Show Notes
In this episode, we cover:
- Why Cathy decided to keep working in engineering after earning an MBA and a law degree. (0:27)
- How money enables power and why women should strive to achieve both. (4:57)
- The importance for leaders to generate positive energy within the workplace. (6:35)
- How position and influence impacts the relationship between management and employees, and the importance for leaders to build trust with team members. (10:48)
- The ways decision making changes as a person moves up the management chain, and why Cathy makes a point to learn the personalities of each of her employees. (13:15)
- Subverting sexist stereotypes in the workplace: Cathy’s take on why women should strive to keep the “emotional volume” at work low. (17:00)
- Tips for balancing job and home commitments as a working woman. (18:53)
- Why Cathy believes being “risk-averse” is holding women back. (24:10)
- When and how to say “no” to accepting added responsibility at work. (26:20)
- What has changed in regard to gender equality, and why there’s still a long way to go. (28:23)
Quotes from Today’s Episode
It’s an unfortunate reality, but power is, to a huge extent, a function of money. People buy policy, and they buy positions of influence as well as access to people who have influence. Lobbyists and media leverage don't come cheap. So I believe that women need to control half of the world’s money so that they can have half of this power and influence, too. - Cathy (
5:55)
People just want to feel good, and being around people who are positive feels good. People want to follow and please those who make them feel good. So, as a leader, you should try to generate positive energy and make people feel safe and happy because it helps you lead and because it's contagious — it makes the whole workplace a little better. - Cathy (
7:44)
When you are a senior leader, everything you do and say resonates louder. It's like having a megaphone. We see this among other senior leaders and expect them to act accordingly, but it can take a while to internalize it's suddenly something we need to pay attention to. - Monique (
10:14)
It's best to keep the emotional volume at work low — whether that’s positive or negative. Women are still fighting the stereotype that we are too unstable to lead, so you want to seem in control and not weak. Negative emotions are especially bad because they make others feel negative, too, and then that feeling gets associated with you. A lot of men aren't raised to deal with their emotions very well at all, so if you seem upset at work, some men may feel like it's their job to protect you. And that's just a terrible power dynamic to have at work. - Cathy (
17:09)
No matter what you hear, treat feedback as a gift and don't react in real-time. If you're upset, take your time to get past your instinctive reaction, and give your frontal cortex — your rational brain — a chance to recover. Then you can process the feedback and learn from it. - Monique (
18:28)
If you’ve made a conscious decision to put most of your energy into your home life, then you've made a rational investment decision based on your goals and your values. Once you've done that, don't beat yourself up if you look around and notice that you're not getting promoted as quickly as your peers who live for their work. Your career might not be zooming, but you're probably going to have great kids. And it's not like you failed — you've only made a different investment choice, that's all. - Cathy (
19:49)
Links:
Transcript
Monique: Welcome to WIT At Work, the podcast where we talk about how women in technology can achieve liftoff in their careers. I'm Monique Barbanson, your host.
Monique: Thanks for joining me today to talk about how women in engineering can advance to senior leadership at tech companies. Today, I'm chatting with my friend Cathy about her role as senior director of engineering at Cisco Systems, where she led a 150-person team responsible for developing software running in the internet backbone routers. Could you start by telling us a little bit about your journey to becoming an executive at Cisco Systems?
Cathy: Well hello, Monique. And thank you for letting me help kick off your new podcast. So, the story of me goes—the short version of the story of me goes, I grew up in a small town in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I was in the first generation of my family who got to go to college. I went to Stanford where most of the engineering courses had, like, two women in them. And while I was there, I interned for HP and then later IBM.
And after graduation, I went to work for a couple startups. The first one didn't make it. And the other one was Metaphor where we met. And Metaphor was bought by IBM. I spent about a year at IBM, and then I moved on to Cisco Systems.
