Lean In Food for Thought的动态

This is an illuminating quick read - another example of how there is often a woman behind every successful man and or innovation! Thanks Lee Chambers and Jennifer Stojkovic for expanding our collective understanding of the true Google origin story and the formative role that Susan Wojcicki played! #Womenintech #WBW #1mWBO #WomenInnovators

“How many trailblazing women in tech can you name?” Not as many as I wish I could. I’ve come across them featured in the stories of start-ups from time-to-time, and of course read Sheryl Sandberg’s book. But it is usually through posts like these, or from speakers lists at conferences that I find them. What Susan Wojcicki accomplished was extra-ordinary, I wish I’d known more about her, sooner. Who are the extraordinary women leaders you follow today? What books have they written. Who are the women making a difference in your career today? Help me find them. For myself, for the young women I mentor. #womenintech #womenleaders

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Think about Google: who do you think of? It probably isn’t Susan Wojcicki While she was the CEO of YouTube, and passed away back in August, like so many women in tech, there’s a whole story you probably weren’t aware of. Back in 1998, working in corporate, she was advancing her career but looking for additional sources of income. So she rented out her garage to 2 young lads who were working on an internet search engine. Those two young lads were Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The search engine entity of Google was built in Susan’s garage. She noticed that they were gaining momentum, and suddenly had a decision to make. Did she carry on climbing the ladder at Intel where she was well regarded, or take a punt on the scrappy startup she had been renting a space to? Given she was four months pregnant, those close to her thought it was ludicrous to even consider it. But she did, seeing its potential. She was employee number 16 at Google, but you could easily make a case for her being the most important hire they ever made. She was pivotal in the launch and creation of AdWords, AdSense, Google Images and Google Books, and the acquisition of DoubleClick which was critical to Googles advertising dominance. In 2006, with the landscape changing, she was one of the main visionaries of how powerful video would become. She led the acquisition of YouTube and by 2012 the majority of Googles revenue came from advertising. She wasn’t just a trailblazer in tech. She was the first Google employee to take maternity leave. She took her fifth maternity leave while CEO at YouTube, setting a precedent that is still important today. When Jennifer shared Susans story online after her passing, it left me thinking. How many other amazing women in tech have stories that were never amplified but essential to holding up the very tech titans that get all the adoration and spotlight? It’s no surprise that 78% of UK students couldn’t name a single famous woman in tech. Here’s to sharing Susan’s story and legacy. And bringing more stories of trailblazing women from the shadows to the spotlight.

Tech still struggles with a lack of women joining the ranks, but if anyone has been a pivotal figure in driving better recognition, and particularly for mothers within the industry, it was Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube. The announcement of her death from lung cancer over the weekend and reading the subsequent obituaries, serves to show what a true trailblazer she was, as both a visionary business leader, but also as a culture changer, breaking down the toxic masculinity that existed in big tech. In fact, Google may not even had existed without Susan, as it was famously her garage that young Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, first set up their promising internet search engine. She had the guts to gamble her secure role at Intel Corporation and join their start-up as employee #16 and their first marketing manager. In fact, Wojcicki changed marketing for ever; firstly, as the architect of ADSENSE, Google’s advertising platform that allowed digital publishers to monetize their content through targeted ads and then as CEO of YouTube, driving video as the number one channel for content. Wojcicki was also go on to be the lead in the early development of?Google’s image search. Her real legacy as a leader was shaping Google’s parental leave policies. As their first employee to become pregnant (she eventually had five children), she demanded the need for supportive workplace policies for working parents, leading her to advocate for and help implement more comprehensive parental leave options at Google. This initiative was significant for highlighting the progressive importance of a family-friendly work environment and set a precedent for other tech companies to follow. I'm obsessed with courageous leadership and every industry has those who challenge conventional thinking to push to break new barriers, both from an innovation and human perspective. Susan Wojcicki richly deserves her place on this list and leaves an indelible print on modern business. DHR Global #courageousleadership #modernbusiness #challengethenorm

All the changes - the rollbacks - Meta and other orgs are implementing with respect to DEI policies aren’t surprising. They are disappointing, but not surprising. The question is, what do we - those who care about social justice and have been shoehorned into ‘DEI’ in the corporate space - do now? I'd love to hear what you're doing in your company - what impact you think this will have, and how you're feeling about it. Do you think the 'moment' of 2020 was a fleeting phase, or did things *actually change*? #antiracism #DEI https://lnkd.in/e7RRky9B

