Elevating Women's Voices at CES and Beyond

Last month CES was rightfully called out for not having any women giving keynotes for the second year and their reaction was disappointing. Despite the negative social media backlash and lists of amazing women sent their way, instead of “reading the room” and bringing female voices to the Big Stage, they stood by and issued disappointing statement after disappointing statement. As a result, many organized their own “Women in Tech/Media/VR/Wearables/ Sports etc” events around CES, the most visible of which was Twitter’s #HereWeAre event organized by CMO Leslie Berland. Watch it if you haven’t seen it, it’s awesome. 

Right after the #CESsoMale buzz started, StoryUp XR CEO Sarah Hill called attention in the Women in VR/AR Facebook Group to the numerous all-male VR/AR panels at CES.

After seeing Sarah’s post and the upset the all-male panels caused in the Facebook group, I reached out to many organizers/panelists/moderators about the all-male VR/AR panels and wanted to share my learnings and suggestions for future speaking engagements.

Why do I see this as important?

We can’t be what we can’t see. Inclusion brings better market, financial and product outcomes. In the current #TimesUp and #MeToo climate, amplifying women's voices and enabling women coming up in their careers to see other women as powerful leaders in this new and growing VR/AR field is important to attract more women into the field and have all our voices incorporated into building the bright new future together.

Learning and Suggestions for Elevating Women's Voices:

1. Assume best intent. All of the men I reached out to supported gender equity on panels and in the workforce. All of them said they would contact their organizer to fix this. Some of them mentioned that they generally didn't know who else was on the panels until right beforehand. One mentioned 4 women had dropped off from their CES panels recently. The men are there to represent their company and do their job. None of them proactively wanted to appear on an all-male panel but this topic may not be as top of mind as it is for some women. Nearly ALL of them asked what they could do or for suggestions to help improve the imbalance.
2. Take a proactive approach--- complaining on social media sometimes works and may feel good, but the quickest way to get a result is to find the organizer, moderator, someone you know on the panel or their Marketing/PR team and send them a friendly message that both acknowledges the existing panelist’s great accomplishments and contributions and also notes that the panel lacks gender diversity and see if they would help or support changing this before the event.
3. Send panelists or organizers lists of great women to join the panels. I sent the CES VR/AR panel organizers the amazing 700+ women list from the Women in VR/AR group, the Vu Dream list of 101+ plus women and an additional list of 20 women I recommended. Why? 101 or 700 names are overwhelming. Based on the topic and other speakers, I can guess what the organizer wants to achieve and who would make the most sense so a shorter list will be more effective when people are busy and attention spans are limited. (ie. are they looking for creatives, engineers, VR, AR, big brands, startups, media, tech, big titles, up-and-comers, etc...)
4. If you are a woman invited to a panel but can't make it, have your own list of 5-20 women you'd recommend from your company, circle or group to offer the organizer. Pull up some other women along on your successful ride. As a corollary, if you are a woman who is invited to speak but don't see many other women on the agenda, proactively suggest adding other great women. As Black Girls Code Founder and CEO Kimberly Bryant said, “Take your seat at the table and pull up a chair and invite another sister.”
5. Treat and talk to men you know as allies. Request they state their preference for gender inclusion when invited onto panels. The group I was working with was Women in VR/AR but it is incredibly important to have inclusion of other underrepresented groups too. Intersectionality is key.
6. Often it is the PR teams booking the events. Talk to PR teams directly and request that they let panel organizers know that their executives prefer to appear on panels with gender and other underrepresented groups diversity.
7. If the organizers are reticient to add qualified women to panels, talk to the other panelists directly. Few panelists and their companies want to be involved in negative conversations, trends, memes or press around gender bias. Based on my recent experiences, I now wonder if direct appeals to the CEO and Corporate Communications teams at Intel, Ford, Huawei, Qualcomm, Verizon and Baidu might have resulted in more change in the keynotes for CES 2018.
8. Proactively organize events. Field of Views CEO Suzanne Lagerweij organized a great CES Women in VR panel broadcast with 6 women including Laura Mingail, Sarah Hill, Rutha Aronson, Alina Mikhaleva and me which was live-streamed by Bob Fine and Charlie Fink. It is important to underscore that while these events are great and inspiring, "Women in X" events are not a substitution for the main event. Women still want to be invited to speak at the main events.
9. Support efforts like the The WXR Fund who had their first pitch showcase for female founders in XR last week!
10. Here are some other suggestions direct from @GenderAvenger if someone ends up on an all-male panel.

• Panelists can use their "manel" platform to express disappointment or, if that is too awkward, to say that they hope women would be alongside them on stage in the future; add that in the future when asked to participate, he will ask for the names of the women who will be on the panel or simply ask if there will be any women on the panel
• Use their opening remarks or answer to the first question to point out/compliment/relate the accomplishments of many women and colleagues in their field.
• Sign the GenderAvenger Pledge and add "I have signed the GenderAvenger Pledge" to their official speaker bio. --Perhaps, announce this from the stage as a way to encourage more diverse panels in the future.
• Give up their seat to "a woman in the audience with similar background and experience."

Long post, but thanks to all the amazing people who worked to elevate women’s voices at CES. Shoutouts in the VR/AR world: to Sarah Hilll for calling attention to this with her original FB post, Suzanne Lagerweij for organizing an event, the Women in VR/AR admins for organizing a Facebook group where these conversations flourish and to all the awesome men (Tony Parisi, Allan Cook, Rikard Steiber, Ted Schilowitz, Tom Vance, Andy Vick, Patrick Aluise, Seth Shapiro, Victor Harwood) and Unity PR exec Alexis McDowel who cared enough to answer my messages on this topic and work to continually improve the world and industry.

As a result of everyone's efforts, the original 6 all-male VR/AR panels were halved with amazing women added to 3 of them. Thanks to all the voices who contributed to making this change!

On CES's "ROI of Digital Reality" panel hosted by DeloitteI participated in, I was asked “How do we empower more women in tech?” Here is my answer:

What to Start:

• Hiring More Women (Recommend posting jobs in places like Women in tech, Women in VR/AR groups, reaching out to affinity groups)
• Paying us Equally
• Sponsoring women (the #1 reason women leave tech jobs is because we don’t see opportunities for growth. This doesn’t just mean mentoring, but also being our champion by identifying us for bigger future jobs, giving feedback and helping us get the skills we need to succeed along the way)
• Elevating: Oprah at the Golden Globes said it best, but we can’t be what we can’t see. An invitation to speak on stage essentially means that the organizer thinks that executive’s opinion matters. Show that women’s voices matter. Highlight women’s voices on stage and inspire women coming up
• Financing female founders. The WXR Fund is a great example.

What to Stop:

• Discrimination
• Harassment
• Assault and Violence
• Giving attention to stories that don’t positively move this conversation forward. I won’t even write more about this because that would give it attention. ;)

Thanks to Laura Mingail who encouraged me to adapt my Women in VR Facebook post and share it more broadly. 

Tech is about disruption and innovation, not doing things the same way year after year. Let's apply this mindset here.

#CES2018 #HereWeAre #WomenInTech #WomeninVR #WomeninXR #WomeninMedia #SeeHer #SeeItBeIt #TimesUp #CESBlackout #IfSheCanSeeItSheCanBeIt #CESSoMale #ChangeTheRatio #RepresentationMatters #Inclusion #DiversityinTech