Category Archives: Diversity

Good For Her Welcomes Cohort Five!

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It’s that time of year when we get to announce that we have a new cohort at Good For Her (GFH). Cohort five has launched! We get an average of forty new applications each year and it was incredibly hard to narrow it down to this select group of exceptional women. This new cohort consists of nine extraordinary entrepreneurs as well as one aspiring entrepreneur. Our members are all founders, primarily in the c-suite, of operating businesses. We bring in a new cohort each year and intentionally keep each cohort small to ensure strong bonds form between members. Our cohort members are selected based on how they will complement the diversity of our current members as well as their willingness to contribute their experience and skills back to the community.

While fundraising is not the only metric of success, our current members have raised over $100M capital since January 2021 — including several $12–20M Series As. Beyond funds raised, these businesses are focused on being great employers with high retention rates, growing revenue exponentially, and building industry leading brands. Our newest cohort members are based in NYC, Boston, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. Our newest member companies represent a diverse range of industries — from B2B SaaS, FinTech, EdTech and Digital Health to consumer products and services. While each cohort has a special bond, the GFH community supports all members with our “give as much as you get” philosophy. From quick responses on Slack to jumping on calls in the moment when urgent advice is needed, these women strive to support each other 24×7. We meet as a community in-person a few times a year and cohort members regularly meet with each other one-on-one and in smaller groups off-line.

Herewith, our newest members:

GFH Cohort Five — 2022
Good For Her Cohort Five — 2022

(Listed from top row to bottom row)
Rave Andrews — Aspiring Entrepreneur
Wana Azam — Ullabelle
Lillian Cartwright — ShelfLife
Tiffany Faith Demers — Upkeep
Cindy Estes — Rapt
Ngoc Le — Phase Zero
Kait Margraf Stephens — Brij
Rebekah Wilson — Source Elements
Brittany Wright — Endex
Peggy Yu — Stack Education

Welcome cohort five!!

GFH operates as a registered 501(c)(3) and, in addition to the latest cohort, the organization recently added Monique Jean to its board of directors. ”I’m excited to support an organization dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs connect and build a community. As women, many of us have been in situations where we are the “only”, having a community built by women, for women, is not just about engagement or mentorship, it’s about being intentional in facilitating the progress of women entrepreneurs and supporting them in their journey.” We couldn’t be more thrilled to have you on board, Monique!

About GFH

Julia Austin started GFH to pay-it-forward after her three decades as an operator in the startup industry. “While we still have a long way to go, there has certainly been major progress since my early years in startup land when I was often the only woman in the boardroom. I didn’t feel I could fully celebrate my success without ensuring that the next generation of female leaders had access to the resources and support systems I never had.” You can read more about the founding story of GFH here.

GFH has had tremendous support from valuable women in the community. Jenny Fielding, General Partner at The Fund says “It is critical for underrepresented members of the startup community to have a trusted network like Good For Her to give them the best possible opportunities for success. I have personally seen how this community has supported their members as they build and scale their businesses and I am delighted to see this new group of entrepreneurs welcomed into the GFH community!”

Best selling author, coach and mentor Kim Scott was an early advocate for launching this non-profit when Julia decided to leave the operating world. She encouraged Julia to turn the energy around her frustration with the “injustice that surrounded the underrepresented MAJORITY” into efforts that empowered them to overcome adversity. “When underrepresented leaders come together in solidarity, we can confront bias, prejudice and bullying effectively and create teams where everyone can “just work” — in both the justice and the get sh-t done senses of the phrase.”

Check out our website for more information about GFH and pay attention to all of our members — they are doing amazing things!

If you are interested in joining cohort six in 2023, apply here.

Walk The Talk…Every. Damn. Day.

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On March 8, 2022’s International Women’s day, from social media posts with the year’s theme of #breakthebias to the New York Times Crossword puzzle theme of women in history, we saw friends, colleagues and leaders across the country proclaim their respect for and commitment to women. It was inspiring to see. However, let’s remember it is what comes after the day of celebration that really matters. The #metoo movement got the ball rolling beyond a special day or month for women in many ways, but are we still talking about it? My friend Susan’s callout of Uber in her famous blog post in 2017 lit a fire that led to lawsuits and the start of some regulatory changes in the heat of the moment, but when the party is over and we’re sweeping up the confetti, are we still keeping the momentum?

Image credit: Imobi Group

Recently on social media, I saw several fundraising announcements that made it all too clear that many companies are talking the talk but not walking the walk on creating equitable working environments. The dichotomy between the images of those who raised extreme amounts of cash for a pre-PMF (product market fit) company to those who raised modest seed rounds for their post-PMF company was infuriating. The posts about someone’s upcoming participation on a “mannel” (all male panel) or their new Crypto team (left) are cases in point. Why don’t they notice what they are doing?? How do companies allow this to happen? Has anything really changed despite all our efforts for equal rights?

This image was posted on Twitter on International Women’s Day ’22 — It has since been removed.

This morning, one of my coaching clients sent me a picture of how he planned to show up at his board meeting today (below, right – shared with permission). It was great to see his solidarity in this moment. In this case, I know Nick’s business, Help Scout, is on the bleeding edge of striving for equality. The company has made conscious efforts to prioritize hiring, culture and product decisions to be sure they remain 100% focused on a diverse team and providing an equitable and inclusive environment for their employees and their customers. They are transparent about how they do this and the metrics they track to stay on top of this focus. More importantly, they keep the beat every single day. Not just during International Women’s Day or Women’s History Month or Black History Month. Every. Damn. Day. 

As I looked at the t-shirt Nick was proudly displaying, I asked myself “Do people know that Nick truly lives the slogans on his t-shirt? Are other companies doing what Help Scout does, but not sharing it broadly to inspire? Do other companies that are announcing mannels or their 5th, homogenous, executive hire despite public proclamations that they understand the practical and ethical importance of diversity simply not believe what they are saying?? Do I give them a pass and hope they’re working hard every day just like the team at Help Scout? Or, do I call it out when I see it? Do I run the risk of getting dismissed as a “salty old broad” or keep challenging this behavior because I just have to do what it takes?” Every. Damn. Day. 

My dear friend Kim Scott’s voice rings in my head frequently reminding me to care personally, to challenge directly and not to display obnoxious aggression. I try to embrace Radical Candor every chance I can (I promise, Kim!), but there are days where I don’t care personally. I am fed up. Tired. Pissed off. I’ve been at this business of combatting bias, sexism, gaslighting and outright discrimination for over three decades. It’s exhausting! I have hope, though. I see more action than I have ever seen. Part of what gives me hope are, to borrow a phrase from Kim’s new book Just Work, “upstanders” like Nick. I don’t have to do all the work, leaders who identify as men understand that they will find more success and also do the right thing by hiring and promoting more diverse people. 

