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women in tech

Equality

Equality as an ingredient for peace: from Gaza to Ramallah to Tel Aviv

February 7, 2018

It’s hard to know if you can make a difference. Small actions, personal actions, can they in some small way change the path to peace? Who knows, but why not do them anyway just in case? Here’s the story of our efforts; the story of WE2, women for economic equality, and our mentoring mission in January 2018.

Early this year I led a delegation of Silicon Valley executive women to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to mentor women entrepreneurs. As I posted before we left:  “I am more deeply convinced now in 2018, than ever before, that the long-term path to a more sane, peaceful world is equality for women. The research is conclusive. Investing in girls and women transforms economies, and healthy, growing economies are more peaceful.” We were six women from Silicon Valley with a broad set of experiences between us as entrepreneurs, leaders, engineers, lawyers, recruiters and product designers and plenty of experiences, good and bad, to share. Together we believe women achieving economic equality is essential for sustainable peace.

It was an extraordinary experience.

Tel Aviv is one of the great startup success stories with energy and intellect oozing out of every crack in the pavement and second only to Silicon Valley. But even in Tel Aviv startups need help and their statistics for women are bad as ours. Low numbers of female founders, crazy low percentages of venture capital going to women. Frustrating for Israeli women, but the norm in tech, and something we can actively change by mentoring and investing in women. I had done some business plan coaching for female Israeli founders a year earlier and so knew of the hunger for women mentors – and this time I reached out to the non-profit Startup Nation Central for help to put the delegation together – asking first if they thought there was demand.

SNC more than exceeded our expectations of what we could accomplish in a handful of days! We met with hundreds of female entrepreneurs, executives and aspirers through panels, round table coaching sessions and one on ones. We talked about the “hard knocks” of our careers and shared the experiences that we had learned from – such as grasping opportunities before you feel ready, taking risk, becoming a CEO or realizing being fired is sometimes the best thing that happened to you. We met with women board directors of Israeli companies to compare notes on the challenges of being (often the only woman) on boards and with leaders of non-profits working on the role of women in Israeli society.

We learned how even hip and liberal Tel Aviv is patriarchal, of the challenges working in startups or technical jobs while holding to Orthodox rules and the lack of role models for successful female CEOs.  I had naively assumed that since young Israeli women serve in the Army alongside of men they’d both be tough (and I know a few stellar examples) and would have equality opportunity. But not the case. Everyone spoke to us about the elite intelligence Unit 8200 (famous for cyber security excellence and the best unit to be from if you want to do a startup). In 8200 we learned that while the initial numbers of boys and girls joining are equal the gender stats are that the more technical the departments and roles, the lower number of women. Is this because you sign up for more years if you join 8200? Or because the roles are more technical? I doubt it, and no one we spoke to could explain it, but the Israeli women seeking equality for the next generation of technical entrepreneurs are trying to understand the underlying reasons.

Startup Nation Central also made sure we got educated about the politics too, which we appreciated. We listened to, and learned from, community leaders – political, societal and peace makers. It is an understatement to say the politics and history is complex so we chose to listen carefully, not take a position and to simply try to understand better than we did before. Some of what we heard appalled me, some reassured me. We learned a powerful metaphor for the calamity of the peace negotiations which has stuck with me: The Israeli and Palestinian political bodies are like a traumatized divorcing couple who can chose one of two paths. They can try to mutually destroy each other, and destroy the future for their children, or they can acknowledge their trauma and work together to create a future for their children. The metaphor fits the current situation and it is unclear which path will prevail in our lifetimes.

Our experiences in Gaza and the West Bank had very different top-level issues, and yet many of the core issues of being women in business are the same. How to raise money, how to grow your career, how to balance family and work, how to challenge the traditional role of women in your society when you know you can do more!

In Gaza we were hosted by Gaza Sky Geeks which is a subsidiary of the Mercy Corps NGO who arranged our entry. The Gaza Strip is a desperate place where the borders are controlled by Israel and Egypt, you cannot enter and residents cannot leave without a permit, which often is not granted.  Unemployment is 42% in Gaza, the highest in the world and youth unemployment is close to 60%. Poverty rates are high and living conditions are bad. Little clean water, limited electrical power, issues with sanitation, medical care, infrastructure maintenance… you name it it’s hard. And yet, to the great credit of the GSG leadership, the GSG team has built a tech accelerator with its own power and a shared work space for more than 140 young people, men and women, to learn how to code and to start small businesses, taking advantage of the freedom the internet and digital skills can provide. The space is warm, light and full of optimism, like an incubator should be. Volunteers come through frequently (by far the most useful are full-stack developers or people who can teach design thinking) and, like entrepreneurs all over the world, the young people we met with wanted to tell us about their businesses and the challenges they are up against.

