[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]San Diego, CA, April 3, 2019. The Women in Technology Network San Diego hosted a golfing event for their members to help them brush up on their golfing skills. They spent the afternoon working on their swing and testing their newly gained skills in a putting and virtual Closest-to-the-Pin Contest at GOLFTEC San Diego.
Jennifer Benedict, Enterprise Account Executive at Managed Solution and Co-Chair of the WIT Network San Diego, said: “We organized this event because business happens on the golf course and women are often left out. That’s why we wanted our members to work on their golfing skills, so they can feel empowered and be a part of the game.”
Suzanne LaTour, President and Owner of the GOLFTECfranchise for the San Diego Region, who sponsored the event, encouraged women to golf and join their colleagues on the golf course no matter their experience.
There were 4 GOLFTEC PGA instructors who were helpful in analyzing swings with their video technology and helped to adjust posture, foot placement, and overall swings. They graciously had a lot of patience with the beginners and even helped some more experienced golfers to perfect and get the most of their swing. Most of all, it was a fun afternoon filled with networking, gaining new golfing skills, and meeting new members so that next time women in tech are invited to a golf game, they’ll gladly accept the invitation.
The Women in Technology Network is a community of professionals across the world that believe in making it easier for women to imagine, begin, and develop a career in IT. There are over 80 chapters in over 40 countries that provide a vast and varied network of events, contacts, and opportunities. The San Diego Chapter is co-chaired by Tina Rountree, Director of Sales at Managed Solution and Jennifer Benedict, Enterprise Account Executive at Managed Solution.[/vc_column_text][grve_gallery ids="31123,31120,31121,31122,31124,31125,31126,31127" hide_image_title="yes" hide_image_caption="yes" image_popup_size="large"][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft, discusses what it's like to be a woman in technology and how she's made a successful career being an IT executive.
WOMEN IN TECH SPOTLIGHT
Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, One Commercial Partner
MICROSOFT
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As a Corporate Vice President in the One Commercial Partner team, Gavriella Schuster is responsible for global partner channel management and programs, with a focus on driving digital transformation for partners and customers. Gavriella’s team is responsible for the high-touch experiences of Managed Service Providers, Hosters, Resellers, Distributors and National/Local SIs. She is also responsible for connecting, enabling, investing in, and rewarding partners through high-touch and low-touch programmatic experiences. She has extensive experience in sales, marketing, product management, and partner development with a strong track record of managing customers, partners, and teams. Over the last 20 years at Microsoft she has managed sales and marketing teams across the Server and Cloud business, the Windows Client Commercial business, Enterprise Services, licensing sales and marketing, field business development, training initiative development, segment marketing, worldwide partner marketing and training strategies and worldwide operations.
AS A PSYCHOLOGY MAJOR, HOW DID YOU END UP IN THE TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY?
When I initially started school, I went into the college of engineering for genetic engineering. I chose the University of Michigan because it was one of the few schools offering that track back then. As I started my junior year, I got a call from my dad saying he had just lost his job. They laid him off after twenty-seven years and that was a huge turning point in my life, a lot of things changed from that moment going forward. What I saw happen to my dad after that had even more of an impact on me. He had really lost himself, it hurt his ego because he really defined himself through his job, which I didn’t realize until he lost his job. Watching him go through that made me think about what I really wanted to do, especially because his profession was very specialized and a similar career path I was pursuing. I remember thinking, if an organization could dismiss you after twenty-seven years, what you really need to do throughout your career and in your life, is to create as much equity and value in yourself as possible. You truly need to value the work you are producing as much as the organization is valuing from your efforts.
I then made the bold decision to change majors, because when I looked into what a genetic engineering degree would get me, it was a very specialized career just like my dad’s. So I thought that would be a bad idea. I went to the career counseling office and asked them for guidance selecting another major, after focusing for three years on genetic engineering. They advised me to switch to psychology. It was more general and seemed like it could open more doors for me than genetic engineering. The career counseling office was amazing. When it was time to graduate I told them I didn't have money for graduate school at the time and that I needed a job right after graduation. I asked them what kind of jobs I could do with my degree and they put me through a series of tests that suggested a management position, saying, “You are a prime candidate for a great manager.” But what is a twenty-one-year-old supposed to do with that? I didn't have any experience in management, so I just started applying for any job that had a management training program. One of them was Cigna Health Insurance. They have the most practical training program that teaches you how to be a great people leader. So for four years, That’s what I did. I went from managing a team of twenty to managing a day and a night shift of six hundred people. I learned a ton about people: their motivations, how to manage them, how to work through issues, and who I should be as a leader. Then I decided to move to Seattle with my boyfriend and started looking for other opportunities. Tech was already starting to be big even in the 1990's. So I started working for a company called Aldus, which was eventually bought by Adobe. That's how I got into technology. The only "in" I really had was managing people, operations, and support teams so I went in managing customer support and operations teams. After four years with Adobe, I moved to Microsoft.
