By Rebecca Caum
When Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, announced to a room full of women, at a recent conference for women in technology, that it was “good karma” not to ask for raises, he unintentionally brought the tech industry’s male centric culture and composition to the center stage of what has been an ongoing point of concern.
By Lucy Sanders
Lucy Sanders CEO of NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) gave the keynote on “Women and innovation” at theglasshammer.com ‘s 5th annual women in technology career event on 23rd October 2014.
NCWIT is an amazing organization that connects and supports change leaders from across the nation and across the pipeline (K-12 through career) in their efforts to increase girls’ and women’s meaningful participation in computing. There are over 150 free research backed resources (reports, tool kits, data sets, etc.) available on their site for those interested in leading the change.
Nicki Gilmour, CEO of theglasshammer.com welcomed 250 women to theglasshammer.com ’s 5th Annual Women in Technology event last Thursday night at the auditorium at American Express. Guests enjoyed an amazing evening of shared experiences and good advice from the panelists who are all navigating their career paths as women in technology. The keynote, presented by Lucy Sanders, CEO of NCWIT addressed stereotyping in tech and how women can innovate which will be covered in full next week on theglasshammer.com.
Avis Yates Rivers, CEO of Technology Concepts International Group and our moderator for the evening opened with a goal for the panel: to have a conversation with women who live the experience of being a woman in technology every day. These were exactly the type of women in attendance — technical women, engineers, coders, product and project managers and even a handful of CTOs.
The first question was posed around driving innovation from the seat that you are in.
Doris Daif, VP Digital Customer Experience, American Express by explaining what her team does and how she drives innovation on a personal and team level.
“We design digital products on behalf of the company, I drive innovation by leaving the office and talking to users and clients. I also give my team unstructured time to think about innovation and lastly we experiment by getting the product out the door in low fidelity ways to see what provides value for the customer. I deeply care about products that are meaningful to the end user.”
Doris explained her career path into technology from marketing at American Express into customer operations and then joining the technical side of the house.
“I had to learn the technical skill and I have had a lot of wonderful people who have taken bets on me and I have learned a lot, including from, the people who have worked for me.”
Justine Chen, who is a senior manager at SunGard, spoke passionately about how she innovates by looking at requirements and the problem, and then solving the problem by writing code.
Patricia Florissi began by explaining her job, which is CTO of Sales at EMC, a role she has had for 10 years.
“I am in that role to think more strategically in the sales organization and add deep expertise for customers to see where they want to go. I like to think that I use innovation when I am exposed to so many different meetings in so many cultures since we do business in over 100 countries. Everyday you try your best and bring that learning back to the institution to create more innovation in the design and delivery of products.”
Adda Birnir, CEO of Skillcrush, talked about how her customers are mostly women who are looking to develop their tech skills, sometimes to change careers, and how she drives innovation by being relentlessly focused on the end user.
Adda stated, “Every day I ask myself, are they (the user) having a good experience? Are we building a community that they need in order to succeed?” Adda went on to talk about how she has built up an ability to tolerate being wrong and not being ready to do things as a way of ensuring innovation in the field. She added, “If you get to the point where you can embrace that then that’s when you can really go out there and do great things.”
Adda also spoke about how she ended up in technology.
“I spent time with the production team at an online magazine where I worked and they were so overworked and they were happy to let me do tasks that they didn’t want to do. I was like ‘oh code, what is this? This is so interesting’ so they gave me forms to build and stuff that they didn’t want to do.”
Kimberly Bryant, Founder of Black Girls Code talked about her journey from electrical engineer to technology practitioner to founder of the only organization focusing on encouraging women and girls of color to get involved in technology.
“One of the things that I think my role allows me to do as an innovator is to be a disruptor in the field. We are always looking at ways to bring girls into robotics, into ‘hackathons’, and do things to change the stereotype and really challenge that every day in every way.”
Avis pointed out that after hearing our panelist’s stories there is no one path, and no traditional set way, to ascend in a technology career.
She commented how disappointing it is to see more than half of women leave in mid-career, especially considering how difficult it is to get women into the industry in the first place. Avis encouraged the audience to stay and see the bigger picture in their career trajectory.
“Often in Corporate America, we are placed in positions where we can’t see the value in at that point, but take advantage of those opportunities, take some learning from it and use it as a stepping stone to the next thing.”
Patricia offered some good advice from her personal journey, “Whatever you do, do it well and there is no other solution than hard work to get there. Also you have to be present, when you make the most out of everything, then you can really take advantage of the opportunities ahead of you. Don’t be afraid, take risks, what is the worst that can happen?”
Kimberly expressed her thoughts on the opportunities that are happening right now and agreed with Avis about staying in the game.
“I think there are so many opportunities for women and girls since so many industries are underutilizing technology, so just being open to where your career can lead is key.”
Mentors and Sponsors and Leaders
All of the panelists explained that they had mentors and also separate sponsors, with Kimberly providing clarification on the difference.