Here we mentored both women and men. Some of us taught small classes on early stage product design, some reviewed business plans and worked with the entrepreneurs to find ways around the unique product development and distribution challenges Gazans face (remember the borders of Gaza are closed to all but a very few). The amounts of funding in Gaza are very small, maybe $10,000 to start a business, so it impressive to see how far some entrepreneurs have come on less money than many Silicon Valley startups would spend on frivolities.

We met with young women to share our careers and while our lives in Silicon Valley are, without question, so much easier than those of the women in Gaza, we had plenty of laughter around our shared experiences. The feeling of being overwhelmed and learning how to simply survive every day while your husband, children and job compete for your time, or to survive the judgement by others as to whether you should be a leader or not. But for many of the young women at GSG they not only had all our challenges and more; they are also working two jobs. One is their startup, the other is a paying job to survive. They just do not have the luxury to only work on their startup.

One example is Amal AbuMoailqe, a young woman who is a degreed, qualified mechanical engineer and who is CEO of a Gazan product and consulting company solving engineering problems she and her team sees in Gaza. Here is her product, the Sketch wheel, designed to help get heavy loads up stairs when you have no power. It is said “necessity is the mother of invention.” It is certainly true in Gaza.

We stayed overnight in Gaza City and, unlike when I visited a year ago, we were very limited in what we could do outside the office or the hotel. Tensions are high after America’s stated intention to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and so we were not able to walk around and explore. There isn’t money for maintenance for most properties (water came in under the window and flooded my hotel room floor when there was a heavy storm overnight) but food for special occasions, even in Gaza, is delicious and our hosts took pity on us before we left and took us out for kanafeh – the heavenly Palestinian dessert made of honey and cheese. Sharing the pleasure of food with friends is important, no matter what the situation.

And while in Ramallah there is more physical freedom than in Gaza, life is still very hard for entrepreneurial young women. There we met with students studying computer science and young women in technical and product roles who had so many questions about how to grow their careers. It’s so much harder for women to take risk with their careers in a society with high unemployment. They simply cannot put their current job at risk by applying for a new job, even in the same company. Low unemployment such as we have in tech in the US is a luxury which allows a young engineer to move around and try different roles to see what she most enjoys.

But high unemployment in the West Bank is also unleashing female business creativity. Because it can be hard to get a job, young women are building their own businesses in creative ways. We were also hosted by the Palestinian Business Women Forum where we met, and listened to, a remarkable group of young, female business owners. Traditionally women are not bakers in Palestinian society, and yet we met with three who are breaking with tradition and building bakery businesses. One is even now being hosted in London because of the quality of her desserts. One 28 year old woman had built a food distribution business to get local products from farm to store efficiently and determinedly shared her samples with us to show us the quality of the cheese. Women are organizing travel, designing clothes, using the internet and social media to get their message and products out.

It’s impossible to visit the West Bank and speak with Palestinians living there without feeling the pain of the ordinary people living with check points and restricted movement. As is so often the case the individual Israelis and Palestinians we met want peace. They hold no ill will at the individual level, but politics gets in the way. The emotion is intense and I was deeply moved by a Palestinian friend who, after a dinner we hosted, said to me in shock “I have never hugged an Israeli before” – yes women hug when they are talking about intense subjects.  I do not presume to take a position on the political crisis in the Palestinian territories – I say again this is complicated – but whatever the reasons the human pain and suffering being felt on both sides, for different reasons, is real. We felt honored and humbled to listen to young women’s stories and share, in some small way, our experiences with them. The trip also confirmed for me that I can read all the books in the world, and watch films and documentaries, but I cannot begin to understand until I go on the ground, experience and listen.

So was it helpful to the women we met? We hope so but from two very different perspectives.

First, the closer an entrepreneur was to having her business plan under way, and some level of product in development the more helpful we could be at a practical level. I met with an entrepreneur with a terrific voice analytics technology to diagnose the progression of dementia who needed business presentation advice, and one who has a brilliant idea (and patent) for stroke treatment who needs to talk with VCs with FDA and medical device experience. Advice, brainstorming and connections are things we can provide. Several of us are in follow up sessions on Skype and in person now; on the ground, sharing our practical experience and Silicon Valley resources.

But the second, which we did not fully appreciate beforehand, is that we are existence proofs that women can lead. We prove, consciously or not, that it’s possible and young women told us over and over how exciting it was to hear our stories – which we did our best to make funny and self-effacing. We talked about anger, and fatigue, and lack of confidence – we did not hold back on the reality of being women in the minority swimming against the current. We appreciate, and do not take for granted, how privileged our starting points were and yet the six of us also shared how hard we had to work, how much crap we took from some men around us and how much personal and professional risk we had to be willing to take to get ahead.

Finally, on a personal note, it is so clear to me that it’s time for women to take an equal role in business. It’s unacceptable that company after company, in Israel, in the West Bank, in the United States has all male leadership or maybe one token female executive or female board member. Women are half the population, they are highly educated in many cases, and we now know that when economically empowered they create a more peaceful society. It’s time for women to have economic power, economic opportunity, economic equality. And no more so than in places where peace is so elusive.