HOW HAVE YOU MANAGED YOUR CAREER MOVEMENT WITHIN MICROSOFT DURING YOUR 20+ YEAR CAREER?
My objective, because of my experience with my dad, was to learn as much about all the facets of running a company as I could. That way, at any point in time, if I decided I wanted to do something else or if the company decided I didn't belong there anymore, I could walk out the door. I would still feel great that I had a lot of skills that I could apply in a lot of different fields. My primary objective has been to never become a subject matter expert. That’s opposite of what a lot of people have done. In my past jobs, whenever I had found myself in a position where everyone was looking to me for answers, I always thought to myself, "Oh, I guess it's time for me to take another job!” As a result, I've crossed over into six different disciplines at Microsoft. One of the great things about the company is that it’s not hard to do that. When you have a core set of skills, the company is willing to take a risk and let you move into an area completely different than what you've done before, as long as you're willing to take that risk yourself. I started in Operations, moved into Customer Marketing then did some Partner Marketing, and competitive recruit campaigns. From there I moved into Enterprise Services and helped our enterprise consultants repackage their IP and their engagement. We developed a business model where we repackaged that IP and created some solution accelerators. I created readiness programs for both our consultants as well as our partners, and eventually moved into our US subsidiary, where I learned about our sales teams and took on a role for licensing sales and marketing. This was a pivotal moment in our history where we were moving from consumer-packaged licensing into enterprise licensing. We built-out our licensing specialist channels and our large account resellers. With that, I helped define the software assurance value propositions and our enterprise agreement structure for about five years.
After that I asked myself, “What’s next? What haven’t I learned?” I ended up moving into the business group because I hadn't learned how to build a product. I hadn't learned engineering. I jumped into product management to figure out the value of the Windows client in the enterprise agreement, which was a big conundrum back then in the early 2000's. I created the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. I enabled several acquisitions with Microsoft and brought them together into this suite of products that complimented what the Windows client was and how it worked with Windows Server and System Center. I was promoted to run all of our Windows clients in the commercial product management team. I led the team through the development and successful adoption of Windows 7. Four years later, when we were going to release Windows 8, I recognized it wasn’t going to be a highly adopted enterprise product. The next three years were not going to be a very exciting three years for me professionally. So I decided to take a job back in the US subsidiary running our Cloud and Enterprise business. Azure at the time was a very small incubation product with ten million dollars in sales, so we needed to figure out how we were going to expand that growth. I took over the P&L business with Window Server, Systems Center, SQL, and this little Azure product to figure out how we could fill an ecosystem and drive marketing campaigns, awareness, and direct business while reconditioning our sales teams to think about services. I did that for another few years and then an old manager of mine came back onto the partner team, reached out and said, “Hey, we need to reboot the ecosystem.” He was right. I also saw this as a huge need when I was doing the same for our Cloud and Enterprise business. So I told him I was happy to come over and figure out how we could create an ecosystem that goes around our new business rather than our old business. My whole career has been focused on start-up projects; things we needed to do at Microsoft, where we saw a need but didn't really know how to solve it. Someone needed to come over and take risks to tackle these problems. That’s what I love to do, I love to take on new challenges and just figure it out.
WHAT CAREER OPPORTUNITIES DO YOU SEE FOR WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY THAT ARE NOT STEM ORIENTED?
There are so many. The thing is, sometimes people don’t see the opportunities because they think you have to be able to code and build a product. But there are so many tech jobs around running a business where what you're selling and what you're building is the technology. Looking at the world ahead, I don’t think there will be a business that doesn't involve technology. Today, I'm working with farmers and IoT devices that allow them to farm better. It’s weird to think farming is moving towards technology. But the industry can’t afford not to. Across industries, business leaders are re-thinking the business model of the business. How do you think about the brand? How do you think about marketing it? How do you think about selling it? Who are your customers? How do you create great customer experiences? How do you create scale mechanisms to reach your customers in your market (which is where partners come in)? How do you run finance around that? How do you make sure the people you're hiring are growing and hiring other great people? People management, leadership, HR systems; these are all questions you need to answer to successfully run an organization. And they’re all tech jobs. I think we can do a better job helping our young people understand these jobs are everywhere. I had a student from the University of Michigan job shadow me one time. She said she learned so much in that short amount of time that it helped her define her career goals. I believe in mentorship programs and job shadow programs to help students understand that these jobs are available and to help them dream of these careers.
WITH THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CONTINUING TO EVOLVE, HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN A WORK/LIFE BALANCE?