“It’s really important to know the role of the sponsor as opposed to the mentor. Sponsors advocate for you, and they are likely to be one of the most important people in your company or industry. Mentors can be someone above, below or a peer to give you advice. Really it is about building relationships all over your company, and it’s so key to building an organization inside or outside of a big corporation.”
Doris explained that the process of cultivating sponsors and mentors has to happen from a very genuine place, built over a long period of time, and keeping up those relationships as you move around the company. She commented, “It’s really important to think about ‘Who are my mentors and sponsors?’ Then nurture those relationships, even when you’re no longer working together.”
Patricia explained that sometimes you don’t know how to be a mentee or a mentor- and although it can feel good to talk, you need to have sponsors. She defined sponsors as, “Someone who cannot only guide you, but also stand up for you in a situation where you need help. If you think you are autonomous and can get what you want on your own, then wake up and smell the flowers.”
She explained that she typically cautions people to stay away from tunnel vision and instead to see what is happening around you.
“Sometimes the role you think you want in the future may no longer exist when you get there. You need to be open to the creation of new roles. If you make your own mountain then you can climb it; how could I have dreamed as a child that I wanted to want to be the CTO of sales since that role didn’t exist?” She added with her signature sense of humor.
Justine explained how she manages her mentor and sponsor relationships for maximum effectiveness. “I take an agenda with me every time I am going to meet with my mentor and my boss and both of them are here today” she added, “Each one of them is very different. To have a valuable relationship between two people, you got to have a plan!”
Feedback, Credibility and Confidence
When asked to talk about their learning so far, the panelists did agree that being credible is the number one thing that you have to be as a woman in technology.
Patricia, when asked what advice she had for the audience, stated her three prong approach.
“You own your own career, do not expect anyone to own it. You have to wake up every morning and ask yourself, ‘are you happy with what I am doing?’ Asking is free.” Secondly, she added that when people are passionate and authentic it comes through. And finally, “work hard is the third one, I don’t see it any other way, maybe there is another way but I haven’t seen it!”
Adda agreed that she believes that every day is a new day to do things better than you did it before. “The more that you can see feedback as your friend the more that can fuel your ability to be better – hearing feedback from the customer is one way I have done this.”
Kimberly also talked about teams and building organizations with the advice to hire the best people that you afford because you don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. Collectively you can then take the business to where you want to go. She added, “Learn to say no. I say yes to everything but burn out is real and that takes me away from my core objectives in my professional and even in my personal life.”
Doris disclosed that she wished she had more confidence and poise earlier in her career and has learned over time to be selective about whom you are getting that feedback from; not all advice is created equal.
“I have been the victim of too many points of view and I end up more confused than when I started. People who you have trust with, the advocates and the sponsors that are invested in you to succeed; those are the people you should listen to.”
Everyone agreed that internalizing every piece of feedback wasn’t very constructive and that especially in technology with code standards changing there is a lot of room to discuss your work and ensure that code is just code, regardless of who is creating it.
Thank you to our event sponsors this year: American Express, EMC, and SunGard for making this event possible. We look forward to 2015.
By CEO and Founder Nicki Gilmour
By Melissa Anderson
A new Catalyst study shows that companies in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) industries are setting women MBAs up to fail from the start.
“The STEM industry has a poor reputation and our research shows that reputation is deserved. There is a significant gender gap across STEM, and not just in technical roles,” says Anna Beninger, director of research at Catalyst.
By Mai Browne
In the past few decades, the world has seen household name technology companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook launched by a succession of young engineers. The massive success of these enterprises, and their famous founders, give many people the impression that tech companies are always led by engineers. Not so. In a Harvard Business Review article titled “Tech Startups Need Non-Techies to Succeed,” tech entrepreneur Ndubuisi Ekekwe noted that non-tech-related factors often play an instrumental role in a tech company’s success.
By CEO and Founder of theglasshammer.com Nicki Gilmour
Whether you work as an engineer or a coder, a big data analyst, product manager, or a project manager in technology, you probably want to work for a great company who values both the technology itself and the women who make it happen.
For women who are looking to make a move to a new employer, you have choices that on a binary level break down into either working for a technology firm with technology as the product or working for a firm who has a different product or service but frankly has exhilarating technology making it all work behind the scenes.
By Cathie Ericson
The news has been astounding: People are face palming over the fact that only 15% of the tech employees at Facebook are women.
And they are atwitter that it’s even slightly worse over at Twitter – only 10% of the tech employees are women.
But while people immediately tend to fault the company’s hiring practices, Karen Catlin, a former vice president at Adobe Systems who currently works to develop women leaders in the tech industry, maintains that the companies aren’t necessarily doing a poor job hiring women; they’re just not finding the candidates they need. And then, even when women are hired, they tend to leave the company earlier than men.
By Michelle Hendelman
A report released last year by the AAUW asked a very simple and direct question about women in STEM: Why So Few? A question this straightforward should have a clear answer, yet when it comes to women in technology the answers are numerous and complex, and tend to lead to even deeper questions such as:
What is preventing women from reaching the C-Suite in Silicon Valley? (6 percent represents the number of female CEOs at the top 100 technology companies)
How can we attract more women to technology careers? (5.7 percent represents the number of women in high tech occupations in the US)
Why do many women leave the technology field mid-career? (50 percent represents the number of women in STEM who leave the field in favor of a different profession within the first 12 years of their career)
Now, new light is being shed on the fact that women in technology continue to face gender bias, which could be the underlying factor contributing to the scarce representation of women in high technology.
