BeCOME an Ally How to achieve gender equity
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[Applause]
so there i was
in this gray conference room that felt
too small for the number of people in it
i’m sitting across from four men
with two men to my left and one man to
my right
and the volume in the room was loud
as they were all brainstorming on the
topic
i have something to say but there’s no
lull in the conversation
it’s a little intimidating but i’m gonna
do it
i take a deep breath i raise my voice to
the volume of the room
and i share my idea
but something strange happens nothing
not even a nod of recognition
in that moment i felt invisible
almost like i had on an invisibility
cloak
that i could not shake off can you
imagine
gotta try again this time i’m gonna do
something different
this time i lower my
i slow down my speech
i don’t share my idea
i talk about my experience on this topic
and what brought me to this room
and then i share my idea
and this time i’m heard despite
30 years in the high-tech industry and
the fact that i’m a senior executive
i still have to prove my credibility on
a topic
before i can be heard and this is not an
isolated incident
and this is not some meeting that
happened a long time ago
this is a meeting that happened in
february just before everybody went home
for the pandemic
and it’s why i’m here today i am tired
of being the only woman
in the room with no allies i am here to
enlist
every single one of you to take a pledge
to drive for gender equity
how if you are a man
step into allyship if you are a woman
step into leadership each and every one
of you
can become an agent of change
by working with intention by working
with purpose
you can make a difference like my friend
jennifer didier
jennifer is the ceo of a technical
training company
and like me she was tired of being the
only woman in the room
of looking out in her classroom at a sea
of men
so jennifer set aside profit and she set
up a scholarship program
to bring free technical training and
technical certification to women
and through her single intentional act
she has
fundamentally changed the career
trajectory versus 70 women who have come
through that
and she’s just at the beginning that’s
what i’m talking about
that’s intentional leadership and i
personally
have sponsored the creation of two
organizations
the women in technology network and the
women in cloud
both dedicated to connecting women
and giving them access and through those
organizations
we’ve been able to touch twenty thousand
women
around the world twenty thousand
that sounds like a big number but in
fact
it’s just a drop in the bucket compared
to what we need
and it’s why i’m here we need to scale
i need each and every one of you to
become a force multiplier
to turn 20 000 into 8
million why 8 million
because that’s what it will take to get
to gender equity in high tech
8 million do you think i’m exaggerating
let me share some statistics with you
when i started in this industry in 1991
36 of the computing workforce was women
in 2019 that number had fallen
to 27 it’s going
in the wrong direction and it’s about to
get much worse
70 percent of all companies are going
through something called a digital
transformation
that means they’re becoming technology
led technology is becoming their
products
their services and their operations
you see that every day that takes high
tech
out of the tech industry and into every
industry
retail manufacturing financial services
even
farming you see that when you go for
shopping when you go to do your banking
when you reach for entertainment
you reach for technology first
and that in and of itself that’s not a
bad thing
what is a bad thing though is that the
jobs that are being displaced
disproportionately impact women and
people of color
and that is a trifecta of badness
because that means by percentage there
are fewer women in technology
there are more jobs in technology and
there are more women being displaced
by the technology that is a crisis
we must act that is not the
workforce that you want for your
daughters
your mothers your sisters your wives
trust me i know i’ve been here for the
last
30 years you know
i thought by the time my daughter was
ready to enter the workforce
things would be dramatically better
well my daughter is 21 years old now
and in fact things are worse
the time to act is now
i need each and every one of you to
become
an agent of change and i have four ways
that you can make a difference
connect outreach mentor
empower and i’m going to talk about each
one of those
connection that’s about taking making
intentional connections with women’s in
your network
reaching out and giving women access to
you and
everyone in your network you can do that
by joining the women in technology
network
joining the women in cloud or any one of
a dozen other networks
designed to give women in business
access
by doing so you become a force
multiplier
to turn twenty thousand into eight
million two outreach
this is about examining your recruiting
practices
your hiring practices your supplier
selection practices
when you post a job do you
screen out candidates or do you screen
in
for diversity i know within my own
organization
when i asked my leaders to stop hiring
for expediency
and stop hiring people they knew
and to make an intentional action to go
outside of our company to create a
diverse candidate pool
of high quality talent and then to have
a diverse
interview panel the gender diversity in
my organization
changed dramatically and now we’re
working on diversity across all
dimensions
three mentor
i would not be where i am today without
the many men and women who have mentored
me along the way
who have shared with me the value of
their successes and their failures
who have helped me avoid those invisible
trip wires and
unwritten rules of business and who have
lifted me up
when my confidence waned think about
your own
mentors i’ve had people tell me that
30 minutes i spent with them changed
their perspective dramatically
when you mentor you blaze a trail for
others to follow
and you give back four
empower the most impactful thing you can
do for another human being
is to empower them
is to help create an inclusive
environment
to sponsor women promote women
put women on your board of directors
and do i urge you to do that just
because i’m a woman
well i mean i am a little biased
but according to the boston consulting
group organizations with diverse
leadership teams have 19 percent higher
profitability
they have greater levels of employee
engagement they have higher levels of
customer satisfaction
and that kind of makes sense right
because a diverse leadership team
is creating products and services that
better reflects the diversity of their
customer base
and so it is not just good for society
it is good for your business
and it’s not as hard as you might think
creating an inclusive environment
is about giving voice to everyone
inviting
everyone into the conversation seeing
people
hearing people making the invisible
visible i want to share with you a story
probably of my worst moment of
invisibility
several years ago i went on a business
trip with a male colleague of mine
and we met with a dozen executives all
of them men
in every single one of those meetings
the male executive
spoke to my male colleague and not me
and even when i would answer a question
the male executive would turn to my male
colleague
for affirmation and validation of what i
had said
even though i was his senior
that entire trip i felt like i had on
an invisibility cloak that i could not
shake off
creating an inclusive environment is
about being an
ally if one of those men
had been an ally to me and just seen me
or in that meeting in february if one of
those men
had invited me into the conversation by
simply
asking me what i thought or heard me the
first time
that’s allyship like my friend mal mc
hutchinson
who’s the ceo of interactive i.t in
australia
he sponsors an organization called male
champions for change
dedicated to driving for gender
diversity in high tech
and within his own organization he has
made a commitment
to make his cyber security practice 50
percent women
that’s intentional leadership that’s
working with purpose that’s what i’m
talking about
you could start big like mal or jennifer
or you could start small
by creating an inclusive environment
whether you start big or you start small
you could start anywhere just start
because we need you
to be an ally to be a leader to be
an agent of change four ways that you
can make a difference
connect outreach mentor
empower for the sake of your daughters
your mothers your wives your sisters the
time to act
is now we need each and every one of you
to make a commitment to help a woman be
seen
to help a woman be heard to make the
invisible visible i want you to make a
commitment today
to become an agent of change and to help
a woman
to take off her invisibility cloak
thank you
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you