Power Up

Introduction

THERE’S A WOMAN IN THE MEN’S ROOM

In the fall of 2015 I chaired the Innovation Summit at the G20 conference in Antalya, Turkey, where presidents, prime ministers, finance and labor ministers, and leading research and policy institutions from the top twenty economies in the world had gathered to discuss global financial problems. This was the first time the G20 had put innovation and technology on the agenda, so there was a lot of attention focused on the Innovation Summit.

In addition to chairing the summit I was also asked to participate on a panel exploring how to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience faster growth in a slowing global new economy.

After the panel discussion was over, the moderator invited questions from the audience. The first question was directed at me, and it did not have anything to do with SME; instead, someone asked whether I had faced difficulties and challenges in Silicon Valley because I was a woman.

I wasn’t surprised. This wasn’t the first time in my thirty-year career I had been on stage to discuss a business issue and immediately gotten a question about my gender.

I responded with a somewhat contrarian take, saying that I couldn’t think of a single door that was permanently shut to me because I was a woman—and that in fact being a woman in the predominantly male technology world had opened many doors to me. Although that’s entirely true, it’s also true that being a woman created many painful challenges for me to navigate, often alone. But that was never where I focused my attention, and a forum on increasing growth in the global economy didn’t seem the moment to start.

Another woman on the panel, a leading researcher from a German think tank, chimed in next. She had just completed a multiyear study of small and medium enterprises around the world and recited a litany of depressing statistics about the very real barriers holding women back: limited access to initial and growth capital, limited representation in the corporate executive suite, limited networking capability because of exclusion from gendered social activities, and on and on.

After the panel the German researcher immediately approached me. “You know what?” she said. “Listening to you, I couldn’t help but think that the reason you were successful as a woman in a men’s world was because you didn’t focus at all on the statistics and facts I was quoting. In fact, you ignored them completely. You proceeded in your career as though you had as much chance at success as anybody else—or maybe even more.”

She was right, and what she said perfectly summarized what I now see as the key to my path to power as a woman in Silicon Valley. If I had stopped to think about being in the minority—with the numbers against me, at risk of discrimination—I might have lost the courage to go out and compete with the best. Like a motorcyclist, I’ve never ignored the rocks and debris that could send me skidding, but I’ve never focused on them either. I set my sights then and now on the smooth ground that allows me to move ahead. Otherwise the fear of crashing might overwhelm me. My background was no doubt a major influence. Growing up as a Christian kid in a 99 percent Muslim country had taught me to focus not on my differences but rather on my strengths.

That day at the Summit I realized something important that sometimes gets lost in the conversation about gender: gender still matters, but we can’t let it matter too much. In doing so, we risk shifting too much of our focus—and others’—from our achievements to our gender. I believe that’s part of why many successful, pioneering women in Silicon Valley whom I asked to be a part of this book declined. Some gave elaborate reasons, others kept it brief, but I often heard the same message in their responses: “I got where I am because I did not focus on being a woman but rather on being the best I could. I won because of my talent, hard work, and determination. I never let my gender define me, and I don’t want to start doing that now.”

I immediately understood their response, as I have always taken that same stance. I always acted as though—and in fact believed— my gender did not matter and I belonged in every room, no matter what anybody else might think. And yet the fact that three decades after I started my own career the conditions for women pursuing careers in technology have hardly changed tells me it’s time that we who have been successful step up and explicitly, publicly support the next generation making their way in this tough field. That means owning that being a woman in the new economy is different from being a man in the new economy, with its own set of challenges to overcome.

That said, when I say I thought I belonged in every room, I mean it. Once I was the only woman serving on a company’s board of directors that had convened to discuss a particularly heated issue, one of those “bet the company”–level decisions. The conversation was fast and furious and lasted a good part of the day. At one point one of the gentlemen called for a break.

We walked down the hallway together while I wrapped up a passionate point. Then the men opened a door, and we all walked through it.

The door shut behind us, and suddenly all eyes were wide on me. For a split second I wondered if what I was saying was completely off the wall or somehow too complicated for them to follow. Then I took in our surroundings: Florescent lighting. Tiled floors. Urinals. Men using urinals.

I had walked into the men’s bathroom.

Without stopping to comment on our whereabouts, I finished my sentence, gave a casual nod, and walked out. On my way to the women’s bathroom I considered whether to be embarrassed. But mostly I felt annoyed because I was sure they were continuing the conversation without me, and I didn’t want to miss out or have to catch up.

When we reconvened in the boardroom, the mood was more relaxed. Great, I thought, they already came to a decision.

“So did you guys finish the discussion?” I asked.

They all smiled.

