By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief
Debra Danielson, SVP M&A Strategy and CA Distinguished Engineer, CA Technologies is committed to making sure that future generations of women in technology have access to the opportunities that will help them advance their career.
This is why she is actively involved in a number of programs at CA Technologies to promote the advancement of women. Danielson said, “I was tasked, along with three other women, to develop a Women in Technology organization within CA to create a forum for networking within the community. This group also provides a foundation for mentoring.” She continued, “It started out as a grass roots organization that has become formalized over the last year.”
Career Path
Danielson started her career in technology as a software developer for Applied Data Research. “The first fifteen years of my career were pretty straightforward,” said Danielson, “I had increasing responsibilities in engineering and then entered management for ADR and Computer Associates, which acquired ADR around 1988.”
During that fifteen year period of her career, Danielson spent a lot of time focusing in integrated development environments creating technologies that would improve the developer experience. “We did a lot of interesting work in introducing multimedia into the developer experience, which was new and exciting technology at the time in the mid-eighties,” recalled Danielson.
After fifteen years of concentrating on the developer experience, Danielson switched gears when she began to think more about the quality of the end user experience. “We needed to rethink our end user experience,” explained Danielson, “So I ended up bringing user centric design and usability into the organization. It was critical to implement a sense of continuity across all of our products since our end users were becoming more generalized and less specialized.”
This focus on improving the end user experience associated with CA’s products led Danielson into a series of roles overseeing the coming together of technology designed to create a broader solution applicable across all of the unique products offered by CA. “For a couple of years, I helped transform CA from a company that delivered point products to a company that delivers integrated solutions that are consistent with one another,” explained Danielson.
CA’s executive management team then introduced the idea of building an organization within the company that would create a stronger and more dynamic technical community, according to Danielson. “I was appointed as one of the charter members of this think tank whose purpose was to push the boundaries within CA and leveraging the scope of the technical talent we had within the organization,” said Danielson.
She continued, “After a couple of months, we formally structured the think tank and I was elected the first president of the Council for Technical Excellence, which was responsible for developing a creative and innovative technical community, and bring our innovation and organic exploration to a next level.”
According to Danielson, the Council for Technical Excellence set the tone for the strategic transformation that has taken place at CA Technologies over the last five to eight years. She added, “One of the key roles I have been able to play within the organization is to take a look at the forces within the ecosystem, identify factors placing stress on that system, and develop a strategy for where the organization needs to be going.”
For the last couple of years, Danielson has been working on mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy at CA, mostly focusing on bringing inorganic innovation into CA. “I look at technology from startup organizations and other companies and make an assessment about the value of that technology. This is hugely rewarding because it allows us to accelerate the impact that we have on the business.”
Intrepid Woman: Robin Morgan, Co-Founder Women’s Media Center and Host of “Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan” Radio Show
Featured, Intrepid Women Series“Despite all of the myths of women’s competitiveness, we know how to stick together,” said Robin Morgan. To Morgan, this is one of the things that make women so special. “Solidarity is not just an abstraction to women,” she continued, “it’s a practical reality, day in and day out.” It is this unique element, according to Morgan, that keeps the women’s movement going strong in the 21st century.
Morgan stated, “I am extremely proud of the fact that I have had the opportunity to be a political activist in what is the most important social and political movement on the planet, at this point in history.”
Forging Her Own Path in Activism
Morgan explained, “I had been active in the antiwar movement and in the Civil Rights movement during the sixties and seventies, and like many young women I assumed we were all fighting for equality for everyone. I thought we were going to march with our brothers, arm-in-arm, toward this great revolutionary transformation– only to find that it didn’t include women.”
She continued, “Women were expected to make coffee, not policy. It was a complete mirror image of the patriarchy we were supposed to be fighting.” This realization was a radicalizing experience for Morgan, and influenced her involvement in founding the first feminist caucus in the Civil Rights organization SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), together with now-Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Morgan and women in other feminist caucuses of New Left groups faced staunch opposition from men, who pelted them with tomatoes, eggs, and even rocks when they tried to speak in meetings. This backlash was a major catalyst for Morgan’s decision to distance herself from what she came to refer to as the “male left.”