And while all this was going on, while I was working full time, first as an engineer, and then later as a manager, I went to school at night. And it took forever. It took me about six years, but eventually, I earned an MBA and a law degree. It was while I was at Cisco, three weeks away from taking the bar, already cramming for it, that I was offered a director-level promotion. And so I had this huge fork in the road; do I become a lawyer that I've been working so hard to do but I might not like it, or do I stick with engineering and take on a more exciting role and continue to be surrounded by engineers, which I love. And in the end, it was a big decision, but it wasn't really all that hard. So, I decided to stick with engineering, which was the right thing for me. And that is my professional journey.
Monique: That is such a great story, Cathy. From being the first generation in your family attending college to engineering studies at Stanford to learning your craft at startups while going to school at night, to becoming a senior leader in engineering at Cisco Systems. It's very much a fairy tale Silicon Valley success story. When we met at Metaphor Computer Systems, you were an engineering manager, and you were going to business school at night. After Metaphor was acquired by IBM, you were asked to head all of engineering for Metaphor within IBM, which was your first senior leadership role. Do you think that going to business school helped you? And what role did active sponsorship from our manager play?
Cathy: Oh, absolutely. I sometimes wondered whether my graduate degrees were this tragic waste of time, but—especially the law degree because I didn't actually become a lawyer. But no, I'm totally convinced that they helped my career just because they added to my credibility because women still aren't taken as seriously as men in the workplace. And this was probably especially true for me because as you know, I smile and I laugh a lot, and I don't exactly exude power. So, I guess the punchline is that I think having cool credentials helped me to compensate for some of the innate biases that work against women in leadership roles.
As for the importance of sponsorship, I will never know how much our VP did to help me get that job, but I'm absolutely sure that his recommendation made all the difference. He was a terrific boss. And I think that having a terrific boss is about the best thing that could happen to your career. When I left IBM, I went to go work for him again at Cisco.
Monique: So, looking back at your career trajectory, what motivated you to be ambitious and pursue two graduate degrees as well as senior leadership roles?
Cathy: In the beginning, it was just sort of innate. Both of my parents grew up very, very poor and my dad worked his way out by starting a company that became successful. So, in my family, being independent, and working hard, and being in charge were just sort of expected. But once I started working, pretty quickly it became clear that there just weren't enough women. I was always in the minority.
And the tragic thing is just how normalized that is. I remember going to a meeting and thinking, “Wow, finally a meeting full of women.” And then I did the math, and they were, like, 20 percent women. I’d just gotten used to not seeing many women at work and this really bothered me.
Also, I saw a lot of sex discrimination firsthand, enough to get really pissed off about it. So, I quickly became passionate about the issue of equality for women in the workplace. So, I guess I'd say while my motivation for pursuing leadership roles was largely a DNA thing, I felt, sort of, a sense of responsibility, too. I wanted to be a good role model once I got the chance.
Monique: That it's really wonderful. Successful women using their influence to help other women is key to increasing our numbers, especially at the executive level. You recently sent me the slides from a talk you gave to women at Cisco. I'd like to ask you a few questions about the points that you make in that talk. You make the point that it's important for women to control half of the money in the world. Can you elaborate on this?
Cathy: Oh, sure. I am convinced that we will not be treated equally in society until we get to make half the decisions about how society runs. I mean, for me, this just seems completely obvious. We need to make half the rules; the official rules, like, the laws, and the unofficial rules: the norms, and values, and expectations, the things that shape our behavior, and then drive our decisions. In order for that to happen, we need more women CEOs, and women executives, and women in all positions of influence, both for the direct impact they can have by making decisions that further equality, and the indirect impact they can have by changing what leadership looks like and helping to inspire the women behind them by giving them similar ambitions.
But at root, this is about power, right? And I hate this, but power is, to a huge extent, a function of money. People buy policy, and they buy positions of influence; they buy access to people who have influence. Lobbyists and media leverage, they don't come cheap. So, I believe that women need to control half the money so that they can have half of this sort of power and influence, too.
