#52Women52Weeks: At the cross-section of NYC tech councils + tech meetups is Jessica Lawrence Quinn

Jessica Lawrence Quinn is the CEO of NY Tech Alliance. Formed by the merger of the NY Tech Meetup, for which she’d served as Executive Director since 2011, and the NY Tech Council, the mission of NY Tech Alliance is to represent, inspire, support, and help lead the New York technology community and ecosystem to create a better future for all. Prior to her work with NYTM, Jessica was the CEO of Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council in Southern California.

1) You started out working for nonprofits starting with Girl Scouts where you went from fundraiser to the youngest CEO of a Girl Scouts Council at that time. What did you take away from your time at the Girl Scouts that helps you run NY Tech Alliance?

There was so much that I learned during my time at Girl Scouts that informs how I run NY Tech Alliance, from all of the details about how to manage and grow a non-profit organization, to how to support and nurture a community, to how to raise money. As important as those skills are, I think what was even more important was how my time at Girl Scouts influenced my general philosophies and beliefs about the responsibility and opportunity a company has to create an environment in which employees can thrive. I believe that companies all too often diminish human potential instead of elevating it, and during my time at Girl Scouts I worked hard to shift the organization's culture to be more trust-based and wellbeing-centered. As I manage NY Tech Alliance and work with startups and other tech companies in our community, I apply all that I have learned over the years about creating life-giving places to work.  

2) What is the mission of the NY Tech Alliance? Why is it important for organizations with overlapping missions to join forces?

The mission of NY Tech Alliance is to represent, inspire, support, and help lead the New York technology community and ecosystem to create a better future for all. The final part of our mission statement - "create a better future for all" - is especially important to me because it connects to my belief that the tech community needs to be inclusive, both in terms of who is creating its products and who those products are being created for, and also to my belief that the tech community should be ethical and responsible and think about the impact of the products it builds. 

NY Tech Alliance was formed through the merger of NY Tech Meetup and New York Technology Council in June 2016. In my experience, I have found mergers between non-profits to be fairly uncommon, often because founders or leaders are attached to their organization's approach. In our case, our missions were almost exactly the same and we felt that we could actually better accomplish our goals by working together as one organization. In merging, our capacity has grown, we don't compete with each other for funding any longer, and we have an even larger community – our membership spans everything from individual programmers to the largest companies in the city. 

3) You were one of only 15 women selected to participate in Seth Godin’s Female Entrepreneur MBA (FeMBA) in 2010. What’s it like being a woman in tech 6 years ago as opposed to now?

Six years ago, I was just getting involved in the technology community and getting to know female entrepreneurs. Having come from the world of Girl Scouts, where I was surrounded by women all the time, it was a bit of a shock to show up at tech events and scan the room only be able to spot a handful of women. Even six years ago though, there was a thriving group of women in tech in New York City, and it has only grown since then. As I attend events or invite women to apply to demo at our monthly meetup or our women's demo nights, I see the numbers of women attending and applying to demo continually increasing. Women are still by far out-numbered by men, but the ratio seems to be getting better. 

That being said, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do. Startups run by women still receive venture capital funding at a much lower rate than companies run by men, and there are still the substantial hurdles of sexism and bias embedded into the tech industry culture. A female entrepreneur who built and sold a very successful company shared with me recently that during her fundraising process, she was constantly asked questions about how many kids she had and how she was going to balance work and family life. Those types of questions are rarely, if ever, asked of men raising money for their companies, and those are the types of underlying biases that still needs to change. 

4) What’s key to diversifying tech and getting more women and girls involved in STEM?

There are multiple layers to the challenge of getting more girls and women involved in tech. In some ways, it starts very early and outside of the tech industry, in our society in general, where toys and activities that have to do with building and tinkering are often geared more towards boys than girls. It also has to do with the fact the computer science is not something that all kids are exposed to. If it is available at all, it is often an elective at the high school level when many young women have already decided on a different academic path. Since it is not equally available to all students in all schools, it also means that young people of color have less opportunity for exposure as well. 

So exposure and equal opportunity for participation are key, but even if all of those things are in place, the tech industry also has to become a more welcoming place for people who are traditionally underrepresented in tech. It doesn't matter if you love computer science: if your experiences working in the industry involve being relegated to completing menial tasks on a tech team because of your gender or not being considered for funding for your startup because of biases held by potential investors or being subject to derogatory or hateful speech, then you are very unlikely to stay in the industry. Companies can start to change much of this by doing things like hiring diverse teams from the start, expanding their networks and hiring from non-traditional pipelines instead of saying they can't find any women or people of color to fill their open jobs, and establishing and living by company values that don't tolerate discriminatory and biased behavior.

It’s important to note that a lot of these biases are unconscious. I remember when I talked about this at SXSW a few years ago, and I mentioned that the “traditional” tech office perk of kegs and foosball tables could be negatively perceived by potential new hires. Many women and other minority groups are turned off by these “bro culture” signs. This sounds simple, but it was a light-bulb moment for some of the people in the room. So I encourage founders to really examine everything if they are committed to having a diverse workforce.

5) Is NYC becoming the new Silicon Valley? Is that something New York even wants to be?

New York has become a thriving center for tech and innovation, and while I think comparisons to Silicon Valley are natural, I don't think becoming the "new Silicon Valley" is really the goal for New York. New York is a different environment with different geography, a different population, and with that, different strengths. There are so many industries based here. “Tech” tends to not stand alone; instead it’s integrated into other businesses, such as finance, media, real estate, and medicine.  I think we are asking a lot of questions in New York about where tech is headed and about what type of tech community we want to be. And I personally believe that the future will be driven not by the companies with the most rapid growth and the highest valuations, but by those who place inclusivity, empathy, ethics, and civic engagement at the core of their businesses.

Link with Jessica Lawrence Quinn HERE

Meet a new woman in business every Thursday! #52Women52Weeks

More like this:

• Sheena Allen doesn't need your invite to a seat at the table—she makes her own
• Katie Prentiss gives back by asking: What do I love & what am I good at?
• Phoebe Taubman fights for workers who need time off to care for their family
• Jessica O. Matthews, helps the developing world power their homes