The young people I work with also inspire me. I was conducting office hours with an exceptional student of mine the other day who is a Freshman at Harvard and cross-registered in my graduate-level course. As a young woman of color, she is breaking barriers in many ways. She aspires to be an entrepreneur and can actually believe that this is possible for her. When I was her age, few women dared to have the hopes and dreams that she has. The stories about how I was treated in the executive conference room when I was a college intern would  shock her. The kinds of egregious things that happened all the time 30 years ago are unimaginable to young people today. 

I have tremendous hope for her and her generation of women; for my own three daughters who are already fighting this fight in their early adulthood, and have far more options (and regulations and guardrails) than I ever did at their age. We are shifting, albeit slower than I’d prefer. What can I say, anyone who really knows me knows that I am impatient as hell!

So I ask you, what are you doing on March 9, the day after International Woman’s Day, to affect change? How about on April 1, when Women’s History Month is another moment in the history books? How will you continue to foster growth of your teams and embrace diversity “Every. Damn. Day”? For me, I will continue to push every daily, but also remind myself that change is happening, and celebrate it.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint. I just hope I am around long enough to see what broken bias really looks like. When this topic is no longer a “thing”. That the shift has happened and things ARE in fact as they should be. Equal and just.

Paving The Way For Less Experienced Hires At Early Startups

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Photo Credit From: https://hfaplanning.com/

So many of the early stage companies I work with are struggling to hire talent. Despite the pandemic, they have raised capital and are looking to hire everything from engineering and UX to marketing, sales and support. You’d think with the pandemic there’d be a lot of people looking for work, but in startup land (tech or not), it’s definitely a candidate’s market…unless you are considered too inexperienced for a role. I especially see this for candidates in underrepresented talent groups where there are less opportunities to develop strong networks. Further, less experienced candidates coming from first jobs at a big company where they hoped to gain mentoring and experience before going to a startup can be boxed out before they even get their careers of the ground. These candidates are often viewed as unable to work in a more scrappy, smaller scale organization.

The most common reason for not hiring less experienced talent in a very early stage company (say, less than 20 people) is lack of time to manage and mentor these team members. I get it. If you are a startup leader, you want an A+ team of people who are self-starters and have seen the movie before. While also more expensive, experienced hires should know how things work and in theory should hit the ground running. That said, even experienced hires rarely work effectively and that independently on day one. Further, I don’t know a single startup that has hired an all senior team and never had to let someone go (or they quit) within their first 90 days. This can be because of a mismatch in expectations, lack of alignment or often it’s because the more senior team members had become accustomed to managing more than doing in their prior roles; they were potentially “startup curious” and couldn’t scale down and/or they had lost their player-coach edge.

It is rare that any startup gets their first twenty hires right. Iteration, learning what you need in your team and evolution as your product changes and company grows is a likely cause for lots of refactoring of teams in the first few years. Therefore, hiring a few less experienced folks could net the same result as one senior hire – some will work out, and some will not. Yes, letting someone go or having them quit and starting over is a total time suck, but that’s part of the game and most companies get better and better in finding and keeping great talent over time. From my personal experience working for several startups early on, each of which had insane growth, I found having a mix of seasoned and less experienced team members can be a super power. Less experienced team members were hungry and eager to learn and the senior team members enjoyed mentoring and handing off the more menial tasks so they could focus on meatier and often more strategic work. It was a win-win and many of those junior team members have had incredible careers after we gave them their first shot.

For the Manager

Here are a few things to consider for those anxious about hiring less experienced talent:

  • Pipeline: In this candidates’ market, hiring managers need to treat recruiting like a sales exercise. Fill the funnel! Overly prescriptive job descriptions will limit applicants (especially women) – this includes being too specific about the number of years of experience required which may not translate well for someone who’s been coding since middle school, but has only been in the workforce for 1-2 years. Get the resumes in, then decide how you want to weed out less relevant candidates.
  • Pre-Interview Screening: Don’t judge a resume by it’s timeline! As noted above, many inexperienced candidates – especially engineers – have been doing relevant work well before they went to college or may be understating their contributions in their current roles. They may lack the confidence to promote their work, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get the work done. Consider having a screening question about how long the candidate has been doing relevant work that may not appear on their LinkedIn/resume.
  • Interview: Size the questions and/or the coding exercise with the experience. Determine if the candidate can learn quickly, whether they ask good questions and whether they can deliver on time. Early on in their careers, these are the key skills that will assure they will thrive vs. showing you their perfect coding capabilities in an interview or through a take-home exercise.
  • Potential for hire: If all that is keeping you from hiring a less experienced candidate who shows tons of potential is having the time or talent to mentor these candidates, look beyond yourself and your more experienced team. Have advisors who can sign up to serve as mentors for inexperienced folks. This can range from doing code reviews before check-ins to helping an inexperienced salesperson practice their pitch. These mentors do not have to have full context on your business or the details of the work; if they are seasoned, they know what to look for and should be able to offer objective guidance (and you should offer them some equity and have them sign an NDA, obvi!).
  • On the job: Yay! You are ready to hire a less experienced team member. Set the right expectations and scale the work. As with any hire, they won’t be up to speed on day one. Their 30-60-90 day onboarding process may look different than a more senior hire though. Start small and work up to more challenging tasks. As my favorite leadership coach Brené Brown says in her amazing book Dare To Lead “Paint what ‘done’ looks like.” The most common reason for failure between employees and their leaders in any job – regardless of experience – is misalignment about what the endpoint should look like. Always define and communicate measurable, clear, goals.

NOTE: If you will hire for a role within the next six months, but are not actively filling it, and a current candidate shows promise for that future role, hire them! You don’t want to kick yourself in a few months that you didn’t hire that candidate when you had the chance. This of course assumes you have the budget to do so.