In this edition of the #ImpactShoutout series, we’re thrilled to present Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook and a fierce advocate for women's empowerment in business. A native of Washington, D.C., Sheryl significantly influenced the tech industry during her time at Facebook. After completing her degree at Harvard, Sheryl began her career at the World Bank, collaborating with economist Lawrence Summers. She then joined Google, where she was crucial in launching AdWords and AdSense, leading to a substantial increase in the company’s profits. In 2008, she made history by becoming Facebook’s first COO, partnering with founder Mark Zuckerberg to develop a successful advertising strategy. Sheryl demonstrates the impact one woman can have! Despite facing backlash over Facebook's handling of misinformation during the 2016 U.S. election, she remained resilient. Her commitment to empowering women shines through in her bestselling book, ‘Lean In’, inspiring many to follow their dreams and ambitions. Sheryl’s personal story also includes overcoming the unexpected loss of her husband, Dave Goldberg, which she shares in ‘Option B’, co-authored with Adam Grant. Sheryl Sandberg’s remarkable journey highlights the power of leadership and resilience, serving as a reminder that challenges can lead to incredible opportunities! #Impact #PositiveChange #Inspiration #Shoutout #Spotlight #Celebrate #Motivation #Impactful #Kindness #MakeADifference #GirlPowerTalk #Empowerment #GirlPowerStories #ImpactShoutout

Tech Could Use More Susan Wojcickis : She did it all : YouTube CEO quietly challenged Silicon Valley’s mythos of the brash male visionary As the CEO of?Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Susan Wojcicki was?no stranger to controversy. She?once said?that trying to manage a platform struggling with misinformation and vile behavior meant that “everybody is angry at you all the time.” But after learning that she had?died last week?at age 56 after a two-year battle with lung cancer, the firestorm I keep coming back to had nothing to do with the business she ran. It took place during a?period in 2015?when interviewers at tech conferences couldn’t seem to stop asking Wojcicki about her kids. The CEO had five of them, and inquiring minds wanted to know how she managed both a high-powered career as well as her family. It’s the eternal question asked of successful women: How do you do it all? The uproar that followed focused on the fact that male CEOs rarely, if ever, get probed about work-life balance, and that queries about motherhood undermine a woman’s professional accomplishments when posed in a business context. “Implicit in the question to a woman of how do you do that is, well, it’s your job to be at home taking care of kids and you obviously aren’t doing that right now because you’re at work doing something else,” Wojcicki?explained?at the time, “so who is doing what we thought was your job?” It wouldn’t be the first or last time that Wojcicki would get painted as a maternal figure despite all she had achieved in her career. I’ve written before about how powerful women in Silicon Valley are often labeled as the?adult in the room, and Wojcicki was no exception. She had been called “nonthreatening,” the “most measured person in tech,” “exceedingly normal, bordering on boring,” “less a visionary thinker than an open-minded and analytical one,” and the “mother of Google.” There’s nothing wrong with any of it — except of course within the context of Silicon Valley, where the implication was that she lacked the bravado of her male counterparts. This framing also manages to gloss over Wojcicki’s risk-taking both in her personal and professional life. She left a stable job to join Google as its 16th employee when she was pregnant with her first child and the company had yet to make a dime. And once there, she pushed for Google to gamble on massive acquisitions like DoubleClick and YouTube. The fixation on casting Wojcicki as the tech world’s normie mom has always been a superficial and convenient attempt to explain how she was different from the archetype of the successful (male) Silicon Valley tech executive. She preferred not to be in the spotlight, and she wasn’t showy. She described her management style as “supportive” — a direct contrast to the toxic tech bro culture that has come to dominate. And she was willing to talk about her family, which many successful women of the same era feared would be a career killer.

As the political landscape in US is changing dramatically, organisations like Meta and Amazon are winding down "outdated material" in regards to Inclusion and Diversity. ?? is this going to alter the DEI focus of companies around the world? probably yes, as those who are conservative will capitalise this change in favour of their arguments ?? the north star of the corporate responsibility should remain the act of respect for all ?? we should put more effort into safeguarding diversity of thought, as such political decisions derive from the fear of the individual who is different from what we used to perceive as "normal" ?? do companies or societies need quotas to survive? ?? definitely not. Such measures have the exact opposite result as we now experience #DEI #diversity #humanrights https://lnkd.in/d5mTeNs2

Do you prefer "Don't be evil" or "Do the right thing"? Google changed its motto from "Don't be evil" to "Do the right thing" in 2015. For me, I prefer the 1st one because often we don't know what's right or wrong, "Do the right thing" is activism, it asks people to do things they believe are right. For example, "men in women's sports" is right for people, but wrong for many people. So if Google coders believe transgender, they will do the right thing and promote "men in women's sports". That's wrong! Here's another example of Google's activism or "Do the right thing" agenda: when searching "Trump rally", the top stories are "Harris rally". That's election interference. But Google coders must believe they "Do the 'right' thing"