Thank you to the Startup National Central, to Gaza Sky Geeks, to the Palestinian Business Women Forum and the Ramallah executives (you know who you are) for organizing and hosting us, and to Indagare for arranging our travel. We self-funded our trip. If you’d like to help the women on the ground come with us next time and/or invest in women led startups in the region.

Here’s my TV interview on our delegation on i24 while in Tel Aviv:

A delegation of female Silicon Valley tech executives & entrepreneurs are helping empower their Israeli & Palestinian counterparts; Penny Herscher & Start-Up Nation Central's Ayelet Tako on i24NEWS English's #TheRundown, with Calev Ben-David & Nurit Ben

Posted by Calev Ben-David on Tuesday, January 16, 2018

 

Our delegation with Israeli community leaders who are advocating for equal opportunities for women

Three of us on a panel in Tel Aviv sharing “hard knocks”

With young women who are building their own businesses in Ramallah

Selfies are a big deal in Gaza Sky Geeks

Two types (Gaza and Nablus styles) of amazing kanafeh. We were hooked!

Photos: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Gaza City © 2018 Penny Herscher

Equality

Why, what and really? Yet another surreal week of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley

June 27, 2017 2 Comments

Yet another scandal of sexual harassment is unfolding in Silicon Valley this week, and after several nights lying awake, angry, thinking about the last 30 years, and expressing my ongoing frustration to a group of friends over dinner I was asked by a friend to answer 3 questions:

1. Why this still happens?
2. Are we really surprised that it does?
3. What does speaking up accomplish any more?

First to the news. As has happened thousands of times before a venture capitalist, Justin Calbeck of Binary Capital, sexually harassed women entrepreneurs attempting to raise money from him. But in an extraordinarily brave move 6 women spoke out, and 3 spoke out by name. The allegations were specific enough that despite an initial denial Justin Calbeck has now resigned and the firm no longer has strong support from its LPs. Its days are numbered.

Given that even the most egregious sexual predators don’t want to be publicly outed by the women they hit on, and we live in such a public online world, why does this still happen?

The reason is the incredible imbalance of power that exists in the venture fundraising world. Most VCs are clean cut white men. Most have been very successful financially…. and they think it is because they are smart. Some truly are. Company founders, old school VCs who have bankrolled winner after winner, VCs who are true company builders, but with the huge increase in capital coming into the venture market there are many VCs who got where they are by being in the right place at the right time. They were just lucky to be at a company that did well, they know the right people, they talk a good game and next thing you know they are raising a small fund from LPs who are desperate to find enough places to put their money and share in the phenomenon.

Venture partners get paid a lot of money to administer a fund, and entrepreneurs beat a path to their door to try to impress them. The entrepreneurs struggle to get their deck looked at, struggle to get a meeting, work hard to make an impact and as a result many VCs develop a sense of hubris and superiority. Rude, abrasive… and blend that sense of superiority with sex and you get some men who think it’s OK to proposition young women who are raising money.

The extraordinary generation of wealth going on in Silicon Valley now (and over the last 20+ years) will lead some people to behave badly. Behave badly to get access to that wealth (Uber being today’s poster child) and behave badly abusing their positions of power. Twas ever so when money is being made.

So why are we surprised? I am not. In fact I think in some ways the issue is worse and more pervasive now than it was 20 years ago. The objectification of women in media (see Miss Representation or https://seejane.org if you want to gather statistics on this) continues unabated and so some people forget that the young woman in front of them is not to be sexually objectified.

The prevalence of the bias against funding women should lead to a huge competitive advantage to the partners and firms that DO fund women and ARE gender blind. I get asked so often for a list of VCs who would be truly unbiased I think I need to create the list! If you have a fund that is actively looking for women founders, or have had a great experience with one, send me an email!

But the really tough question here is does speaking out accomplish anything?

I chose not to speak out in the 80s and 90s (and if that makes you angry stop reading here). I became very practiced at simply ignoring the sexual actions – the hand on my knee all through a coffee meeting – the hand on the back of my neck under my hair while talking with me – the stroking of my shoulder – all while I was clearly married. In my head I was made of stone, the action did not touch me, I believed if I simply ignored it and pretended it was not happening it would stop. Most of the time it did. Sometimes I would have to lift the hand off my body. And then sometimes the action would be so aggressive I would get upset and not be able to turn off my anger and I would need to remove myself from the situation before I blew up.

I did not believe speaking up would change anything, and was sure to backfire. Unwanted male attention was my responsibility, and shameful (perchance the influence of the nuns in my middle school). So I was not surprised when the one time I did go to HR for help with the unwanted attention of an executive I was told that if I made a fuss and sued I could get a settlement but my career would be over. Instead they gave me the words to say to get him to back off – turns out he had been warned before (but he was a valuable guy) and they were confident the right language would get the message across. I did, and it worked, but their words “you’ll never work in this business again” stuck with me.

