At Roblox, we pride ourselves on building a workplace that reflects the diversity of our players and creators around the world. We like to take a moment every Women’s History Month to celebrate the female employees who work hard every day to make Roblox awesome. Learn about their careers, journeys, and advice for those looking to make it in tech.
Emily Yu, Privacy Director, Policy and Compliance
Someone you admire: I really admire Chrissie Scelsi, U.S. general counsel for Wargaming, and Hannah Poteat, managing privacy counsel at Twilio. They’re both really strong, assertive women who get the job done.
Proudest accomplishment: I chaired the planning committee for the California Lawyers Association IP and the Internet Conference in Los Angeles last June. I have never planned a whole day event before, so it was completely outside of my comfort area. I consider this to be my greatest accomplishment to date because I managed to overcome a lot of obstacles to make the event a success.
Advice to women beginning their career in technology: Keeping work-life balance in mind, be willing to volunteer. I’ve had so many opportunities to present on panels and do a number of really interesting activities just because I was willing to raise my hand. Of course, don’t do it at the expense of sleep or mental health.
Alex Amorati, Product Manager, Marketplace
Proudest accomplishment: My favorite accomplishment at Roblox is launching emotes! It was one of the first big projects I worked on as a product manager, and it was a pretty big change to the Roblox platform. It has been a ton of fun to work on!
Biggest inspiration: Huge shout out to the amazing faculty at my grad program, CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center. When I was an intern at Roblox and just starting out as a PM, I didn’t feel like I had the right stuff to pursue what I loved, but my advisors pushed me to put myself out there.
Advice to women beginning their career in technology: You might be one of the few women in your office. You might look around for an example to follow and not find anyone like you. You might feel soft or girly or emotional or just different from everyone else. Different is not a weakness! Know yourself, learn what you can from the people around you, and find your own path.
Lydia Gray, Director of Total Rewards
What made you choose to work at Roblox? The most valuable asset of any company is your people, and one of the biggest levers you can use to help with engagement and productivity is compensation. It’s both analytical and psychological – and you can’t mess it up. Therefore, you need a lot of thoughtful analysis and stakeholder buy-in to ensure its properly designed and delivering the right outcomes for your company. I love that it brings my passion for finance and psychology together as well as I get to work with everyone to ensure we design something that’s fair and competitive.
What brought me to Roblox was that I was looking for a company in which the company’s mission and values aligned with my career aspiration of working a senior HR leadership role in a scaling business. I have seen the power of bringing people through play throughout my life, so Roblox was the perfect fit!
Proudest accomplishment: I think my significant professional accomplishments have been empowering my employees and peers to become leaders themselves. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing someone live up to their potential. I had an employee at a previous company who the rest of the leadership doubted had the capabilities to be a team leader. I worked with this employee and pushed to give them an opportunity. This employee became one of the best team leaders we ever had and is now the global head of a division at my previous company.
Advice to women beginning their career in technology: Although she is in a different industry, what would the Notorious RBG (Ruth Bader Ginsberg) do? You may not always have a role model, so become your own – just like what Gandhi said: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
Diana Lee, Engineering Manager
Proudest Accomplishment: Out of everything I have accomplished at Roblox, I am most proud of building my team. What started as a team of one (me!) has grown to six with the support and trust of my organization. Together, we’ve designed and shipped highly-scalable systems instrumental to globalizing our platform. We have also come up with countless inside jokes and acronymized our projects to spell out foods (We love GUAC!).
Biggest inspiration: My mother is an absolute inspiration to me. She is also a software engineer and navigated a career in a male-dominated field long before I did. She is the reason why software engineering felt natural, normal, and attainable. I have learned from her the value of going beyond to make an impact. I distinctly remember her spending evenings at my school, after her long days at work, setting up computers and educational software. This was before the days many of us had personal computers at home or even knew how applicable a skill like typing would be for a third-grader, and my mother wanted to set us up for success. She went above and beyond to spread her own love for computers and technology to young kids and saw the opportunity to do so in her free time.
Advice to women beginning their career in technology: Feed your curious nature. Ask questions, pursue knowledge, and tinker with any piece of tech you find interesting.
On behalf of the Roblox community, thank you so much for your stories and achievements! We hope your example inspires the next generation of creators, engineers, and entrepreneurs.