Episode 17: Female in Silicon Valley

April 29, 2013

"In this one particular conversation I had with an angel investor...he responded, ‘Well, I don’t want to say the wrong thing and call you a meek Asian woman, but I wonder how you will lead a group of about 100 people?’" - Elizabeth Yin, co-founder, LaunchBit

Raising money for a startup is a tough proposition for any entrepreneur. Elizabeth Yin (left) and her co-founder set out more than a year ago to raise a first round of funding for their company, LaunchBit. Along the way, they became more conscious of their gender than they'd ever been before. 18 minutes. 

In part two of the show, we meet Janne Sigurdsson (above), an Icelandic director at Alcoa, the mining company, who talks about how much work her employer has done to make the firm more appealing to women. Smelters aren't known for their allure, but Alcoa upped its female workforce by more than three percent during the recession.

And we meet a couple of executives from Coca-Cola, who explain what the beverage behemoth is doing to make life better for women inside and outside the company.

Show notes: Elizabeth Yin wrote this piece for Women 2.0 about her funding experiences, which prompted me to interview her for the show. This piece from The Verge is also very revealing about just how hard it can be for women business owners to get male investors to take their ideas seriously. 

You can read more about Catalyst's honoring of Alcoa here and Coca-Cola here. Oxfam's Behind the Brands report came out in February.

Sponsorship notices: Do take advantage of Audible's and Squarespace's offers! You can get a free audio book and a 30-day Audible trial by going to Audiblepodcast.com/broad. As I said in the show, Bossypants really is great. For the Squarespace offer go to to Squarespace.com/broad and use the code 'broad4' if you decide to sign up - it'll get you a 10% discount. I built this site using Squarespace 5 - but they're now on 6, which looks even better.

Episode 16: Leaning in

April 12, 2013

Finally, the great debate: The Broad Experience is leaning in. 

"I went into the book with very negative expectations. I had read...articles...that suggested she came from a privileged point of view and didn’t have anything to say to the masses. But I felt completely the opposite after reading it." - Yvahn Martin

"There are two people in this book who are not white. One is a Hispanic male and one is an African-American male...She never talks about how non-white women have totally different experiences on top of what she's described." - Stacy-Marie Ishmael

"She’s not risking a ton by writing this book…but once you realize this is not my best friend Sheryl telling me what she thinks, there’s some good stuff in there.” - Dora Chomiak

(Standing up, left to right: Yvahn Martin, Dora Chomiak, Stacy Marie Ishmael.

On sofa, l to r: Ashley Milne-Tyte, Gaea Freireich, Rebecca Jackson)

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book 'Lean In' was famous - or infamous, depending on your point of view - before it was even published. Once it came out, it shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. This week six women from Generations X and Y gathered over a glass of wine to debate the merits of Sandberg's advice, and discuss how the book plays into the whole debate about male and female roles at work and in the home. Views are varied and unvarnished. 26 minutes (well you can't have six women in a room and edit it down to 15, can you?)
 

Squarespace sponsor offer: For a free trial, go to Squarespace.com/broad, and if you do decide to continue past the offer period, you can get a 10% discount on your account by entering the offer code 'broad4' below the pricing options.

Show notes: my guests were the intrepid Dora Chomiak, Gaea Freireich, Stacy-Marie Ishmael (who you may remember from episode 7), Yvahn Martin, and Rebecca Jackson. 

Here's Anne-Marie Slaughter's review of Lean In from the New York Times Sunday Book Review. And you might like to check out this male take on Sandberg's message on the Harvard Business Review blog. (In short, the author says women should *not* have to be more like men. I don't think following Sandberg's advice means they do, but that's another story. This piece is yet another example of how people read this book through an incredibly personal lens.)

And as I said in the podcast, for inspiring stories of women in science, check out Stories from the Field, from the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Episode 15: Do we have to fit in?

April 1, 2013

"If you don’t have the courage to step out of your comfort zone, you will not lead. So I don’t view that as a male or female thing." - Kathy Caprino

This has become a big point of contention for many women - the idea that to do well at work we have to fit in to company culture, instead of the company bending to accommodate itself to the way we do things. In the first part of the show I talk to career coach and Forbes writer Kathy Caprino (above). I interviewed Kathy for a print piece more than a year ago, and as soon as I started doing The Broad Experience I knew she'd be a great guest. She's been through it all - the corporate job from hell (that she couldn't quite leave), complete with workplace drama galore, the reinvention-that-didn't-work - and finally found her niche as a career and leadership coach for women. We talk about whether women are really 'fixing ourselves' if we do things the Sheryl Sandberg way, and the extent to which corporations need to alter their inner workings (a lot).