There's a lot of things I learned while working part-time for three and a half years while my kids were toddlers. First, you don't have to go part time and give up twenty-five percent of your salary just to have a decent balance. Second, it's all about setting boundaries and knowing what you're willing to do and what is non-negotiable for you. Be very clear with people to set the right expectations. I think there's a lot of fear around doing that. But what I found is that the clearer you are about setting those boundaries, the more respect and credibility you earn from your colleagues. I also think you're much more productive when you have those personal deadlines. When you give yourself more time, things take more time. Third, I’ve learned that 100% doesn't always exist. You can't always expect to achieve 100%. For most things, when you get to 80% that’s usually good enough. The other 20% isn’t always worth it.
WHO HAVE BEEN YOUR MOST INFLUENTIAL ROLE MODELS, MALE OR FEMALE AND WHY?
My very first manager at Cigna was a key role model for me. She was a nurse who had come into this office position because they needed people who could look at the claims and actually perform medical evaluations on medical necessity. It was amazing to me that she was a nurse and was also running the claims office. On top of that, she was a single mom and one of the most patient people I had ever met. She had high expectations and could give you hard feedback. But you’d still be smiling at the end of the conversation. She had a growth mindset and was very empowering. I learned a lot about how to be a good coach, and what real leadership meant. She showed me honesty and transparency was very important. I’ve kept in touch with her throughout my career and have had multiple meetings with her. She continues to mentor me. Another key role model for me has been my friend Erin, who is a very strong leader at Microsoft. She's on the engineering side and helps me form a good, balanced view of both life and the business, which helps me understand where people are coming from. From a career standpoint, it’s really nice having someone close, but far enough away to be able to coach you through difficult situations.
ARE THERE ANY BOOKS, PODCASTS OR OTHER EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS YOU WOULD RECOMMEND TO YOUNG WOMEN?
One of my absolute favorites is Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly. It’s about stepping out, taking risks, being vulnerable, and doing your best everyday. She's pretty remarkable and I love her message; you don't have to be someone different or do things differently. You can be the best version of you and do what you do best. It's a really inspirational book.
Another favorite is Win Forever: Live, Work, and Play Like a Champion by Pete Carol, the coach of the Seattle Seahawks. He has a whole course on “winning forever” that I was lucky enough to participate in through Microsoft. He ran us through the importance of positive thinking and positive coaching, expecting the best of yourself, giving yourself grace for your mistakes, and just going out and doing better every day. One of my key takeaways was this: at the end of the day, make an internal highlight reel, similar to reviewing the plays that worked in the game. I used to do a lowlight reel. On my way home, I would think of all the things I didn't get through in the day, or all the conversations that didn't go right; all the things I could have done better. I learned that’s just not helpful. All it did was reinforce the negatives. What you need to do is build a highlight reel and think about all the things that did go well and learn from the things that maybe didn't go the way you’d hoped. Then you can think about how your day can be structured tomorrow to do even better.
Another book I love is called Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It’s awesome. It’s all about work-life balance and focusing on the things that matter, while letting go of the noise and not letting yourself get distracted by the unimportant things.
We also have Jae Allerd who leads a company called Simple Intentions come and lead mindfulness sessions for my team.
AS SOMEONE WHO HAS CARVED OUT A SUCCESSFUL CAREER PATH AS A FEMALE EXECUTIVE, ARE YOU CURRENTLY MENTORING OTHERS, IF SO WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS YOU ARE DOING?
Mentoring others is extremely important to me. It inspires me and gives me energy. Another great thing that I learned from Pete Carol's course is to develop a personal statement, and know who you are. You should be able to describe your personal philosophy on life in twenty-five words or less. When I challenged myself to do that, I found that coaching, mentoring, and helping people helps me learn and grow and gives me a lot of energy. When people ask me to coffee or ask to shadow me, I always say yes. There are three reasons: I love doing it. It expands my network. And I always learn something new. Probably thirty percent of the time, I continue connecting with them month after month or year after year. I see such great changes and growth in these people. It’s as rewarding as watching your own children grow. I love feeling like I've been a part of their growth.
Another way I try to help others is through women mentoring groups I’ve launched to help empower women to make sure they have a seat at the table and can contribute in meaningful ways. We are also very involved in Women In Technology (WIT) and helping the partner community increase their diversity and help women grow in their careers.
WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT ON THE HORIZON AT MICROSOFT THIS YEAR?
We have a lot of simplification underway both for our partners and for our customers. I have seen Microsoft do a lot of new things each year, before cleaning other things up, which can pile up each year and create a lot of complexity. I’m really excited about our current approach. We're making an active effort to hit “file new” on a bunch of backend systems and tools, assets, and catalogs. That will simplify things and get rid of the extra noise. I think that will make an enormous difference. We're taking a much stronger “One Microsoft” approach. Satya Nadella has made a huge difference in the organization. When we went through the challenges with the Department of Justice (DOJ), it really divided the organization by necessity. It’s taken a long time, but we needed to bring it all back together. Satya has been the driving force in making that happen, so we can function and think as one organization. I'm really excited about the new collaboration and connectedness we are delivering throughout the organization. Along with new customer focus, that collaboration enables us to create new end-to-end partner experiences and end-to-end customer experiences.
