By Michelle Clark (Keene, New Hampshire)
Silje Vallestad did not major in technology, nor did she ever plan to make her mark on the tech industry as Founder and CEO of the mobile app development company, Bipper. Yet here she is, a successful entrepreneur blazing trails in an industry where women are not heavily represented in leadership positions.
So far, Vallestad has developed and launched two mobile safety apps – Mobilekids and bSafe –which have experienced incredible success in the European market. Now, Vallestad is working on establishing Bipper’s headquarters in Silicon Valley while continuing to raise brand awareness for her company in the United States. How is she doing it?
According to Vallestad, the success of her mobile safety products, Mobilekids and bSafe, stems from the fact that she developed them from a different perspective than the typical tech industry innovator. Instead of trying to push the limits of digital technology, Vallestad set out to offer a simple solution to what she considered to be a common problem for parents. That is how to keep young children safe when using mobile devices.
“I was certain there had to be some sort of mobile phone service for kids, but I couldn’t find anything,” said Vallestad. “When this wasn’t available, I decided I had to develop it myself.” So that is exactly what she did. In 2007, while on maternity leave, she decided to pursue her idea of a mobile safety service for children by submitting her proposal to a business plan competition called Venture Cup in Norway. At the time, she had no financial backing and no employees, but she was determined to turn her vision into a reality, which isn’t anything new for Vallestad, who was already starting up volunteer projects and NGOs at the young age of 14. “I knew at an early age that I had the ability to make my vision come true and turn ideas into reality,” she said.
Vallestad explained, “I had the vision, but I had no idea if it was technically possible.” She soon discovered after being chosen as the winner in the business plan competition, that not only was her idea feasible, but the judges of the competition clearly identified a market and a need for Vallestad’s service. Aside from gaining praise and attention for her mobile safety service idea, Vallestad also gained access to start-up capital and business mentors who provided her with the advice and guidance she needed to continue moving forward with her idea.
In fact, if it wasn’t for a mentor who told her that no one would invest in her idea if she ran her fledgling company like a hobby or a side project, Vallestad would have probably been content accepting the comfortable job in the financial industry she was offered around the same time as she began seriously thinking about pursuing her tech venture full time. “It took two years to raise enough cash and hire the first person who knew anything about technology,” Vallestad said. But finally, in the spring of 2008, Vallestad finally received her first seed investment and hired her first employee.
After dodging the devastating blow of the Great Recession that crippled the economy in late 2008, Vallestad launched BipperKids, her first mobile safety service in 2010 with two European operators. One year later, Vallestad introduced bSafe, a mobile safety app for women, to the market, fully realizing her dream of making the world a safer place.
Intrepid Woman: Silje Vallestad Discusses Her Journey from Idealist to Innovator
Intrepid Women SeriesSilje Vallestad did not major in technology, nor did she ever plan to make her mark on the tech industry as Founder and CEO of the mobile app development company, Bipper. Yet here she is, a successful entrepreneur blazing trails in an industry where women are not heavily represented in leadership positions.
So far, Vallestad has developed and launched two mobile safety apps – Mobilekids and bSafe –which have experienced incredible success in the European market. Now, Vallestad is working on establishing Bipper’s headquarters in Silicon Valley while continuing to raise brand awareness for her company in the United States. How is she doing it?
According to Vallestad, the success of her mobile safety products, Mobilekids and bSafe, stems from the fact that she developed them from a different perspective than the typical tech industry innovator. Instead of trying to push the limits of digital technology, Vallestad set out to offer a simple solution to what she considered to be a common problem for parents. That is how to keep young children safe when using mobile devices.
“I was certain there had to be some sort of mobile phone service for kids, but I couldn’t find anything,” said Vallestad. “When this wasn’t available, I decided I had to develop it myself.” So that is exactly what she did. In 2007, while on maternity leave, she decided to pursue her idea of a mobile safety service for children by submitting her proposal to a business plan competition called Venture Cup in Norway. At the time, she had no financial backing and no employees, but she was determined to turn her vision into a reality, which isn’t anything new for Vallestad, who was already starting up volunteer projects and NGOs at the young age of 14. “I knew at an early age that I had the ability to make my vision come true and turn ideas into reality,” she said.
Vallestad explained, “I had the vision, but I had no idea if it was technically possible.” She soon discovered after being chosen as the winner in the business plan competition, that not only was her idea feasible, but the judges of the competition clearly identified a market and a need for Vallestad’s service. Aside from gaining praise and attention for her mobile safety service idea, Vallestad also gained access to start-up capital and business mentors who provided her with the advice and guidance she needed to continue moving forward with her idea.
In fact, if it wasn’t for a mentor who told her that no one would invest in her idea if she ran her fledgling company like a hobby or a side project, Vallestad would have probably been content accepting the comfortable job in the financial industry she was offered around the same time as she began seriously thinking about pursuing her tech venture full time. “It took two years to raise enough cash and hire the first person who knew anything about technology,” Vallestad said. But finally, in the spring of 2008, Vallestad finally received her first seed investment and hired her first employee.