Another key moment for Morgan occurred in 1968, when the Democratic National Convention was being held in Chicago, and was expected to draw (and did) a significant amount of protest activity from radical groups. Instead of joining these protests, Morgan had already decided to organize what would become a historical protest at the annual Miss America Pageant. Here, during this nationally televised event, Morgan and other members of New York Radical Women brought attention to the Women’s Movement by outwardly protesting against symbols of female oppression.
In her final public display of separation from the male left, Morgan published a piece in an underground newspaper, entitled, “Goodbye to All That,” in which she named popular male leaders of the left and called them out for their degradation of women being no different than men of the odious right. “Being a writer, first and foremost, the pen was my most powerful tool. Depending on how you look at it, this piece became very famous–or infamous,” said Morgan.
“That shut the door,” she recalled. From here, Morgan went on to publish Sisterhood Is Powerful, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed books of the 20th century. Many people credit this collection of women’s essays with starting contemporary American feminism.
Read more
Sponsorship Remains a Murky Topic for Many
Mentors and SponsorsBy now everyone has heard about sponsorship and how it can expand women’s career opportunities, right?
Not quite.
Despite sponsorship being a “buzz-word” in the women’s career advancement space for the past few years, the topic remains somewhat mysterious for a lot of people. At least, that’s what our latest study, “Women in Technology: Leaders of Tomorrow,” [PDF] suggests.
We polled almost 200 junior and mid-level women in technology jobs for the report, which was sponsored by Accenture. Our respondents provided us with a lot to work with – most notably, almost two-thirds said they hope to have a senior management or C-suite job someday. By most measures, these women aren’t suffering from the so-called lack of ambition that many have blamed for leadership diversity’s stalling progress. In fact, you could say these women seem to be “leaning in” pretty hard already.
Even still, most of the women who took our survey didn’t feel their companies were really “leaning in” to them in equal measure. In fact, only a quarter (24.5 percent) said that their company was “walking the talk,” by providing support that matched up with the verbal promises made by management to support women.
One of the results of haphazard or half-effort approaches to providing career development opportunities and training for women is that people don’t hear correct or full answers about what can actually help propel them to the top.
One of these things is sponsorship. Our research revealed a lot of confusion amongst our respondents about what sponsorship really entails. Sponsorship is so important for career advancement for everyone, but especially women – studies by Catalyst and the Center for Talent Innovation have confirmed this.
Women need to get a clear picture of what it looks like since they’re the ones who stand to lose the most if their understanding of sponsorship remains blurred. It’s up to companies and corporate development programs to demystify sponsorship for their female workforces. Here’s what we found.
Read more
Thought Leader: Suzanne Penavić, Director of Employee Engagement, SunGard
Thought LeadersPenavić graduated from Cornell University in 1987 with a degree in Developmental Psychology. “From a career path perspective I think I followed a pretty nontraditional path,” said Penavić. This is because instead of choosing a career related to her college major, Penavić accepted a job at JP Morgan on Wall St. She said, “I caught the tail end of the Wall Street Eighties boom and I joined JP Morgan the summer before the crash.”
Career Path in Finance and Tech
Although Penavić’s time as a banker was short-lived, she was first introduced to technology, as it relates to financial services, when the entire FX back office at JP Morgan was being replaced.
“I was in charge of the Payment Investigations portion of the project,” explained Penavić, “and after that I ended up running the middle and back offices of the derivatives operations. It was the early nineties, and it was definitely the Wild West when it came to swaps and options, but it was booming. I found myself having to put these very complex synthetic instruments into an infrastructure that wasn’t designed for it.”
It was at this juncture that Penavić decided that banking wasn’t the best professional fit for her and made a swift career change when she accepted a job with a privately held software company called Microbank. Penavić recalled, “There was forty five people at the company, software was a fairly new concept at the time, and my parents thought I was crazy for leaving my job on Wall St.” She continued, “It was an opportunity I did not foresee, but it had a huge influence on my career path.”
“I essentially grew up with Microbank,” said Penavić, “As the company matured, we started a client services organization separate from development, built out proper professional services delivery capabilities, and then took it to the next level by implementing a product management and strategy function, which I was in charge of.”
