Springing my TEDx commitment into action

I have received a lot of questions lately on why I am planning to focus more of my time on Diversity and Inclusion. I thought I would share a bit more on my backstory from the TEDx talk on diversity that I delivered in November, the journey I have been on and the actions I think you can all take to make a difference, disrupt the status quo and help us to make significant progress in our efforts to build for a more inclusive economy. I hope you will join me!

I have been in the high tech industry for 30 years and at Microsoft for the last 25 years. Throughout my career, there have been many meetings, initiatives, projects and teams that I have worked on where I was the only woman in the room. I had to learn to stand up for myself, make my ideas heard and establish my credibility so that people would listen which took a great deal of persistence, courage and effort on my part. In the TEDx talk  that I delivered last November, I share my own personal experiences of being in meetings with all men, where I speak and am talked over, not heard, and not noticed. This makes me feel invisible and in order to remove that cloak of invisibility takes a great deal of effort on my part or a strong ally in the room.  I have talked to many of you who have had similar experiences and that is one of the major reasons we must change the way we work. It is unacceptable to have credible, innovative, qualified talent in the organization that are marginalized and underappreciated. 

At the same time, statistics show us that the diversity in high tech is getting worse and on a downward trend. When I started in this industry in 1991, 36% of the computing workforce was women. In 2019, that number had fallen to 27%. The global pandemic has seen women and people of color leaving the workforce at alarming rates. The World Economic Forum stated in March 2021 that at the rate the women and people of color are dropping out it will be another 135 years before we get to gender equity in the workforce. Digital transformation is actually exacerbating this challenge. The jobs traditionally held by women and people of color are being displaced disproportionately when an organization goes through a digital transformation. 

We must take more intentional and aggressive action. I realized as Microsoft’s Channel Chief that I was in a position to make a bigger difference. I had an ecosystem of 300K+ organizations in high tech that were listening to me. I saw this as an opportunity for me to take a stand within the industry and to build a platform to drive for gender equity in high tech. 

I sponsored building two organizations dedicated to this cause of gender equity and access – the Women in Technology Network and the Women in Cloud Network. Through these organizations we have reached 20K women around the world and mobilized them and provided access and encouragement to build new companies in technology. We needed to do more, with the help of Karen Fassio and Gena Goh, we also created the Inclusive Economy work within MPN and then we recruited Regina Johnson in to help us build a Black and African American Partner Growth Initiative as well. 

Last year, I decided that I could branch out and deliver a TEDx talk to hopefully mobilize a movement to make change. As part of that TEDx talk, I developed a framework to make it easy for people to understand the role that everyone can play to be an ally, take a leadership position and BECOME an agent of change. 

My framework is quite simply that – BECOME.   

BE = be an ally, be a leader and be an agent of change.

Then just remember these four steps: 

COME:

C= Connect 

O= Outreach 

M= Mentor 

E= Empower 

Have you had similar experiences to my own? Please join me in this movement to take action and drive for change. Please commit and comment. Together WE CAN make a difference!