For The Less Experienced Candidate

For folks dealing with the catch-22 of needing experience, but not getting job interviews or offers because you lack enough experience, here are some things to consider:

  • Highlight Transferable Skills: Look deeply at your resume and try to tease out skills you have gained in past roles that are applicable to the job you wish to land. Were you a camp counselor while in college? You likely have strong leadership skills, can multitask and work well in teams. Worked as a waitperson in college? You have sales and customer service experience! Were you on the robotics team or helped friends build their first websites in high school? You started building your technical skills earlier than you think! This also works for job shifters – pull out the buzzwords that highlight your transferable skills. Be explicit under each role such as “Product Management Skills:…” or “Sales Skills:…”.
  • Get Help: Find someone in your network to help you further tease out your experience in your resume and help you practice your interviewing skills. Tap into former bosses, advisors and college professors. If they can’t help directly, they may know someone who can! Practice both technical skills and general communication skills. Both are important.
  • Continuous Ed: Continue to develop your skills outside of school or your day job. Take coding classes online (there are tons) or participate in one of a gazillion webinars designed for core skills like sales, growth marketing and design. A silver lining of the pandemic is that there are now so many great online resources! If you complete these courses, list them on your resume; this shows initiative, willingness to learn and the ability to multitask if you did this work outside of your day job or school.
  • Never Assume: Finally, never assume that just because a company doesn’t have a job posting commensurate with your experience that should not apply. This could be a stretch opportunity or the chance to get a warm introduction to the hiring manager for a future opportunity. Taking steps like this is a first sign that you are ambitious and creative and many people will hire talent despite a position lining up perfectly or even being open. As noted for hiring managers above, good people are hard to come by! I have personally hired many talented people without a perfect fit or a role open at the time because someone showed promise or I knew I’d need them within the next six months.

If all else fails…

Still not sure you can bring someone less experienced on board or can’t get a young startup to take a chance on you? Get creative and offer a “try before you buy” option. Even if part time, it can be great for both the company and the candidate to do a small project together – for pay. The manager can get a sense of a candidate’s work and the candidate can get a sense of what it’s like to work at the company. 

Tips on this concept:

  • Agree on a project that is no more than 2-3 weeks worth of work for a junior team member and with a clear deliverable.
  • Use the time working on the project to meet other members of the team. Schedule a quick meet and greet on Zoom or join team meetings to get a deeper sense of the company culture.
  • If the trial goes well and an offer is made, the equity vesting/cliff start date should be from the start date of the trial project. 
  • Be careful about competitive situations. If a current employer has a clause in their employment agreement that says any relevant work done outside of business belongs to them, don’t do a trial role like this for a related business (sounds obvious, but I have seen this happen too many times!).

I am truly hopeful that more young companies will take chances on less experienced hires. This is where magic can happen for all involved and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see some of my most junior hires “back in the day” now in senior leadership roles or starting companies of their own. Hopefully, they are now paying it forward!

How have you figured out ways to hire less experienced people or find a role as a less experienced hire yourself? Please share in the comments. You can also read more about my thoughts on hiring here.

Welcome GFH Cohort Three!

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I am so very pleased to announce that the third Good For Her (GFH) cohort has launched this week! Back in 2015, I noticed that there were a lot of male founders supporting each other. Some had informal monthly meetups for beers where they’d talk about leadership and fundraising challenges. Some were part of programs created by investors or startup accelerators. When I asked why there were so few women integrated into these groups, I got answers ranging from “I don’t know any women founders” to “It would be weird to have only one woman in our group”. I knew plenty of women founders, so I decided that if they were not getting invited to these groups, I’d create one for them.

The focus of GFH is to create an intimate community for like minded startup founders who identify as women. Each cohort of 8-10 founders is carefully curated to ensure a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, company stage and types of businesses. We have founders of B2B, D2C and B2C products. They’re bootstrapped to post series A. There’s no limit to where their businesses can go to be part of the group. The only requirements for a member are that they are a founder of their business (not all are CEOs), have a product in-market and they are good humans. All members are vetted by me and occasionally another GFH member before they are invited to join. Most of our cohort two and three members are in NYC, however with the pandemic, we’ve become more flexible and now have members based around the country.

Including an “Emerging Leader” in each cohort is something we started with cohort two and will continue to do for all cohorts going forward. These young women are aspiring leaders who would benefit from being among the incredible GFH women. They are part of the GFH family and included in every way.

GFH is fully funded by me. There is no fee, equity grant or financial obligation for any of our members. It is my way of paying-it-forward and I take great pleasure from watching these groups and individuals thrive. Pre-covid, I hosted events that ranged from dinners in my home to taking members to the theater and book signings to organizing pitch practices and how-to sessions (our most recent one was on the product roadmap process). I lead on topics I know well and bring in experts from my network as needed. During the pandemic, our connections are primarily in Slack and Zoom meetups – we’re hoping that’ll change some day soon! Meanwhile, in the GFH Slack, each cohort has its own private (and very active!) channel and there are open channels for cross-cohort connections around topics like fundraising, hiring and leadership. All members sign a code of conduct ensuring what happens in GFH, stays in GFH! I am also available (practically) 24×7 to every member for networking and coaching. Oh, and there’s a lot of fun too – the GFH community has a great sense of humor 🙂

When a new cohort starts, I am very engaged in pulling the group together and fostering discussions. It is my goal that, over time, each cohort becomes its own “thing” without my routine facilitation. With two cohorts now well on their way, it’s time to welcome cohort three! Herewith are our newest members (hover on images for name & company):

Geetika Agrawal (VAWAA)
Jennifer Brisman (VOW)
Cathy Chukwulebe (Emerging Leader)
Rebecca Greene (Stealth)
Julia Hawkins (Cabinet)
Christie Horvath (Wagmo)
Shanea Leven (CodeSee)
Chrstine Schindler (Pathspot)
Mai Vu (Maivino)

I am sooooo excited about partnering with this group! The buzz has already started on slack and they are receiving the much needed support they crave. Welcome cohort three!!

Check out our website for more information about GFH and pay attention to all of our members – they are doing amazing things!

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GFH Cohort Three Kick-off – July 2020!

Reflecting On The Intersectionality Of Today’s Pressing Issues

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I was so moved at tonight’s event at The Wing in SoHo that I had to write. In the spirit of the anniversary of Stonewall, we had an extremely thoughtful panel of rockstars:

  • Cecilia Gentili – Transgender activist, actor and someone who speaks with deep empathy from countless experiences throughout her lifetime.
  • E.M. Eisen-Markowitz  – Restorative (and Transformative) Justice Coordinator and public school teacher.
  • Wazina Zondon – Founder of Coming Out Muslim and sexuality educator.
  • Alex Berg – Panel moderator, and journalist covering national news, women’s issues, and LGBTQ+ culture. 

