When you get offered a seat at the head table of the juggernaut at the center of the social media universe, and that seat enables you to highlight and address representation issues, it’s the proverbial “no-brainer” decision to take that seat.
Maxine Williams has been in that seat since 2013, as Meta’s Chief Diversity Officer. Of course, when she started the job, the company was still called Facebook.
“My upbringing in multicultural Trinidad and Tobago certainly set the stage for an appreciation of differences among people,” Williams told Caribbean Beat magazine.
An advocate for inclusion, who says she is never satisfied with the status quo, the soca music lover has found herself being a member of Meta’s most senior executive leadership team under the chief executive officer, according to the company’s website.
She misses being home in T&T for mango season. She’s a soccer mom who finds ways to bring the latest technology to her kid’s games to record the action and still be part of the moment. Williams is a modern woman, whose DNA contains some of the old school values of being raised in the Caribbean.
“However, by virtue of size and scale alone, educational and work opportunities were more limited than if one had the offerings of the entire globe from which to choose,” Williams said in a Tech at Meta online post.
A graduate of Yale University and Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, Williams’ work experience is a mixed bag.
She is an attorney, but she has also worked as a broadcast journalist and there was also a stint in improv acting.
Maxine Williams continues to use her experiences as a Caribbean woman, and as Black woman in America, to help shape the future of the social media giant’s “metaverse.” She says representations in the metaverse should reflect the diversity of the real world.
“It’s important to remember that an inclusive metaverse benefits everyone, including people from traditionally underrepresented groups,” Williams said in the Tech at Meta post. “What inclusivity in the metaverse will look like is a difficult question with no easy answers.”
Time will tell.