In part two I meet a representative from one of those big corporations, the multinational consumer goods company Unilever. The company has just been honored by Catalyst for its progress in getting more women into its leadership pipeline all over the world - and believe me, it's doing this in some very interesting ways. Can you imagine a company attracting women in the west by cozying up to their parents? Tune in to hear all about this, and more. 17 minutes.

Show notes: Kathy Caprino's book on women getting their careers and lives back is Breakdown, Breakthrough. For more on women and the workplace in India, this recently published piece in the Harvard Business Review has some good information.

You can read more about the details of Catalyst's award to Unilever here. 

Oxfam's 'Behind the Brands' report can be read here. 

Episode 14: When it's too hard to leave

March 18, 2013

Everyone loves Etsy, right? If you live or work in creative circles, you are at the very least aware of this popular online marketplace for hand-made stuff. Danielle Maveal (left) felt really lucky to work there, relishing her role as liaison between Etsy and its many sellers. But eventually she was itching to move on. Except she couldn't bring herself to leave. She's far from the only woman who has wrestled with this. Tune in to hear more about why women stay in jobs longer than men.

And in part two of the show we meet Whitney Johnson, former Wall Street analyst, investment firm founder and current dream-wrangler. We talk about some of the research in her book, Dare, Dream, Do, and how she made the transition from music major to secretary to equity analyst. 16 minutes.

Show notes: Terri Boyer is executive director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. During the interview we began discussing this study from Pew Social Trends. The study found that young women in the US are now likelier than young men to put a high priority on having a career that earns them good money. Terri was arguing that these findings suggest that women may soon lose the tendency to stick in jobs longer than men for all the reasons we discuss during the episode. I'm a bit skeptical, though. I think it's easy to reply to a survey stating your intentions or wishes, harder to actually carry out those intentions. We know women are prey to strong social and cultural influences, from expectations about how they should behave to norms around who does the housework. We need to change more than our intentions to earn good money before we'll be switching jobs as often as men do, and upping our salaries in the process.

Episode 13: When women ask women for a raise

March 4, 2013

In this show we look at women and negotiating, but from an angle I'd never thought about until recently. What happens when a female employee asks a female boss for more money? Many women claim female managers recoil when they ask them for a raise. Why? And we return to the topic of women in technology. Why do so many women who work at tech companies perform 'emotional labor' roles rather than technological ones? 14 minutes. 

Show notes: here's the full story behind Ashley Welde's attempts to get a raise from her female managers (including details of who finally gave her a raise, un-asked). One thing I couldn't fit in the story is that Ashley's experiences have put her off female bosses. She prefers men because she believes they are likelier to advocate for her. Forbes Woman contributor Susannah Breslin feels the same way about male bosses, though for different reasons. Thoughts?

Sara Laschever is co-author of two books on women and negotiating and travels throughout the US giving workshops and talks on this topic.

Here's the piece in Dissent magazine about ex-Facebook worker Katherine Losse and the culture of Silicon Valley, which got Lauren Bacon thinking. Losse's book is The Boy Kings. And here's Lauren's blog post, 'Women in Tech and Empathy Work', which spurred our conversation.

Episode 12: Women of Kenya

February 3, 2013

Africa is becoming a continent of entrepreneurs, and a lot of them are women. Most of these run 'micro businesses' selling fruits, vegetables or consumer goods at roadside stalls, but when I was in Kenya last month I spoke to two energetic entrepreneurs operating in the formal economy. These are the types of business owners the World Bank says Kenya needs more of if the country is to reach 'middle income' status by 2020.

Tune in to hear event manager Lydia Kaindi (above), who has firm opinions on what's going wrong with Kenyan men while its women soar, and film producer Mercy Murugi, who works with young people in Kenya's, and probably Africa's, largest slum. 12 minutes.

Anyone who wants to know more about Kibera should read this wonderful piece on a day in the life of this sprawling Nairobi neighborhood.