All Tech Is Human Library Podcast Series #1 | Erika Cheung
In the first conversation of a sixteen-part All Tech is Human Library Podcast interview series, Executive Director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship Erika Cheung joins David Ryan Polgar for a conversation about ethics in entrepreneurship, the responsibilities of a whistle-blower, and the ways we can co-create a more equitable tech ecosystem. This was recorded live in front of an audience at Unfinished Live, where All Tech Is Human held a three-day activation.
Cheung discusses the factors that allowed her to identify and report ethical issues at Theranos. What are the risks associated with whistle-blowing? How did her experience at Theranos motivate her to start Ethics in Entrepreneurship?
About Erika Cheung
Erika Cheung is the Executive Director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, a non-profit organization with the mission to embed ethical questioning, culture, and systems in start-up ecosystems. She is famously known for being a key whistle-blower reporting the medical-diagnostic company Theranos to health regulators. This account is covered in the book Bad Blood by John Carreryrou, 60 Minutes, ABC Podcast: The Drop Out, and Alex Gibney’s documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. She also advises and supports the development of biotechnology and healthcare initiatives across the APAC region.
Key Takeaways
The courage to be a whistleblower is a risk worth taking for the fundamental belief of justice and innovation.
Getting creative with ethical entrepreneurship looks like interrogating your company values and culture, and shaping your viability to solve wicked problems without extractive or exploitative means.
Ethics ought to be embedded in the systems design process of an enterprise, rather than an afterthought when second and third-order consequences take effect.
Quotes
“Falling into becoming a whistleblower was sort of a matter of circumstance. The fact that I talked to the COO, I talked to the board [of Theranos] and everyone was like, ‘We don't know what to tell you. We don't think you're right about this.’ …And then deciding to go external to actually talk to the media and talk to regulators is sort of what brought me into that sort of whistleblower territory. But that wasn't really my intention. My intention was just basically to say, ‘Hey, you need to stop processing patient samples. Turn that open sign to closed…and go back to the drawing board because this technology's not ready to deploy.”
“Why were we the ones that came forward? I mean, It's hard to say…Maybe it was the fact that I was very young and…the constraints that I had on my life were a little bit less. I didn't have a mortgage…I didn't have to tell my significant other, ‘Hey, I might lose my job. I might lose my job tomorrow. We might not be able to make our mortgage payments…I think people need to understand that. I also just started working for the company…I hadn't been…saturated in the culture as long. So it hadn't sort of pushed the boundaries of what I found acceptable.”
“...So that was the genesis of [Ethics in Entrepreneurship]...it was the combined experience of coming out of this huge crisis and collapse that was so tragic. Frankly, I really tried to push [it] out of my mind until it came back to the media, and I had to deal with it again…it’s now become a part of my identity whether I want it to or not.”
“...The conversation of ethics and technology was very strong in academia, but actually [the] majority of these entrepreneurs were not coming from these academic institutions. They’d…worked in industry for a long time, and then they decided to start their companies…they were intersecting more with these incubation programs, professional associations, accelerators…so maybe [Ethics in Entrepreneurship] could just repurpose what was going on in academia and structure it within these sort of startup spaces.”
Learn More About Erika Cheung’s Work:
Ethics in Entrepreneurship | LinkedIn
Credits:
David Ryan Polgar - Moderator
Erika Cheung - Interviewee
Unfinished Live - Producers