Every product person carries biases into their work. Most never examine them. At the fourth Gathering of The Product Consortium, Samia Suys, VP Product at Cheqroom, delivered a sharp, personal talk that forced the room to confront an uncomfortable reality: the mental shortcuts that make us efficient also make us blind to the people we exclude.
The talk moved from concrete examples of bias in the workplace to hard data on homogeneity in investment and product teams, then landed on a practical framework for building more inclusive products. Samia did not sugarcoat it. She opened with real discriminatory comments she had witnessed in professional settings and challenged the audience to recognize similar patterns in their own environments.
What Is This Bias You Speak Of?
Samia opened by grounding the conversation in real workplace moments. She shared examples of biased and discriminatory comments she had encountered firsthand: dismissive remarks about colleagues in wheelchairs, a meeting where someone casually suggested muting the Taiwan office, inappropriate comments about periods, and exclusionary language directed at the LGBTQ+ community. These were not hypothetical scenarios. They were things said in professional settings by otherwise competent people.