Something else I’m very engaged in is the work that Kurt DelBene is doing for the company. He’s working on our own digital transformation and relooking at the way we do everything; the way we support ourselves. We're creating a new north star about how things could and should be done, bringing digital together for the company. We were the epitome of distributed computing. We took that to the extreme within Microsoft and everything was built on their own system and everyone had built their own thing. But this work is bringing everything back together so we can simplify and eliminate the noise. Our main focus is to create connected experiences and I’m very excited about it.
About Managed Solution
We're technology enthusiasts with a people-first approach. For over two decades, we've witnessed the profound impact that the right technology and support can have on businesses and individuals. Success, to us, is seeing our clients, partners, and team conquer challenges to achieve their greatest goals and build lasting connections. This relentless pursuit of inspiration drives us forward, pushing us to deliver innovative solutions that empower growth and lasting success.
Trailblazers show girls the world of science and tech is cool – and needs them
By Deborah Bach as written on new.microsoft.com
One day in her senior year of high school, Cristina Mittermeier sat on the floor with her classmates listening to a man talk about career opportunities in marine sciences while she looked up, transfixed, at the otherworldly images he showed on a screen.
Mittermeier knew right then that she wanted a career focused on the ocean. But her hometown of Cuernavaca, in central Mexico, was nowhere near the water, and there were no female scientists around who could offer her guidance. Mittermeier’s father wanted her to be an accountant, like him. Her grandmother wanted her to find a husband. Her mother, a psychologist, told her she should follow her dream.
Mittermeier couldn’t have imagined that three decades later, she’d be standing before a room of girls at the Microsoft store in Bellevue, Washington, encouraging them to consider a future in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.
Girls need to know that there are a lot of women who have blazed a trail for them, and we are just waiting to see what they can do.
“When I look at this room, I recognize myself as a young girl,” she said to the standing-room-only crowd of more than 50 girls. “Growing up in Mexico, we didn’t have a lot of opportunities. It was so hard for me to imagine doing all these things.”
Cristina Mittermeier tells the young audience about her work as a National Geographic photographer as her partner, Paul Nicklen, looks on.
Mittermeier and her partner, Paul Nicklen, were at the store for Microsoft’s #MakeWhatsNext workshop, part of a broader campaign aimed at engaging young girls in STEM. As part of the #MakeWhatsNext campaign, Microsoft’s Global Ads team initiated a partnership with National Geographic for the March 18 event, one of six at Microsoft stores around the U.S. featuring women working in STEM fields — from a bioinformatics CEO to an astrophysicist and a young volcanologist in training. The event included a Facebook livestream with Jennifer Adler, a marine biologist and National Geographic Young Explorer, and presentations from the speakers, followed by an hour of codinginstruction.
Mittermeier and Nicklen are renowned National Geographic photographers and conservationists who have traveled to more than 100 countries and worked in some of the remotest corners of the planet. They are also the co-founders of SeaLegacy, a Canada-based organization launched in 2015 that aims to combine the pair’s award-winning images with storytelling to raise awareness about climate change and protect marine ecosystems around the world. They told the audience at the workshop that the planet needs the contributions women in STEM can offer.
“We need great scientists out there like yourselves understanding oceans,” Nicklen said. “Half of the air we breathe comes from oceans.”
Our whole society loses out when a significant proportion of the world’s brainpower is not engaged in creating those solutions.
With the pair’s stunning color images as a backdrop, Mittermeier detailed her circuitous career path. Afraid to leave home after high school, she enrolled at a university in her hometown and studied communications for a year. She was getting straight A’s but wasn’t feeling challenged. So Mittermeier swallowed her fear and made the decision to move away and study science.
Because there was no major in marine biology available at the time in Mexico, Mittermeier got a degree in biochemical engineering. Her studies exposed her to industrial fishing and commercial food production, which cemented her passion for conservation.
“I did a 180 as soon as I left university,” she said.
Mittermeier hoped to become a scientist and get a Ph.D., but she married soon after finishing university and had three children. Her husband at the time was a scientist and anthropologist who studied tribal communities, and Mittermeier borrowed his camera and starting taking photos in the field. Her work caught the attention of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which asked to include some of her images in an exhibition on Amazonian tribes. Mittermeier has now edited 24 photographic books and been named among the World’s Top 40 Most Influential Outdoor Photographers by Outdoor magazine.
Cristina Mittermeier
“When I was starting my career, so many people said to me, ‘Don’t do that. Why don’t you become this or this instead?’” she said. “I’m so glad I persevered.”