Monique: I love how you cut through the BS on this. Power is one of these topics it's difficult for women to talk about, just like money. But if women want to change the status quo and get representation in positions of influence that match our percentage of the population, women need power, and money is key to power. One of the things at the top of your list of leadership behaviors is that leaders generate positive energy. It really stuck with me because that totally resonates with me, but it's not something I hear being emphasized a lot as a leadership quality. I have a link in the [
00:06:55 notes] to an
article in the Harvard Business Review. It discusses research showing women score higher on most leadership qualities than men, but this was not on their list of leadership qualities. Ability to inspire and motivate is on the list, but nothing about energy.
Cathy: So, the idea that leaders should generate positive energy is not like a normal thing?
Monique: Well, I think you're completely right about it. I'm just surprised that it's not something that I've heard emphasized that much. Also, to me, there's a subtle difference with being positive. Generating positive energy means you find a way to broadcast that energy to the people around you. I think it's very powerful to be able to do that as a leader.
Cathy: Oh, I think so too. It's just a little bit hard for me to talk about because it seems so obvious. Basically, people just want to feel good, and being around people who are positive feels good. And people want to follow and please people who make them feel good, right? So, as a leader, you should try to generate positive energy and make people feel safe and happy, and good about themselves both because it helps you lead and because it's contagious, and it makes the whole workplace a little better.
I do take your point, though, about being positive versus generating positive energy. It's a subtle difference. It's not just about optimism, although that's very important. I think it's also about making people feel that you feel optimistic about them. There's a Maya Angelou quote I like that says something like, “People will forget what you say and do, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
And I believe that the best leaders make people feel good. The energy part is key, too. That's about action, and enthusiasm, and urgency, and a little bit different from just being positive about things in general. And there is no downside. It's really easy to see the negative in things, especially for people with an engineering background because engineers are basically designed to find the flaws in things. It's a cliche, but where it's true, I think it's best to frame problems as an opportunity and failures as a new path, whenever you can.
Monique: Yeah, love that quote from Maya Angelou. Being positive about others implies trust and respect, which are both so important to healthy relationships. To come back to power, Jeff Pfeffer studies power at Stanford.
He lists energy as one of the personal qualities that gives someone power. And of course, leadership and power are connected.
Cathy: Oh right, I think to a large extent, that's what makes you a leader, right? Nobody wants to follow somebody who doesn't have some positive energy.
Monique: Another thing I remember you highlighting is that, as a senior leader moves up the ranks, an exclamation point gets added to everything you say. What did you mean by that? And what made you realize this?
Cathy: Well, this is a small point, but it's one that I learned sort of late in the game, so maybe it's not so obvious. It's basically a reminder. The way I put it, with every promotion an extra exclamation point gets added to the end of whatever you say. So, you could say the exact same words with the exact same intonation, but people will hear it completely differently just because of the difference in position. And that's because people want to please their boss, right? So, as your influence increases, so does the importance of what you say. And it's best to tone down as you go up so that you're not yelling at people.
Monique: Right. When you are a senior leader, everything you do and say resonates louder. It's like having a megaphone. We see this about other senior leaders and expect them to act accordingly, but it can take a while to internalize it's suddenly something we need to pay attention to. Deb Gruenfeld, a colleague of Pfeffer at Stanford, wrote about how having power can serve to remove inhibitions and make some people not behave with the empathy that contributed to their success in the first place. I don't think any of us wants to be that person. Another warning you give in your talk is that nonverbal feedback fades as your seniority level increases, and truth becomes elusive. How did you realize that was happening? Do you have a story?
Cathy: Sure. So, as you get promoted, people want to please you more, they want to bring you good news, and they really, really would rather not have to bring you bad news. And for direct feedback, you can manage this by asking more questions and creating more opportunities to get that feedback, but for nonverbal feedback, you've got to rely on your empathy. And I don't have a great story for this, but one time at work, I was talking so much that even I could tell but nobody around me let on; they just smiled and nodded as if I wasn't boring them to tears. And they were being polite and I was being a jerk because I wasn't getting the usual nonverbal clues. So, I had to make a conscious effort not to talk so much because people had basically stopped interrupting.
