Diva Tech Talk interviewed Patricia Howard, veteran instructional designer/developer, whose employers and clients have included General Motors Corporation,  AAA Life Insurance,  the Auto Club Group and MSX International. Patty came to the technology field by happenstance. “When I was a little girl, technology did not exist as it does, today,” she said. “I didn’t touch a computer until my senior year of college!”   She pursued a fine arts bachelor degree with a minor in business at The University of Southern Colorado, “..and had to write a paper for a finance class,” Patty said. “The system was DOS!”

After college, she moved to Michigan, and her first roles were at a national historic landmark and nonprofit, Pewabic Pottery, as a tile presser, potter, mold-maker and technical design reviewer, checking and validating specifications.  Her intellectual appetite led her to explore technology and a friend “gifted” his 486 computer to her. Exploring her options, Patty left Pewabic and took short-term administrative assignments as she explored various industries. After this investigatory period, she exclaimed “I feel like I got the ‘Willy Wonka Golden Ticket’ because I landed a job as an entry-level Web Designer, with no experience” at MSX International, where she worked on websites for internal customers. “They were looking for someone with an artistic eye.“ Patty is forever grateful for her MSX tenure of 6 years, where she learned HTML, Illustrator, Wireworks, ImageReady, Flash, and Photoshop as well as “soft skills” including conflict resolution training.  Patty was blessed with an excellent manager who told her to “design it the way you think it should be, and I’ll make it work!” Then “the economy unfortunately contracted.” Patty was among the last of her team to be let go, in the depths of the recession/depression, as the company dramatically downsized.

Her MSX experience awakened Patty’s realization of her affinity for organizational development.  She worked at The Creative Group, a division of Robert Half International, as a temporary contract employee, deploying Web development skills.  Eventually she landed at Gradepoint working closely with instructional designers. Then she entered Wayne State University, for a masters’ degree in instructional design with a focus on interactive technology, and human performance improvement.  Post-recession, “when I emerged with my degree, the economy was on the upswing.” Patty took an internship at Auto Club Group, and then a full-time position at AA Insurance, where she spent 5 years as a courseware designer. “I did more courseware development and was also the LMS (learning management system) administrator.”  Leaving there, she began working as a contractor, through TTI Global, at General Motors.  The November, 2018, announcements of GM consolidations and plant closures  resulted in contractors ending projects. Now she is actively seeking her next challenge.

Patty’s advice for creating an interesting career included: “Find out what you don’t know.  Ask more questions.” She noted that, when younger, she didn’t explore all her options as thoroughly as she would recommend others do.  She characterized her own skill-sets as having a propensity for gleaning information and making logical sense of it; a passion for making data useful; and a thirst to build something comprehensive from scratch. Patty loves to “put all the pieces together into this beautiful, inherent piece of training that is going to make someone’s life easier!” Her three greatest strengths include organizational ability, creativity, and a high degree of empathy. “Trying to see what the learner is going through to understand what they need” is key in doing instructional design. “I feel like I have great skills to make a difference, now.”

With all the changes through which she transitioned, Patty said “I don’t have any ‘pit of the stomach’ fears, any longer.” One of her lessons for other girls and women is “fear can be a motivator or a show-stopper. New technologies can be intimidating.  Don’t let that stop you. Let that motivate you!” Patty has learned much from her volunteer work, since it gives a person the chance to “do something they would like to do,” increasing knowledge. Some of the organizations she mentioned are the Association for Talent Development, the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and  Inforum Detroit . In all her volunteer work Patty said “I try and give without resenting it” to avoid crossing the line into imbalance.  To sum up Patty’s humorous viewpoint: “The glass isn’t half empty; it isn’t half full. It is twice as large as it needs to be, because no one did a proper needs analysis!”

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Rebekah Bastian, Vice President of Community and Culture at Zillow Group, leading efforts focused on equity and belonging, social impact and cultural engagement. Rebekah was one of Zillow Group's first employees, moving from Microsoft in 2005. She has spent over 13 years leading product development and evolving into her current role.

Rebekah originally started as a music major, but shifted, reassessed, and went back to school taking courses at her local community college. This led to math and physics. Her epiphany was that “[she] can do well at anything [she] works hard at.” Rebekah has been proving that lesson to herself ever since. She encourages others to “work hard at things you enjoy, are passionate about, and things you are good at.” She transferred to the University of Washington where she completed her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering and continued on to UC Berkley, for a masters in that field. She applied to Microsoft  and her work included development of the pervasive Outlook email platform.  

Subsequently she found Zillow Group, which was in full start-up mode and working under the radar. She took a flyer because she had faith in the founders, Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, from their success with Expedia.  Ultimately, Rebekah loved the mission of Zillow Group, the ability to start something from scratch, and the chance to get experience with many different roles.

She began working on the first version of the Zillow website, which has since become the largest real estate marketplace in the U.S. Rebekah worked on building product until about 8 years ago, when she was promoted into people management. As she progressed, leaders under her grew.  She was able to launch a side project, paving the way for her current role.