No question the very brave women who have spoken up recently, including Susan Fowler who wrote the blog post Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber, will make local change happen. The situations they call out will change for the better in the short term. I do believe the tactic of brushing the complaint under the rug won’t work now so that is good.

But to get to systemic change in the long run we need to get away from the boys club, to get away from situation after situation being dominated by men, often with no peer-level women in the room. For most of my career I have been the only woman in the room, and often treated as an honorary male. I’ve heard my share of locker room talk, even now, and every time I choose my reaction – usually a blend of humor and outrage – just enough to get the message across without damaging my relationship with the speaker.

I frequently raise the need to have more women on management teams and in the board room, although it often falls on deaf ears, and I have to be careful not to be “difficult” (and I am sure some think I am). But I know for certain that once there are 2 or 3 women in a partnership, or in a management team, or on a board not only do the decisions improve (lots of research coming out about this now) but also the locker room talk and unconscious bias decreases.

I have great confidence that most of the men I have worked with are not sexual harassers, and do not wish to be biased. But we all have unconscious bias and gender bias is one that we are only now really starting to grapple with in the technology industry. The industry is big enough and the bro culture prevalent enough, particularly with many of the new economy companies, that we must deal with it. To do that we need to attract women into tech, help them stay in tech, coach them, promote them and get them into leadership positions in venture partnerships and companies so we can build a better culture in the industry.

So does speaking up accomplish anything? The answer is maybe. Depending on your role sometimes you can make more difference working from the inside. But huge credit to the women that do, and to the men that are outspoken about the need for change.

My Personal Journey

How 2016 rocked my world as I talked with women entrepreneurs

January 4, 2017 Leave a comment
 I am more convinced than ever that there is a bright future for women entrepreneurs and 2016 proved it to me!

I stepped back from being a full time CEO a little more than a year ago. It was time, for family reasons, and I set out to change my life. I still work (I serve on two public company boards) but I decided to spend a great deal more time with my father and my family than I have ever been able to do before, and to prioritize my time to giving back. But I had no idea what that really meant for me – what could I do that was meaningful other than work as a CEO?

I decided that I would just say “yes” to every request for help from entrepreneurs, especially, but not exclusively, women. Not that I would be a pushover and do anything I was asked, but I would say yes to any request for a meeting from an entrepreneur who wanted advice. A first meeting at least and if I thought I could make a difference I’d keep saying yes. I wish I could say I was inspired by Shonda Rhimes’ TED talk but I did not see it until I was well into the year. Instead I was thinking of it as following breadcrumbs without knowing where they were going to lead.

It’s been an extraordinary year, it’s taken me in directions I never would have expected, and it’s changing me.

I’ve met with many amazing female entrepreneurs. Aged twenties to sixties. A psychiatrist who has figured out how to use technology to dramatically reduce the cost of cognitive testing for veterans with PTSD or the elderly with dementia, a media executive with a passion for travel who’s changing how people explore the world, a technologist who’s figured out how to measure skin tone so you can buy the right makeup for your skin, a CEO with an IoT product that can tell you all about the water leakage risks in your commercial property assets (something I did not know was a big problem), a woman revolutionizing the sex tech industry, a woman with breakthrough security technology to protect your phone, a visionary who set up the first and only incubator in Gaza… a new calendaring app, a better travel itinerary planning app, a next generation geospatial model, better on-chip failsafe technology, the artistic director of a ballet, networking technology, machine learning technology … the whole gamut! I have found I love talking with entrepreneurs and CEOs. I love listening to their stories about their businesses, what’s working, what’s scaring them, how they are getting funded.

I ask questions, ad nausea, and then focus in on one of two challenges they face and discuss with them how to overcome them. It’s fun for both of us, and I realize I can help many of them. No judgement, just the experience of being there myself more than once before. And I now believe, more than ever, it is much harder for women to get venture funding than men. I have far too many data points now!

I’ve met with women hedge fund managers who only invest in women led companies, recruiters whose only business is placing women on boards, bankers who want to do deals for women CEOs. The movement is happening. Women are, more than ever, proactively helping women. I threw a book party for Joann Lublin’s new book Earning It – the party was 3 days after our horrific election – and I saw ~60 women (eating my husband’s terrific food and drinking good wine) talking to each other about how this cannot be our future and becoming even more committed to make a different future for women.

But I also visited Israel for the first time and I was hooked. I found Israel fascinating and a historical goldmine but then I spent time in the West Bank with family who are orthodox settlers, and at the same time joined a small group trying to help Palestine with Silicon Valley technology. Wow, that is a complex area. I am reading like crazy trying to understand, but it’s also an area where young women are starting businesses and where I can help.

2016 wasn’t all about female entrepreneurs. I’ve spent 25% of the year in Europe. Driving with my Dad through France, quiet days with him in England helping him write his life story, Italy with my daughter, with my husband, with my sister. Enough time that I know I was truly present for my family, for the first time in a long time.