My twenty year-old daughter, who has been openly queer from a young age, joined me tonight as my guest. As we walked home, we processed key points from the discussion. A few worth noting:

  • We are privileged white women and we and our family, friends, colleagues, etc. are not doing enough to support real change in this country for the LGBTQ+ community. Putting strong light on the issue and companies changing logos and decorating storefronts to rainbows a few weeks a year is not enough. It’s a conversation and action that needs to happen every single day.
  • The majority of people who are speaking up and fighting for change are putting themselves at risk ahead of those of us who can afford to take real risk. Reflecting on Stonewall, Cecilia highlighted that it was the white privileged professionals who ran from the scene and the less privileged crowd that put their lives at stake to fight back – people who could not afford bail money if arrested or perhaps survive if they were to be imprisoned. 
  • Wazina gave us pause around how we’ve been talking about reproductive rights. This is an intersectional issue, not just a white feminist issue or about who can tell whom what they can do with their own bodies, it’s also a parenting issue: who is ready to be a parent and what that means (emotionally, physically and economically). I applaud her for the work she’s doing with young people around this and other important health, identity and sexuality issues.
  • EM spoke of transformative justice inside schools to change the narrative and behavior vs. the crazy spend in NYC schools to police the problem (over $700M/year!). This is an important issue well beyond our city schools. We need to transform society.
  • On D&I and hiring, we heard stories of companies seeking to be inclusive that are not removing barriers to allow a diverse pool of candidates to apply simply by creating exhaustive list of requirements in the JD (see more of my thoughts on this here). Provide training, mentorship and tuition reimbursement for applicants who have the aptitude and lack the experience. Make it happen vs. complaining “we can’t find the ‘right’ candidates”.
  • Finally, know your political candidates positions and vote for those who understand these issues and are motivated to take action. Now more than ever, we need the right people in office.

I’m definitely going to think deeply about how I can make a bigger impact on these points and take action; with my voice, my dollars and my body if I have to. I suggest everyone else do the same – educate yourselves, open your minds and take action. 

Thank you to the events team at The Wing for organizing this evening! My only constructive feedback (‘cuz you know I have it!) is that there were not nearly enough of your members there or PR around it. We can do better.

The War For (Diverse) Teams At Early Stage Companies…and Beyond

Note: Diversity is a term used 30+ times in this piece and refers to all types of diversity, beyond just gender.

In 2004, there was a post-bubble burst resurgence of well funded startups and VMware, like many other companies in the Silicon Valley, was struggling to compete for talent against Google, Yahoo and others in their space. The hot conversation in the weekly e-staff meeting in Palo Alto was about maintaining the bar and hiring the very best talent they could find. This was well before diversity and inclusion was trending as a hiring pain point. There was a war on talent.

To combat this war, the leadership team at VMware got creative. There was an urgency to bring on talent and just competing on compensation and equity wasn’t enough when that talent pool itself was sparse. So, leveraging ties to several of the team members’ east coast roots, they tried an experiment and opened an office in Cambridge, MA.

As the Site Director hired to build out that office at the start of 2005, I was charged with bringing on at least a dozen engineers by the end of the year. I had strict guidance on who to hire first;  the first six hires had to be at least a Staff level engineer, which at that time was like a Principal at most other companies. Even though we were desperate to bring on more talent, the leadership team insisted we still keep the bar high. There were no compromises – hire the best, no matter what.

By the end of 2005, we ended up hiring over 20 seasoned engineers and were well poised to scale that location with more junior talent and expand into other regions across the globe. It was a hard push to win the war, but we won it and many would say that getting scrappy, maintaining the bar and taking risks outside of Palo Alto to hire great talent was one of the key factors that led to VMware becoming the multi-billion dollar success story it is today.

Getting Scrappy And Taking Risks To Create Diverse Teams

Flash forward to 2017, and the talent war is still on, but it’s not just about hiring top talent, it’s about hiring for diversity. There’s plenty of science to prove that diverse teams are what separate average companies from the big success stories. Once there’s diversity in teams, you attract more candidates from underrepresented groups. But there is a catch-22 when companies and teams with no diversity can’t hire candidates from underrepresented groups, in part, because they have no diversity in their current teams!

I was at an event recently where I sat in a breakout session about diversity and inclusion where most of the fifteen or so participants were white, male, CEO-Founders of very early stage companies. These leaders were complaining that despite best efforts, they were not able to find/hire qualified, candidates from underrepresented groups for their open positions. Investors were on their back to meet deadlines and reach revenue goals and the push for building diverse teams was not a high enough priority to push back. They had to hire the best talent they could find, and get coding!

But what if that talent didn’t exist? What if it was 2004 and there were no engineers to hire, never mind engineers from underrepresented groups? How do companies, like VMware did back then, combat this war vs. becoming complacent? What can companies do today to be creative, continue to scale, and develop a diverse team? What if CEOs, their leadership team and their boards held the line on diversity metrics, no matter what?

Starting From The Top

A company that is committed to diversity must demonstrate that commitment from the top, down. CEOs set the tone for the organization’s culture by demonstrating a commitment to diversity and inclusion. They don’t just say they care about the problem and acknowledge the importance of solving it, but they force it to happen. VMware’s founding CEO, Diane Greene, was adamant that we hire only the best talent from day one, and CEOs today need to do the same when it comes to hiring diverse talent.

One of the most compelling reasons for any strong candidate to join a company is knowing there’s diversity at the senior most levels. Having Diane at the helm played a huge role in my decision to join VMware. She was a role model and inspiration to everyone at the company as she balanced the complex demands of scaling our business with her family and other commitments outside of work. We were not only inspired to follow her drive and passion for the business, but the company naturally attracted other strong, candidates because of her leadership.

Whether you are an early stage company, mature business or even just a growing team within a maturing business, committing to diversity at the top is critical. Here are some suggestions on how to do that:

  • The founding team: Diversity does not just have to exist between your co-founding team, it should be among your first hires, your advisors, customers and/or friends of the company. The more diverse the team, the more likely you will be to attract new team members from under represented groups. Introduce prospects to these company “community” members to begin to demonstrate your commitment to this metric at the start. For example, I frequently join interview panels for early stage companies I advise to ensure not just a great hire, but to add diversity to the panel itself.
  • Set and hold the diversity bar for leadership hires: Don’t say “it would be really great to fill the next senior role with a diverse candidate”, rather make it mandatory to create a diverse organization. “We will not hire another manager, director, VP, etc. unless they bring diversity into our team.” Get scrappy and go hard to build these teams (see below). Stop looking for just culture fit and homogenous pattern matching and seek those different than you – they are sure to be additive to your organization beyond just their skills and experiences. Yes, it may take longer to find that person, but hold out for it – it’s worth it!