Monique: Well, kudos to you for reading the room and noticing this. While we're talking about adjustments, another one is that, as a manager of managers, your access to project details goes from being direct to being indirect. Do you have any advice about how to handle not having that direct information anymore?
Cathy: Nothing surprising, really. Just do your best to have really honest, good relationships with the people who work for you. Do what you can to make it easy for people to tell you when they've screwed up and try not to be intimidating. And have a wonderful boss; that's key. Unlike most of your reports, they will give you direct feedback and will help you get things right.
Monique: I think you've really nailed it about the importance of the relationships with your team members, and getting direct feedback that helps you grow as a leader. What are some actionable suggestions that you could share about building these relationships of trust with your team?
Cathy: Oh, that's good. I like actionable and very specific. But this one isn't hard. Just have regular one-on-ones, talk to every report every week and make time for them, even if you have nothing to say because maybe they have something to say. And if you end up having a meeting where really nobody has anything to say, that's okay, too because building the relationship matters.
Monique: I totally agree. Trust builds over time, and having weekly one-on-ones gives you that time over months with team members where you share personal goals, you solve problems together, and you get to know each other's tendencies. What about making decisions? Did that change for you as your visibility in the org, and the impact of your decisions increased?
Cathy: Yes. As you move up, you make bigger and bigger decisions based on less and less data. And you're not the subject matter expert anymore so you're dependent on others for input. This kind of decision making can be a challenge, especially for people who've come up through engineering because engineers tend to be more comfortable measuring than assessing. And as you move up the management chain, your decisions become more and more about judgment.
Monique: Does it become harder to make decisions?
Cathy: I wouldn't say harder so much is just more complicated. You have to please more people, and more different kinds of people and the results have more dependencies on things that you don't control.
Monique: So, we talked about how, as a manager of managers, you have to manage indirectly. What did you do to monitor that projects were on the rails and trending in the right direction?
Cathy: Lots of conversation. Of course, you have to do the spreadsheets, and the reviews, and the regular project management things, too, but talking to directors, and managers, and engineers, and people involved from other groups is, I think, at least as important. I think meeting regularly with peers, like product marketing, and doing skip-level one-on-ones are just absolutely invaluable. You could have a manager working for you who you love, but their team hates them and you will have no way of knowing that unless you have a process in place that invites that kind of feedback.
Monique: So, your advice is to build a team that you trust, and then calibrate. What do you mean by calibrate?
Cathy: By calibrate, I mean understand in a way that helps you interpret what they say better, and also that it helps you better predict how they might react to things. For example, someone might say, “I'll have it for you on Tuesday,” and you know that they will. And another person might have a tad optimistic personality. And when they say Tuesday, it doesn't happen till Wednesday.
At first, this is a problem, but after a while, when they say Tuesday, you hear Wednesday, and it all works out fine. You can manage both of these people perfectly well, it just takes a little while to get to know them. Another example—this was at Metaphor—I once told two very senior engineers that we were behind and we needed to hurry up to make our delivery commitments. The woman, she got totally stressed out; she thought that I'd yelled at her. And the guy, he didn't get the message at all, he had no idea that we were late with this project.
And both of them were excellent at their jobs, but the problem was me; my message was badly calibrated for these people. And I learned it the hard way that one single message was not going to get through to both of them. Another sort of calibration is that some people are more humble than others, and you have to keep your eye out for that. You have to make a real effort to spot them, and then be careful that they don't get overlooked and undervalued.
