What If… There Were More Women in Technology? The Business Case for Diversity
From Anita Borg Institute Wiki
What if... there were more women in Technology? The Business Case for Diversity.
- Mani Abrol, Senior Manager, Yahoo! Research
- Beryl Nelson, Engineering Manager, Google
- Caroline Simard, VP Research and Executive Programs, Anita Borg Institute
Objective:
What if we had real gender diversity in technical roles? Research shows that women currently hold 25% of computer occupations in the US (US Department of Labor, 2008). In a major study of Silicon Valley companies, the typical representation of women was 19% (Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Clayman Institute for Gender Research). The representation of women graduating with computer science degrees has been in a steady decline and is now at 18% at the bachelor’s level (National Science Foundation). In other countries, the representation of women in technical roles is similarly low. In India, the proportion of women in the software industry in India is at 28% including both technical and non-technical roles, and the representation of women in senior leadership positions is below 10% (Mercer and Nasscom 2008; Catalyst, 2011). Faced with these statistics and growing calls for change, executives, academics, policy makers, and technical women who are advocates for increasing the representation of women in technology are consistently faced with making the business case. Yet, the evidence linking diversity to innovation outcomes and return on investment isn’t well known. The goal of this session is to heighten the awareness of the relationship between diversity and innovation at the team and organizational levels. The panel will not only present quantitative data on the relationship between diversity and innovation, but engage executives at the highest levels of the technical ladder to articulate concrete examples of how diversity has benefited technological innovation in their companies.
Slides File:GHC-2011-Business-Case-for-Diversity.pdf
Overview:
The goal of this session is to heighten the awareness of the relationship between diversity and innovation at the team and organizational levels. The panel will not only present quantitative data on the relationship between diversity and innovation, but engage executives at the highest levels of the technical ladder to articulate concrete examples of how diversity has benefited technological innovation in their companies.
Around the world, companies, academic institutions, and governments have become aware of the dearth of women in technology and have embarked on change initiatives. Yet, many of these initiatives suffer from a lack of high-level commitment and a phenomenon known as “diversity fatigue”. This difficulty in translating change into action, we believe, comes from a framing of diversity as a problem to be managed, rather than a benefit to innovation. Why does diversity drive innovation? We will present findings from several research studies, across industries and geography, which have proven exactly that: that gender and racial diversity leads to better decisions (Gruenfeld and Preston, 2000; Page, 2009), problem solving (Page, 2009; Gurin, Nagda, & Lopez, 2004), technical innovation (Ashcraft et al, 2007; Page, 2009, Cox, 2001), and increased profits (Herring, 2009; Thomas, 2004).
We will then invite CTO’s in leading high-tech companies to provide concrete examples of how diversity has translated into innovation in their companies (eg, products, ideas that have been the result of team diversity, better team efficiency and creativity, etc). The panel will also jointly discuss several aspects of the challenge in promoting diversity in an organization. How does the business case for diversity manifest itself at the highest level of technical management? How are executives making the business case internally, and what are the challenges in realizing the benefits of diversity on innovation?
Biographies:
Beryl Nelson joined Google in Hyderabad, India, in 2009, and since spring of 2011 works in Google’s websearch team in Kraków, Poland. She lived in Asia for 15 years, 6 of those in India, and worked at a number of companies in Hyderabad. Prior to India, she lived in Tokyo, where she took several years off to raise children before joining Epos Japan. Early in her career, she worked in functional languages and compilers in the US. Beryl has designed and co-presented diversity sessions at Grace Hopper India, at the ACM India conference 2011, and internally within Google.
Mark Bregman is CTO of Neustar. Previously, he was executive vice president and chief technology officer at Symantec, responsible for the company’s technology strategy. Bregman joined Symantec through the company’s merger with Veritas Software, where he served as chief technology officer. Prior to joining Veritas, Bregman was CEO of Airmedia, a wireless Internet firm. Previously, Bregman was at IBM where he held senior management positions. Bregman holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard and a master’s and doctorate in physics from Columbia University. He serves on the boards of BASIC, ShoreTel, and the Anita Borg Institute.
Alan Eustace is one of Google’s senior vice presidents of engineering. He joined Google in the summer of 2002. Prior to Google, Alan spent 15 years at Digital/Compaq/HP’s Western Research Laboratory where he worked on a variety of chip design and architecture projects. Alan was promoted to director of the Western Research Laboratory in 1999. Alan is an author of several publications and holds numerous patents. He earned a bachelor‘s degree, a master‘s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Central Florida.
Kathy Hill brings more than 30 years of product development and management experience to her position as Senior Vice President for the Office of the Chief Operating Officer, responsible for improving critical product operations components of Engineering and Customer Value Chain Management to optimize shareholder value. Prior to her current role, she was Senior Vice President, Development Strategy and Operations, and previously was Senior Vice President of the Access Networking & Services Group, and Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Desktop Switching Business Unit. Prior to joining Cisco, Hill was Vice President at Ascend. Hill is a Board of Trustees Member of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook, leading the engineers who write the code used by hundreds of millions of people each day. Before Facebook, Mike was the Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where he led the global and open product development process behind Firefox. Mike was formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems which acquired his company, CenterRun. He began his career working at various start-ups including a digital effects software startup, building software used in several major motion pictures. Mike holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University.
H. Tayloe Stansbury is senior vice president & chief technology officer of Intuit. He has more than 27 years of experience in the software industry, most recently as chief information officer of VMware. Previously, Tayloe was executive vice president of Ariba, where he led engineering, product management, hosting, IT and customer support. Before that, Tayloe held executive engineering and general management roles at Calico Commerce and Xerox. Earlier, he worked on developer tools at Borland International and Sun Microsystems, and did research in computational linguistics at Xerox PARC. Tayloe graduated with honors in math and computer science from Harvard University.
Caroline Simard leads the Anita Borg Institute’s (ABI) research and executive program initiatives. Her research on the barriers facing women in technology has received national attention. She is also spearheading knowledge diffusion efforts and executive engagement programs directed at supporting organizational change for greater retention and advancement of technical women. Prior to ABI, Simard was a Researcher at the Center for Social Innovation of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Caroline holds a PhD in communication studies from Stanford University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Université de Montréal and a Masters degree in Communication and Information Studies from Rutgers University.