Microbank was eventually acquired by Sungard, where Penavić now serves as the Director of Employee Engagement after working in several senior level product management roles in the Financial Services division. Currently, Penavić is really excited about the work she is doing to build out SunGard’s corporate social responsibility, community investment, and employee volunteerism policies and programs. “It is such a huge lever for engagement,” explained Penavić.
Read more
Women in Technology are Pivotal to Business Growth and Innovation
Expert AnswersArguably, women working in the technology industry may still face an uphill climb on the mountain of gender equality, but knowledge, confidence, and strong self-esteem can be powerful attributes to counter this challenge.
Although I have read about some women’s negative workplace experiences, I’m fortunate in that I have mostly had positive experiences throughout my career in tech. The few negative experiences barely register, in large part due to the role models who guided me at an early age.
I have found that it’s good to be different, and that as a woman working in a male-dominated industry, it’s okay to stand out in a crowd. Technology will likely continue to be male-dominated for years to come, so women will have to look for advantages as they present themselves.
For instance, I’ve found in both social and professional situations people will often recognize and remember you. If you find yourself in that situation, embrace it. That difference can be your fast track to visibility with your superiors.
Look at Where the Jobs Are
Technology offers excellent career opportunities in almost every business or industry. Companies need tech-savvy people and leaders, even if those businesses are not a pure technology play. Tech is also a constantly evolving and challenging career. Where you start is not where you’ll end up.
And there are more opportunities available today for women to build a rewarding career in tech at a time when statistics show organizations can’t fill science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) positions fast enough.
According to KPCB general partner Mary Meeker’s annual “Internet Trends” report for 2013, “America has a shortage of high skilled STEM workers”. The same report highlights five high tech companies that can’t seem to hire enough engineers: “IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and Qualcomm have a combined 10,000 current job openings in the U.S.”
And though it’s not all wine and roses, a separate global survey conducted in April 2013 by online staffing platform Elance finds 80 percent of female respondents from more than 7,000 participants are “optimistic about the future of women in technology”. When asked what technical skills they wished they had or intend to possess in the next 12 months, website design, programming, and mobile applications development were among those at the top of the list. This is an encouraging trend.
Read more
Voice of Experience: Susan Lawson, Vice President, American Express Digital Technologies
Voices of ExperienceFor Susan Lawson, Vice President, American Express Digital Technologies, her career path in technology wasn’t exactly linear, in that she did not major in technology nor pursue a career in tech directly after school. However, when she decided that technology was the industry in which she wanted to establish her career, she returned to school to complete her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science. Susan explained, “I went into the aerospace industry to build flight simulation artificial intelligence systems.”
Susan leveraged the power of networking when she made her move to American Express. “I was based in Houston at the time, and established a great professional relationship with a person in my company working on artificial intelligence in Phoenix,” she said.
She continued, “He moved to American Express where they were building a new team to develop expert systems. He thought of me, recommended me and recruited me to work for American Express.”
Career at American Express
Susan came to American Express to work on expert systems and eventually transitioned into the Advanced Technology Group within the company. “We were focused on exploring new technologies being developed at the time that American Express could really benefit from. This was at the time that the World Wide Web was just getting started, so there were a lot of opportunities in that space,” said Susan.
Since the technology was so dynamic and critical for American Express’ business, the company created a separate group, as an extension of the Advanced Technology Group which became the Internet Development Group. Susan joined the web group and began developing secure internet capabilities globally for American Express.
“I have spent the majority of my career in the interactive and digital domain, which of course has expanded into mobile technologies and other interesting areas,” said Susan.
She is especially proud of the work she did early in her career supporting the international businesses of American Express. “Getting these markets established with secure websites for cardmembers was a breakthrough for American Express, and I love it when the work I do makes a big difference for the company. It’s exciting and very rewarding,” said Susan.
According to Susan, another highlight in her career was co-leading the complete re-architecture of American Express’ website, which supports millions of cardmembers every day. “This was a huge team, leadership, and technical endeavor that was extremely successful,” explained Susan.
Currently, in addition to research and development of new interactive and payment capabilities, Susan is spending a lot of time advancing collaborative development methodologies at American Express.