Mittermeier is a role model for girls considering a career in STEM, but research points to a dearth of women like her as a primary reason more girls don’t enter those fields. Little early exposure to STEM subjects, lack of confidence in their own abilities and a masculine culture that discourages girls are also cited as factors. Just 6.7 percent of female college students in the U.S. graduate with STEM degrees, according to BestColleges.com, and women currently hold fewer than 25 percent of STEM jobs in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Microsoft has launched several initiatives aimed at reducing that gender gap. The company partners with nonprofits such as Girls Who Code and Code.org to provide computer science classes and coding workshops, and Microsoft’s DigiGirlz initiative connects high school girls with Microsoft employees and other industry leaders through various events. Microsoft also works with policymakers to ensure that students have access to computer science classes.
Corporate Vice President Mary Snapp is the head of Microsoft Philanthropies, which launched in 2015 with a focus on providing technology to young people, particularly girls and underserved populations. Women’s representation in STEM is critical for reasons beyond equity, Snapp says.
“We need everyone to help to solve the big challenges our economies and our societies are facing,” she says. “Our whole society loses out when a significant proportion of the world’s brainpower is not engaged in creating those solutions. We want to encourage girls to stay in STEM so they can solve the problems they care about most, from finding solutions to climate change to curing cancer and beyond.”
Constance Adams knows firsthand how powerful the influences discouraging girls from STEM can be. Adams, who was the featured speaker at the March 18 workshop in Troy, Michigan, is a space architect and National Geographic Emerging Explorer who has designed habitations for Mars and helped design several space shuttles.
Constance Adams talks to girls at the #MakeWhatsNext workshop in Michigan.
About a decade ago, Adams was passing a gift shop at the Johnson Space Center in Houston shortly before Halloween and noticed a child-sized replica of the distinctive orange launch entry suits worn by space shuttle crews. Delighted, she picked up one for her young daughter. Adams had been raising her as a single mother, taking her on work trips around the world, and the little girl was familiar with Adams’ work.
So Adams was shocked when, after presenting her daughter with the suit, she burst into tears.
“She said, ‘I can’t wear that — that’s for a boy,’” Adams recalls. “I was absolutely floored. If that child, growing up attached to my hip, had absorbed that narrative that astronauts weren’t women, wow. Somehow the girls really are not getting the picture that they have these options.”
Adams promptly arranged to bring her daughter to lunch with her friend Pamela Melroy, then a NASA astronaut. Adams’ daughter came away with an autographed photo and a new perspective on who could be an astronaut, but the experience stuck with Adams.
“I became much more conscious about doubling down on promoting STEM for women,” she says.
Despite the factors working against girls’ interest in STEM, Snapp believes the gender gap can and will be overcome.
“We’re already seeing some positive change. There is growing interest in computer science programs, for example, at the university level — in fact, some university science programs are having trouble keeping up with demand,” she says.
“And that growing interest, according to the universities we’re hearing from, is also coming from women. That’s one of the many reasons that I’m optimistic about the future for women in STEM.”
Back at the Bellevue workshop earlier this month, girls gathered at tables after the presentation and got to work on a coding exercise. Shilpa Asrani watched as her 7-year-old daughter, Trishaa Khanna, and two other girls huddled around a computer. Asrani said Trishaa was exposed to coding through her older brother and has a natural interest in science, but she thinks popular culture must do a better job of signaling to girls that they belong in STEM fields.
“I think the media needs to focus more on girls,” she said. “That’s what needs to happen.”
Trishaa said she liked hearing Mittermeier and Nicklen talk about wild animals and their environments because she hopes to become a veterinarian and work in a zoo.
“That’s my dream job. I want to be a vet, a zoo helper who takes care of the new baby animals who are born,” she said.
Kyra Mohr, 10, was intrigued by the chance to do some coding, which she considers fun. She hasn’t decided what she wants to do for a career yet, but thinks it will involve technology and space.
“I like space, planets and how humans have evolved to know how to go into space,” she said.
For Mittermeier, the workshop was an opportunity to provide the encouragement she wishes she’d had as a young girl.
“If I had imagined myself in these roles, it probably wouldn’t have taken me this long to get where I am,” she said. “Girls need to know that there are a lot of women who have blazed a trail for them, and we are just waiting to see what they can do.”
Men have long dominated the technology industry, but the growing number of women entrepreneurs and business leaders can't be ignored. The most notable recent example is Marissa Mayer, Google's first female engineer who was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo Inc.
Here's a look at other women who may not be as well known as Mayer but are making their mark in the tech industry, as well as their inspiring words for other business owners:
Staying ahead of competitors
Sometimes when you come up with a creative new solution to a nagging problem, competitors quickly follow your lead and eat up your market share. That's what happened after Leah Busque founded TaskRabbit in 2008, an online marketplace where users post a task they need completed and it is assigned to the “TaskRabbit” who makes the lowest bid.
A former software engineer at IBM, Busque keeps her company agile by making frequent product changes, seeking out expert advisors and nurturing company culture. Since May 2011, TaskRabbit has tripled its net revenue and the number of tasks posted per month. It has also increased its user base sevenfold, while its staff has grown from seven a year ago to nearly 50 today.
