The program team here at the Anita Borg Institute is very excited to be delivering our first TechLeaders: Realizing Your Vision workshop designed specifically for women of color. Award-winning performance improvement coach and consultant Loretta Love Huff is facilitating the workshop and we have an inspiring lineup of groundbreaking women speakers and panelists.
The morning panel of senior technical women spoke about passionate leadership. Neerja Raman, is a Senior Research Fellow and Stanford Media-X Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, where she is working on business and leadership models for social entrepreneurs. Her memorable line, “while trying to break through the glass ceiling, don’t get stuck to the sticky floor” brought laughter to the room but also nods of recognition. She advises leaders to be curious, honest, upbeat, positive, and patient.
Cecilia Aragon, a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an award-winning stunt pilot, got a big laugh by asking who in the room thinks of herself as a nerd, then who thinks of herself as cool, and applauding the overlap. Cecilia talked about the need to maintain a positive attitude in working to counteract discrimination, and inspired us with stories of using her passion to overcome fears and reinvent herself. Her advice: Believe in yourself and know that you are wonderful; don’t fear that you’re making a mistake; find a passion and let it sustain you; and don’t be afraid to start from scratch again.
Gilda Garreton, Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, told us how a Birds of a Feather session for Latinas in Engineering led her to co-found Latinas in Computing (LiC) in order to help others. She talked about the career benefits of community work, including “free” training, a sandbox to test new strategies, networking and opportunities for visibility. She advises women of color to use their outsider status as an advantage, by offering different viewpoints that add value. Her strategies: cross the bridge first, ask them to visit the other side, respect and be willing to listen.
Christine Grant is Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University. Dr. Grant had a dream to start an institute at NC State for minority faculty development. Now she teaches and researches 50% of the time and spends the other 50% on faculty development. Her advice: Draw on your past experiences to guide your future goals, aspirations and the approach that you take to achieve your goals. Explain your needs and demand respect. Find and use supporters. Try to marry the things that you’re passionate about into the things that you actually do.
The panelists had some great responses to questions about risk-taking and recovering from failures:
- Neerja: learn to articulate risks but don’t let them deter you from doing what you want to do; make failure a part of your plan.
- Christine: You can fail to be successful at something without being a failure. Focus on what you’re going to do in the future and project that out to people rather than focusing on the failure.
- Cecilia: A success is built on many failures. Most failures are not fatal, so think of each failure as an opportunity for change and growth.
In the afternoon Loretta led a session on discovering a vision for your technical leadership. She shared some interesting data that the 3% of the world’s population who have written down their goals earn ten times more than the 83% who have no goals. Research also shows that the more multi-sensory experience we can have of our goals, the more likely we are to achieve them, so she had everyone imagine what achieving their dreams would look, sound, and feel like. As we talked about giving up self-defeating beliefs and behaviors, and overcoming fear of change, Loretta shared a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do the thing and you will have the power.”
Our keynote in the afternoon was by Valerie E. Taylor, Computer Science Department Head at Texas A & M University. Her topic was Women of Color: To Thrive and Not Just Survive. She gave us a technical overview of her research in processor performance modeling. And she shared some very sobering data on the scarcity of women of color at high levels in industry and academia, while reminding us that “anything over zero is fantastic.” She talked about the realities for women of color including isolation, self-doubt exacerbated by a lack of role models, being misunderstood, and being taxed with representing other women and ethnic minorities.
One key barrier is a lack of access to networks of influential colleagues, and she shared some findings from the Catalyst Report on Informal Networks of Women of Color regarding Blending-in versus Sticking-together. Based on the Catalyst study she recommended:
- Have both sticking-together and blending-in networks, and recognize the differences between them.
- Be aware of the time commitments: utilize your lunches to network.
- Communicate your goals within your networks.
Another key barrier is a lack of mentors and role models because of the low number of minority faculty in science and engineering. She shared data from Donna Nelson’s survey of underrepresented minority professors in top Computer Science departments. Her recommendations included mentoring women of color faculty through the tenure process. Dr. Taylor also talked about the importance of being true to yourself, and the importance of letting students see you as a real and complete person, e.g., one who takes time for her family.
At the evening’s networking reception we heard briefly from Marvell Allen about the Women of Color Action Network (WCAN), David Porush about MentorNet, and Phoebe Lenear about the Empowering Leadership Alliance, providing our workshop participants with more resources for underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. I enjoyed the chance to chat with more of the workshop participants, who I’m finding to be as diverse and inspiring a group as the speakers and panelists.