Silicon Valley Business Journal Announces Top 100 Influencers List

Silicon Valley Business Journal just named their top 100 Women of Influence, and it was an honor to be counted among them. After five years of running my nonprofit initiative, CloudNOW, focused on Female Executive Leaders in Cloud, it was wonderful acknowledgement of the work that I’ve done as a passion project in addition to my ‘day’ job as a Marketing Executive and Startup Advisor.

The importance of these recognition platforms to lift us up when the day-to-day headlines in Silicon Valley tear us down, make Awards like the Business Journal’s a welcome oasis:

• Why is Silicon Valley so Awful to Women?
• VR, being sued over rampant sexual behavior and creating toxic work environment for female employees;
• All male panels talkin’ women in tech...are we not even qualified enough to weigh in our own experiences?!

It’s no small thing to navigate a successful, multi-decade career in tech as a woman, and so I’ll offer this advice to the next generation of female leaders:

1. Find mentors. Align yourself with thought leaders, and organizations who believe in you and which support Diversity and Inclusion.
2. Create a robust Network. This will be your safety net and your sanity check for your entire career. Think about relationships long-term, and find a group of people who want the same things for their career that you do-- you’ll pull each other up.
3. Be your best promoter. This is where women really tend to fall down-- promote yourself, your work, speak at conferences, apply for jobs that you are tremendously under qualified for, and believe in yourself.

I owe much to the incredible mentors and inspirational leaders who have believed in me and for the immense opportunities they have provided me, folks like Rand Barbano, and Lauren States. I thank all my colleagues who collaborated with me and have supported the vision of CloudNOW to be a source for positive change for women in tech: Lori MacVittie, Susan Wu, Evelyn de Souza, Kim Burnham, Alexa Inga, Rita Scroggin, Becky Wanta, Sandy Atwell, Joanne Moretti, Julien Barbier, Reuven Cohen, and Chris Boehlke to name just a few.

We know that companies that embrace Diversity and Inclusion in all aspects of their business statistically outperform their peers-- but let’s not just outperform them, let’s put them out of business.

PS- Want to be part of the solution? --help launch a future leader’s career in tech, donate to this scholarship fund for CloudNOW’s Alexa Inga who has started a degree in Software Engineering at Holberton School in SF. 

Go, Alexa!! We are so proud of you.