Read more
The Glass Hammer’s 4th Annual Women in Technology Event: How to Be a Leader!
News, Women in IT, Women in TechnologyThis is what over 200 women in technology wanted to know at The Glass Hammer’s 4th Annual Women in Technology career event sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters, American Express and SunGard last Wednesday.
Do successful women in technology have all of these qualities to ensure a path to the top?
The keynote, delivered by Nicki Gilmour, CEO of The Glass Hammer, set the stage for the evening’s intriguing conversation by revealing highlights from our research stating that women in technology have above average ambition levels. Also, women who want senior management jobs tend to have role models, sponsors, be in a network and actively attend leadership or career development sessions.
Determine Your Leadership Style
“You can learn traits,” said Jane Moran, CIO of Thomson Reuters, “You can do little things to challenge yourself.”
In response to the finding that women in technology identify more strongly with being honest and goal-orientated, rather than decisive, according to the survey, our panelists provided the audience with their insights and interpretations of the results.
Mary Byron, Head of Technology for the Federation at Goldman Sachs, commented, “I think women value honesty in the workplace and want to see integrity in their workplace.”
Debra Danielson, SVP of M&A Strategy and Distinguished Engineer at CA Technologies, added, “I have taken many psychometric tests in my career and being trustworthy has always been a prevalent trait for me. People want to trust their leaders.”
When discussing different leadership traits that garner success, all of the panelists agreed that each leader can effectively portray their unique skills in their own fashion. “You may never have all the leadership traits you admire,” said Susan Lawson, Vice President at American Express Digital Technologies, “but you can build your own team with people who have complementary traits, you don’t have to do it all.”
“There are different types of leaders,” added Danielson. She continued, “It has to be in your style for it to be effective. The women surveyed for the study did not say that they believed the identified leadership traits to be optimal.”
Read more
Voice of Experience: Debra Danielson, SVP M&A Strategy and CA Distinguished Engineer, CA Technologies
Voices of ExperienceDebra Danielson, SVP M&A Strategy and CA Distinguished Engineer, CA Technologies is committed to making sure that future generations of women in technology have access to the opportunities that will help them advance their career.
This is why she is actively involved in a number of programs at CA Technologies to promote the advancement of women. Danielson said, “I was tasked, along with three other women, to develop a Women in Technology organization within CA to create a forum for networking within the community. This group also provides a foundation for mentoring.” She continued, “It started out as a grass roots organization that has become formalized over the last year.”
Career Path
Danielson started her career in technology as a software developer for Applied Data Research. “The first fifteen years of my career were pretty straightforward,” said Danielson, “I had increasing responsibilities in engineering and then entered management for ADR and Computer Associates, which acquired ADR around 1988.”
During that fifteen year period of her career, Danielson spent a lot of time focusing in integrated development environments creating technologies that would improve the developer experience. “We did a lot of interesting work in introducing multimedia into the developer experience, which was new and exciting technology at the time in the mid-eighties,” recalled Danielson.
After fifteen years of concentrating on the developer experience, Danielson switched gears when she began to think more about the quality of the end user experience. “We needed to rethink our end user experience,” explained Danielson, “So I ended up bringing user centric design and usability into the organization. It was critical to implement a sense of continuity across all of our products since our end users were becoming more generalized and less specialized.”
This focus on improving the end user experience associated with CA’s products led Danielson into a series of roles overseeing the coming together of technology designed to create a broader solution applicable across all of the unique products offered by CA. “For a couple of years, I helped transform CA from a company that delivered point products to a company that delivers integrated solutions that are consistent with one another,” explained Danielson.
CA’s executive management team then introduced the idea of building an organization within the company that would create a stronger and more dynamic technical community, according to Danielson. “I was appointed as one of the charter members of this think tank whose purpose was to push the boundaries within CA and leveraging the scope of the technical talent we had within the organization,” said Danielson.
She continued, “After a couple of months, we formally structured the think tank and I was elected the first president of the Council for Technical Excellence, which was responsible for developing a creative and innovative technical community, and bring our innovation and organic exploration to a next level.”
According to Danielson, the Council for Technical Excellence set the tone for the strategic transformation that has taken place at CA Technologies over the last five to eight years. She added, “One of the key roles I have been able to play within the organization is to take a look at the forces within the ecosystem, identify factors placing stress on that system, and develop a strategy for where the organization needs to be going.”