Zillow Group’s diversity program began by reviewing how to build diverse points of view and people’s experiences into the organization, while shaping culture more intentionally. Rebekah also starting thinking about how she could use the Zillow platform to solve social issues like access for underserved populations to fair, affordable housing. This community work is her real passion.  Rebekah believes in setting employees up for success by removing barriers while affording autonomy. She benefited from this philosophy personally with her own side projects at Zillow Group. Based on the introduction of the Apple iPhone, she assisted on a project that led to the mobile Zillow application. When it launched, it got attention from Apple and gained fast popularity. Zillow Group created the formal mobile team and she became its first mobile product manager. This opened more doors for her career.

In her Community and Culture Vice President role, Rebekah organizes and leads the Zillow Group team focused on equity and belonging, cultural engagement, housing stability, and social impact. She believes “power comes from combining these components together” into one unit. That team creates a space where everyone can bring their best selves to thrive at work. This includes  hiring diverse employees, and ensuring that after onboarding, they possess a strong sense of community. There are also affinity equity networks, and a team of “Equity and Belonging” ambassadors. The ambassadors receive tools, resources, and through those, offer support for “every employee in the community to apply an equity lens to their line of work.” Zillow Group is also encouraging internal mobility within the company, bringing everyone to a level playing field for success despite any past inequities in backgrounds.

Rebekah believes no organization has proposed and implemented the perfect formula for leadership in diversity, community, inclusion, especially in corporate tech. Rebekah professes that she “love[s] problems that need to be solved that haven’t been totally figured out yet because that is what we do at Zillow Group, --- innovate! We need to be bringing everyone along.” More importantly, “everyone is on the equity and belonging team. It can’t be just one team of a few people doing this work for the company. We have to create systemic change.”

Active prioritizing is key when there are so many ideas and directions for a team like this. Rebekah’s product manager experience/role comes into play as she handles the sheer backlog of potential projects that fall under this mission. The team examines metrics on where they are and where they are trying to go to select the most impactful projects aligned with overall strategy. Reviewing employee engagement can help, so she gets that data through various surveys. “In term of deciding the exact priority, you want to have a big vision of where you are trying to go. Zillow Group wants to create a space where every employee can be heard” and positively impact everyone with whom Zillow interacts.

Zillow Group also created an internal pathways model called “get involved” so every Zillow team member can easily get immersed in equity and belonging, and give back, or just have fun. They use various technology and channels to share these opportunities. This work is exciting for Rebekah. For example, “Kids Day of Engineering” is an annual Zillow Group event where employees bring their children to participate in engineering activities. Another example is Zillow Group’s “Community Pillar” which takes the rental marketplace and allows individuals with credit or rental barriers find housing --- a great example of “incremental work that can be done on top of an existing product to create a new feature that can solve social issues.” Overall, the approach is to “creates pathways for everyone to get involved. We are really trying to channel all the passion and skills our employees have to do some great work.” Rebekah exclaimed.

Rebekah believes every woman should “speak up and advocate” for herself  “asking for what she wants.” Her career breakthroughs began by simply asking. On the topic of balance, Rebekah finds times for things like aerial acrobatics as a “physical outlet, social outlet, and creative outlet.” Rebekah is a big fan of making a list to help her keep everything straight as a mother, leader, and philanthropist.

Rebekah ended the Diva Tech Talk interview with one of favorite quotes, from the Girl Scouts:  “Leave it better than you found it.” She thinks that can be “applied to anything you are doing and is needed in our world today.”

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Nafisa Bhojawala, Studio Chief for Cloud Design at Microsoft Corporation. Nafisa, the daughter of an engineer dad, and an art teacher mom, grew up in India, and Dubai, UAE.  “We grew up, drawing, painting, working on embroidery; just basically making things! But I also loved the clean rules of math and physics.  I learned to appreciate how the world works around me.”

When Nafisa chose her university major, she wanted to specialize in fine arts. But her parents persuaded her to “pick a useful profession.” She decided on architecture and emigrated to Chicago to study at Illinois University of Technology. She spent one year, before she realized she was hooked on design, “looking at problems, and solving them, even on a smaller scale.” She logically matriculated into the design school. Nafisa then discovered computer technology.  “I used it first as a tool, as a designer, but very soon I began running into these frustrating situations while using the computer,” which prompted her to think about how challenges could be circumvented. She began “sketching out ways of doing it,” and taking programming classes to “go deeper, to understand how code is written.”

Nafisa’s Capstone project was an interaction endeavor: a learning tool targeted to high school students. To gain confidence, she accepted an internship at Morningstar, the respected global financial firm offering influential investment research and recommendations, managing over $200 billion in institutional assets, and providing software/data platforms for investment professionals.  There “I worked for close to a year on a CD-ROM project,” Nafisa said. “They were converting their stock data into an information tool that financial planners could use. It was the first time I was working as a young designer, figuring out how to apply my visual skills to interaction design.”  After obtaining her degree, Nafisa joined The Doblin Group, a global innovation firm dedicated to solving complex problems through rigorous interdisciplinary approach.  It was another evolution for her. “Their work is very diverse. I learned how to do research there; apply business strategy to problems.”  It was there that Nafisa realized that “I like to design things that become real, and that I can see people using.”

