

Josh Seefried
Yeah, I was down in Austin, Texas for a trip, and one of the folks that worked on this project, they also have a gender neutral name, and they said to me, and this is a person not in the LGBT community, not really involved in that area. And they’re like, I cannot tell you how many notes I’m getting from this rollout.

Josh Seefried
And they told me that this was the most meaningful project they’ve ever worked on in their career. And this is a 20 or 20 plus career person. And I was just so moved. I was like that. And that was powerful to me that, here’s someone saying that this is the most meaningful thing they’ve done in government so far.

Josh Seefried
And I would agree, I’ve done a lot of things, but this has been the thing that I felt like has been the most touching. It’s so visible. It’s just it’s it’s just the right thing to do.

Kai Miller
Nicole, how about you?

Nicole Gilbride
Yeah, I have to. Of course. One, one. Was that one of our tech leaders on the project who is sort of, you know, like assigned this task to do it, you know, based on where this work needed to happen. It filtered to him and his team and he was kind of like, okay. And you kind of got on board after time, like you started realizing how cool this would be.

Nicole Gilbride
But at one point, his daughter, who I think also worked for VA or somehow found out about the project, she was so proud of him. And then he came back and told us about that story, and he was like almost to tears of like my young, like Gen, the Gen Alpha daughter thinks that like, this is so cool.

Nicole Gilbride
And she’s bragging to her friends that, like, this is the thing that my dad’s doing and it’s big bureaucracy. And like, that was super duper touching. I think the other thing for me is seeing that one. It’s like, cool that VA was trailblazing in this space. Like literally were the first federal agency to do this. But now seeing the impact of other federal agencies like we’ve probably met, I don’t know, Josh, we have to call, but it feels like 7 to 10 different agencies working with them on how did we do it from a policy side?

Nicole Gilbride
How do we do it from an implementation side? How do we do it on a like a true tech to tech side? Like what buttons did we hit and how do we hit them to make it work? And seeing them then subsequently roll it out? That’s super cool because it’s not just the change we made here at VA.

Nicole Gilbride
It’s a change we’re seeing across the federal space, and that’s exciting, at least for me.

Kai Miller
Thank you both for sharing that is there as you kind of reflect on those moments and everything that you went through to make this a reality with the team, is there something you can point to, a way that working on the Pronoun project has influenced how you interact with your work today?

Nicole Gilbride
I have one, I’ll go. I think the hardest part of this project for me was. There there’s this sense in user design, which is part of like how we solution things of you want things to be designed so that they’re easy to use so that the steps the person has to take in order to complete an action are simple and minimal as possible.

Nicole Gilbride
And we also, if you look across the LGBT community and beyond, the desire for pronouns that are very personalized to an individual is high, and especially within that community, that desire is high. And I think it taught me a really important lesson in the balance that you have to find between meeting individual people’s needs, but balancing that with making a solution accessible for the masses.

Nicole Gilbride
And me like, knew that if we had a list of every pronoun request that came in, if Josh and I and the committee that decides those, if we approved every single pronoun collection that came in, that dropdown list would be, you know, a hundred options long and it would be hard for people to find the one that most closely resembles what they were looking for.

Nicole Gilbride
And it would deter people from, from adoption. And so but as a human, that was really hard for me because there were some really great requests that came in that, like, we wanted to say yes to, I think one of the cool ones we did say yes to was, a request for like she am to have, for our Spanish speaking population to have the ability to say their pronouns in both English and Spanish.

Nicole Gilbride
And that’s one that we said, you know what there is in that population, both on the veteran side and the staff side, that we were able to approve that one. But, it was hard from a human perspective that there were going to be some pronoun requests that we just couldn’t say yes to you from a user design perspective.

Nicole Gilbride
But balancing the fact that making that design simple and easy to navigate, easy to choose, easy to find, your best option, but that that’s hard. I think that’s life. That balance between meeting everyone’s needs and also getting things done in a way that the most people will benefit. And so but it’s it’s still something that like I struggle with a lot.

Nicole Gilbride
It was it was a good lesson learned but also kind of tough to carry. I, I still struggle with it a bit.

Kai Miller
Thanks, Nicole. Josh, I’m wondering, what is this? What is this look like today? Are there are there future plans for the project? Is it now kind of on the just on the on the automated front that Nicole’s described, are there things that you all are talking about?

Josh Seefried
Yeah, I think we are always looking for ways to improve the project. As Nicole said, when we started adding and the Spanish pronouns, that was one great evolution. And there may be some in the future, but deciding how we do that, it has been a great evolving process for us. But I think that, it’s been embraced by the work force.

Josh Seefried
People understand why it’s important. And I think that’s because we tried to solve an actual problem, and I approached it that way. And so I think that we are looking to see what else can we do if there’s a problem that actually arises. But I think it’s just naturally growing.

Kai Miller
Excellent. Well, I want to Josh, Nicole, thank you both so much for joining us and for sharing the story. I think the thing that attracted me most to talking with the two of you about this, especially during Pride Month, is that it is it is so simple. It’s just a simple thought of how do you use technology to make life a little bit better, a little bit clearer, a little bit more inclusive in this case, for for those who are at VA, but then expanding to the entire federal government and being that that example.

Kai Miller
So I personally really appreciate you sharing this story and sharing the perspective that that those those small thoughts, those small things that we do really do matter. So thank you so much for taking the time and and for talking with us.

Nicole Gilbride
Thanks for having us.

Josh Seefried
Thank you.