Women deserve limitless workplaces

My understanding of a woman’s role in the workplace began with my mother’s own storytelling to me across our kitchen table. She grew up in a small town in India and lived most of her adult life in the United Arab Emirates. In her 30s, she started working for a global money exchange center as a cashier. She eventually became the first woman to lead a branch. By the time she retired, she was leading the company’s busiest branch. Despite her success in increasingly challenging roles and delivering better results than her peers, my mom was never meaningfully promoted. She saw men all around her advancing within the company, but her career stood still.

Every time I take time to reflect on my mother’s professional experience, my resolve to change the work world grows. I am convinced that my mom could have been in the C-suite if her growth was not limited by the societal norms for women at that time. Her story, and the countless others like it, are the reasons I’m so eager to foster conversations about what men and women can do to remove the limitations that hold women back.

In my mind, building limitless workplaces for women is all about A, B, C: allies, belief and controlling what you can control.

Allies in the workplace could have helped women like my mother. If they stood up, spoke up and acted, who knows how high she could have climbed. I know how powerful allyship can be to advance careers because allies have been essential in my own. Having a great leader like Neal Sample, Northwestern Mutual’s chief information officer, has been critically important. It’s as if he gave me wings to fly.

He supports me and he enables me to be a champion for others. When today’s COVID environment disrupted our team’s ability to participate in outside conferences – especially those geared toward advancing women technologists, sharing the latest trends and networking – he proactively backed our efforts to launch our first-ever virtual Women in Technology Conference. Neal played a key role in recruiting speakers and even spoke at the conference himself. When we saw a need to inspire and invest in women in technology in our company, he proudly supported our efforts to create our Women in Technology (WIT) Squad program. He’s always showing up for us – and I’m so thankful to work for a leader like him.

But Neal has been one of many allies in my professional life. In one of my first leadership roles, one of the men on my team told me that I was not qualified to be his leader. He refused to work for me. Another man on the same team repeatedly berated me for being a woman leader. Fortunately, I had the courage to stand up for myself, and I had great allies – my boss and my colleagues in human resources who stood by my side and helped remove these bad actors for their unacceptable behavior – and I was able to continue my career journey. 

In recent weeks, a few of my colleagues including Amy Hanneman and Souheil Badran have written about the importance of allyship – and in my opinion, it cannot be repeated enough. Women and people of color need allies among us to act – again and again – so we can reach our aspirations.

Belief is another way that anyone can empower women in the workplace. I was recently watching a documentary on Black history, and at one pivotal moment, a question was asked, “What can I do to end racism?” And the person responded, “Believe me.”

That’s the first thing we can all do: start believing the women, people of color and others who are sharing their stories of struggle with you. Too often, people dismiss a woman’s story as “all in her head” and so they tire of the challenges. “Everything from her is about her being a woman all the time.” Please know that your woman colleague likely worked hard to overcome her anxiety about opening up. She took a leap of faith to share a deeply personal and difficult story with you, in the hope that you would hear her and help her persevere. Please, believe them.

Belief is something that women must also grant themselves. Believing in yourself as a woman can be a difficult task in itself, especially if there are too few women to inspire you in your organization. It’s easy to get discouraged and allow those words from our past to seep in: “You’re a girl so you can’t be proficient in math / technology / leadership / strategy,” and so on. Resist those voices by replacing them with others that motivate you. Be the leader you wish to see.

My dad grew up in a village in India with no electricity. As a child, he walked miles to school. Today, he’s in his 70s and still relishing his work as the head of the Pediatrics department and the medical director at a hospital in UAE. My husband had no electricity in his house until he was in 10th grade, and he had to study under the chimney lights. He came to this country on his own and went to school with no friends or contacts. Today, he’s a database architect. My sister, too, persevered in her career in the fashion world. I myself came to the U.S. with no nearby friends, no family, and no background in technology. But I saw the boldness in these people around me – and in my mother – and they inspired me.

Here’s a photo of my amazing family, touring the Hobbiton set from Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in New Zealand.

That’s why I’m so passionate about mentorship. Through our conferences, our WIT Squad and more – our goal is to bring together excellent mentors and leaders to inspire and equip women in technology with the mindset, courage and insights they need to be successful.

That is also why I’m so adamant about diversity and inclusion. It’s much easier for women to believe in themselves when they are not by themselves, alone. And a woman’s confidence is more likely to be rewarded, not rejected, at inclusive workplaces that keep a careful eye out for gender bias and stereotyping.

Control what you can control. Find ways to progress on your journey and don't allow things that are outside your sphere of influence to break your stride and your spirit.

When I came to this country, I faced a litany of challenges. Some of the obstacles I couldn’t overcome, but others I could control and affect immediately. For example, I quickly realized that though I knew English, I wasn’t communicating as effectively as I wanted to. It’s one thing to know the words; it’s another to understand another culture’s tone, mannerisms and norms. So initially, I focused on that. I watched how others communicated and analyzed what worked and what didn’t. Over time, I sought to pick and choose the verbal and non-verbal behaviors that would enable me to communicate more effectively without sacrificing my authentic self.

When I got hired, my new focus was to do my job better than anyone else and work for leaders who would believe in me. I was intentional about the jobs I applied for and the work I did each day – and that made all the difference. Focusing and following through on those two things gave me the confidence I needed to push forward – and push back on anyone who tried to hold me back me along the way. And when I needed to, I did.

I can’t help my mom advance in her career – none of us can: she is now happily retired. But my daughter will grow up and join the working world soon enough. We must help to create a better work world for all the women in our life: our colleagues, daughters, nieces, aunts, cousins, neighbors and so on. Because when we do, we will help to solve one of the longest-standing social, moral, economic and business challenges our world has ever known.

I hope that you will join me and countless others who are working to create workplaces where a woman’s potential is limitless. Be their ally, hear their stories, believe in them, control what you can, and help resolve the challenges in their professional lives so they can focus all of their energy and talents on delivering results for your organization – as well as the women who will follow them.