Beth F. Cobert

"One of the most challenging barriers to diversity and inclusion is unconscious bias. An aspect of unconscious bias that we work to guard against in federal hiring is the like me bias. Each of us looks at candidates and looks at folks and says, is their background like mine? Because if they are, they're likely to be qualified. We need to find a way to fight against those perspectives."

"I've had the honor of sitting in on discussions with the National Security leadership on the topics of diversity and inclusion."

"I'm sure all of you in the room can think about your own experiences where having that diversity was vital to our success in our mission. As given that diversity can't be an add on, it can't be this activity on the side. When we're thinking about the mission, including the missions in the national security space, it has to be seen as critical."

"…we thought about diversity and inclusion as an entire part of the development process, not something we wanted to add on at the end. So we worked with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, who's working to bring more diverse talent into Stem fields."

"We need all the individuals in the room to continue to stress the importance of diversity and inclusion to this mission."