Women as Tech Leaders

Women as Tech Leaders

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heathergrahamleadership

1 Jun, 2022

A 2020 McKinsey study found that “Companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn, these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives, or none at all.”  This goes to prove that not only are women a source of needed tech talent to fill open positions but having women in executive roles helps make a company more profitable.  I have discussed how diversity is key in bringing in new ideas, solutions, and opinions that help make teams more creative in my book “Pull Each Other Up.”

Female Leaders

Who are some of these women in tech companies that are increasing profitability?  Here are a few well-known examples:

  • Pam Parisian – CIO of AT&T 2016-2020.  Retired 3800 legacy applications saving the company $800 million per year.
  • Lucy Peng – CEO of Alibaba Alipay division from 2010 to 2013 growing it to a value of $60 billion.  Directory of Finance of the offshoot Ant Financial Group which is an online payment platform from 2013-2018 to a valuation of $60 billion. 
  • Meg Whitman was CEO of eBay where it grew from 30 employees to over 15,000 and became CEO of HP from 2011 to 2015 until the split to HP Enterprise where she served as CEO until 2017.  HP Enterprise shares rose 47% during this time.
  • Susan Wojcicki – YouTube CEO in 2014, had her fifth child in 2015 while CEO showing that it is possible to have children while being an executive, and helped raise profits to $90 billion while advocating for women in tech and women’s rights.  Youtube has raised the number of women employees from 24% to 30% in her care.
  • Safra Catz has been CEO of Oracle since 2014 and is leading the company’s digital transformation to the Cloud.

What does this mean?

As you can see, these women are paving the way both for their company as well as our future of bringing more women leaders into tech.  Organizations should continue to look at ways to introduce more diversity at all levels to improve profits and innovations and build for our tech future.

#womenintechnology