Monique: I'm so glad you brought this up. As a people manager, one of the most important parts of our job is ensuring there’s compensation equity based on contributions, not based on who's the loudest. So, what about building relationships with cross-functional peers, like product management, design, and customer support? What's your take on how to build a relationship of trust and mutual respect with cross-functional peers?
Cathy: Well, it's not really complicated. The way to do that is just to talk to them regularly, treat them as peers, and try not to get into fights about territory. Also, understand which decisions they get to make and let them make them—get out of the way—and expect that they will do the same for you. And another thing is that different functions get different levels of respect in an organization, and I think it's important to treat everybody as if they are at least as important as you are. And here's a small tangent for your ambitious listeners: when you get promoted, often you end up managing people who used to be your peers and vice versa. So, the moral is, be nice to your peers.
Monique: Now, let's talk a bit about career issues specific to women. What are some of the observations that you've made?
Cathy: Well, one thing I figured out early on, is that it's best to keep the emotional volume at work low, and I mean, positive or negative. We're still fighting the stereotype that women are too unstable to lead, so you want to seem in control and not weak. Negative emotions are especially bad because they make others feel negative, too, and then that negative feeling gets associated with you. A lot of men still aren't raised to deal with emotions very well at all, so if you seem upset at work, some men may feel like it's their job to protect you. And that's just a terrible power dynamic to have at work.
You don't want to come off as the fragile woman who needs saving. A corollary to this is that if you have a meeting coming up and you might not be able to handle it professionally, it's way better to blow it off and seem flaky than it is to show up and embarrass yourself. An issue related to emotions at work is that nobody wants negative feedback, it's just unpleasant by definition. But you can't learn unless you get it, right? So, I think it's important to make it as easy as possible for people to give you feedback and that requires managing your emotions.
Don't argue with people when they give you bad feedback, just say thanks. For example, if a performance review is painful, say thanks. And then let your boss know that you'd like some time to digest what you've learned. And then ask to have a meeting to come talk about it later. That way you can go away and be upset. And then when you return with questions, you can learn from the answers.
Monique: Okay. No matter what you hear, treat feedback as a gift; don't react in real-time, if you're upset; you can take your time to get past your instinctive reaction, and give your frontal cortex, your rational brain, a chance to recover; then you can process the feedback and learn from it.
Cathy: Exactly. I mean, people just want to be happy, so you don't want to make the process of giving you constructive feedback something that's unpleasant for them.
Monique: Let's talk about another issue specific to women, especially during this pandemic. Back in April, the
New York Times reported results of a
Morning Consult survey. It revealed that women say they’re fully or mostly responsible for the housework, as well as 66 percent says they're fully or mostly responsible for childcare, which the
New York Times says is roughly the same share as in usual times when there isn't COVID. How can women balance the time commitments required from a senior leader with commitment at home?
Cathy: Well, as soon as we could afford it—I was probably maybe 30—we hired a house cleaner and that was absolutely life changing. We made a conscious decision not to fight over the things that you could throw money at and fix. And that made a huge difference for us. But I know women don't always have as much leeway as they should on these things. So I'd like to see, women make intentional decisions about how much to invest in their careers versus in their home lives.
Like if you’ve made a conscious decision to put most of your energy into your home life, then you've made a rational investment decision based on your goals and your values. But once you've done that, please don't beat yourself up if you look around and notice that you're not getting promoted as quickly as your peers who live for their work. Your career might not be zooming, but you're probably going to have great kids. And it's not like you failed. You've made a different investment choice, that's all.
I guess I'd say more generally, I think it's important that women don't just let life happen to them because there are a lot of default assumptions about women and mothers that don't work out so well for the women and the mothers. And if you think these assumptions through, sometimes you can find a way around them, like hiring a house cleaner. Actually, I think I would go even so far as to say the biggest difference I found between men and women at work is the sheer amount of guilt that so many women carry about their career decisions. Women make decisions and then they feel bad about them all the time. And helping women advance in their careers is the purpose of this podcast, but I think getting rid of some of the work guilt that women carry would be an advancement of sorts, too.