Note to VCs & Board Members

It is great to see so many VCs and board members stepping up to foster diversity in their portfolios. They are committing to invest in more women founded companies, hosting “diversity events”, making the Decency Pledge and some are creating special funds for diverse entrepreneurs. I believe many VCs are sincerely interested in this effort and not just creating PR tactics to position firms to appear supportive. While those efforts are important to further the cause (don’t stop doing them!), I challenge them to set the bar higher; implementing hard accountability metrics for diversity in their firms and in their portfolio companies. To not be complacent in the reality that it’s “hard to find qualified  candidates from underrepresented groups”, but rather force change to happen. Here are a few suggestions:

  • Mandate that your partnership be a diverse team. Studies continue to come out on how diversity in investment teams have stronger exit outcomes. Get scrappy and find ways to build diverse teams for your firms. The more diverse your team, the more likely your firm, will attract a more diverse group of entrepreneurs into your deal flow. And don’t stop at one – keep forging ahead and strive for a more balanced group of partners; a token diversity hire isn’t enough. Also, each partner from an underrepresented group on your team allows for more diversity on your portfolio companies’ boards. While there’s great debate on whether there’s a direct correlation with diversity on boards and company performance, it is a sure thing that diverse boards add new perspective and new ideas to help the organization succeed.
  • Refuse to fund a non-diverse team (!). Yes, you may have to get your LPs to sign off on this, but many LPs are now pressuring the funds they’re in to push harder on the diversity front. So, take the lead, be proactive and tell them you’re holding the bar. Even if it means an initial slow down on deal flow and longer lead times to exit. The data proves that those investments are far likely to pay off in a bigger way than the non-diverse team investments you’re making today.
  • Set your portfolio teams up for success and help find candidates from underrepresented groups for your investments. Extend runway with a bridge loan or other means until the company has had at least six months to try to shore up their team. Make this a priority of your firm. This too is likely to improve deal flow if you offer this type of support to entrepreneurs as many entrepreneurs are not even coming to you because they don’t have the requisite co-founder, never mind a co-founder/founding team that is diverse.
  • Cover the cost to augment teams during the recruiting process. Not only encourage your portfolio companies to bring in consultants/contractors from underrepresented groups as part of their core team until they demonstrate diversity in their teams, but pay for it! Invest in your teams beyond the equity round.
  • Note to Founders: Depending on urgency to raise capital, you might consider refusing to take money from funds that don’t walk the talk – will your board be diverse? Would non-diverse investment group allow you to fill their board seat with an alternate who brings diversity into the board? The more senior candidates you are courting to join your company will examine board composition carefully – especially if your investors play an active role in the day-to-day of your company (It happens more than we think!). How hard are you willing to work to get a diverse board? Also consider creating a seat for an independent board member from day one to be used if needed to round out your team.

Beyond The Leadership Team And Investors

How are you set up to source for and hire diverse teams? Are you looking in all the right places? In 2015, I wrote a whole primer on hiring for startups (much of which is also applicable for later stage companies), but here are some specific tips on getting creative on hiring for diverse teams:

  • Diversity in your interview panel: Most hiring managers these days know it’s ideal to have a diverse interview panel to help sell a candidate on the role and company, but if your team lacks diversity, consider augmenting the interview team with diverse “community” members – either from other teams in your company or by inviting board members, advisors, friends of the company, etc. to participate. More good info on the hiring process for diversity here.
  • Join, sponsor or network with diversity orgs: There are countless non-profit organizations that cater to diversity hiring causes. For example, joining the National Center for Women in Technology’s Entrepreneurial Alliance which is designed for both startups and incubators/accelerators, provides access to job forums, invitations to their events and connections with over 600 other membership companies. Blackengineer.com has a jobs board, as does lgbtconnect.com. There are loooong lists of other organizations you can tap into to support diversity hiring efforts here, here and here.
  • Bring on Diverse Contractors: To me this is a win-win. You can start getting some work done and having diversity in the office can allay concerns when members of underrepresented groups come in to interview. I’ve heard countless stories of a candidate going for an interview and saying “the whole office was dudes or all white” …you get the visual. I’ve also heard many stories of contractors who fall in love with the company they’re working with (and vice versa) and join full time! (and as noted above, maybe you can get your investors to pay for it!).
  • Never miss the opportunity of a passive candidate: So many companies fail to build diverse teams because they wait for applicants vs. seeking out great people. Troll LinkedIn, go to meetups related to your company’s area, hire sourcers to look for great candidates who may not even know they might want a change until they get a call from your company! Don’t wait for these candidates to come to you.

The First Diverse Hire

Once you reach success and start to hire diverse team members, remember, for many of them, they may be the first one – whether it’s at your company as a whole or perhaps just in one team. There can be an ominous feeling when one thinks they’ve been courted or hired as the token diverse candidate/employee. What will you do to ensure that they are set up for success?

  • Acknowledge the problem from the start. The first time you diversify your team, especially for a small company, the individual will know they are bringing diversity to the table. Speaking from experience, it’s fine to call it out, as long as it’s clear that this is not THE reason they are in consideration. Needing a strong technical leader, or someone who has specific domain expertise is the priority, diversity is simply a value add to the team/company…but don’t dwell on it.
  • Consider how you operate today and whether there are any conscious or unconscious biases towards the current homogeneity of your company/team. Are there activities that happen at work or after hours such as fantasy leagues, spa trips or perhaps even non-family friendly activities that keep the first diverse hire from feeling comfortable or the outlier? Does your office decor offend or intimidate? Carefully examine how your company culture, rituals and environment is setup to be as friendly as possible.
  • You’re not done – the first hire that creates diversity in your team should not check a box and then you move on. Keep at it and for God’s sake please do not make that hire the ambassador for all future diversity activities! It is still the hiring manager/leadership team’s responsibility to keep the momentum.
  • Finally, focus on retaining those great hires.

Make diversity a priority. Hold yourself, your team, your investors and your board accountable. Set standards, get scrappy and change things for the better.

This is a war on for diverse teams. Treat it that way.

Reply in the comments if you have other creative suggestions on how to win the war on creating diverse teams.

Is The Future Bright?