Busque expects more marketplace expansion in 2012, as she works to fulfill her vision to "revolutionize the world's labor force."
Believing in your passion
In 1998, after a happy-hour revelation that tech outsourcing was the wave of the future, Cassandra Sanford and two partners decided to start an IT personnel company. What evolved out of $10,000 and some computer equipment was St. Louis-based KellyMitchell Group. Previously, Sanford had studied corporate law at St. Louis University and spent a few years as a technical staffing specialist at Boeing.
In 2004, Sanford’s goal was to generate revenue of $25 million within five years. By 2008, the company had already hit $39 million and went on to surpass $50 million in 2011.
In addition to running KellyMitchell, Sanford returned this year as chair of the Women’s Leadership Society giving initiative of United Way of Greater St. Louis. In 2011, she helped the organization raise more than $6 million. Next up: becoming a "$100 million company with 1,000 employees."
Taking the entrepreneurial leap
Canadian native Michelle Zatlyn is best known for starting San Francisco-based CloudFlare, which taps into companies’ need for fast, secure websites. The service had its beginnings at Harvard Business School, where Zatlyn was asked by co-founder Matthew Prince to join the project. After graduation, she and her two co-founders moved to California and launched CloudFlare in 2010.
CloudFlare accelerates and secures websites much like a content delivery network, but it’s easier to set up and configure. CloudFlare now delivers 65 billion web pages per month -- more than Amazon, Wikipedia, Twitter, Zynga, AOL, Apple, Bing, eBay, PayPal and Instagram combined.
Hiring the best employees
Susan Feldman and Alison Pincus's One Kings Lane is a members-only site offering high-end home and lifestyle items, with unique finds and Pinterest-worthy photos. Before launching in 2009, Feldman learned the ropes of the fashion industry while serving as vice president of sales at Polo Jeans and president of sales for Ralph Lauren Sleepwear. Pincus’s previous experience was at Walt Disney, NBC and publisher Hachette Filipacchi in marketing, business development and digital media.
While competitors such as Fab.com and Gilt Groupe have also moved into the discount décor space, Feldman and Pincus don’t foresee introducing full-priced items or expanding into new product areas. One Kings Lane has two million registered users, and generated more than $100 million in revenue in 2011.
Being a great leader
An acronym for "reliable open systems engineering," Chesterfield, Mo.-based Rose International is an IT company focusing on contingent workforce services. After beginning her career as an architect in India, founder Himanshu Bhatia, now 49, moved to the U.S. in 1987, shifted to technology and earned a master's degree in management information systems.
Bhatia’s time spent managing contractors at an aerospace manufacturing company opened her eyes to the need for improvements in boosting system quality, making pricing more competitive and creating a more nimble IT staffing model. Her response to those issues was the launch of Rose International in 1993.
In 2006, revenue reached $61 million, and it increased to $360 million in 2011. This year, Bhatia’s company was named among the top technology integrators in North America.
Leveling the playing field
What's the key to making an online video go viral? British entrepreneur Sarah Wood has the answer. In 2006, she co-founded Unruly Media, one of the companies at the forefront of online video marketing. The company acts as a technology platform for social video campaigns including Old Spice's wildly popular "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" video (more than 42 million views on YouTube) as well as Evian's lovable Roller Babies video (more than 58 million views).
Serving as COO, Wood has been instrumental in fueling the company's growth and developing its technology platform, the "Media Engagement and Measurement Engine," which Unruly says has delivered and tracked 1.65 billion video views. In 2011, Wood was named U.K. Female Entrepreneur of the Year.
Blazing your own trail
With a passion for vintage apparel and décor, Susan Gregg Koger co-founded ModCloth in 2002 from her dorm room at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The business turned a profit in 2006 with $90,000 in revenue, which skyrocketed to more than $15 million in 2009. Gregg Koger uses "social commerce” to involve potential customers in her site even if they aren’t actually buying. For example, the "Be the Buyer" program allows people to choose which styles go into production.
As the demand for vintage merchandise has grown, so has the ModCloth team, which now totals nearly 300. The success hasn't changed Gregg Koger, though. She continues to expand her inventory by traveling near and far in search of distinctive pieces for her company and her closet.
Motivating yourself
Think of Rebecca Woodcock's Cake Health -- chock full of free web and mobile tools -- as the Mint.com of wellness.
Inspired by a friend's struggle with managing health-care expenses, Woodcock launched the San Francisco-based company in 2010. She began her career in corporate technology, running product development and market strategy research for companies such as Intel, Google and LG. That experience equipped her with the know-how to make both Cake Health’s site and mobile app easy-to-navigate tools for health-care expense management.
Woodcock created Cake Health while attending a training program called the Founder Institute. Her brainchild was named the "most disruptive" startup in her 2011 graduating class.