“Magdalena, we didn’t talk about the company at all,” one of them said. “All we could talk about was that you had walked into the bathroom! We were shocked, but not you—you didn’t even react. All you cared about was finishing your point! You’re completely unflappable.”

His tone was admiring, and we all laughed. Then we got back to the business at hand, which was actually much more productive now that everyone’s mood had lightened.

With this book I want to help the next generation of women look blithely past the poor odds to power UP and command the right to be in any room. I want to help you look beyond the gender statistics of the workplace and feel confident entering any of the technology-related fields—but also prepared to deal with the challenges.

Although I urge women to focus on the smooth road to ride fast and fearless, I will also talk about some of the tough circumstances we do face. It’s not talked about enough, particularly among women who have made it. I want women to have tools to manage the people who, consciously or unconsciously, act to take away their power. I’m sharing these stories for men as well because I believe the next big push forward shouldn’t be a women’s movement—it’ll take all of us.

This is not a research book or a political platform but a field guide for women who want to have successful careers in the new economy at large. I don’t want women to have illusions about the tradeoffs inherent in a hard-driving career. High-growth business means cultures that don’t coddle people. They’re not particularly attentive to work-life balance. They’re high risk.

Those are the downsides. The upsides are work that is intellectually stimulating, relationships that feed off the shared thrill of creating something new, and a shot at wealth and opportunity way beyond what’s readily available in most other fields.

THE TIME IS NOW

Technology is the driving force of the New Economy. With the creative use of technology, established industries are being transformed, creating new competitors who are emerging as leaders. Great examples of new-economy companies are AirBnB, ZipCar, and Facebook, three companies that are changing the way people vacation, get from one place to another, and create and consume information. The new economy is coming to an industry and an office near you, opening the floodgates for mainstream participation.

All this suggests a unique opportunity for women to power UP, changing both the face and the future of technology. High-growth startups create lots of jobs and typically make their employees owners. Even the company cook can become a millionaire, as we witnessed when Google went public. These companies are more willing to break rules than are legacy firms because they have little to protect. With good ideas, courage, and hard work, workers in the new economy can leap hierarchies, bypass gatekeepers, and upend traditional expectations around success. And because these companies will be breaking a lot of established norms and redefining processes, they are by nature open to new ideas, both from men and from women.

Furthermore, to succeed in the new economy, you don’t need to be an engineer or a person enthralled by technology for technology’s sake. Think about a company like Rent the Runway, which is using sophisticated logistics and distribution to make couture fashion accessible to women who can’t afford to buy it. Underneath all the sparkling gowns, it’s an impressive technology company.

THE CULTURE OF TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING. New-economy leaders are now owning the ways that privilege, gender, and race have shut people out of otherwise healthy meritocracies. There’s a lot of work to do. You have only to look at my own Valley network, from which the women in this book were drawn, to see this is true. They are brilliant, driven, and deserving of their opportunities. They are also predominantly white or from privileged educational backgrounds. By and large this is still the face of Silicon Valley. But change is coming, with leaders recognizing that diversity leads to better results: stronger, more innovative teams, and better products and services for customers.

At the time I came of age in high tech there were so few women that we weren’t thinking about a political movement. We were doing what we needed to get work done in a man’s world. We were not thinking about whether we had it hard—and we certainly weren’t thinking about whether there might be others who had it even harder. Essentially I ignored my gender and focused on my success. Other women took the same approach. When Kate Mitchell, the cofounder of Scale Ventures and board member of the National Venture Capital Association, recently told an audience of women in San Francisco that she had finally decided “to come out as a woman” after years of doing whatever she could do to minimize her gender differences to fit into the male-dominated technology world, many women nodded their heads.

Today women and men have much higher expectations for how workplaces address bias, recruit talent, and create an environment that makes everybody feel comfortable and confident. We’re also seeing the fruit of many decades of politics and formal advocacy. The numbers may still weigh against women, but major companies such as Salesforce and Amazon have publicly set goals and announced they’ve achieved pay parity, a victory that third-party salary surveys have confirmed. More companies and victories for equal pay and opportunity will surely follow. Academics, politicians, and entrepreneurs are all working to increase the number of women working in high-tech and STEM fields more broadly.

But let’s put all that back in our peripheral vision. I was compelled to write this book because I believe that there’s another, much more powerful reason that every woman reading is poised to power UP:

Powering UP, as I see it, requires you to own your power. Powered-UP women:

This book has been made possible by the many brave women founders and technology leaders who have joined me in putting out their hands to pull other women up. This is the final level of powering UP: finding ways to help others who have never gotten a fair shake—not just women but everyone who has been either overlooked or judged inadequate by the reigning gatekeepers.

We can all power UP, no matter how low our beginnings or how big our challenges. Powering UP beats all other alternatives. And when enough of us have powered up, we’ll just knock down the gates.