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My dad was a science fiction buff, Democrat and a WWII veteran. As a single parent, he did a marvelous job inspiring me to explore my interests in technology and encouraging me to be my own person with the strength and means to create the life I wanted to live. We were “not that Jewish” in terms of rituals and convictions, but our heritage and suffering was always a thread throughout our lengthy family debates about politics and the world at large. Being a Jew was part of who we were as individuals and as a family and his role in the war and the stories he told from his experience was a constant reminder of how important it is to stand up for what’s right, defend minorities and protect our freedom.

I often have days where I wish my dad was still with us so I could see his mind explode when I showed him the latest in tech. An avid Azimov reader and Star Trek viewer who bought every single new calculator (the first one was a Sharp CS10A weighing over 50 pounds!) and Radio Shack TRS80 as they were released, he would have totally lost it if he were to see the iPhone and all the applications one can use on it today. If I were to share a VR headset with him or bring him to an AR installation, he would marvel at how the technology he imagined from all his Sci-Fi reading was coming to life. He would have also said none of it surprised him, because he believed all of it was inevitable. The future was always bright in his mind.

Despite all the progress we’ve made in tech in the US since my dad’s passing in 2009, we’ve had a lot of regression in the country at the same time. I imagine how my dad would feel today about our current President and the rise of hate and bigotry in this country. I imagine how he’d feel to see women continue to deal with discrimination and adversity; where inequality still exists across industries, across the nation. As a Jew, I imagine his disgust at some of the unimaginable things that have happened in our country in the most recent weeks. I imagine that he would not think the future’s so bright right now.

I am not a political activist. In fact, I refer to myself as “A-political, ‘A as in anti'”. I do vote on the regular and keep an eye on important bills being passed, but until recently, I’ve tried to avoid the topic as much as possible. Today however, I am embarrassed for our country and ashamed at myself for not doing more. As I read my twitter feed, I take pleasure in seeing the lack of fear in calling out our President for being ignorant and crass. We are very lucky to live in a country where we can be so vocal without recourse. But I fear we may not have those rights much longer if we allow things to persist. I am now challenging myself on what I personally, as an apolitical non-activist, can do to support our country getting past all of this.

I plan to start by surrounding myself with good humans who care deeply about these issues and have a zero tolerance for hate and bigotry. I will only work with and for organizations where they stand by these same beliefs (I am proud that my employer* has recently committed to standing against hate and violence). I will ensure that whomever I work with, mentor, or coach knows that I will always focus on creating a safe space for them to thrive, speak their minds and be supported – no matter how they identify (race, gender, religion or otherwise) as long as they reciprocate. Finally, I will do what I can to support those on the front lines trying to make our country a better place. I may not run for office or join a picket line, but I will speak up more about the issues, fund programs that are allowing us to make progress on equal rights and social justice (I donated yesterday to https://www.splcenter.org/), sign petitions, and encourage others to do the same. Anyone and everyone can make a difference in some way. We cannot just sit back and watch this happen.

So, Dad, if you’re watching what’s going on right now from wherever you are, please send good vibes and support us any way you can as well. Change won’t happen overnight, but I believe the good people of this country will push hard to turn things around and once again, the future will be bright.

Got other ideas about ways those of us who are apolitical can make an impact? Please share in the comments!

*UPDATE: @DigitalOcean has recently created a site to also foster donations to SPLC as well! Go DO!

Opening Doors & Taking Action

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open doorsAs the news unfolded in the past week over Susan Fowler’s recent blog post about her experiences at Uber, I have been thinking deeply about finding my voice on the matter. I recalled the countless times I had been harassed and never said a thing to anyone, let alone the HR rep at whatever company I was working at the time. I have dozens and dozens of stories of inappropriate, sexually charged, comments from colleagues, winks, suggestive touches, crass jokes, and pictures shared with me that I wish I could unsee. I never called them out.

Fear of gaslighting – being accused of being oversensitive, crazy, blowing things out of proportion – is probably one of the top reasons for not reporting the umpteen incidents employees experience in the workplace. It seems no matter how high we climb the corporate ladder, we still hold back. Whether it’s gaslighting, possible retaliation, or as in Susan Fowler’s case, being totally ignored, we doubt we will be heard.

On those rare occasions when we are heard, those who fall victim to bad behavior or blatant harassment are often “handled” quietly, if at all. Issues are swept under the rug before anyone knows. So, regardless of whether the bad actor gets a warning or more severe action is taken, no one else learns from this lesson. Organizations and leaders desperate to protect their reputations and avoid litigation make it go away a fast as possible. Perhaps those who helped “clean it up” get a reality check, but as long as there is no exposure, no public shaming, no admission of guilt, we will continue to see situations like Ms. Fowler’s persist.

It was a bold move for Ms. Fowler to publicly share her story about Uber and its leadership team’s lack of attention towards her situation. The ubiquity of Uber, and attention the company is already getting in other forums, certainly gave fuel to this issue, but this is not just about tech companies gone bad. It was a rallying cry for leaders at any company, big or small, to not only open the doors for employees to be heard, but to make it clear that crossing the line is no longer tolerated and when it is crossed, action is taken.

Opening Doors
Building a culture of open doors is not just about telling employees “my door is always open,” but actually opening that door. We had a thoughtful series of conversations on this topic at DigitalOcean (DO) over the past week. At our company all hands, we emphasized a zero-tolerance for any harassing behaviors that make our employees feel unsafe and our CEO and I both committed that, while we want people to talk with their managers and our People team first, we are 100% available to talk with any employee who is uncomfortable and prefers to talk with either of us about any issue.

Our commitment to our employees this past week has been well received, but executives making statements about their open doors is only part of the equation. Opening doors is also about ensuring a safe and inclusive work environment by proactively mitigating issues. Ensuring a safe work environment involves everything from setting policies and guidelines to conducting cross-company training beyond the online course we are required to click through when we start a new job.

studentdiscussion_250One of my former employers offered a training using situational role playing to develop understanding and empathy for those who may not appreciate the severity of certain actions. It was an invaluable exercise and we do something similar with the unconscious bias training we provide to all new employees as part of their on-boarding at DO. We’ve found by raising awareness of these behaviors in realistic settings we can do a lot to set clear expectations on what acceptable and unacceptable is, and make people more aware of their impact on others.

If you see something, say something.
Despite proactive efforts, open doors, trainings and policies, harassment still happens. Sometimes, it’s an innocent mistake where a young/inexperienced employee just doesn’t realize they’ve said something wrong. Sometimes, it’s an experienced executive who’s never been called out thus doesn’t appreciate the impact of their behavior. Regardless, we cannot stay silent.