Through a friend, 19 years ago, Nafisa successfully interviewed for a design position at Microsoft. “When I joined my team, I felt like I had found my tribe: very talented people, supportive of each other. I had a great manager, and a fantastic mentor.  I could learn everything!” As she has moved into more senior leadership, she has come to the realization that “It takes a culture that supports growth and exploration…where people feel like they can take creative risks, and actually try things.”

Nafisa shifted into program management and learned she needed to “lean on others.”  The key was also “being humble about it: being a learner,” she said. “Now I’m not afraid of pivoting.  I can figure it out. “ One of her revelations has been that early in her career she focused on how to get things done, (“because you need to perfect your craft”) but later in her career, she has had to “focus on the big picture, because I needed to solve bigger problems, that were more ambiguous.”  She takes pride in the fact that she feels comfortable “being the person who asks the stupid question.” That exercise often results in pinpointing the most innovative solutions. For example, working as a program manager for Microsoft Azure (Microsoft’s primary cloud platform providing a full portfolio of technical services for IT developers), Nafisa realized that there was a “weak link:  the customer research piece.” Accessing customer feedback was a complex issue as the product line was being developed. “There were various stakeholders, timelines were crazy, and we did not have resources.” In less than 6 months, she had created and led a “high trust” team, to “do research at a very fast clip;” and work with diverse user “personas” encompassing developers and IT professionals, to ensure high feature quality and useful deliverables across a decentralized product set.  Azure is robust and successful in part “because we figured out how to pump data through our decision-making process, from the time we decide what we want to build to actually building something.”

Nafisa has now moved to leading the UX (User Experience) for Microsoft’s Power BI (Business Intelligence), PowerApps, and Flow, tools designed to elegantly provide the highest level of productivity to developers and others deploying BI rules inside the enterprise. “Now we are adding artificial intelligence and machine learning.  The responsiveness of systems is just at another level. You suddenly feel like you have more power, working for you.”

Nafisa acknowledged: “I have a need to create. Art has always been the place I go to, my sanctuary.  It has, also, been a way for me to connect to a very different community, that I would not be connecting with in business. Her art “informs” her career and vice versa. It has taught her useful leadership precepts: “be optimistic about the process and the outcome; pour your soul into it; take risks along the way; recover from the failures you encounter.  You will discover you are very resilient. You know more than you think you do.” Nafisa also characterized her art as essential because “It helps me understand the ‘creatives’ I manage. It is a journey all of us go through.”

As a busy mother, as well as business leader/artist, Nafisa achieves balance by “not thinking about perfection.” She works on doing a little bit better each time, bringing heightened awareness to each project.  And “I lean on others,” she said. “My partner who has an equally busy and chaotic work-life is my partner in parenting, too.” She stressed that “we can all be present in all parts of our lives, if we have a strong community to work with, that we trust.” Additionally, “I am very selective about what I spend time on.  I am a little bit ruthless, setting those boundaries.” Nafisa’s final piece of wisdom was simply “anything you choose to learn, can be learned. You get to decide. But keep doing it, because that is how you keep growing.”

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Ford Motor Company’s Smart Mobility and Tech Engineering Leader, May Russell.

“I loved mathematics,” May exclaimed, “but it’s not like I had access” living in Kuwait, from which her college physics professor father and civil engineer mother emigrated to the U.S. when she was in college.  “It’s beautiful but limited in resources. There was one bookstore in the whole country.” A self-described “reading nerd,” May “exhausted every single sci-fi book they had!”  She recognized her first “thirst for, and love of technology” through a “very aspirational” science fiction passion. She pointed to Isaac Asimov and his Laws of Robotics, and mentioned that, today, she still refers to those, in her work.  Her first computer science class at age 15, allowed May to innovate, using an Access database with a Visual Basic front-end, so that a video store owner could catalogue the entire inventory of VHS tapes. She became computer science valedictorian in her high school class.

Matriculating, she had the chance to either enter the school of dentistry at Cairo University or the computer science program at the American University in Egypt.  Urged to “try both,” May simultaneously began first semesters at both institutions. Quickly though, “it became clear” that May loved computer science, so she focused on technology.  She has never regretted that decision. In her senior year, her family moved to the U.S where May entered the University of Michigan - Dearborn. It is another decision May has never regretted, lauding the U.S. tradition of “respect for humanity…the value for human life and civil rights, comparatively speaking” and “the ability to effect change.”

