Enabling the Inclusive Mind

Hi, I’m Fanny and I joined Criteo in 2017 as a member of the Human Resources team supporting the R&D community. I’m also the leader for Critenable, the most recently-formed Criteos Cares community and I’d like to share some thoughts about our community’s focus on living with disabilities.

If you’re like me, living through the time of covid is making me think about the number of things I take for granted. Seeing my family and friends. Travel. My favorite restaurants. During the past year, everything has changed. Thinking about what we take for granted in life is a recurring theme in Critenable. Dedicated to building a more accessible world, our community works to create true awareness about people with disabilities.

Eye opener

At our recent Critenable Day event, which coincided with International Disabilities Day, I invited an external speaker named Tanguy. In direct, simple words, Tanguy talked about learning to live with a disability that arrived when he was 18 and coming to terms with not having full use of his legs. Instead of fighting his disease, he decided to make it his friend, even giving it a name: “George.”

Have you ever thought about how people may react differently when meeting someone with a disability? Tanguy compared the relatively normal way people look at him sitting in his wheelchair to the discomfort and strangeness he sees in their eyes when he is attempting to walk.

His frankness and honesty melted any of the societal taboos we may have about speaking openly of someone’s disability. But, it was more than that. For a moment, by putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we were able to put aside our worries about daily life at a time of global pandemic.

An energizing subject

When we started talking about this topic a year ago, I really didn’t know what to expect. Yes, Criteo’s values certainly reflect an attitude of inclusiveness. But, what were we really doing to walk the talk when it came to ensuring we provide a welcoming environment for employees with disabilities?

Before joining Criteo, I’d spent 8 years in a company that invested a lot in building diversity around people with disabilities. I’d learned how powerful it is to create real awareness but I also know how difficult it can be to change mentalities. It’s a cause that means a lot to me but would others feel the same way?

The answer came at the first organizing meeting of our community. I remembered what one of my colleagues told me, “Getting people to come to a meeting to talk is the easy part. Asking them to do the work is much harder.” But, when we asked for volunteers to help with topics we wanted to explore, the hands shot up! I was surprised – and really happy -- to see the energy that the subject evoked.

Diverse motivations

I’m still learning about the wide variety of reasons employees choose to participate in the Critenable Community. One person said they were motivated by reading studies that engineers and statisticians were more prone to autism and just wanted to do something to help. Another spoke of personal frustration of being denied a professional opportunity due to a perceived inability.

Think Zoom meetings work the same for everyone? A friend of one of our participants has hearing difficulties and experience enormous stress in meetings, made even worse when multiple languages are being spoken.

Sharing stories and experiences like these helps us to think past our own existence and consider how it feels for others without the same capacities. And that’s not something to take for granted.