The Importance of Gender Diversity in Tech Isn’t Just a Marketing Gimmick!

The road to becoming a Vice President of Marketing for an industry-leading data protection tech company was paved with challenges. It took hard work, dedication and perseverance to become the results-driven marketing leader I am today. I have created and developed marketing teams that leverage performance data for aggressive growth. As lead marketer, I must also foster and maintain a culture of collaboration and managing knowledge.

Of course, an already-healthy company culture helps facilitate collaboration. It is also what attracts and retains top talent in any given role. It is a testament to an organization’s core values to have a wealth of talent eager to join its ranks. As I considered my options for entering the tech industry years ago, I found that I often had to look thrice to find a woman executive in any given organization. I asked myself if a company was an appropriate environment for me to pierce the male-dominated technology bubble? Truth be told, if there hadn’t been other women on the executive leadership page of a company’s website, I likely would not have joined.

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Fortunately, there are other women on the leadership team in my current role. Representation matters, and it’s this diverse leadership team along with a strong culture that drew me to join this company. It was a welcoming experience. The company has provided a supportive and healthy work environment where I am respected as a professional and as a woman. But this wasn’t always the case in my career.

I once received a promotion to the executive leadership team for a growing technology company. That team was primarily male. After my promotion, my direct manager and the company’s CEO pulled a copy of the P&L during a one-to-one meeting. He said, “Have you seen this?” And because I’d never been included in revenue conversations previously, I responded, “No, I haven’t, and I’m excited to dig in!”  His response was, “Well, this is called a profit and loss statement, and this is how we….”  I immediately stopped him. “John (name changed), I know what a P&L is. I have an MBA, remember? And if I don’t know what a P&L is, then I should probably get a refund on my graduate school tuition.”

Although this was an isolated incident, there have been other times in my career where I’ve been either actively or passively classified as ignorant because of my gender. Earlier in my career, I responded with passivity. As if expecting to be classified as ignorant. It wasn’t until I worked for successive CEOs who understood the vast chasm of inequality for women in technology, and who actively advocated for women in tech roles, that I became my own best advocate. These leaders were known to say, “Well, actually, that was Lesly’s idea, not mine,” and “Just because I’m on this call doesn’t mean I have all the answers. You’ll need to confer with Lesly on that.”

This type of leadership is not about hiring a trainer and repeating the right management slogans. It’s about fostering an authentically positive work environment where employees are encouraged to collaborate across departmental functions, and genuinely get to know one another. To create this type of culture means prioritizing psychological safety and ensuring employees feel comfortable sharing knowledge and skills in an accessible public forum. When employees experience openness from top management around personal weaknesses or lack of knowledge, and they are simultaneously encouraged to do the same or to share their own strengths and expertise, they can do both without any fear of job instability or retribution.

In my role, it is essential that I lead by example – sharing my thoughts, ideas, projects, documents, and data – in a company-wide forum to not only provide the vehicle for communication but a vast and organic knowledge base of questions, answers, discussions, and collaboration. The hurdle here is not the technology; the hurdle is changing the behaviors of colleagues, to make sharing the default instead of the exception.

By contrast, empire-building and knowledge-hoarding are relics from a bygone era of male-dominated culture and have negative implications at almost every level of an organization. So, while a culture of knowledge sharing facilitates personal development for employees, it also ensures that hoarded information doesn’t leave the company when turnover happens.

The knock-on effect of knowledge-sharing is that employees can access the support and validation they need to be successful in their roles. Making myself and others successful is ultimately my goal, and the by-product of that is a cultural environment that fosters constant communication, honesty, and openness.

A huge part of the inequality divide is that many women aren’t supported by male allies. Yet, from seats of power and privilege in the organization, male allies can play an integral role in addressing or countering negative attitudes toward women in technology. Under these circumstances, a woman who has learned to be her own best advocate would not be deemed bossy, emotional, demanding, talkative, or worse. When male counterparts validate and participate in the hard work needed to achieve greater gender diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry, women are free to openly use louder voices, exhibit more confidence, and share deeper insights.

Women tend to explore creative and what is known as ‘helping’ careers. Helping careers include healthcare, teaching, customer service, and yes – marketing. Why is marketing a helping career? Because marketing has traditionally been a role that supports the organization’s sales teams and other organizational business areas as its customer. As technology progresses, marketing has become an integral data-driven part of the entire customer journey. From awareness to advocacy, marketing teams are doing the “creative” work behind revenue and growth initiatives. They are also optimizing media placement and assessing data and ROI behind initiatives and campaigns. Marketers constantly adapt by tweaking processes to maximize the value of all of the work they do.

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Historically, marketers have been content with saying, “50% of my marketing doesn’t work, but I don’t know which 50%.” Well, in 2021, you can and should know with certainty. And if you don’t know, there’s a pretty good chance your job is on the line.  Regardless of the creativity and appeal of your work within the organization, data is the path to breaking the status quo. If you are pursuing a marketing role, learn the data. Learn Google Analytics, learn everything you can around search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, content marketing driving web traffic, and marketing attribution models. You must be able to tie your efforts to revenue for an organization. Although tools like Salesforce and HubSpot can help with reporting, you’ll need to ensure that you understand what drives revenue and build upon that while concurrently limiting or outsourcing those activities that can’t be tied to revenue.

Sales and marketing is a tough business. It’s a result-driven profession and your job is under intense scrutiny day in and day out. Having strong women in marketing leadership is remarkably beneficial to any team. When women are included in these roles, it can change the company’s dynamic and culture and create more room for growth. Further, giving voice to the varied experiences and worldviews of women are the building blocks for creating something truly unique. Equal access to opportunities will drive innovation and ensure individual and company success.

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