Graduating, May had job offers from E&Y,  Texas Instruments, and Ford. She accepted the E&Y offer. “My advice to anyone is accept the most challenging opportunity; do the thing that scares you the most, the thing that is riskiest to you.” E&Y gave her the chance to work in many industries with many different clients. Post 9/11, she reached her 5-year E&Y anniversary, having “learned a lot.”  Combined with “fatigue from the pace” of 80-plus hour weeks, she discovered “I wanted to work for a company where I got to ‘own’ things.” So, she applied to Ford and moved there, 16-plus years ago.

May learned a valuable lesson: careers are not always linear. “My goals, staying in the technology field, were to join a large company where I had purpose and mastery and got to ‘own’ products. And I didn’t want to have to travel, Monday through Thursday.”  Within the first year at Ford, however, her salary returned to the E&Y level, and her hard work was recognized. Her admonition is “do what is right for you, at the time it is right for you, as long as it aligns with your goals and values.”

May’s first Ford project overhauled the entire dealer parts order fulfillment system. Then she became the leader of a 150-person development group working to transform the intricate Ford global order system She progressed to manage all business-to-consumer and dealer ordering and communications systems development, where she led a much larger organization, with a variety of team leaders managing sub-teams inside it. “That takes a different skill-set, more strategic thinking, supplier relationship management, and deep thought on how we execute B to C” she said. She then moved on to lead the transformation of Ford’s worldwide human resources systems and then began to work in “emerging technologies.” There she led a team to create Ford’s initial “best-in-class” consumer-facing mobile application, empowering consumers to command and control their vehicles. May helped create a “software engineering company within a company” ---- recruited talent, built an entrepreneurship culture, adopted the agile processes of a software development company. Starting with just handful of  developers, that organization has now grown to 500 colleagues, and four software development labs on 3 continents. Their products on the drawing board had to be developed in months vs. years, (in an organization traditionally unused to that speed) and deployed globally. May is proud that this first application (“Ford Pass” and “Lincoln Way”) has been the “highest rated application in every app store”; won the global 2017 Mobile Marketing Design Award from MMA;  and has been recognized as a leading application for connected cars by Gartner.  

May sees her top strengths, in addition to confidence instilled by her family, brilliance and developed leadership skills, as perseverance (“I just keep going”) and learning to “enjoy the journey.” Her philosophy is that “at the end of the day, you spend more time at work. So, if you enjoy the journey, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy” that you will achieve great things.

Discussing female leadership, May shared that “I did feel the burden of being a woman when I had children.”  But two of her “greatest career catapults” at Ford occurred within two months after the births of her two children. May acknowledged that while she had educational and career advantages and has a very strong support system in her husband and parents, not every mother is that lucky.  “There are women out there, who have had children too early. And childcare is too expensive if you make a decent income, and cost-prohibitive if you don’t. It becomes a vicious cycle.” While very courageous, May admits to two fears: “A primal fear that something will happen to my children; and that both my kids, and I, may not realize our potential.”

In becoming a leader, May’s lessons included:

• “Every opportunity is an opportunity to excel and shine.  It doesn’t matter how small the assignment is, it is your opportunity to do your best.”  
• “Master something” before you move on.
•  “Always leave something better than you found it.”

To achieve happiness, May constantly reminds herself to be grateful and “that instantly makes me happy.”  In her technical leadership role, May received great advice from a former Ford CIO: “you are the CEO of your own business.“  The technical leader is fully responsible for everything (P&L, human resources/talent, product development and delivery etc.) as well as the established technical vision and future technology path. Summing up, having “a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose” creates May’s personal joy.    

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Wanda Castelvecchi, National Practice Manager for Security and Enterprise Networking at ePlus, (https://www.eplus.com/), responsible for over $500 million, annually.   

Wanda did not enter the technology industry in traditional fashion. In the mid-1980’s she was a law librarian, using Lexis (https://www.lexisnexis.com), and Westlaw (https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/en/products/westlaw) research databases before most attorneys became adept in them.  “I worked for a large law firm in downtown Richmond, Virginia, until my son was born,” she said.  During her maternity leave, the law firm closed. “So, I found myself as a brand-new Mom, with a brand-new baby at home, with no job.  I had to figure out how to make this work!” She became the “Renaissance Woman” at a smaller firm, doing reception and recruiting duties, working in the law library, handling billing, marketing and more.  That firm acquired their first computer. So, she evolved into becoming the firm’s internal computer expert. Wanda saw this as a strong learning challenge, which she mastered.

From that firm, Wanda was hired by a technology systems integrator. She proceeded to obtain both Novell certification, and Microsoft certification, within the first 6 months and “thus launched my crazy career in IT!”  After entering the field, she noticed the paucity of women. “It felt like a huge challenge to me not only to be accepted as a newbie in the technology field, but to be accepted as a woman.” At the company, Wanda was promoted into sales from systems analyst but immediately encountered a resistant manager, who stated she would probably “be gone in 90 days.” Wanda decided to prove him wrong. Through sheer persistence, she wound up as the top salesperson of the quarter, during that very first quarter.  “As women, we could let those words crush us, or we can take those words and say ‘I’ll show you what I can do…”

Having moved from a technical role into sales, Wanda counseled that the path is not for every technologist.  “What people don’t understand are all the mundane tasks” with which sales professionals cope, including paperwork.  The role requires empathy for deeper psychological issues underlying customer satisfaction, as well as the need to acknowledge and attempt to rectify mistakes when they are made.  She also emphasized that being honest, genuine, reliable, considering yourself an advocate for the customer, and never losing the tendency to ask many questions of a client, as part of sales discovery, is key to success.  