New Research Indicates Stereotyping Still an Issue for Women in Tech
The culture of Silicon Valley is touted by insiders as a true meritocracy, where innovation trumps gender, race, or economic status. However, new research suggests that stereotypes –especially against women –are still creating barriers for women in technology. The paper, written by professors Ernesto Reuben of Columbia Business School, Paola Sapienza of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and Luigi Zingales of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, presents the findings of a lab experiment in which managers assess, and ultimately hire, people who have been tasked with completing math problems.
Despite the fact that men and women historically performed equally well on the assigned math problems, the managers were twice as likely to hire a man over a woman when only one attribute of the applicants was made known: appearance.
Furthermore, the experiment revealed that managers were still more likely to choose a man over a woman even when they had more information about each applicant’s ability. Perhaps the most alarming revelation from the study came when two-thirds of managers selected male applicants even when they did not perform as well on the math problem as a woman.
The researchers determined that these managers were unable to see beyond their implicit bias based on the overarching stereotype that women are not as skilled at math as men, regardless of how well women performed in that isolated situation.
Do the results of this lab experiment explain the meritocracy myth plaguing the technology industry?
By Michelle Hendelman
In a recent gender diversity survey released by Fenwick & West LLP, extensive data about the growth of women in leadership positions at companies included in the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index (S&P 100) and companies included in the Silicon Valley 150 Index (SV 150) –an index representing the top 150 public companies in Silicon Valley –between 1996 and 2013 provides some insight into the staggering deficit of women leaders in high technology compared to large public companies.
According to the survey, S&P 100 companies have seen a substantial amount of growth in the number of female board members and women in executive level positions compared to SV 150 companies. As we explore the trends in female leadership within large public companies nationwide versus the SV 150 more closely, we have to ask the question: are women breaking the glass ceiling in Silicon Valley?
Moreover, how can CEOs, senior executives, and diversity managers at Silicon Valley’s top companies use a gender diversity study like this as a benchmark for progress going forward?
Where are the Women on Boards in Silicon Valley?
The Fenwick survey found that during the 2013 proxy season, 98 percent of S&P 100 companies reported having at least one female director, compared to only 56.7 percent of SV 150 companies with at least one female director. Although over 40 percent of SV 150 companies currently do not have a female represented on their executive board, they have increased the average percentage of female board members from 2.1 percent in 1996 to 9.1 percent in the 2013 proxy season, but considering the fact that it took seventeen years to achieve that growth, it is difficult to label the increase of female board directors as real progress.
According to Fenwick, there are some important components at play contributing to the lack of female board representation in Silicon Valley. The authors indicate that larger boards – like those in S&P 100 companies –will have more female participation by default compared to the much smaller boards found within SV 150 companies. In addition to board size, the survey suggests the following factors are keeping women out of Silicon Valley’s boardrooms:
Read more
By Hadley Catalano
Unencumbered by regulations and potential failure, 35 and under innovators, powered by the unlimited potential of technology, are greatly appealing, prompting investors to jump on the branding bandwagon – but they are not the only show in town. According to Women in Tech Network founder Marina Lee, we are fixated on younger entrepreneurs “because of Silicon Valley successes” and the publicity Millennials receive for their innovations. “With that said, the stats support that there are more mature/experienced entrepreneurs creating successful businesses under the radar,” Lee said.
Successful innovators – and the irrelevance of youth as a factor in entrepreneurialism ¬ – for the high technology and information technology communities has been well documented by Vivek Wadhwa and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) in the MIT Technology Review. The message is clear: there is no age limit on innovation. The SSRN research team found the average and median age of the founders of successful U.S. technology businesses (with real revenues) is 39, with twice as many founders over 50 than under 25 years old.
“The age of 39 is interesting because it is an age where entrepreneurs are raising families, meaning that they are vetting and building companies that are less risky than their younger counterparts,” Lee said.
Additionally, according to a Kauffman Foundation report by Dane Stangler, successful entrepreneurs, with a “peak age” of 35 to 45, typically come from previous jobs in big companies or from institutions or universities. This observation “runs against the prevailing stereotype that entrepreneurs are, or should be, recent college grads or college dropouts, (but) helps explain the age distribution of entrepreneurs,” Stangler reported.
What Does This Mean For Women?
It can be marginalized road for middle age entrepreneurial women in technology, according to Flavia Sparacino, CEO of Sensing Places, but women are present and their stories need to be told.
“Women are innovating all across the spectrum of new technology companies, as founders, CEOs, heads of marketing, programmers, and as UX designers,” said the entrepreneur, who received her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.
“Together and in large numbers, as a community, we can start changing perceptions. Not only can women design and build innovative technology products and lead great teams. The cultural shift we’re aiming for is that women are also actually ‘entitled’ to do so,” said Sparacino.