Monique: Your point about making intentional decisions here is a great one. I saw a cartoon by a French woman that captured the dilemma of splitting household chores. The cartoon made fun of how her husband was willing to help, but completely left to her the burden of figuring out what needed to be done and how. Being responsible for planning everything at home, especially if there are kids, is a significant drain of mental energy for women.
Cathy: Oh, exactly. And what makes this a little more complicated is that the default role is often the efficient one. For example, stereotypically—so not for everybody—but guys are raised to know how to take care of cars, and women are raised to know how to take care of the house. So, when a couple is optimizing their personal resources, their time, and their effort, it's just easier for the couple to have the woman do the women jobs, the guy do the guy jobs, and stepping out of these roles is more expensive than sticking with them. It’s kind of a shame, but I think every generation is getting a little bit better at this.
Monique: The other factor I'm thinking about is, isn't it the case that taking care of the car is something you can just throw money at by taking it to the garage, without worrying too much about it? Plus, nowadays, cars are getting so full of electronics and complexities, it's best to leave them to the professionals. You can tell how we handle it in my household. And it's funny actually because when I was in engineering school, one of the classes we had to take was a thermodynamics class. In one of the labs, we had to tune a car engine.
And I remember, there were a bunch of four-cylinder car engines out on the floor for us to work on. My lab partner was one of my friends who was also a woman. And, of course, neither of us knew anything about how to tune a car. But there was a description of how to do it in the lab. And guess what? We finished the lab first.
Cathy: Oh, of course you did.
Monique: Yeah, I mean, there were instructions so it took a lot of the mystery out of it. My first and last time tuning a car.
Cathy: I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. That took confidence. You didn't do that, “Oh, I've never done it before. I'm going to suck at it,” thing. You figured it out.
Monique: Where I was going with that is throwing money at feeding the babies at night, or taking them to toddler gymnastics, and generally at childcare activities is not quite as easy as taking the car to the garage, or hiring a house cleaner. It's fraught with shoulds, judgments, and expectations from family members, male and female colleagues, and even strangers. In some countries, there's affordable childcare and early childhood education. Then kids stay in school pretty much until the end of the workday, like after 5 p.m. In the US, every family is left to figure out childcare for themselves, despite the fact that this is a universal problem and it would be very leveraged to have a common solution.
Cathy: Absolutely. The US is shockingly behind in some of these policies, like family leave, and the cultural changes that let dads leave work to go get a sick kid, those are going to take a long time, sadly.
Monique: So, we talked a little bit about some of the stereotypes about women, for instance, that they are risk-averse.
Cathy: Women tend to be risk-averse. And that's really holding us back. We need to be out there, as bold as men, in making decisions with less information than maybe we're comfortable with, and taking on more risk. And we could start by asking for raises as often as the guys do. That could make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives, and there's really no reason for that not to be happening right now.
Risk has never been a strong suit for me, but whenever I took risks they paid off every single time. Taking the Metaphor team to IBM was a huge jump in responsibility for me. I knew at the time that people I respected thought I was out of my league, and it's not like they were wrong. I was a second-line manager; I'd only ever managed developers. And the team I was taking included testers and some marketing people.
And I didn't actually care. It sounded like fun, and so I jumped in. And it turned out terrific. So, based on my experience, I would encourage women to take every battlefield promotion that comes their way, even if they aren't sure that they're qualified because the odds are their competition isn't qualified either. And on a more general note, I'd add that you have to get noticed before you can get recognized. And I think that means doing something a little bit unusual, or doing something especially well. For me, it was having weird degrees and taking jobs that I probably wasn't qualified for.
Monique: Well, I think you're being a little hard on yourself this time. Of course, keep in mind, we've all heard that women only apply to jobs that they are 100 percent qualified for, while men will apply if they're 60 percent qualified.