Wanda moved from the smaller system integrator to Sycom Technologies (https://www.sycomtech.com/) where she spent the next decade.  She performed at a very high level, becoming Professional Services sales leader of the year for multiple years and then “I became a sales manager. While I had a really good run at it, what makes a good salesperson doesn’t always make a great sale manager!” But she learned valuable lessons from sales leadership: patience with a diverse team; understanding that individual motivation is different and not all team members are driven to excel; and how to listen, set expectations, and create plans with achievable goals.  But above all, Wanda “learned to keep moving and always learning.”

From Sycom, Wanda briefly did a short stint at another Cisco partner company,  and then moved to ePlus, (https://www.eplus.com/),  an engineering-centric technology solutions provider working in key technologies from data center to security, cloud, and collaboration.  She has been with ePlus for 9 years. There she was fortunate to get her “best boss” and is absorbing more leadership lessons.  One is selflessness. “Nothing he ever talks about is about himself. Imagine that you wake up every morning and you have the ability to create your own path. And you have a manager who is 100% supportive of that, who has always got your back!”

Selfless, herself, Wanda has been active in several nonprofits giving back to the overall community including a role on the Board of Directors for the Richmond Animal League (https://www.ral.org). But her newest endeavor fills her with the most passion. GRIT (which stands for Girls Rock’In Tech) introduces middle school girls to various tech careers, with a specific focus on cybersecurity.  “In addition to there being an overall shortage of women in technology, there is a huge shortage of experts in cybersecurity,” according to Wanda, up to 1 - 2 million jobs going unfilled each year.  So, from her vantage point, it is logical to encourage girls to explore the field. She noted that women are often more risk-averse, have excellent project management skills, and a concern for safety, so the field could be attractive.  “Organizations who don’t have women in their cybersecurity practice are probably less secure,” as a result of the deficit, according to Wanda. Currently active in 4 schools, with plans to be at 6 by 2020, and then growing even more rapidly, the GRIT program’s name has a double meaning since “one of the things we want to be able to develop is grit” (the ability to persevere against all odds) in the young women it serves. “You can be really great at math, engineering or science, or anything you want, if you work really hard,” is GRIT’s mantra.

Wanda shared other additional success tips. Among them are:  as you progress, pull people up with you; honesty and integrity are paramount; learn to laugh at yourself; and take your vacations. Most importantly, she emphasized: “Always be learning. Every day, learn something new.”

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Monica Bailey, Chief People Officer at GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com). At 18 million global customers and 8,000 employees, the 22-year old company is an indisputable market leader, as the largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar in the world, four times the size of its closest competitor. Monica came to her role at GoDaddy “having seen a lot of things I love about the technology industry and having seen a lot of things that I didn’t want to repeat.”

The daughter of a social worker mother and a residential builder father, Monica was raised in a “rough and tumble fishing town” on Washington State’s coast, populated by “amazing people” who “had to be as fierce as the ocean to survive there.”  She graduated from Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow School of Communications with a double major in psychology and communications, and a special focus on women’s studies. Early in her career exploration, she knew “I wanted to help people; I wanted to make an impact.” Fate intervened in landing Monica’s first job. Armed with her resume, she visited a friend at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington and spotted her third cousin, who facilitated interviews. She was hired as a technical recruiter. “I feel so fortunate. Tech is a place where we don’t ponder too long. We experiment, try things, iterate, and hopefully make change in the industry, and the world.” Her career at Microsoft spanned many roles including recruiter, recruiting team captain, senior human resources generalist working on Microsoft’s consumer internet group, manager of Microsoft’s merger and acquisitions, senior talent assessment manager supporting President/CEO succession and development planning, and also did a stint as HR partner for Microsoft’s Research arm.

Monica is a life-long champion of diversity, shaped by enlightening lessons from her 17-year Microsoft tenure. She has the highest regard for Microsoft’s current CEO but “I grew up in a work environment that was internally competitive,” she said. “There was no shared, core criteria that was fair and accessible to employees.” Learning from that, she believes “there is enough pie for everyone. I don’t want to compete with folks. I don’t want my folks to compete with each other.” In her industry, and company, “we are better together.”

Monica defined diversity as “having different perspectives around ‘the decision-making table.’ The more folks you bring around that table, from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different socio-economic classes, the more holistic you get to be.” She stressed that if you don’t have diversity, as an organization, you can “miss the market.”

