ABI Archives - The Grassy Road

Technology, Women and Equity at the 2014 Grace Hopper Conference

Guest post from YY Lee, my business partner and COO of FirstRain I am proud of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (@ghc) community this week for raising important issues and grappling with uncomfortable, difficult-to-solve questions. I appreciate FirstRain’s own Penny Herscher (@pennyherscher) for putting herself out there to moderate the Male Allies Panel, despite the concerns going-in about how to constructively include that perspective. The fiery reaction to that session raised the level of engagement around deep-seated systemic equity issues in our industry in a way that [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:24-08:00October 11, 2014|Equality|0 Comments

5 Keys to Authentic Leadership

From a talk I gave at VMware in Palo Alto earlier this month Leadership comes in many styles - charismatic, intellectual, bullying - but in all cases leadership is hard to sustain over time unless it is authentic. Real. Genuine. These 5 keys are from a woman's perspective, but most apply just as much to men. 1. Embrace making decisions. Not only embrace them, but have confidence in how you make decisions. I'm a fast, intuitive decision maker. I make a decision on minimal visible information and then use data [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:48:37-08:00July 23, 2014|Leadership|0 Comments

Women Computer Scientists – Yes They Exist!

Published earlier today in the Huffington Post Women are doing some amazing work in Computer Science and Engineering, how come we don't know about them? We all know about the stereotypical hot start-up out of Silicon Valley led by some twenty-something white guy but we don't hear much about women entrepreneurs, computer scientists, researchers and business leaders in tech. How come? Is it like the research study recently reported in the New York Times where a scientifically oriented resume with a women's name at the top was consistently rated lower [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T16:53:20-08:00October 4, 2012|Equality|0 Comments

Engineering is the way to bring jobs back to America

We are facing an ongoing threat to America's global economic leadership and increasing the number of engineers in our workforce is one powerful way we can change our destiny as a country.In Silicon Valley we have one engineering job open for every two engineers that are employed - this means it is hard to find enough qualified workers and so companies move jobs offshore to India and China where they graduate many more engineers than we do. Today we simply do not have enough people trained in the "STEM" areas [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:03:08-08:00October 25, 2011|Career Advice|2 Comments

I Am A Technical Woman – Anita Borg Institute

I am at the Grace Hopper Conference today in Tucson Arizona - here as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology. Check out the video the team made last night (and which is at the top of Digg this morning) - it will make you smile and give you sense of the power of this group of young women.The conference is a spectacular success - 1600 attendees - 99% technical women and 50% students. The energy and enthusiasm for technology is [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:16:39-08:00October 2, 2009|Equality|0 Comments

Celebrating Anita Borg on Ada Lovelace Day

I never met Anita Borg while she was alive - but I serve on the board of the non-profit that bears her name and so I am reminded of her legacy frequently.The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology is about the impact of women on technology and the impact of technology on the world's women. It was originally set up by Anita to bring women together and advance them in technology and when she died it was renamed in her honor -- it's a testimony to Anita that the [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:47-08:00March 24, 2009|Equality|1 Comment

Leadership and Risk

I visited the Grace Hopper conference today in Keystone Colorado to give a talk on Risky Business – Building Teams and Taking Risk as the Leader.As I always find when I talk on leadership I had a great time. About 300 women in the room (GHC is 1400 technical women this year), 50% of whom were students. My objective was to share my principles on how to build a company from a startup (an inherently risky proposition), illustrate my principles with stories and have fun at the same time.I started [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:23:07-08:00October 2, 2008|Equality, Leadership|0 Comments

Motorola’s management churn foretold today’s troubles

Motorola's troubles just keep getting worse - as reported today in the WSJ. At least the new CEO, Greg Brown, is predicting "no quick fixes".Looks like a quick fix was tried last summer, though prior to Ed Zander's departure. We track management turnover and you can see from the MOTO chart that there was a major reorg in July. [Red are departures, blue internal moves and green hires - dark are execs, light are managers]. That July spike looks like it was a reorg to take management from ICS - [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:30:42-08:00January 23, 2008|My Personal Journey|0 Comments