Cathy: Right. I was surprised and saddened to hear that. And some of the changes we need are really hard, but others are really quite easy. We could just act like the guys; we need to apply for those jobs.
Monique: Yeah, that's a great point. It can be scary, but getting outside of our comfort zone and working through that discomfort is where personal growth comes from.
Cathy: Right. That and also getting comfortable with rejection. I think women tend to play it too safe because we don't want to get hurt. We treat failure as if it's something about our soul rather than the context. And there's a saying I like that goes, “If you aren't failing a good chunk of the time, then you just aren't aiming high enough.”
Monique: A good question to ask ourselves regularly, for sure. Well, talking about risk, one situation where this comes up is whether and how to say no strategically at work. It's important to give your team a chance to meet its business objectives. Part of a leader’s responsibility is to monitor team health, which includes work-life balance and not burning team members out. Given the stereotypes about women being risk averse and the more severe consequences of failure for women in male-dominated roles such as engineering, is it harder to find the right trade-off? Do you have any advice about when and how to say no strategically?
Cathy: Well, I'd advise women to think twice about accepting projects that reinforce negative stereotypes. Women might want to say no to special projects that are basically house cleaning, for example, a cross-functional project to go through everyone's code to make sure it adheres to some new standard. It's important; it's necessary; people will be grateful, but at the end of the day, you will have been helping and not leading, and it's much better to have your efforts be strategic. In general, I think it's best to say yes to projects that directly impact the company's product, that make the company money, and to work for a profit center rather than a cost center. It's better not to be overhead if you can avoid it. As for how to say no, that's tough. Maybe emphasize how passionate you are about some other part of your job. I have a hunch that the women get pressured into accepting these kinds of things a lot more often than the men.
Monique: Right. It's good to do your part for the team, but be careful not to create the expectation that you're always going to take all of the tidying up projects, like paying back tech debt, and the projects that are internally focused versus projects that are going to add value for the customers and therefore meet more visible business objectives.
Cathy: Right. You said that better than I did. You want to generate impact, and sometimes the cross-functional effort to capitalize the Ts in the comments or whatever does matter and you will get recognized, but I'd say just be careful about how many helping tasks you do.
Monique: A
Harvard Business Review article I added to the [
00:28:28 links] for this episode, points out research shows that men and women don't take the same kinds of risks. Women are reluctant to take physical or financial risks, but they tend to stand up for what is right. For instance, where there's a lack of diversity, women leaders are the ones who advocate for diversity and inclusion and they are more likely to take the ethical path when there's pressure not to. So, you could argue that women are willing to take risks, just not about the same things as men. We're coming to the end of the interview. It's time to ask do you think things have changed? And do you have any final words of wisdom?
Cathy: Yes, things have changed. Definitely they've changed because people have changed. All for the better, I think. Women are getting bolder and more educated. Laws are progressing too, so I think there's a hope. I also think there are more startups now, so they are more opportunities for women to take on senior leadership roles.
But culturally, it’s going to be a really long slog. These stereotypes, they were burned into us when we're so young. On the other hand, we did just get a woman VP, so that's kind of exciting. So we've just got to keep fighting and advancing until we control half of the money and make half of the rules. And overcorrecting would be totally fine with me too. You know, like that Ginsburg quote.
Monique: Yeah. How many women would you like to see on the Supreme Court?
Cathy: [laugh]. Yes, that one. With respect to wisdom, I don't actually have any wisdom, but I'd like to say that there isn't one single path to success; everybody has to come up with their own. And if you choose to rise in industry, then I'd say, do what you can to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes. And if you decide not to focus on your career, then please make your decisions with your eyes wide open; make compromises knowingly, and then don't flog yourself later about the consequences.
Monique: That's a good place to end it. I think. Cathy, thank you so much for joining me for this inaugural episode of WIT At Work. It's been so much fun to do this together.
Monique: You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at
witatwork.com, and please subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. I'll see you next time on
WIT At Work.