I am not unaware that it is a privilege for me to be able to do this, but I also now recognize that it is not only money that holds us in our jobs. It is also social status, recognition, a sense of being important. One of my new friends, now in her seventies, and who had a very big, high profile CEO job, told me one of the things she found most difficult about retiring was not being important any more. We are all, in our own ways, driven by ego and giving up the identity that defined me for most of my adult life has had it’s hard moments, like when a man asked me at a fundraiser what I do for a living and when I said I am retired he said “oh” and walked away. I’ve had plenty of “invisible” moments this year and it takes some getting used to.

We may feel it’s hard for women entrepreneurs in 2017, but the groundswell is growing. The number of smart women building businesses inspires me. The number of powerful female CEOs inspires me. And in 2017 I am open for business to help them in any way I can!

Career Advice

Give yourself permission!

June 20, 2016 Leave a comment

I was struck by the interesting interview with Beth Comstock of GE in the NYT today – where she says “you have the permission to try something new”. In this case she is talking about innovation but innovation is not the only area where we are held back by the need for permission. Too often we are stymied in areas that lead directly to our happiness.

Too often, as working professionals, and especially women, we are held back by our fears. Fear of failure, fear of what other people will think, fear of the unknown, fear of being less than. We live in the world of Lean In and male-dominated tech, where I know and have personally experienced that to get ahead you have to work twice as hard, and be twice as smart, as the men around you. This doesn’t leave much room for permission to change, or to be rested, or happy.

So what’s the solution. I think it’s to consciously, and overtly, grasp the nettle and give yourself permission.

Permission to stop caring what other people think. As Cindy Gallop (entrepreneur and change agent extraordinaire) says “Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. You will never own the future if you care what other people think”. And yet so often we worry endlessly about what the people around us think. Our boss, our peers, our parents; the people who have opinions about our title, or car, or house, or how much money we make. But in the end, the only people whose opinion really matters is our closest friends (who if they love you will support you no matter what you do, or how your screw up) and our partners in life (who do have to be in the boat with us). No one else matters. Truly.

Permission to try something completely new – like start a company. Scary. What if I am no good at it, don’t like it, fail at it? Well, so long as you do some basic financial planning so you can survive a temporary misstep what are you afraid of? Chances are you can always go back to what you did before. I have seen this many times in Silicon Valley – value accrues to failure. People try something completely new, it fails and they go back to what they did before. But they are often now actually more valuable. They have more experience, they may be humbled and so be a better leader and more compassionate. They will be changed, and usually for the better. Or maybe permission to try something completely new for yourself means going to back to school and taking the chance you can create a whole new career path for yourself.

Permission to not check your email 24/7 on vacation. Permission to not keep a perfectly tidy house. Permission to wear flats to work. Permission to leave a job you hate, or a boss you hate, even if it means making less money. Permission to pursue a sports passion which may mean you don’t climb the corporate ladder as fast as your peers. Permission to experiment with your career.

I had to take myself through this process as I made the decision to change my professional life. I can get wracked with guilt that I am no longer driving the feminist CEO agenda. I can get down on myself that I stepped back when other women are running companies and setting the agenda for key technologies in the valley. I, like so many successful women, continue to fight the demon of feeling like a failure inside every day. And so I give myself a talking to – sometimes physically in the mirror! Permission to try a new way of life. Permission to be with my family, and travel, and read, and write. And to stop caring what other people think.

For a while at least!

Equality

Do stereotypes keep women out of tech?

October 12, 2015 Leave a comment

A friend sent me a NY Times article this weekend titled “What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech” and I was struck by how different the current experience of young women is from when I read Maths at Cambridge in 1979.

Yes, then it was unusual. Less than 5% of the Maths class were women in my year. But beyond that it never felt hostile. I never felt like I didn’t belong, or Maths was too hard for girls, or I shouldn’t be doing it. And when I graduated I needed a job and Texas Instruments was willing to teach me how to program so I leapt in with both feet, learned how to touch type, and then learned how to write code. I admit, I was the only girl on the team, and I looked in envy at the TI Dallas software team that had plenty of women in it, and in leadership, but I never felt I did not belong.

The big difference between then, when girls majoring in CS in college was at it’s peak and now, whenthe number has dropped precipitously, is captured in the article:

“The researchers also found that cultural stereotypes about computer scientists strongly influenced young women’s desire to take classes in
the field. At a young age, girls already hold stereotypes of computer scientists as socially isolated young men whose genius is the result of genetics rather than hard work. Given that many girls are indoctrinated to believe that they should be feminine and modest about their abilities, as well as brought up to assume that girls are not innately gifted at science or math, it is not surprising that so few can see themselves as successful computer scientists.”