After dodging the devastating blow of the Great Recession that crippled the economy in late 2008, Vallestad launched BipperKids, her first mobile safety service in 2010 with two European operators. One year later, Vallestad introduced bSafe, a mobile safety app for women, to the market, fully realizing her dream of making the world a safer place.
Read more
Voice of Experience: Michelle Y. Lee, Northeast Regional President, Wells Fargo
News“We have an obligation to mentor young people in our industry,” began Michelle Y. Lee, Wells Fargo‘s Northeast Regional President. “Be very deliberate about sharing your knowledge with young people who are making their way and figuring out their career. Your legacy is defined by how many people you’ve prepared to take your place when you’re ready to move on.”
Reflecting on her 29-year career in the industry, Lee says she didn’t always understand the importance of seeking out mentors early on. “I don’t think when I first started out that I knew the value of having a mentor and an advocate. I really admire the young people I see today who seek out mentors deliberately. I didn’t know the importance of building those relationships.”
That’s not to say she didn’t have guidance, though. “Certainly, when I look back I see unofficial mentors and people who took me under their wing.”
She encouraged young women to seek out mentoring relationships early and to be deliberate about it. “It probably would save them some of those embarrassing mistakes we all make along the way – or at least guide them on how to recover when they do make them,” she said with a laugh. “And make sure to look for diversity in your mentors – both men and women can provide different and important viewpoints.”
Read more
Why Do We Need Male Mentors and Sponsors?
Mentors and SponsorsBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)
By now, we know that mentors and sponsors are critical for our career advancement. We need mentors who can be our sounding boards and give us advice, and we also need sponsors who push us toward stretch opportunities and have our backs behind the scenes.
Mentor and sponsor relationships with women may come more naturally than those with men, but there simply aren’t enough senior women to go around. We ask a lot of senior women. It’s time we ask senior men to do more to help level the playing field for women in the pipeline to the top.
Caroline Ghosn, Co-Founder and CEO of the online mentoring platform Levo League, explained, “Given the ratio of women and men in leadership today, having one-to-one mentoring interactions with only senior women won’t work on its own or be available to everyone who needs them; this is a necessary but not sufficient part of the mentorship puzzle. We need to do two things. First, we need to cultivate relationships with male mentors. Second, women can try turning to resources – like Levo – that access the relatively scarce group of female mentors through technology and provide a one-to-many system of mentoring.”
Levo recently invited Warren Buffett to serve as a mentor within its Office Hours mentoring series, and the company plans to open the doors to more male mentors in the future. Ghosn suggested that women can advance more rapidly by keeping an open mind about the gender of their mentor or sponsor, and making an effort to reach out to senior men for advice and advocacy. Here’s how.
Read more
Women Leaders Discuss Investment Management in Uncertain Times
Industry Leaders, Leadership, Women on the Buy-SideOur panel included Jane Buchan, PhD, CAIA, Managing Director and CEO, PAAMCO; Michelle Meyer, Senior U.S. Economist, Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Leah Modigliani, Senior Vice President, Investment Strategy and Risk, Neuberger Berman; Ranji Nagaswami, CFA, previously Chief Investment Advisor to Mayor Bloomberg, City of New York; and Anjun Zhou, PhD, Managing Director and Head of Multi-Asset Research, Mellon Capital. Each shared her point of view on where the markets are going and how to deal with inflation and risk moving forward.
Our moderator, Heidi Moore, US Finance and Economics Editor at The Guardian, began, “Previously, we’ve always had a crisis to talk about.” But this time, the biggest factor facing women on the buy-side is uncertainty. “What is important to know about the markets,” she asked, “when so much is unknowable?”
Read more
Both Extroverts and Introverts are Essential to a Successful Team
Expert AnswersThere has been lots of talk these days about introverts and extroverts, generated by the bestselling book Quiet: The Power of the Introvert in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Herself an introvert, author Susan Cain writes that introverts are “too often denigrated and frequently overlooked in a society that’s held in thrall to an extrovert Ideal – the belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.”
The truth is, it’s not an either-or situation. Every person has many different faces, and it is all too easy to forget that. I come across business owners all the time who wish they could create an army of Mini-Mes, a team of people who are all just like them. Yet the real power comes from having people on your team who are different because they can do jobs that you might not have an innate preference for.
Let’s dive into this deeper. Recently I became a Certified Practitioner of the MBTI Step I and Step II Instruments. MBTI is also known as Meyers Briggs psychological type theory. I asked my team to fill out the standard 93 questionnaire designed to measure innate type preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. I reassured my team it isn’t a test – it isn’t – and that there were no right or wrong answers. It’s simply an effective tool to help people build relationships – and teams – and to understand why differences arise at home and in the workplace. Most importantly though, with an understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, team building becomes so much easier and effective.
