Photo: Jennifer Moss, Popy Dimoulas-Graham and Melanie Baker discuss their lives and careers.
Who runs the world? Well, according to Beyonce, it’s women.
And the stats seem to support it. In Waterloo Region, women account for more than 50 per cent of the population. Women-led startups can achieve up to 35 per cent higher return on investment than their male-only counterparts, yet only 11 per cent of Communitech-engaged startups have female founders or co-founders.
In a community known for innovation and community support, why are we falling short in building and supporting female-powered companies?
The facts are frustrating and disappointing. We see the struggle to attract and retain strong female talent at Communitech, and know we can play a part in a solution. So, we launched Women in Tech in 2013 with the mandate to increase the retention and advancement of women.
We are supporting women in both technical and non-technical roles. Our program is just getting off the ground, after months of research and planning. What can you look forward to? A Peer2Peer group, mentorship programs, regular networking events, skills development workshops and entrepreneur bootcamps.
We know we can’t tackle this issue alone. It’s going to take a global community. We’ve partnered with Google for Entrepreneurs on #40Forward, in which 40 startup communities around the world are taking new approaches to increase the representation of women by 25 per cent in 2014.
It’s a big challenge, with no clear solutions. It’s a global issue and not just a local problem. And we may fail.
At the end of the day, however, we know diverse teams make better decisions, bring higher return on investment, and lead to strong initial public offerings. The numbers are proving it. Now the question is, what do we do to create success?
In search of answers, I invited Jennifer Moss, co-founder of Plasticity, Popy Dimoulas-Graham, founder of Charity Republic, and Melanie Baker, a 15-year tech veteran in community management, to join me. We cracked open a bottle of wine and I asked about life, work and the tech community.
No topic was off limits: we talked family, growing up local and career paths. In the span of just over an hour, three women with varied experience in the tech sector chatted and challenged each other. As the sun set, the conversation grew lively and opinionated.
Did we walk away in agreement? No. Did we make headway in beginning important conversations that ask hard questions not only of women and men, but of organizations like Communitech and our region? I think so.
As Communitech moves forward with the #40Forward challenge, I wanted to share some of our conversation.
Q – There’s a lot of talk in the media about the advancement of women in tech. What have you learned through your leadership roles?
P – There aren’t enough of us.
In the University of Waterloo Velocity program, there are about 30 companies, and I believe only three have female founders or co-founders. And I always wonder, what can we do differently?
J - It’s so often that the expectation of Jim [Moss], as the CEO, and him being my husband, there’s always the feeling that I got the job by default.
There’s no expectation that I would be first and Jim got the role because he’s my husband. It’s expected that I got the role because I’m his wife. You have to battle against that a lot.
M – I don’t notice it. Again, it’s been 15 years. I’m aware that I’m usually one of the few women there. You expect it. You’re in tech.
J - I think one of the things that has been very important has been to develop myself as a thought leader. I spent a lot of time with Jim really evangelizing him, and building him up as a thought leader. I thought that I just didn’t feel like I needed to do that for myself. But now I’m beginning to push myself, and my brand, out there. It’s been really good for the business.
P – I think authenticity gets past almost anything. If you are genuine and authentic and you are just yourself I think it overcomes a lot of barriers.
Q – Let’s discuss the gender gap in the tech sector. How do disparities in wages, struggles gaining VC funding and being a woman entrepreneur affect you?
M - I think by the time women get to those positions, especially senior ones, they’ve had to deal with being the only woman in the room for so long that they no longer think, “Oh yeah, I should probably help other women get up here.” You are so used to getting yourself through the day and building your own career. The only person you’ve had to think about is yourself.
It may not even occur to you anymore that you are technically part of a [female] community. It’s tunnel vision because you’ve had to watch your own back for so long.
J - I notice women of a certain age who give advice like, “Don’t talk about your kids. Don’t be like this or that.” I think they were getting into their careers at a time where they did have to fight tooth and nail. And that’s why I say now the paradigm has to shift. You can’t just follow the same pattern.
I talk to our CTO about this. He’s very forward-thinking about how he thinks about women in our organization. He has goals about wanting equal women to men developers on our team. And I wanted to know what his motivation was behind that. And he said, “If I find a woman developer, she is three times, sometimes five times, better than her male counterpart, because she’s had to be.”
P – I think that’s one of my biggest questions: Why aren’t young women becoming entrepreneurs?
I think of when I was in my early 20s. When I was that age I was very risk-averse, and to be an entrepreneur, you have to take risks. I eventually realized that the career path I had chosen was the wrong one for me. I realized I had to take a risk in order to do what I love and follow my passion. At that young age you are so impressionable. I had pressure from my parents saying, “You need to go into the sciences. Don’t follow your passions. Get a high-paying job.”
Q – Do you think this is a trend? We see young men taking risks. Why aren’t we seeing young women entering this world?
P – Women are more logical [laughs]. They mature faster, so they can think about [entrepreneurial ideas] and go into it later and smarter.
M – The women I know who are entrepreneurs, especially serial entrepreneurs – ask them what their parents did. They ran their own business [everyone nods].
Now, my parents didn’t. I know why I don’t want to run my own business. Having an entrepreneurial family helps.
Q – Family and balance. You feel like you are working all the time, but isn’t your family more a part of it?
J – It’s so true. The kids see us working all the time. But they are part of it.
M – Kids benefit from seeing you do what you love.
J – My daughter said, “I want to do what Mummy does.” And Jim said, “Why, what does she do that you want to do?” And she said, “I don’t know, but she just comes home happy all the time.”
She doesn’t know what I do. She can’t describe what I do, but she knows I come home happy. That’s all that matters to her, and she wants to emulate that.
I’ve been in a corporate job that I hated. I was not happy, and I was not a good parent because I was not a happy person.
Q - What works and doesn’t work in designing a community that is inclusive to women? What do you need from us (Communitech and Waterloo Region) as a larger support system?
M – I think the design is the first thing. Community development is becoming very social-science oriented. And you have to design it before you ever start building it. So to bring women in, you need to know who you want in it, what roles you want women to play, who you need to exclude and what the focus will be.
J – You need to think about growing the community of the future, too. I mean 100 years in the future, not just two or five.
M – Particularly with women. You need to invite them in, and then push them forward to speak, share opinions, especially younger women. There has to be extra work done in that direction. And it needs to be zero-tolerance for anybody. Everyone has to mind their manners; there cannot be abuse. It starts in the design and it starts early.
P – What I hear from both of you, and what I agree with, is that women need to get uncomfortable.
J – We talk about being risk-averse, and even though I’m risky, I push myself really, really hard to be uncomfortable. It’s a constant battle. I’m always doing it. Painfully.
M – And we talked about this before; it’s a thing I’ve noticed: the older I get the more stuff I make myself do.
J – It’s very easy for me to send Jim to go and do public speaking, but I need to do it, and I’m going to keep doing it until it doesn’t feel uncomfortable.
P – I think it’s really important, how Communitech can help women. You really have to get them when they are young, and show them female role models in the space.
