Latest Mitchell Baker Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I grew up as an only child. I think it might just be that my dad really didn't care that I was a girl. "You're gonna do certain things 'cause I want you to, and that's the way it is."

  Mitchell Baker

  Girl, Dad, Children

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Some period of time later you look up and say, "That concern was right on the mark; it happened exactly as I thought it would." So that's been really helpful to recognize.

  Mitchell Baker

  Looks, Helpful, Look Up

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• I guess my other advice is that it's really good to be comfortable among groups of men! It's just a very common work setting and I don't actually think about it too much, but there must be some comfort level that I've developed over the years.

  Mitchell Baker

  Men, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Just to have the confidence to say, "Which end of that spectrum am I usually on?" That's been very helpful to me. Because it's a really awkward setting.

  Mitchell Baker

  Awkward, Helpful, Ends

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Usually, you know, you're at a table and you're the only woman, you've got this idea, you finally speak up - I mean, I've been in some settings where every head turns toward me and then they all turn away as if I've never spoken. Which I think happens when whatever I said was so out of the blue, or so awkward, that they just didn't know how to respond.

  Mitchell Baker

  Mean, Thinking, Ideas

  "Inside the Firefox’s Den". Interview with Laura McClure, www.motherjones.com. September 16, 2008.

• Our sense of "open" is that the authority to make decisions about that gets distributed based on merit and understanding and participation and leadership, not solely on employment or a title or a business plan. Technical colleagues will define "open" as "open standards," "interoperable" - you can find it, search it, cut and paste it, view source, mix and match - all those things that we associate with text on the Web, that you can continue to do that with audio and video and whatever's next.

  Mitchell Baker

  Cutting, Views, Decision

  "Inside the Firefox’s Den". Interview with Laura Mcclure, www.motherjones.com. September 16, 2008.

• What's been most helpful to me is realizing that those times when all the heads in the room turn and look at me as if I was crazy, reinforce my own leadership capability. Because I've been in a number of those settings where I've been right. And I've been right often enough that now when it happens I don't automatically think, "Oh, my, what's wrong with me?" or "Ohhh, I must not be ready for this role," or "They know so much more than I do."

  Mitchell Baker

  Crazy, Thinking, Numbers

  "Inside the Firefox’s Den". Interview with Laura Mcclure, www.motherjones.com. September 16, 2008.

• So many commercial orgs have software where you can come and modify it but they still control everything. And what's controlled is very clearly what's good for their business, or if they're more progressive, their view of what's good for the Internet.

  Mitchell Baker

  Views, Internet, Progressive

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• We're also looking a lot at graphics and video. We've done a lot on a deep technical level to make sure that the next version of Firefox will have all sorts of new graphics capabilities. And the move from audio to video is just exploding. So those areas in particular, mobile and graphics and video, are really important to making the Web today and tomorrow as open as it can be.

  Mitchell Baker

  Moving, Important, Levels

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• We should probably figure out a new word for this. For us, "open" means transparent, as in "open source" - you're not locked in to what the original creator did. And in our case "open" also means distributed decision making.

  Mitchell Baker

  Mean, Decision, Cases

  "Inside the Firefox’s Den". Interview with Laura Mcclure, www.motherjones.com. September 16, 2008.

• I'm excited about mobile; clearly that's important. Mobile devices are kind of at the opposite end of PCs, in that PCs are pretty open and you can do a fair amount with them, but many mobile devices aren't. We're excited at the idea that we can make the same kind of contribution in the mobile space. So that's one thing coming down the pike.

  Mitchell Baker

  Ideas, Space, Opposites

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• There's something about being a woman in a technology space, unless you happen to be model beautiful, where there's always, always talk about what you look like.

  Mitchell Baker

  Beautiful, Technology, Space

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• But most of us who aren't models aren't models, right? And so, you just have to get used to that and sort of read right past it. So. On the sex symbol piece, I don't get that piece. On the personality piece, that people are excited to meet a leader from Mozilla - maybe there's more about meeting me personally than I give credit for, but I find that people are excited about what Mozilla is, more than 'Oh my god, there's Mitchell, look, her hair,' whatever.

  Mitchell Baker

  Sex, Past, Hair

  "Inside the Firefox’s Den". Interview with Laura McClure, www.motherjones.com. September 16, 2008.

• The sex symbol thing's a little bit different for me. Usually, like whenever there's a picture of me, there's always this set of things that comes out like, 'Oh my god, she's so ugly.'

  Mitchell Baker

  Sex, Different, Ugly

  Source: www.motherjones.com