On The Trail

I attended a lunch-and-learn yesterday that was all about women building their personal brands and side hustling to develop networks for professional and personal advancement. It featured two women in their late 20’s, trying to figure it out, like the rest of us. Sitting in that room, I was struck by how much progress we’ve made. When I was starting out in tech almost four decades ago, the words “female empowerment” were still two decades off. We had the term “feminism,” but back in that day it frankly sort of equaled “militant” and was frowned upon—definitely not the label you wanted on your up-and-coming career.  

We didn’t talk about personal brand, either; that was three decades off. You went to work, you did your job, and if you did it well, good things happened (mostly). Networking meant going out to happy hour somewhere on a Friday after work (or if you were at HP in the 80’s, it was a Beer Bash in the Grove), or maybe playing on the co-ed softball team if you were a joiner. There was no LinkedIn, there was no ‘Women in Tech” group in every city. Heck, there was no email or texting for that matter. Imagine networking without email or text or LinkedIn or affinity groups?    

So, in some ways it’s never been easier for women to grow personally and professionally. But all these channels have made the world more complicated, too. Sadly, modern communication can also create negative attention and divisiveness sometimes. But every once in a while, I get a glimmer of what can be. And that happened yesterday.

First, the two young women on the panel were great. Confident in their abilities, but also quick to say they haven’t got it all figured out, either. It’s a journey. There are just as many wrong turns as right ones. So we learn from the wrong; we course correct and move on. They have learned at relatively early ages in their careers not to take criticism personally and not to let the inevitable disappointments derail them. This took me the better part of two decades to really get, so bravo to them for being quicker learners than me.

Second, I was so encouraged by the number of men that attended (three cheers for Men@Braze)! One of the things I have always found a little disconcerting about all of the networking events we gals go to is that they are filled with women. We don’t need to convince ourselves that women need to support each other—we need men in the room to support us, too. So if this is the beginning of a more balanced gender representation on the topic of promoting women in tech, that signals real progress to me.

Last, having been on many panels like this over the course of my own career, I was so happy to have the feeling that the torch is being passed to the next generation of women. Some days it’s easy to feel discouraged by the latest statistics on gender inequality--to feel like progress is too slow and never enough. But yesterday was not one of those days. Yesterday I was watching the next great group of women come up behind me on the trail, wave, and pass on by. A trail I helped to blaze in some small way. A trail I’m still on.

Now it’s their turn—to make the trail in front of us a bit wider, and branching out to reach more destinations. I’ll be here right behind you, trying to make sure none of us fall behind.