Building Gender Equality From the Inside Out and the Outside In

As part of a Forbes ongoing series about women leaders in technology, Amy Blankson shares insights from Jayne Groll, CEO of the DevOps Institute and tech expert, as she discusses moving beyond stereotypes and assumptions if we want to attract more girls and women to technology. Instead of seeing women as less capable in tech fields and in need of special accommodations, we need to work on giving women a voice and many seats at the table; eliminating gender bias in the workplace; and truly making the field inviting, safe, and navigable for women. It's an approach that will help women, men, and workplaces in general, as more opportunities for women mean a better balance for everyone—and the opportunity to make the most of women's talents and ideas.

By Amy Blankson

This is the sixth article in the "Women Execs in Tech Series," an ongoing conversation about current challenges in the industry and best practices for increasing gender parity in the workplace.

Jayne Groll is co-founder and CEO of the DevOps Institute and has accumulated a wealth of IT credentials throughout her career. Her 25 years in senior IT management have positioned her as a sounding board for individuals hoping to delve deeper into the many issues in tech. Recently, she was asked how to recruit more girls for a robotics team. A male participant in the conversation suggested they should “make the robots pink or something?”

Despite over two decades in the tech sector, Jayne is still dumbfounded by these types of suggestion. In her mind, it’s not about making the tech industry more appealing to women by “pinkifying it,” but rather it's about making the sector a fair and safe place for women.

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Data doesn't lie: Tech firms need to hire more women to succeed

By SARAH LACY, Wired

The year 2017 put gender bias in focus again. Firms must study the numbers if they want to thrive, writes entrepreneur and author Sarah Lacy. In this extract from her new book, Lacy makes the case that hiring women isn't just the right thing to do - it makes business sense too

Silicon Valley prides itself on being a place that breaks the mold, embracing misfits, disrupting business as usual. We're so radical that we fund college dropouts who've never held down jobs before to build companies. That is pretty radical. Or it was. The first time it was done. Once it becomes the new template for the only thing you fund, you aren't disrupting anything.

The industry's top VCs have actually copped to this. During a 2008 keynote at the National Venture Capital Association, John Doerr (one of the top VCs in the history of Silicon Valley) said to Mike Moritz (another one), "If you look at [Amazon founder Jeff] Bezos, or [Netscape founder Marc] Andreessen, [Yahoo! co-founder] David Filo, the founders of Google, they all seem to be white, male nerds who've dropped out of Harvard or Stanford, and they absolutely have no social life." Doerr took it further, saying, "That correlates more with any other success factor that I've seen in the world's greatest entrepreneurs."

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Startup Accelerators Hold The Keys To Gender Equity In Tech

When I quit my job on Wall Street to launch Invibed, I heard every reason why my idea wasn't going to work. Millennials don't care about money. Really smart people have already tried to solve this problem and failed. And of course, only 3 percent of venture capital goes to female founders.

A few months ago, my co-founder and I were on a business trip when we received a call. We were one of 12 startups accepted into the NYU Steinhardt EdTech Accelerator powered by StartEd. Being accepted meant we would participate in a three-month immersive program in New York City and that we were eligible for up to $170,000 in investment, funded by Rethink Education. We had just become part of the 3 percent.

An Accelerator That Is The Exception Not The Norm

Knowing "what is," we were prepared to be the only female founders in our cohort. But walking into the first day at StartEd, we forgot ‘what is’ and were reminded of "what could be."

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Three FinTech CEOS Share Keys To Startup Success For Women Leaders

Within the first few minutes, you must establish your credibility.

That is keen advice from Krista Morgan, CEO of P2Binvestor since 2012 and co-host of “Women Who Startup” radio podcasts.

“I often just emphasize my degree, my portfolio growth and put my expertise in context,” says Morgan, whose company deals in access to lines of credit from $250,000 to $10 million.

“I walk into a room of people in finance and they don’t expect you to be a CEO of a finance company. So I overcome that bias.” She adds, “I also try to be a slightly more serious and less friendly version of myself.”

Morgan’s company, P2Binvestor (that stands for People to Business), “is a financial technology company providing large lines of credit to growing companies who are too big for small business loans but cannot yet access a traditional bank line of credit. We partner with private investors and banks to provide our clients with competitively priced, flexible, and scalable capital. We also build amazing technology that makes it easy to manage large, asset-based lines of credit,” according to the company site.

Morgan is a leader in FinTech, the growing field merging finance and technology with a startling lack of gender diversity.

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