Embracing change
If OpenTable is the standard for reservations, Fullerton, Calif.-based Starbates hopes to become the standard for customer loyalty. Serial entrepreneur Jean Chong launched Starbates in 2012, a smartphone app that patrons can download and use to scan QR codes posted in participating restaurants and unlock deals. In return, restaurant owners get information about customers and can send them customized offers.
Chong was chief executive of couponing site StretchE.com before launching her first startup, Premier Food Safety, a provider of food safety training. While Starbates isn't the first restaurant loyalty service on the market, Chong aims to change the game by providing more metrics and by not requiring a credit card to be linked to customer profiles.
Being flexible
In 2005, MissOandFriends.com became 16-year-old Juliette Brindak's method of promoting interaction and self-esteem among "tween" girls. When her sketches of “Miss O” -- created to entertain her sister, Olivia -- were a hit among family and friends, Brindak’s parents helped her think about how to create a business out of content by girls and for girls.
Fast forward to 2011, when MissOandFriends.com was rated the No. 3 “girls only” website worldwide by Alexa data. Brindak, now 22, says hiring staff has been one of her greatest challenges as a young entrepreneur. But with experience, she’s better able to read people and has gained the confidence to stand up to investors and partners.
This year, Brindak launched MissOMoms.com, a site connecting women who have daughters. Brindak says the two sites together pull in more than 3 million unique visitors a month.
Don't Tell This Robotics Team That STEM Is For Boys
At the Javits Center in Manhattan last Saturday, hundreds of teenagers milled about in sneakers and safety goggles, tinkering with the robots they had brought to the FIRST Robotics Competition New York City Regional. Requests for parts (dowel rods, PVC pipe) boomed out over the PA system. Parents lingered near each team’s staging area, sporting their children’s team colors.
Robotics competitions this large haven’t been a standard part of high school for very long. The ability of so many schools to support teams that build semi-autonomous machines–or find enough kids to even build a team–is a fairly new phenomenon. One thing about the competition will be familiar to anyone who participated in a particularly nerdy hobby in high school: It was very dude-heavy.
But the team FORBES had come to see was busting that trend: The Fe Maidens–pronounced “Iron Maidens”–is one of two robotics teams from the Bronx High School of Science, a magnet school in New York City. It’s made up of 42 girls. The only male members of the team are coaches and mentors. (The high school’s other team is coed, and it’s neck-and-neck with the Fe Maidens when it comes to competitive wins.)
“It wasn’t until I came here that I realized that STEM fields are more than just a career,” says team captain Violet Killy. “I thought you could just start them after college, or during college, and I’d have to wait to get my hands dirty. And then I saw kids driving robots at Bronx Science, and I was like, ‘I want to do that.’”
The team was founded in late 2006, expressly to encourage girls to get into STEM and break down the gender stereotypes that are, nearly a decade later, still rampant in technical fields. Even the students who make up the Fe Maidens regularly hear people saying they’re pretty good at this–for girls. “We’re trying to get girls to realize that this is something they can do, this is what’s out there, it’s available to them, it’s fun,” says Killy.
And the name? The team’s first captain was a fan of the band Iron Maiden. “We’re a group of girls, we’re tough as iron, we’re building what the guys are building,” explains the team’s PR chief, Luz Jimenez. “So we just went with it.”
At the competition, the team was tinkering with its robot for the first time in several weeks. Per competition rules, each team gets six weeks to build its robot (they start with a basic kit of parts provided by FIRST, the STEM education nonprofit that sponsors the competition, but can add parts as needed). The robot must then go into a bag until competition day.
At the competition itself, teams compete in two-and-a-half-minute rounds of a game that changes every year. This year the theme was castles. Students compete in two three-team “alliances,” each defending a castle at one end of the playing field. Among other things, robots were tasked with operating autonomously for the first 15 seconds of each round, clearing certain barriers on the playing field and scoring goals by sending balls through holes in the opposing alliance’s castle.
SBA Names Finalists for InnovateHER Business Challenge
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) today announced the finalists of the 2016 InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Business Challen...
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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) today announced the finalists of the 2016 InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Business Challenge, a nationwide business competition to highlight innovative products and services created and launched by cutting-edge entrepreneurs.
In making the announcement, SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet said: “From precision medicine to agriculture to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, America’s entrepreneurs are transforming society and creating businesses that promise to be game changers. The incredible talent and ability of these 10 finalists is boundless and their creativity sends a message that is loud and clear: American entrepreneurs are launching and growing businesses across all fields of endeavor that will disrupt the status quo and improve lives around the world. Finding and rewarding these visionaries is the message of InnovateHER. Entrepreneurship makes anything possible.”
An executive committee of SBA officials reviewed more than 180 semi-finalist nominations and selected 10 finalists whose products and services best met the competition criteria and presented the greatest potential for success.
