Female Tech Exec

Over the past year, I’ve worked with many mid-career women in tech in planning and reaching for their next career level and I’ve learned that there are several common stumbling blocks that challenge almost every one of them.

In this episode, I describe the four most common career challenges encountered by mid-career women in tech on their way to the executive levels and simple but effective ways to turn them around to your advantage.  These challenges are well documented in behavioral research by people like Adam Grant, Daniel Pink and others.  I have tested ways to overcome them through my own career and through the experience of dozens of women in our programs.  

The traps are surprising and the ways of avoiding them have to do with simple mental adjustments and hacks that really work to set you on a strong track to climb your career mountain.  

This is the first of a series of market updates with select partners who have their pulse on the market for tech executives. 

Today's market update comes to you from Andrew Abramson, the Partner in charge of the Product practice at Riviera Partners, an executive search firm in Silicon Valley.  Riviera has been responsible for filling CPO and other Product leadership roles at companies like Uber, Airbnb, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash, Credit Karma, Reddit, Udemy, Thumbtack, Masterclass, Eventbrite, Stripe, Atlassian, Dropbox, Upwork, Zendesk, GitHub, Asana, Twilio, Okta, Snowflake, PagerDuty and others. 

In this excerpt from a client-only live call, Andrew covers the following:

4:40 - What are the current major trends in the recruiting space for Product leaders

8:10 - What are companies flexible on when they evaluate less experienced Product managers

10:58 - Expectations a candidate should have to succeed in the current marketplace

13:24 - How to recognize red flags with startup founders and investors as a candidate

15:35 - Tension between wants and needs of founders and their product companies

17:42 - Tips for positioning one’s self in early stage startups

20:46 - Key experience that candidates should focus on to become a desirable candidate for a Product leadership role

Members of our executive development coaching programs have access to the full call content, including the live Q&A section.  To learn more about our programs and to get a jumpstart on your career climb to VP, join our next free Product VP Challenge here: www.productvpchallenge.com. The next one is coming up in September 2021!

Today I interview Yvonne Markgraf Stoehr, a creative Director of Product with deep experience in film making and film production.  She demonstrates how you can extract the strengths of your creative and “nonstandard” background to make you a strong and uniquely skilled executive in technology.  

Yvonne’s design sense includes understanding how to connect the dots and being genuinely curious about different people and their talents.  This skill led her to identify a little-known band called Nirvana in the early 1990s for one of her first film projects and also led her to an Emmy-award winning project.  Later Yvonne used the same creative and personal skills to navigate complex products and large teams in different tech companies like Microsoft.  

In the interview we explore the early vulnerable side of Kurt Cobain that Yvonne saw before Nirvana got famous and we talk about the importance of fueling one’s creativity.  Yvonne stays close to her roots through rock and roll portrait photography and playing the drums in her family band.  Unsurprisingly, Yvonne’s Board of Directors small group of four female tech executives in our Executive Development Program bears the name “Nirvana”. 

Connect with Yvonne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonnelevaymarkgraf/
Check out the first film recorded interview of Nirvana which Yvonne produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__8UDylv7WU

Are you a star or are you a star-maker? 
What does hydroponic gardening, fermenting jalapeno peppers and organizing half-birthday parties have to do with your career success?  

Today's guest - Rosa Welton, Director of Product Management at ServiceNow and a member of our Executive Development Program - will share with you the secrets to her success in tech and Product Management.  Rosa's journey took her from her humble beginnings helping her family with their Spanish music cassette store to leading large teams and products, speaking on the Women In Product stage and emerging as one of the Latinx role models for women in tech.  

To connect with Rosa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwelton/
To sign up for the next Product VP Challenge that Rosa did with us: www.productvpchallenge.com

In this weeks episode I cover the three important steps to take when confronted with a bully in your workplace:

1.  How to identify a bully at work (it's a lot tricker than you think and you may be tempted to blame it all on yourself)
2. The 3-step strategy to dealing with and most importantly, neutralizing, a bully.
3. The key skill you'll need to master as a Product leader to effectively deal with bullies as you climb the ranks.

I'm coming off the heels of a major scaling push inside our business and my next priority is to make my podcast and blog schedule reliable and predictable.  So, very soon, expect to see a lot more (and a lot more regular) content from me and my guests on the "Female Tech Exec" podcast, so that YOU can get up to date and relevant guidance in climbing your career peak!

Don't forget to subscribe, like or comment - I'd love to hear what your thoughts on the topic!

In this episode of "The Female Tech Exec", I talk about human skills or most commonly referred to as soft skills and how it is oftentimes overlooked and undervalued. There is a key reason why you should pay attention to this skill and look into to developing it further.

And here is the link to Simon Sinek’s talk: https://youtu.be/o9uzJ0LgvT0

Tune into today's episode to learn the 3 critical sets of skills in order to master the "executive test" and become an executive in tech. They relate directly to the 5 keys of the Career CLIMB™ framework and they will surprise you!

In this Episode of the “Female Tech Exec”, I reveal a simple but powerful clue from mountain climbing that’s relevant if you truly want to climb to the top of your career as a female in tech.

If you're a mid-career female product professional in tech, sign up for the next free Product VP Challenge here: www.productvpchallenge.com. We start Feb 8th!

With the New Year, it's time for New Year's Resolutions. Only, the stats are stacked against you.  Depending on the study you read, you'll find that 80-90% of New Year's resolutions don't even make it to February.   

So, the question is not why your New Year's Resolution is destined to fail (it's not).  The real question is how to ensure your New Year's resolution lasts not only until February, but delivers results at the end of the year as well.  And that's what we discuss in today's episode.

In this Holiday podcast episode, I explore the spirit of generosity and kindness and offer controversial advice to female product executives - stop being nice. I break down for you the HUGE costs of being nice for your career and your life and coach you how to avoid falling into that trap.