I simply don’t remember the stereotype of the nerdy young man when I was coming up. CS was not cool, it was not a way to make money back then. To make money you’d go into finance and investment banking. I was the only one of my peer group who went into industry or, as one person said to me at the time in an attempt to put me down, “trade”.

But I can see it now. From Big Bang Theory to HBO’s Silicon Valley (which is so true I simply don’t find it funny) the young, white, male, nerdy, non-showering, stereotype is alive and strong. And we have to change that. Another reason the new film The Martian is so good. It is gender balanced, in both technology and leadership roles; and it follows Gravity which was of similar balance and quality. Something aspiring young female nerds can look up to.

Equality

5 Practical Ways You Can Keep More Women On Your Team

October 9, 2015 Leave a comment
Published in Inc on Oct 5, 2015

At long last, the world is paying attention to the issue of gender
diversity. In May 2014, top tech companies started reporting the dismal
numbers of women in their workforces. When these statistics were
released to the public, a spotlight shone on this disparity, sparking a
conversation on the need for gender equality amongst corporate America.

While
this conversation has been discussed at length in the media and
exhausted by panels at conferences all over the world, the fact remains
that little change has actually occurred. We have a long way to go. As a
new report from Lean In and McKinsey shows, we are more than 100 years away from gender equality in the C-Suite. To top it off, NY Times reports,
the modern workplace is “toxic” and “the ranks of those women still
thin significantly as they rise toward the top, from more than 50
percent at entry level to 10 to 20 percent in senior management.”

It
might have taken 100 years for women to be able to vote in the U.S.,
but it shouldn’t take 100 more years before we achieve gender equality
at the office. If you want your company to benefit from the economic advantage of a diverse team,
there are five actions you can implement at your own company to grow
the number of women on your team. Here are some actions you can take now
to act locally and change the number of women on your team.

1. Women attract other women.

Do
you have at least one, preferably two, of your operational leaders who
are women? “Operational” is an important distinction. There are plenty
of teams where the HR person is a woman, or the communications person
(occupying the pink ghetto), but when you start looking for R&D leaders or P&L managers, the number of women thins out drastically.

What
few people realize is, if you have women in technology and operational
leadership they will attract other women. Women want to see other women
ahead of them in the company they are joining so they have positive
proof that they can get ahead in that company. Likewise, if there are no
women for your younger employees to look up to, you will lose them over
time. Before you say you can’t find them, determine going in that you
will interview both women and men for your open positions. In your
interview process you will find highly qualified women and you will hire
them. These highly skilled women will be magnets for other women
considering your team and open your talent pool up significantly.

2. True, not fake, flexibility.

Many
teams talk flexibility and yet the subtle competition and mindset of
one-upping each other that some teams exhibit can make working flexible
hours feel unsafe for many women. True flexibility means actively
respecting every employee’s wish to get their job done where and when it
works for them. If you can establish a culture where it’s completely
acceptable to call into a meeting if you need to be home or use video to
hold one-on-ones to support a teammate that needs to leave early
(rather than look down on it), you can keep women (and men) on your team
who have to juggle their home responsibilities with their job. But you
have to be proactive and out spoken about your support for flexibility
(provided people get their jobs done of course). Passive support is not
enough.

3. Talk about diversity openly.

It
takes courage to talk openly about your belief on diversity. Many of
your team will agree with you, but some will not, and not everyone will
tell you. I have found that a few men will complain to each other and be
passive aggressive on the issue, but you still need to speak out so the
women and other minorities on your team hear you. There is enough
evidence now that diversity creates better financial results and better
products. It makes no sense to omit 50% or more of the potential talent
from your workforce. By having the courage to speak out, be consistent
and be fair you will keep more women on your team and improve your
company in the process.

4. Invest in your women.

Many
fields are hostile to women, especially technology. Facebook’s Mary Lou
Jepson is just the latest in the long line of women to speak out about it.
Knowing that the workplace can be toxic or hostile, one way you can be
better than your competition at keeping and growing women is your
willingness to invest. Send women to female career oriented conferences
like the Grace Hopper Conference or the 3% Conference. Support them forming Lean In circles.
Speak openly about your wish to see them invest in staying with their
chosen field and find ways to grow within their field rather than
dropping out or moving to a more female friendly industry.

5. Hire a few good men.

There
are many men today who believe strongly in the need for gender
diversity. Their motivations are varied. Sometimes they have daughters
and want their daughters to have every opportunity. Sometimes it’s “just
right.” Other times it is understanding the need to hire the best and
the brightest and not wanting to miss out on half the talent. Whatever
the reason, these male allies are important in the quest for gender
diversity.

Bring men into your team who want to work on a diverse
team. Find men who don’t tolerate prejudice towards women and will
support the advancement of the women on your team. Make a conscious
effort to support these men when they work hard to bring women onto the
team and identify unconscious bias in the people around them.