“I am honored to announce the finalists of the second round of the SBA’s InnovateHER Business Challenge, building on the success of our 2015 challenge where we engaged over 100 organizations and reached over 1,000 entrepreneurs across the nation,” added Contreras-Sweet.
The SBA congratulates the following finalists, who will have the opportunity to compete for the top three awards totaling $70,000 in prize money provided by Microsoft:
Dr. Agnes Scoville from Scoville & Company (Pacidose), St. Louis, Mo.: Pacidose allows mothers and caregivers to accurately dose and deliver medicine to babies through a soft pacifier nipple.
Anna Daily from Ascendant DX LLC (Melody), Springdale, Ark.: Melody is a simple and highly effective diagnostic to detect early stage breast cancer by identifying specific proteins present in tears.
Jennifer Shipp from Brilliant Inventors LLC (Knife Glider), Mission, Texas: The Knife Glider is a cutting shield that has been statistically proven to reduce the probability of being injured or cut when preparing food with a knife by more than 90 percent.
Sascha Mayer from Mamava, Inc., Burlington, Vt.: Mamava makes freestanding lactation suites and other design solutions for nursing mothers on the go.
Marissa Siebel-Siero from IntelliWheels, Inc. (Tinker), Champaign, Ill.: Tinker is the first ever 3D product configurator in the wheelchair marketplace that gives customers feedback and control.
Susan Leary Shoemaker from Undercare, Inc., Bronxsville, N.Y.: Undercare offers innovative undergarments that accommodate persons who have difficulty dressing.
Cassandra Curtis from Once Upon a Farm, San Diego, Calif.: Once Upon a Farm creates quality, eco-friendly and nutritious baby food products for children.
Dr. Pu Wang from Vibronix, Inc. (MarginPAT), West Lafayette, Ind.: MarginPAT is an intraoperative assessment of breast tumor margin using photo acoustic/ultrasound imaging system.
Dawn Dickson from Flat Out of Heels, Miami Beach, Fla.: Flat Out of Heels are a convenient way for women to relieve stiletto sore feet on the go.
Elizabeth Caven from UpCraft Club, Des Moines, Iowa: UpCraft Club is changing the way digital goods are found and sold using a patent-pending process allowing brick and mortar retailers to receive revenue from the sale of a digital good.
These 10 finalists are invited to the National InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Business Challenge during Women’s History Month in Washington, D.C., where they will pitch their products and ideas to a panel of expert judges.
The 2016 InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Business Challenge was launched in August 2015 with over 200 local competitions across the country hosted by universities, accelerators, clusters, scale-up communities, SBA’s resource partners and other local community organizations. The SBA sought to unearth products or services that will fill a need in the marketplace and have the greatest potential for commercialization.
For details on the competition, visit www.sba.gov/innovateHER. This site will be updated as more information regarding the event is made available.
Cosponsorship authorization No. 15-6050-169. SBA’s participation in this cosponsored activity is not an endorsement of the views, opinions, products, or services of any cosponsor or other person or entity. All SBA programs and services are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis. Reasonable arrangements for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance.
While the likes of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are the icons of a male dominated tech industry, women are rapidly entering both regular and high level positions. Data from the top 8 tech companies reveals a rate of growth 238% faster than men, with no sign of slowing down.
Inspired by the rising trend of women in the tech, we have aggregated the data from 30 trusted sources and looked at the most successful women in the industry and their roles as founders, leaders and venture capitalists.
Look at the most interesting facts in this infographic!
- See more at: http://www.coupofy.com/blog/infographics/the-238-percent-faster-growth-of-women-in-the-tech-industry-than-men-infographic#sthash.2UOBzwN8.dpuf
The Future of Tech: See how Women in Tech are Inspiring Great Minds
The Future of Tech: See how Women in Tech are Inspiring Great Minds held on December 10, 2015 at the Microsoft Stores in San Diego, CA and Scottsdale, AZ were both special evenings for women leaders in technology who are passionate about changing the ratio of women in tech.
Several guests brought their daughters and together we shared our knowledge and resources to help young women understand and expand their potential as future leaders in technology - from the classroom to the boardroom.
The events both featured a movie screening of Big Dream and success stories and networking opportunities for women technology professionals.
The San Diego event featured a panelist of two women leaders who spoke about the unique perspective and innate skills that women bring to traditionally male dominated positions in technology and leadership, such as communication and a desire to help everyone on their team be successful.
Alicia Fettinger, IT Director at VOXOX, and Leslie Jeffries, CIO at California Coast Credit Union, both gave some practical advice and encouragement for women looking to break into careers in technology. They also spoke about overcoming limiting beliefs that women may face and shared personal stories about how they were able to overcome those challenges.
Big Dream follows the intimate stories of seven young women who are breaking barriers and overcoming personal challenges to follow their passion in science, math, computing & engineering. From small town Iowa to the bustling streets of the Middle East, Big Dream immerses viewers in a world designed by and for the inspiring next generation of girls.