Her transformational work at GoDaddy has been propelled by a partnership with Stanford University’s 40-year old Clayman Institute, a nonprofit extension founded to inspire innovative solutions that advance gender equality. After their in-depth review with unprecedented access, “They said: you have two choices.  You can continue to refine your hiring to reduce unconscious bias, similar to what many companies are working on. Or you can go for the ‘Holy Grail:’ career advancement for women, knowing that there is very little research in this area, at this point.”

Making the Holy Grail choice, GoDaddy revised their unique performance review process encompassing the “what” (targets, objectives, activity,) and “how” of achieving goals. “We want wonderful people doing wonderful work,” Monica said. “So, we had to reimagine the ‘how’ in order to strive for true diversity. The ‘how’ is how you exemplify our values; how you live them every day; how you help each other do great things for our customers.  We included ‘how do you introduce diversity and different perspectives ‘around the table’, in order to innovate.” Monica stressed that there has also been a robust effort to block unconscious bias in every human resources’ process as a result of the Clayman Institute counsel. “We just decided to build diversity into everything we did. Diversity is not siloed. It lives in every piece of work we do. The bummer is you’re never done!”

GoDaddy is making great diversity progress.  “Our employees are super-clear about our culture and values. They come to GoDaddy because it is a really different culture --- hard-charging, yet collaborative. We overtly talk about it and more importantly, our people talk about it.” Monica said. “And we have record low attrition.”  She proudly pointed to a recent survey that shows that 89% of GoDaddy’s top individual contributors and leaders would recommend the company to others.

By following Clayman’s recommendations to break down all the work into a simple, clearly accessible set of behaviors, “women and men have a statistically equal shot at top performance in the company…We pay a dollar for a dollar, women to men.”  And, “last year, we were at 31% women in our most senior roles.”

Monica’s  diversity recommendations for other organizations include: thoughtfully and creatively formulate your vision of success and act on it; examine performance by every possible human criteria to strive for absolute fairness; methodically and constantly survey your talent base, and customers, on what is working and what is not; and engage in systems like “promotion-flagging” to ensure that those who don’t “self-promote” are still fairly recognized. Monica was emphatic about the positive return on investment that diversity represents for all companies. At GoDaddy “We believe that diversity creates better innovation, better products and services for our customers.”

Her mission at GoDaddy is “making the company we all want to work for!”

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Scarlett Ong Rui Chern,  entrepreneur, founder/ CEO of Peerstachio.  Scarlett is the epitome of entrepreneurship:  courageous, persistent, agile in approach.  She grew up in a small town in Malaysia and left to pursue higher education in the United States. “I had one year of community college in Kuala Lumpur, and then transferred as a freshman into the University of Michigan (https://umich.edu/).”  As a 10-year old, Scarlett said: “I was interested in tech, especially the gaming field. I was always interested in the collaborative aspect of tech, the basis of what I am working on, now.”  

Scarlett matriculated to the university, after looking for a sense of “community” among colleges. Everyone was friendly. However, “my first year was not a very good year. But I really believed in myself, although I was struggling to adapt to the whole situation,” she said. “Besides being an international student, I was a first-generation college student in my family. And I didn’t have family members around.”    Scarlett initially faltered, academically. “It was a shock to realize that I was coming from behind. Not having enough peer support, in an academic sense, brought me into a space where I felt alone, and not sure of what I was doing.”  She had to “figure out strategies of how to reach out” for help. Scarlett initially closed herself off, but now “I have grown to be a more open person, more self-aware” knowing when to ask for help.  “There are a lot of other students that face this issue, too.”

Scarlett joined the university’s “optiMize Social Innovation Challenge” in freshman year. Her first project created a “gamified” classroom experience for elementary school students.  She then entered the university’s business school, with an emphasis on consulting.  “I joined a pro bono consulting club on campus.” There, she worked with the famed Zingerman’s, and created a  framework to enable past employees stay in touch with the current Zingerman’s community.   She discovered that consulting was NOT her personal life mission. “I am the kind of person who likes to get her hands dirty, make ‘hands-on’ impact, see things through,” she said. “This is when passion comes into play. Not only did I pick myself up, but I wanted to create something that would help others pick themselves up.”

Scarlett discovered U of M’s Zell-Lurie Institute, dedicated to advancing knowledge and practice of innovation.  “They offer a lot of support in terms of mentorship, grant-funding”  She also joined the Michigan Venture Capital Association, as a summer intern, where she worked on the association’s 2017 annual landscape guide and “changed the game” in terms of its data collection, data collation, and interactive reporting.  She entered U of M’s CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE competition, which “reimagined” techniques and spaces for teaching and learning in the 21st century.  Scarlett and her partners tried to create a “study mentor” using artificial intelligence (AI). Her team was one of 5 finalists that had the unique opportunity to meet with Amazon’s Vice President of Development.  From this, Scarlett learned one of her key life lessons: “What makes a startup successful is not just a cool idea.  Ours was too far in advance.  There wasn’t yet a market for it.”  Scarlett shed the original team, and took the kernel of that concept as the foundation for Peerstachio, conceptually launched in September 2017.