It’s
time. The dearth of women at the top of companies is not just a
pipeline problem that stems from companies not proactively working to
improve their culture for women. We need to address the culture that
causes 50% of women to drop out of tech within 10 years of graduation
because it’s hostile. They don’t stop working, they just leave tech.
However, you can change the outcome for your team if you work hard to
bring women in and to keep them; your company will be stronger for it.

My Personal Journey

Did I get away with murder?

September 30, 2015 3 Comments

As readers of my blog know, I have had a high pressure career while being married to a man who also has a career, and raising two children. That’s the backdrop to something my father said to me last weekend which stopped me in my tracks.

Talking about a woman we know whose husband is divorcing her, my father said “Well you got away with murder!”

Wow. Talk about judgement from your Dad. Now it’s important to note my father is absolutely one of the good guys. He’s always been very supportive of my career and proud of my accomplishments, but even he carries the unconscious bias about women working.

When I was a new CEO, working hard, with two young children, my parents would often say “poor Bret” – feeling sorry for my husband that I was not taking enough care of him. They would feel bad for me that I was working so hard, and my mother many times said she wondered if she had done the right thing raising my sister and I to be so independent because the result was that we had stressful careers. I know she’d do it all over again because she believed strongly in women’s equality and I learned to ignore all the comments eventually because I knew they understood really. But when my father said I got away with murder I had to think again.

What exactly did I get away with? Staying married. Being in a partnership with a great guy. Raising two amazing children who are now powerful, fully functioning adults who I adore, and who adore me? Keeping my health despite a few trip ups along the way? Finding amazing young women to partner with in raising our children? Choosing to work with like-minded business partners in my own companies? Having a handful of friends to lean on when my schedule got too crazy? Raising dogs and cats together in peace?

Seriously?

And yet I know I have been silently judged by many people far more seriously than my father’s quip. Men in the workplace asking me if I would come back to work after my pregnancy, asking why was I working with young children at home. Asking me if I feel guilty, asking me what my husband thinks about my working, asking me if I could manage both children and my career. I have experiences a mile long – I could write a book but it wouldn’t change anything.

Maybe I did get away with murder. But maybe not. Maybe I lead a rich and rewarding life surrounded by great people who help and support me, and whom I help and support back. And, after a good debate last weekend, my father says he agrees with me.

 

Career Advice

5 Reasons You Need To Work Hard To Get Ahead

June 29, 2015 Leave a comment
My latest in Inc from June 25, 2015



So many times, I’ve been asked, “how did you balance your career and
kids?” Many young people want to hear that I found the answer to balance
and hope I have the formula, but I don’t. Unless you have a fairy
godmother who can guarantee early success in the next big thing, then
you are going to need to work hard to get ahead, make a great living and
have a strong career. In my experience, there are no short cuts and
there is no such thing as “balance.”

We live in a competitive, global world, connected 24/7. Understanding the implications of that is half the battle:


1. It’s a competitive world (part 1).
Yes, the person sitting next to you wants your job. Or they want to get
promoted ahead of you. You are competing, whether it is visible to you
or not, and it has always been this way. The ambitious ones among you
know that getting a promotion is very competitive. Unless you are
computer scientist (in which case there are more jobs than people), you
need to work hard to hold your job and advance, and you need to be
better than the person next to you. When opportunity knocks in the form
of a new project, or a request from your boss, do not say, “that’s not
my job” or “I’m trying to keep balance in my life”–instead, grab it
with both hands and show your boss that you are ambitious and that you
understand your hard work and smart results will be rewarded.

2. You can lean on your partner. This one is probably easier for many men reading this than women, since women typically spend
twice as much time doing housework every day as men. However, whether
you are male or female, learning how to lean on your partner as you push
your career ahead is critical because you are going to need time to
work. Everyone in the household needs to step up and learn how to cook
and clean the kitchen! For many women that means learning to give up
control and letting their partner take an equal role in running the
household. The good news is that a natural shift of equal responsibility
in the home is happening as millennials are twice as likely
to have dual income families. This younger generation knows better
than their parents do that a happy, functioning, two-income household
means sharing the work! Of course, if you are single, you are probably
trying to find the time to date, which can be a challenge and interfere
with everyday chores.

3. Your business is global.
 Unless you are an hourly worker it is likely that your job is
increasingly around the clock. This is the side effect of globalization
as you bring together teams from around the world to solve problems and
meetings happen at 11 p.m., 1 a.m., or 5 a.m. Sometimes this can feel
grim, and yet it is actually an opportunity to spend more time with your
family. Unlike 20 years ago when I would have to stay in the office to
be connected, I can now go home, work out, have dinner with my family
and then login to work from my home office.

4. It’s a competitive world (part 2).
Not only are you competing in your global workplace, your company is
also competing in a global world. It is very likely your company has
competitors in China or India with employees who are driven to improve
their economic status in the world and for their families with their
time and dedication. To use the old cliche “a rising tide floats all
boats”–you want your company to be the rising tide so you and your
teammates can grow your careers. Your global competitor is willing to
sacrifice balance in their lives to get ahead and so should you.

