Charlotte Lewis Jones, Facebook (Courtesy photo)

Charlotte Lewis Jones, associate general counsel on Facebook's augmented and virtual reality legal team, has led the company's legal strategy regarding much of what has become known as "Inclusive AI." The program tests new systems through the lens of inclusivity in hopes of giving the company the tools necessary to achieve broad market success. Jones is among the 21 lawyers chosen by The Recorder as Women Leaders in Tech Law as part of this year's California Leaders in Tech Law and Innovation Awards.

The Recorder: What's your proudest professional achievement of the past year and why?

Jones: Building products whose inputs include diverse feedback and inclusive, unbiased training data sets is immensely important to any company's market success. Many times, ensuring the training set is as such is a matter of economic empowerment and access (e.g. imagine so-called predictive resume screening software that doesn't recognize the brainpower of top HBCUs) and, for some technologies, a matter of life or death (e.g., imagine self-driving car software that doesn't recognize people with significant amounts of facial hair). Building a process and legal framework that enables the company to gather this type of data and feedback is something I'm super proud of, and I hope other companies are also invested in similar efforts so that we get this right.

What's your proudest personal achievement of the past year and why?

I wrote and published a children's book, with commissioned illustrations, in order to announce the birth of my daughter Aspen. In the book, she's called Princess Jones, and she's still in "mommy's tummy" while the family prepares for her arrival. I'd been talking about writing children's books for the past few years, and I finally found the inspiration to get it done. I received such positive feedback, I'm working on another book, exploring a child's creativity and the possibilities of frontier technology.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to a woman starting out in tech law?

Be creative when it comes to amassing skills. Create your own opportunities to gain experience if they're not being presented to you. Prioritize experience over salary early in your career (e.g. work for less (or free) if you'll get valuable experience). Don't let anyone make you believe that they are more capable or have all the answers because of past or current experience; their position could simply be a result of a number of random things, including luck and having the right professional relationships and sponsors.

What concrete steps could be made to increase the number of women in tech law?

It's simple. Hire more women. If you are in-house, insist that your outside counsel team includes women—especially diverse women—in meaningful roles. Even if they are not the lead attorney, encourage them to have a voice and participate in meetings (e.g. ask them what they think if they haven't given an opinion on an issue yet), so that they aren't invisible and are learning the skills to be invaluable. Don't allow anyone to get away with a token woman on the team. Take advantage of her brilliance so that she can grow.