For a while, it seemed like Silicon Valley had decided it was perfectly fine to fail on diversity and sexual harassment. The very white, very male, always-hoodie-clad club of founders was the core of the tech industry—and its members were down for some perfunctory bias training and lip service, but not a mea culpa. Then came the deluge. With reports of sexual harassment now rolling in at regular intervals, it seems like maybe the Valley is on the precipice of shift.

That’s where Y-Vonne Hutchinson comes in. Hutchinson, a labor attorney by trade, is the founder of ReadySet, a diversity-focused consulting firm that works primarily within the tech industry. (She’s also a member of Project Include, a community dedicated to building diversity into the tech industry.) Hutchinson’s company works with businesses that want to enact real change—beyond the hand wringing and Medium posting that happens in the wake of a crisis.

Needless to say, business is up. In the wake of the latest wave of outrage, I spoke with Hutchinson about what companies can do to get better—and whether this string of publicity is, in fact, progress.

Alexis Sobel Fitts: Why do you focus on the tech industry? Is it much worse than other industries?

Y-Vonne Hutchinson: Diversity and inclusion is really the labor policy issue of our time. That’s especially true in the field of tech. First off, technology is influential—the way companies do business sets the standard across the board for what we view as acceptable. Also, [tech] displaces people from other industries—so it has the potential to perpetuate inequalities and roll back gain. When you look at automation and work, men stand to gain one job for every four lost.

We’re losing the jobs traditionally that women and women of color have had. And the jobs where we’re having growth, those people are being excluded from—not on the basis of merit, but more on the basis of discrimination. It’s not just an issue now; it’s an issue that’s going to influence our workforce for decades to come.

Do you think the last few weeks have been a turning point in Silicon Valley?

Not yet. It’s a wakeup call. But we haven’t seen companies take the action that they need to take for it to be considered a turning point. Now we’re becoming aware of how big the problem was. There are some of us that have been aware of it, let’s be clear, for a long time. People are more aware of it now.

Why are so many people coming forward only now?

It is really hard to come forward. Sexual harassment is really hard to prove, and the way our society uses victims of sexual harassment is not always favorable. Often people turn on the victim — labeling her the accuser and digging into her background. If you’re at a company, you may have signed a non-disclosure, non-disparagement agreement, so you’re legally barred from telling your story.

HR exists to protect companies. Its job is not to protect the victims. Quite often, HR will start to build a case against the victim, laying a case for poor performance. In an atmosphere of doubt, it can be extraordinarily hard.

There’s also something that’s happened to us as a country. We’ve had this paradoxical shift with the election of Trump. It’s awakened us to the pervasiveness and the reality of sexual harassment and sexual assault. It was very tempting just even a year ago to think that we were, for the most part, past that. Very clearly, the question of how pervasive sexual assault is [has] barged back into the spotlight. [Because of that] it’s much more likely that women coming forward now will be believed. I think that other women, like Ellen Pao and Amélie Lamont, opened the door. We saw a trickle and then once Susan Fowler’s case broke, we got the flood.

You said earlier that you don’t think companies are ready to create an inclusive workforce. If they were, what would the roadmap for that look like?

It’s not a question of if companies are ready, but if companies are willing. We haven’t seen the action yet to indicate that they’re willing. We’re seeing a couple of think pieces; some pledges. Actions that don’t really have teeth.

For us to really start to combat sexual harassment, we’ll have to address some of the underlying causes. [That means] reevalsuating Silicon Valley culture generally—and this elevation and promotion of masculine values in the workforce. Getting beyond the culture of over-idealizing youth and immaturity. Having a higher representation of women, and I want to be very specific about this: all women and at all levels.

Right now, the accountability measures that exist within companies are not sufficient. I generally recommend having a third party—whether that be an ombudsman or some other reviewer— for claims. Of course, unintended consequences can arise from that. I came across a story involving a diamond retailer that started a hotline for people to report sexual harassment. Then [they] used those reports against the people who reported to identify trouble makers.

We’re also hearing now that some venture capitalists are saying, “Well, I just won’t have informal lunches or take a woman out to dinner. I won’t have these meetings with women.”

One thing that we’ve really been looking at with ReadySet is the culture of sexual harassment training. California has mandated sexual harassment training laws, which are considered to be the most progressive in the nation. But they can often undermine what they’re intended to do. California law dictates that people with managerial responsibilities have mandatory sexual harassment training for two hours every two years. That is out of line with what we consider to be best practices of training and it can be counterproductive. You see people who actually come out with more resistance to identifying and combating sexual harassment.

Is that because you have people who have been through this very perfunctory training and think, “I know everything, I’m insulated?”

“I’m the exception to this. Why do I have to do this obligatory training?” These are virtual trainings for two hours: You click a couple buttons and answer a survey. That’s not enough to combat cultures that contribute to sexual harassment. Generally, what is recommended is at least four hours of training—something that looks more like a half day of training. In-person training. Training where people are actually interacting with the trainer and not just someone speaking to an audience.

Companies don’t want to invest in that. What works is a lot harder than what feels good in the moment.

Is it harder to reform a company when the bad behavior comes from someone—like a founder—who is setting the values of a business?

We’ve seen a lot of misconduct from VCs, which directly relates to misconduct from founders. The VCs are the ones that choose these founders. They’re the ones that fund these companies. They’re the ones that sit on their boards. It’s no coincidence that the culture of the toxic founders is [there with the] VCs. The two are directly related, and you can’t solve for one without solving for the other.

Aside from the holistic approach, when a company comes to you and says, “We know that we need to improve on all these metrics,” where do you start?

That change really has to come from the top. It’s very hard for someone who is an employee in an organization to change the culture. That’s the sad truth. What you can do, however, as an employee, is vote with your feet. There’s still a competition for talent in this industry.

When that talent goes, people pay attention. If you have men and women, top engineers, saying, “We’re not going to go to these companies anymore. We’re not going to help you scale. We’re not going to help you get traction in the market. We’re not going to support you,” then you start to see a shift.

That’s a really important point to make, too: The majority really can influence company culture.

There’s a role for consumers as well. When I think about the downfall of Uber, I go back to the #DeleteUber campaign. Uber was vulnerable because it made a series of mistakes that were directly a result of its toxic culture. The consumer-driven #DeleteUber campaign showed that they could be swayed by consumer voices. That’s something that we overlook in the Valley, because a lot of the companies are privately held and investor-backed.

Are you seeing more people coming to you to try to tackle these issues head on? And, if you’re not seeing that kind of influx, what does it take to get people to really preventatively deal with the culture?

You know, it’s funny—while I have seen an uptick in business, I don’t really get the “We don’t want to be Uber” line when people engage. People come to my company when the other fixes don’t work. When metrics alone don’t do it; when research alone won’t do it; when hiring people won’t do it; when unconscious bias training won’t do it. That’s when they come to us.

All of those things have their place, but what we see often in the Valley is people implement them and think that they’re a panacea. That it will solve all of their problems. ReadySet provides end-to-end solutions that are not easy. We require companies to do a lot of discovery. We ask a lot of tough questions and then we really focus on implementation. When companies are ready to do that, that’s when they come to us.