Read more
The Effect of Voice Pitch on Women’s Career Advancement
Office PoliticsWhat does the sound of your voice have to do with your level of corporate success? Apparently a lot, according to “Voice pitch and the labor market success of male chief executive officers,” a research paper recently published by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in Evolution and Human Behavior. The authors, William J. Mayew and Mohan Venkatachalam of Duke, and Christopher A. Parsons of U.C. San Diego, present strong evidence that male CEOs who possess a deeper vocal range are more likely to work for larger companies, enjoy a longer tenure, and make more money.
While this study does not explicitly analyze how the vocal pitch effect impacts professional women in a corporate setting, a solid argument can be built around the fact that female executives might find themselves at a disadvantage because of a supposedly inferior biological trait. But, this is not the message that should be taken away from the paper, suggests author and Duke Professor Bill Mayew.
“This can be an empowerment tool for women in the sense that if we can understand what characteristics matter, the next step to is to look at why they matter, and when do they matter most,” says Mayew. “Then you can start to think about tailoring them. For example if you are a female sitting in the boardroom, and you cannot control your voice pitch, what are the other things you can do in terms of getting your voice heard?”
As one of the first research studies to emerge on the topic of how evolutionary and biological traits affect how quickly an executive ascends the corporate ladder, this paper shifts the focus from the common factors of education and experience to intangible traits that are more difficult to measure, such as voice pitch. By learning what factors might play a role in determining who gets chosen for senior level positions within large corporations, women can focus on displaying their own unique set of strengths.
Read more
Voice of Experience: Renee Haugerud, Founder and Chief Investment Officer, Galtere Ltd.
Voices of ExperienceRenee Haugerud, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Galtere Ltd., issued a challenge for young women in the investment space. “It really is an industry where you have to be a self starter. So dare to be bold. Dare to have a view point. Take everything you know and make a decision. Put your money where your mouth is and dare to start a company.”
Haugerud founded Galtere 15 years ago, and she is enthusiastic about increasing diversity in the investment space. She believes it will strengthen the entire industry. That’s why she and her husband founded the Galtere Institute at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga – to encourage women to go into trading, to examine the gender differences that have made the industry the way it is today, and to examine how it can evolve in the future.
“If we can teach men a more female-centric view of trading, and we can teach women a more male-centric view of trading, we’ll have the best of both worlds,” she said.
Read more
The Link Between Doing Good and Team Performance
Money TalksA new study [PDF] suggests that managers can boost team performance by offering “prosocial” bonuses. The study’s authors say that teams do better when individuals get bonus compensation which they are then instructed to spend on another team member or a charitable group.
The Harvard Business School working paper was released this month and written by Lalin Anik, Duke University; Lara B. Aknin, University of British Columbia; Michael I. Norton, Harvard Business School; Elizabeth W. Dunn, University of British Columbia; and Jordi Quoidbach, University of Liège. The researchers were looking for ways around common problems caused by traditional bonuses, which have been shown to be ineffective in increasing morale and productivity.
According to Anik et al, prosocial bonuses, or bonuses that are spent on other people, may be the answer. Teams that employed prosocial bonuses reported higher productivity and more satisfied employees than those that only used traditional bonuses. They write, “These results suggest that a minor adjustment to employee bonuses – shifting the focus from the self to others – can produce measurable benefits for employees and organizations.”
Apparently, the sense that they are doing good can motivate people to work better together – here’s how.
Read more
The Idea Exchange: Crowdsourcing Women’s Advancement
Managing ChangeImagine if you were able to recruit women from across the country to spend hundreds of hours debating how best to help women stay on the leadership track at American companies.
Then imagine what might happen if a small group of those women spent countless more hours distilling the resulting ideas into 78 solutions, 16 ideas for CEOs to make change in just 24 hours, and tips and advice for women themselves.
Well, Bentley Center for Women and Business (CWB) did just that. The resulting report—Idea Exchange: Advancing Women in the Workplace—helped move this type of conversation into action by sharing ways to eliminate barriers both small and large to the supports women need inside the office and at home.
The Glass Hammer spoke with Susan M. Adams, PhD, senior director for the CWB, who helped lead the Idea Exchange initiative and facilitated the writing of the report by serving as the content expert.
Read more
Making Diversity Personal – Storytelling and Leadership
Industry Leaders, LeadershipA new McKinsey report suggests that while tracking and analyzing diversity metrics is important for success in gender parity, we should not downplay the importance of personal experience. Leaders should be encouraged to engage in storytelling, McKinsey suggests, making their connection to diversity personal.
Lareina Yee, a Principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, explained that while, in the past, she and her team had researched into problem areas that companies experience when it comes to diversity, for this research they decided to delve into the things that companies are doing right. “Instead of framing all of the things companies were not doing, we decided to ask ‘what are things that companies are doing that make them better?’ Who are the positive deviants?”
She continued, “That’s how we got to the storytelling piece. It’s about commitment, and we believe that intensity of commitment is critical for the success of the program.”
Yee, who wrote the report with Joanna Barsh and Sandra Nudelman, says that when leaders are genuinely committed to improving workforce diversity, they put their passion and their resources behind numbers-based corporate initiatives in a combination that yields success.
Read more