I believe every manager is accountable for reporting any incident that they observe or is reported to them as soon as possible. I also believe it’s every employee’s right to know that their company is taking action to ensure a safe workplace. However, because of corporate policy and privacy protection, we often lack the transparency of how organizations are handling situations and whether they are operating a safe place of work. We cannot, for many reasons, publicly call out every person who crosses a line, but there could be methods(*) to get ahead of this such as:

  • Providing a safe forum for any employee to report an incident they’ve experienced or observed.
  • Tracking anonymized incident data to look for trends including frequency of issues and resolution timeframes.
  • Implementing and broadly communicating Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) that provide hot lines, advocacy and legal counsel.
  • Internal or even public communication on a company’s performance regarding harassment situations. Imagine a world where companies own unfortunate situations and say how they are resolving them and share improvement data. Scary as that may sound, I bet that if more companies shared this information, the trend of incidents would go down.

The beat goes on…
Whether it was in Twitter or in an intimate setting among friends, Susan Fowler’s story is not the first we’ve heard like this nor will it be the last. We need to continue to bring these topics front and center and commit to continuous improvement in the workplace. I’d love to hear how other leaders are handling this topic at their companies. We all benefit from learning from each other, so please share your stories in the comments.

(*) These are just suggestions, I leave the real policy and program design work to the experts 🙂

“I was right, I am the only girl. AGAIN!”

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This is the fourth summer in a row that my youngest daughter, now 13, has done some sort of a programming camp. For three out of four summers, she has been the only girl in her group. While I commend these programs for a great curriculum and instructors, this has caused me to think about how, as parents and a community, we need to step up efforts on gender balance in computing much earlier than college or even high school. If girls are not participating in programs like this in their formative years, how are to expect them to be computer science majors or pursue technical careers?

As we walked to Harvard this summer for her first day of camp, my daughter was a bit anxious about yet another digitalmediaacademy.orgsummer as the token girl. We had chosen a new program through Digital Media Academy (DMA) largely because they were one of the few to offer a Virtual Reality course where she could play with Oculus Rift and learn how to design virtual worlds. A second major factor was that much of the DMA website and materials are full of images of girls having fun with technology – suggesting they are very successful in recruiting girls to sign up for their courses.

In response to “Mom, if I am the only girl again this summer I am going to be so mad.” I tried to be encouraging and focus on the coolness of the course she was taking. I told her how leading edge she was to learn about an emerging technology before most people her age even knew what it was. I didn’t talk about the potential gender imbalance and instead focused on the fact that this was about pursuing her interests and passions. Inside though, I was hoping…no praying…she wasn’t the only one. Not just because I didn’t want her to be the one girl among the boys, but for the bigger picture. I was dying for a sign that the canaries were singing loudly in the coal mine. Hopeful that I would see a mixed group of boys and girls in the room eager to dig into technology.

The canaries weren’t singing…

When we arrived at the camp check-in area, we were relieved to see a few other girls signing in and heading off to their classrooms. The counselors whisked my daughter away to her classroom so I didn’t have a chance to see the gender composition. I asked her to text me at lunch with a pulse on how it was going.

As I walked back home, I reflected on the prior three summers. The first summer, she signed up for a game design course through ID Tech, hosted at MIT. The boys in this class were obsessed with Pokemon cards – something my daughter knew nothing about and had no interest in – and their break time was used to trade cards or play video games. As a pretty typical 10 year-old girl, she would have rather spent her lunch break talking about boy bands and Youtubers or maybe tossing a frisbee around outside. Needless to say, between that and being among a group of 8-10 year-old boys with zero interest in socializing with girls, my daughter felt pretty isolated among the group. Outside of learning a bit of Javascript, she was pretty disappointed with the experience that year.

The following year, I decided to combine a week I needed to spend at VMware’s Palo Alto HQ with an opportunity for her to try ID Tech again, but this time hosted at Stanford. She was willing to give it another try, thinking it was cool to “attend Stanford”. Once again, I dropped her off at the sign-in area and hoped for a better outcome than we experienced on the MIT campus the prior summer. At pickup time, she joyfully jumped in my rental car bubbling over about all the fun girls who were in her mobile app game design class. Just like her, some were there because their parents were in the valley for work and others were locals and long-time ID Tech participants. Not only did she have a lot more fun than the prior summer, but she accomplished a lot more in that week than I would have expected. We were both thrilled.

Flash forward to last summer and another year with ID Tech at MIT. My daughter was pretty into Minecraft at the time and was eager to go deep and get better at programming in general. She is a very go-with-the-flow kind of kid and told me she didn’t care if she was the only girl, she just wanted to geek out for a week after her return from a month at sleep-away camp. After such a good experience on the west coast the year before, I hoped that I’d see a trend shift here and she’d have other girls in her course. Alas, once again, she was the only one.

While I only have one data point of one summer in the valley, it was pretty interesting to experience such a different situation out there as compared to here. Are more households tech savvy out there because of the thick concentration of tech jobs? Is the bar higher in Silicon Valley schools such that kids out there are exposed to programming/technology earlier? Perhaps it’s climate and spending a week inside to code is a welcome break from sunshine (?!) whereas here we take every moment we can to get our kids outside before the next snomageddon.

Or, perhaps the girls here are not signing up because, like my kiddo, they’re worried they’ll be the only girl.

“I was right, I am the only girl. AGAIN!” was the text I received during her lunch break last Monday. I told her to hang in there and get as much as she could out of the course. But, I felt so very disappointed. Where are the girls that were shown so prominently on the brochure? Why are parents not signing up their girls for these cool classes? It’s Oculus for Pete’s sake!

My biggest concern here above all is that this is one of the biggest factors that impacts the pipeline of young women choosing technical degrees and jobs. If 8-13 year-old girls think their only option to learn how to code or experiment with new technology like Virtual Reality is to be an outlier in a room full of boys, they won’t sign up. Even now, while she learned a lot and got along just fine with the “gamer boys” (her nickname for them) in her class, my daughter is desperately looking into more girl-friendly programs for her age group next summer. Thankfully, now that she’s older, there are programs like Girls Who Code or Technovation. Even though I am a huge fan of programs like these and they give girls the critical mass of peer support they need, I worry it swings the pendulum the other way. I want to see balance in these programs. Not programs for just girls or those that cater to just boys.