For the last couple of years, Danielson has been working on mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy at CA, mostly focusing on bringing inorganic innovation into CA. “I look at technology from startup organizations and other companies and make an assessment about the value of that technology. This is hugely rewarding because it allows us to accelerate the impact that we have on the business.”
Read more
Look on the Bright Side: Optimism Can Boost Your Performance
Managing ChangeBy now, you’ve probably heard about how women are more risk averse than men, and this could be one reason why firms with more women decision makers do better in turbulent business environments. In fact, the idea that the overconfidence bubbling up from a culture of testosterone-drenched male traders was the root-cause of the 2009 economic meltdown was popularized by the New York Magazine article “What If Women Ran Wall Street.”
Women tend to be more conservative than men in how they approach risk, writes author Sheelah Kolhatkar. This can result in more stable, rational decision making. Rather than making ego-based trades driven by showy overconfidence, women traders tend to operate on a more even keel. This rationality is a generalized characteristic of women that is viewed as an asset in any industry.
Nevertheless, women still receive mixed messages about confidence. We praise women for taking a conservative approach to business risk, while at the same time, we encourage women to take more career risks, by talking up their achievements, asking for stretch assignments, and taking on more of the P&L roles that test their mettle.
How much confidence is too much confidence? When is the right time to feel good about your chances, and predict your own success? What is that illusive sweet spot?
A new INSEAD study purports to show that being optimistic about one’s work can actually boost performance. But in doing so, the authors also make an important distinction between optimism, confidence, and overconfidence that may help sort out some of the contradictions women face when it comes to taking risks.
Read more
Women in Leadership: Where Do We Stand?
Managing ChangeIn July, Sheryl Sandberg and PwC US Chairman and CEO, Bob Moritz, sat down for a special PwC webcast to have a conversation and revisit some of the most important themes discussed in Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, & the Will to Lead. This inspired us to also take a closer look at the current state of women as leaders and assess where we stand, what actions we could consider, and how we are going to achieve these goals.
Moritz, who is an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusiveness, said of Lean In, “The reality of the book and the discussions will be about gender, particularly from a female’s perspective. But the lessons within it are equally applicable from a minority perspective, a generational-millennial perspective, a sexual orientation perspective.”
We believe that by encouraging men to talk about the challenges of others, as well as their own, everyone can really benefit. The critical role of the diversity agenda should be a companywide initiative rather than a point that only a select few subscribe to. So, we ask the question: where do we stand?
Read more
Voice of Experience: Jane Moran, Global CIO, Thomson Reuters
Voices of ExperienceJane Moran, Global CIO, Thomson Reuters has been working in Information Technology in the finance sector for the last 25 years, but it is not where she started out. “After college I became a business analyst for a venture capital firm where I learned that my skill set was better suited to networking our office. I became known as the go-to person who could fix any PC or server,” recalled Moran.
The president of the company, who Moran had the opportunity to work with directly, recognized her ability and sponsored her to take computer science classes. This set the foundation for Moran’s career in tech as she went on to earn her MBA with a focus on IT from Boston University. Moran then went on to work for a consulting firm, where she spent five years developing portfolio management and trading platforms for financial institutions.
“I consulted for about eleven years, but when I was pregnant with my second child, I couldn’t continue to travel for work as much. I ended on a consulting assignment for a small dotcom firm in Boston and they actually offered me a CIO position, which I accepted since it was based in Boston,” explained Moran.
The company was eventually acquired by Thomson Financial in 2004. “In 2005, I became the Global CIO of Thomson Financial, which was a two billion dollar company at the time,” said Moran.
In 2008, Moran’s career advancement continued when she became the Global CIO of the Markets division for the Thomson Corporation, which had recently acquired Reuters. Moran said, “In 2010 the company centralized all of IT, and that is when I became the Global CIO for Thomson Reuters.”
Moran added that she graduated from Brown University with a degree in History and full intentions of entering the legal field. “You don’t need a technical degree to be technical,” explained Moran. “You just need to enjoy what you do. That’s the most important thing.”
Read more