BeCOME an Ally | Breaking through the gender equity divide

Have you ever been fed up with something and thought to yourself, “WAIT! Why am I putting up with this?” I had one of those moments a few years ago and it set me on a path of change—a path that took an exciting turn a few months ago.

In November, I had the honor of giving a TEDx talk about something that has brought me heartache for years: the gender equity gap in the technology industry. After 30-years of regularly being the only woman in the room, I’m hopeful that sharing my story on the TEDx stage will be a catalyst for scalable change.

BeCOME and Ally: How to achieve gender equity

In the talk, I share personal stories about feeling invisible at work, as if I’m wearing an invisibility cloak that I just can’t take off. I know many of you can relate—you know, when you share your perspective in a meeting and are met with deafening silence? I can’t tell you the number of times that’s happened to me.  

To be fair, I’ve worked with many kind and inclusive allies throughout my career. And Microsoft has taken this challenge head-on—making great strides with allyship training and a clear focus on creating a culture of diversity and inclusion. It’s been encouraging to see the progress we’ve made so far.

Unfortunately, in our industry as a whole, there just isn’t enough forward movement. So, by sharing my personal experiences, I hope to create a force-multiplier effect, where we can harness collective power to make change and ultimately bring gender equity to technology. But if we don’t act fast, we’re in trouble.

When I started in the technology industry in 1991, 36% of the computing workforce was women. In 2019, that number had fallen to 27%. We’re going the wrong direction, and it will soon get even worse.

The jobs being displaced through digital transformation disproportionately impact women and people of color. And that creates a perfect storm: by percentage, there are fewer women in technology, there are more jobs in technology, and yet there are more women being displaced by the technology. This is truly a crisis.

The good news is, we have the collective power to do something about it. Through technology democratization, purpose-driven leadership and male allyship, we can close the gap of inequity and create a new narrative. 

We need to add 8 million women to the technology workforce in order to achieve gender equity in the industry. With roughly 4 million in tech today, we have a long way to go. But with your help, we can create access and opportunity. We can #BeCOME agents of change by embracing four simple actions.

Connect | Make intentional connections with women in your network. Reach out and give women access to you and everyone in your community.

Outreach | Examine recruiting practices, hiring practices, and supplier selection practices. When you post a job, do you screen out candidates or do you screen in for diversity?

 Mentor | I would not be where I am today without the many men and women who have mentored me along the way. When you mentor, you blaze a trail for others to follow.

 Empower | The most impactful thing you can do for another human being is to empower them—to lift them up and create an inclusive environment that gives voice to everyone and allows people to be heard and seen for who they are.

In my TEDx talk I share examples of people I know who are walking the walk, like @Jennifer Didier who is the President and founder of our partner @Directions Training. Tired of seeing only men in her training programs, she set aside profit and created 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 for 70 women.

Another example is @Mal McHutchinson from @Interactive IT in Australia. He helped sponsor an organization called Male Champions for Change, which is 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% women. That’s intentional leadership.

Through connection, outreach, mentorship, and empowerment, we can build healthier workplace cultures. We can attract new employees, customers, and investors. We can increase opportunities for all women and build a new generation of leaders that understand the value of equity.

We can do it. But it will take intentional action. I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll be posting articles here on LinkedIn about each of the four actions we can take to #BeCOME agents of change and help women take off their invisibility cloak.

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BeCOME an Agent of Change | Outreach

In 2016, @Enavate, an IT organization focused on Microsoft Dynamics, was at a crossroads. Revenue was down and the leadership team was unsure about the company’s future. During a meeting, a bleak report from the company’s Chief Financial Officer triggered something in the mind of Enavate’s CEO @Thomas Ajspur. 

 “I had forgotten why I started the business, which was to create an amazing place to work that inspired our team members. So, we made a conscious decision to focus less on the numbers and more on our culture and our people.” 

 As Enavate’s leaders set out to turn things around, they realized it wasn’t just a revenue and culture problem they had to solve. They had a gender equity problem too. Only 20% of the company’s workforce were women. So, they changed their hiring practices—not by creating policies to require diversity, but by changing their approach to recruiting. 

 Instead of hiring based on skills or “people they knew,” hiring managers were expected to look at candidates for who they were as individuals. They started hiring for quality rather than skills or expediency. That approach has doubled the number of women at Enavate. 

 “I‘m proud of getting to 40% gender equity, but I’m not happy. We need to get to a 50-50 split,” said Ajspur. 

 This is the kind of intentional leadership I was talking about in my recent TEDx Talk, BeCOME an Ally: How to achieve gender equity. It’s going to take the kind of allyship demonstrated by the leaders of Enavate to bring 8 million more women into the technology industry. That’s how many more we need to reach gender equity in high tech. 

 How do we get there? We need to scale. We need force multipliers. We need more men and women to become agents of change. That’s why I developed the BeCOME framework, which is made up of four actions every one of us can do to help move the needle:  

In a recent LinkedIn article I talked about Connection, and how critical it is for us to open our networks and create access points for women to connect with business leaders and with one another. The allyship demonstrated by the leaders at Enavate exemplifies the second action we all can take: Outreach. 

 Outreach is about examining your recruiting and hiring practices. When you post a job, do you screen out candidates, or do you screen in for diversity? And what about the suppliers you work with, or the vendors you hire—can they do more to create access for women? 

 A few years ago, I challenged the leaders in my own organization to stop hiring for expediency and to intentionally go outside the company and generate truly diverse candidate pools—and then ensure a diverse panel conducted the interviews. We were all inspired by the high-quality of diverse candidates that emerged. It changed the culture of our organization, and as a result, the gender diversity in our team improved dramatically.  

There’s something special that happens when you have gender equity in your team. There’s more collaboration. You get new ideas and fresh perspectives. And as an organization we’ve become more empathetic. More vulnerable. More human. We talk about our feelings and we’re more open about our opinions. We aren’t afraid to share what we think. Overall, we’re just a healthier organization because we have equitable representation.

Pushing for gender equity in the workplace isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do for your business. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, organizations with diverse leadership teams have 19% higher profitability. They have greater levels of employee engagement, and higher levels of customer satisfaction. When you think about it, that makes sense. A diverse leadership team is creating products and services that better reflect their diverse customer base, right?

Enavate has experienced that first-hand. The company has doubled in size since making the conscious decision to change the culture of their company and move toward gender equity in their workforce. Today, 40% of its team members and 40% of its leadership team are women. And Enavate is now one of Microsoft’s largest Dynamics partners in the United States.

“We have an obligation as a company and to society to help people who have a harder time getting access to roles in technology,” said Ajspur.

By creating a culture of diversity and access, Ajspur says Enavate is now a favored destination for top IT talent, “It’s well known that you can be a person here, not just a number.”

To Thomas, and everyone at Enavate, thank you for being allies and leaders. Thank you for being agents of change.

Be sure to watch for my next #BeCOME LinkedIn article where I’ll share another way all of us can drive for gender equity in tech and become agents of change, through Mentorship.

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