So, how do we solve this problem?  Some suggestions:

  • Parents: Sign up your girls for programming summer camps! In most cases it’s ONE week. One! Your kids will survive a week of being indoors most of a day, trust me. And if not in the summer, sign them up during the school year or during school vacations (gasp!). Also, have them sign up with a friend to further balance whatever program they choose. And if you have boys interested in tech, try to sign them up for programs that are diverse too! The younger boys are sitting next to girls who are coding, the more “normal” it’ll feel to them as the grow up with technology.
  • Tech Camps: Don’t just try to recruit girls, sign them up. Reach out to faculty and school technology programs that have girls enrolled and develop partnerships that drive these girls to your camps. Also, try to mix up your courses so it’s not eight solid hours a day of programming. Stop catering to the boys who play video games all day and offer time to run outside or maybe even swim in the afternoon. Kids learn fast. There’s a lot they can learn in a week without having to sit in front of their desktop the whole time. And please, for the love of God, stop plastering your brochures and websites with just pictures of girls. Show boys and girls working and having fun together. Foster diversity.
  • Groups that target professional technical women: Invite young girls to some of your events or encourage mentoring between your members and the girls’ programs mentioned above. If more young girls interested in tech have role models, they are more likely to persevere in rooms full of boys. Maybe even start a camp of your own?

As the VR camp came to a close, I attended a showcase to see what my daughter had accomplished for the week. It was pretty cool to navigate the funky landscapes and terrains she had designed as though I DMA_showcasewas in them via the Rift. She was proud of what she had learned and was eager to download Unity at home so she could keep working on her project. I asked her how she felt about the week overall and she said “It wasn’t so bad this year being the only girl, in fact the best part was that I had the bathroom all to myself.”

Got ideas about how to get more young girls into tech?  Please share in the comments!

Step One: Investing in the Minority

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Once, in my first few weeks in the early days at Akamai, I was pulled aside and told I had to stop wearing suits every day because people thought I was looking for a new job. I promptly went out and bought five new pairs of jeans and mothballed my vast array of suits and dresses. I wanted to be sure I was taken seriously as a senior member of a technology organization. Now here I was, 15 years later, asking myself if jeans were OK to wear to a program I was invited to attend at Stanford Law. The event was hosted by a16z and is designed to prepare future corporate board members of venture backed companies. I’m a big believer in the value of strong first impressions and, like it or not, what we wear is part of that first impression.

I sought advice from a friend who’s been a senior leader at a few top technology companies in the valley. Her opinion is that jeans “are part of a wardrobe that connotes technical competence. Dressing like a stereotypical engineer offsets the fact that I’m female; people can place me as an engineer in spite of my gender. And the converse is true as well – jewelry, high heels, emphatic makeup, skirts, scarves – most garments that emphasize femininity also connote non-technical because they connote femininity.” However, she goes on to say “being female, of course, still connotes ‘not a leader’ just like it does ‘not technical’ so you’re still going to have to dress like a guy to get intuitively bucketed as leader instead of an admin.” This last part struck me because the guys I know, in our field, who are some of the best leaders I have had the pleasure to work with, routinely wear jeans; not just to go to work but on stage and in executive meetings.

So what does this have to do with “Investing in the Minority”?

As noted above, the program I was about to attend was to prepare future corporate board members. I knew I was invited along with another CEO friend of mine from Boston in part because we were women, but I thought it was to round out the attendee list. We are often the token “nerd chicks” in our circle of professionals. So, while I was stressed about walking into a room full of white dudes in suits and being taken seriously (on first impressions because of what I wore), it turned out to be a totally moot point. As soon as I arrived, I knew this was about getting a new class of highly diverse board members and no one cared about what we wore. The room was ~75%, ethnically diverse, women and of all the male attendees, I counted only two white dudes. Most of the presenters were, however, white dudes (and most of these white dudes were wearing jeans), but they had clearly been tutored on balanced use of pronouns and were careful not to patronize or overtly call out the diversity in the room.

Audience diversity and wardrobe aside, what was really striking was that a16z put a stake in the ground that they are intent on solving the dearth of women and diversity on corporate boards by training up a bunch of us for the job. This realization reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a founding CEO and CTO duo who want to hire more women engineers. Women were applying for their job postings and they were great fits for this company, but they were finding that most of these women were not “technical enough”. I questioned whether there was unconscious bias at play or whether these women were really not as technically competent for the roles they were hoping to fill. The founders insisted these candidates were great in every way, but they just didn’t have enough coding experience. Just like a16z is investing in diversity for boards by training us up, I pushed these founders to invest in these women engineers. If they are great in every way, but just don’t have enough experience, give them that experience!

Which leads me to think more about this group of newly enlightened future board members. Now that we have been schooled in the duty of care and the duty of loyalty, who is taking the next step to actually get us onto boards? This is no different than the very capable women engineers who just need hiring managers to give them a chance, and perhaps some training/mentoring, so they can get experience. Unless we are actively marketed, recruited and given a chance to sit on boards, this investment in us as minorities is for not. I am not saying that we sit back and wait for others to do the work for us. I will definitely tap my board and others to make sure they know I am now even more prepared to take a board seat than I was with “just” my 25+ years of experience in management in startups and mature companies and from sitting on three different non-profit boards. However, I do think it’s incumbent upon a16z and others who aspire to support and foster diversity on boards and in corporations to seek us out and take a chance on us.

A16z made it clear in their invitation to this event that they are not guaranteeing us board seats. I get that and nor should they as we each need to stand on our own and demonstrate what we can do. However, they should, IMHO, commit to Step Two:

  • Create a directory of newly minted “board ready” professionals who have completed programs such as the one offered by Stanford Law
  • Upon election to a board, provide a mentor directory to those who have completed the program so we can have an experienced, trusted advisor or two to call upon in our first year of board service [Note: They may have to sign an NDA to do this, but if they are trusted professionals without a conflict, this should be a reasonable ask.]
  • Pressure their portfolio companies, current boards they sit on, and others in their networks to take a chance on us, or perhaps if not already oversubscribed with board observers, let us observe so we can start to get real board experience.
  • Finally, track our progress. Where are we in 9-12 months? Are we sitting on a board? Did anything we learned in this program become valuable in our first months as board members? Did we make an impact? As Professor Daines noted in his lecture last week, not enough research has been done on corporate board governance – especially on VC backed companies – so let’s start capturing the data now.

I am truly grateful for the invitation to participate in the program last week and hopeful I can leverage what I’ve learned on a private or public board soon. Much thanks to Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Margit Wennmachers and their team for taking the time to organize and participate in last week’s program!

…and for those wondering “but she never said what she ended up wearing??!”, I wore jeans.

Got ideas about how to foster more diversity on corporate boards? Please reply with a comment!