Scarlett takes both computer science classes and Udemy courses. “But I knew, deep in my heart, that even though I love tech, I wouldn’t be a professional coder. I partnered with a friend of mine, who is currently our CTO (Chief Technology Officer).”  She also recruited a UX designer to implement the “front end” of Peerstachio, while the CTO manages the back end.  Scarlett manages fundraising, the company’s overall vision, market research, marketing, competitive analysis, and sales.  

Peerstachio’s main mission is to help students improve grades by connecting underclassmen with a trusted cadre of older students, to get academic questions answered in a highly responsive fashion. The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is launched on django, html5, scss and javascript coding stack Website, and sqlite3 (PostgresSQL in future) on the back-end of the site.  Scarlett ensured that she validated real customer need by conducting detailed surveys of potential clients.  (At the time of our Diva Tech Talk interview, the Peerstachio team had interviewed 110 students, globally.)  Scarlett is becoming a highly experienced entrepreneur.  For instance, she said “If any startup tells you there is no competition, they need to do more research.”  For Peerstachio, “I feel fortunate we have competitors.  That means there is a market, and room for us to improve.”

Scarlett thinks that passion, perseverance and sense of purpose are propelling her as well as empathy for the customer. “I would add one more: positivity,” she said. “A ‘growth mindset’ has kept me going.”  Scarlett’s fond hope is that she, and others like her, can show that “if you have some goals, and try to get what you desire, that is ultimate happiness.”  Her biggest fear is missing something that she could accomplish.

Scarlett’s leadership lessons include: develop deep listening skills, collaborate, be confident and decisive, and lead by example. She stressed that, in a startup, “there is no such thing as 9 to 5. Work and life are intertwined.”  To balance that, Scarlett follows a “process of layers of priority” to juggle multiple goals, successfully. Many of those goals are tied to making life better for others. She also recoups energy through exercise and reading, watching videos, and reflecting.  

Note:  Peerstachio has received grants since this interview including DTX, at TechTown Detroit: https://techtowndetroit.org/?press-release=u-m-startup-peerstachio-receives-inaugural-10000-gm-go-award.

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The Diva Tech Talk team was grateful to have the amazing experience of attending Grace Hopper Conference 2018. We highlighted many conference details, discussed the Abie awards, and shared the voice of attendees on the Episode 73 Podcast. If you didn’t get a chance to listen, please check it out here: http://www.divatechtalk.com/blog/ep73

There was so much material and insight that we had to create another article and episode for our listeners to stay with us on this journey. This podcast has a special announcement for our listeners.

One incredibly worthy outcome of the Grace Hopper Conference and the AnitaB.org effort is the Top Companies report for women in technology. This is a national program that identifies key trends around the representation of women in the workforce. First launched in 2011, it pairs wonderfully with the conference “vibes.” Although there are many other female technologist benchmarking programs, this is the only one that measures technical employees using a rigorous, standardized definition of the technical workforce. The 2018 Top Companies report was compiled with participation by 80 companies, 628,000 + technologists with 150,000 + women technologists in that group. Congratulations to the companies who took top honors for female tech diversity for 2018. Special Diva Tech Talks “shout-out” to Tarsha McCormick and Shuchi Sharma, two leaders in that cohort we were fortunate to interview. Check out the full Grace Hopper Conference 2018 Press Release on Top Companies here: https://anitab.org/news/press-release/2018-top-companies-report/

In addition to the keynotes, and breakouts on topics ranging in complexity from exploratory data analysis to mentoring, there were also some amazing women with whom we spent time to capture their experiences for our Diva Tech Talk audience. After reviewing their insights, the Diva Tech Talk team is proud to announce a new Diversity Leadership Series, following this event. The series will feature senior level leaders from a variety of organizations, who lead diversity and inclusion programs in their respective organizations. In this Grace Hopper Event Recap podcast, we include audio teasers for these full-length episodes, rolling out over the coming weeks and months. Here are some of the women we will include in our upcoming Diversity Leadership Series:

In this episode, we feature short clips from the following amazing women in technology that we interviewed.  Later, we will publish their full stories in our newly announced Diversity Leadership Series:

• Monica Bailey, Chief People Officer at GoDaddy

• Sonja Gittens Ottley, Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Asana

• Tarsha McCormick, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, North America for Thoughtworks

• Rebekah Bastian, Vice President of Community and Culture at Zillow Group

• Shuchi Sharma, Global Lead for Gender Intelligence at SAP

• Paulette R. Gerkovich, PhD, Senior Director, Diversity and Inclusion, Micron

We hope you enjoy this teaser and look forward to the upcoming series as much as we do. Make sure to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.

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The Diva Tech Talk team was ecstatic to attend the 3-day 18th Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing #GHC18 (ghc.anitab.org) --- the world’s largest gathering of women in computer technology --  September 26 through 28, 2018 in Houston, Texas. The conference has taken place since 1994, with a yearly cadence since 2006. Named for U.S. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, many continue be inspired by her work on the Mark I computer and creation of one the first industry compilers, that eventually led to the development of COBOL, still a relevant programming language today. Grace paved the way for many women to follow her in technical careers.