5. Kids are resilient.
This one was a hard lesson for me to learn and my guilt was the enemy,
but I did learn. In my experience, kids do better when they learn to be
independent and they are incredibly resilient if they are loved
unconditionally. Yes, you want to be at their games so they know you
care and so you can share your pride with them, but I don’t think the
phenomenon of the helicopter parent is good for kids. They will be
stronger and more competitive adults if they have learned independence
and they will have a better understanding of what it takes to compete
when their turn comes.

6. Life is not fair. It just isn’t. You need to make your own luck. For 99 percent of us that means hard work.

Equality

The oldest profession in the world is alive and well in Silicon Valley

April 1, 2015 2 Comments

Of course we’ve all been agog at the Ellen Pao trial. Silicon Valley loves nothing more than to talk about itself. The self-obsession goes hand in hand with ego, intellect and ambition.

But an unexpected side effect of the discussion of the blow-by-blow of the trial is now, for a while, everyone will be looking for covert sexism. And nowhere better to find it than cougar night at the Rosewood hotel in Menlo Park.

This is not a new phenomenon. I blogged about it in 2011 after spending an amused Thursday evening there people watching. Even back then the VC, wanna-be, hooker dynamic was in full force.

Now, it’s out in the mainstream press. New York Magazine no less, reported on “Where Silicon Valley Looks for Love in the Era of Ellen Pao”. The crowd in question at the Madera bar, sitting outside in the fading sun and rising moon, is a mix of older (white and Asian) men, older women, younger women, and, just sometimes, ordinary people wanting a cocktail with a friend.

And this latter case is how I usually observe “Cougar Night”. The Rosewood is on my way home. It’s the only high quality bar on the 280 corridor (indicating a market opportunity I suspect). It has very good bartenders who can make a mean Basil Grey Goose Martini (except on Thursdays when they take it off the menu because it takes too long to make – so you have to know to ask for it). And by Thursday I am often in the mood to relax, meet a friend and have a martini on my way home.

It was one such Thursday a few months ago that I saw just how efficient the scene is at the Rosewood. Three middle aged men (one white, two Asian) sitting in one of the large outside booths. The waiter comes up and introduces them to three women who were about 30. Each had long hair, each had a skirt that would not have made it past the nuns at my middle school (i.e. only an inch or two below the crotch) and two had plenty of back skin showing. Initially they sit together, but within 5 minutes they had moved around so they were each paired with one of the men. It was like a dance. The toss of the hair, the hand on the thigh, the eye contact.

I watched in admiration. The oldest profession is alive and well preying on the equity-rich customers who are hoping to not only benefit from the greatest wealth creation of our time, but also find some love at the same time.

My friend chastised me when I said I wanted to take photos to document the dance. She was sure we’d get thrown out and not be allowed back, and the location is just too convenient for us to blot our copy book with the management. So I behaved (unlike the time she and I were asked to leave a restaurant in Rome for being too noisy) but watched in fascination and amusement. The girls were good!

Rest assured, dear reader, Silicon Valley may seem like a dry, stuffy place filled with male nerds, but it’s not. There are actually plenty of interesting, professional tech women hanging out in the Rosewood on Thursday nights (because, after all, the drinks are good), but they’re the ones smiling, watching the dance.

Leadership

The Best Mistake I Ever Made

October 29, 2014 2 Comments

Asked by a journalist the other day “what is the best mistake you ever made” I had to think for a moment. There are so many – where to begin!

But as I pondered the question, there is one decision I look back on and think “What was I thinking?”

I became CEO of a raw software startup at 36
when my children were 2 and 4 years old. My husband was working long hours
running a small consulting business and I thought I had no limits. I could do
anything, and I wanted to run my own company. I wanted to show that a woman
could run a very technical software company in the semiconductor industry – where
there were no women at the top at all. And I wanted to lead.

Six months in I felt I had made a terrible
mistake. I was totally exhausted every single day. I barely had time to see my
kids in the week and I had bronchitis month after month. I had 2 nannies
working shifts, I gained weight and I would lie in bed awake every night
wondering how I was going to survive, never mind win. I think my marriage only
survived because we had already been married 15 years at that point and my
husband is truly, authentically supportive of my career.

And yet… it was one of the best things I could
have done, and I loved it. I loved being CEO, I loved building a company, a
team and working with customers. I became fast friends with our nannies and my
kids turned out just fine. They are confident, independent and have endless
very funny stories about their crazy mother and the experiences they had
because of my job. They traveled with me all over the world, they went into the
office with me at a young age learning by watching and they have a strong work
ethic as a result of the exposure they had. And we are close, very close.

So was it a mistake? Some days I think I took
a huge risk assuming I could do it all and have it all. But when young women ask me about that decision as they think through their own I’m encouraging. Children are resilient, good men are supportive and while you can’t have it all you can certainly have your fair share.

Image: Alamy