The Grace Hopper Celebration convenes many thousands of women in computing in a single venue to discuss topics of interest, and share research related to women in technology. Students flood the halls to get exposure to tech companies and tech departments; and many engage in onsite career interviews. There are a variety of presentations, poster discussions, and meet-ups throughout the week. It is also an ideal gathering for veteran tech women, employed in the field, to present and listen to each other, while networking and meeting the next generation of upcoming tech women. This year’s conference boasted a record attendance of over 22,000.

This episode is full of audio highlights from the event including:

• Event overview from Hotwire
• Interviews with two past Abie Award Winners
• Teaser into an interview with Noramay Cadena
• We are Here montage
• Sneak peek into future Diversity Leadership Series

We encourage listeners to visit us online for a full blog write up at: www.DivaTechTalk.com

This blog article covers even more details on the speakers, awards, and top companies report.

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Diva Tech Talk interviewed Stephanie Espy, Founder and CEO of MathSP (https://mathsp.com/) and STEM Gems (http://stemgemsbook.com/).  Stephanie shares a common goal with Diva Tech Talk (www.divatechtalk.com) to support the next generation of female STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) practitioners. Both of Stephanie’s parents are engineers and three of her siblings are connected to STEM. “Engineering and science are two main career paths my family has taken.” Stephanie was also influenced by “really fabulous teachers”as early as elementary school, extending through secondary education and college.

After high school, Stephanie moved from Georgia to Massachusetts to attend MIT (www.mit.edu ). There she “thrived because of the community” and obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering.  Her penchant for bonding with others in her dorm, in her major and “with other women of color on campus” got her through the “difficult moments.” Stephanie successfully completed research projects and worked at many internships which “helped solidify my understanding of how engineers make a difference in the world.”  She matriculated to the University of California, Berkeley (https://www.berkeley.edu/) for her graduate degree in chemical engineering.  She also accrued corporate experience, working with polymers in a manufacturing plant; using various rubber-producing plants at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve quality and yield of U.S.-grown natural rubber; and as a chemical engineer in the oil and gas industry at BP (www.bp.com).  She also decided to get a business degree to complement her graduate degree in chemical engineering.  “I landed at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School” (http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/) where Stephanie earned her MBA.  At Goizueta, she “shifted gears; I got this entrepreneurial ‘bug’ and that drove me to want to create something, my own way of helping to close the gender gap in STEM.”

Stephanie said “most of my experiences had been in male-dominated environments. I yearned for more representation” by women and people of color.  She founded MathSP a decade ago. “S stands for strategies; and P stands for problem-solving.” The company’s premise is “in order to enter a STEM career, you must have a solid foundation in math and science.” Her venture helps male and female students at all levels “uncover gaps in their foundation and close them, helping them become more ‘STEM-fluent:’ better problem-solvers, independent thinkers and life-long learners.”  

She also saw a need to serve girls “in their own special way.”  In 2014, Stephanie founded STEM Gems (http://stemgemsbook.com/), which began as a book but has morphed into “a movement.”  Its aim is “to expose girls and young women to careers and role models in STEM.”  It offers its audience exposure to career opportunities that “they did not even know existed.”  In addition to the variety of career choices, STEM Gems also give girls exposure to role models working in science, technology and math.  “These are things you, as a girl, can do!” The STEM Gems book features 44 different women and their diverse careers, like data science, global health science, environmental engineering, archaeology, entomology, biotechnology, animation and a plethora of others.  

“There are so many careers out there that people don’t really think about,” Stephanie exclaimed.  STEM Gems is shining a light on many of them. “A lot of research went into finding STEM women leaders, highlighting their accomplishments and advice, interviewing all of them,” and spotlighting the biggest thing: “how they make a difference in the world and help people.”  A challenge was also to put those stories into the language of children “so a 10-year old girl could pick up the book, read it, and understand. It has touched so many lives, both through the book and the STEM Gems Clubs!” The clubs focus on groups reading the book and following a curriculum (with adult community members leading). They began in the last 12 months, and have spread through the United States.  “It is a ‘tribe setting,’ and shows you that you are never alone in your pursuit of greatness,” Stephanie said.

Stephanie has learned many leadership lessons throughout her career: “Never, ever, give up, despite the odds.”  Do not be intimidated. “Walk into a room and sit at the table…” invariably letting your voice be heard. Speak up and speak out. And “you cannot shy away from a challenge.” Get comfortable “being a trailblazer.”

Stephanie’s parting tips for women and girls to succeed include:

• “Be a part of the community. You can’t do much alone.”   To that end, she recommends membership in many of the national and regional professional associations that offer resources, support and fellowship.
• “Be a mentor to the next generation. Be a role model to many; and pick a few for whom you can really have an impact on their journey.”

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