017 - Taking the Better Together Pledge with Jonathan Sposato
Women in Business & Technology
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Full episode transcript -

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so number one. I said that because I truly, truly believe that your company and your product and your customer satisfaction the culture that you eventually build and grow as your company scales. I believe all of that will be better, much better if you have AH, female co founder and someone at the very highest levels of a company where you have that gender inclusion. If you start there, that's a great place to be, and you're just gonna be a lot of positive benefits.

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Microsoft Build is our ultimate annual developer event, where the most innovative minds and tech meet to get Inspired Creek Tomorrow and Code the Future. The conference will take place from a seven through the ninth at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Washington programming will focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning, mixed reality cloud data and other emerging concepts. For more information about the event or to register had to Microsoft dot com forward slash build, you're listening to the women in Business on Technology podcast from Microsoft In H episode, you will hear from women in amazing technology and business roles, as well as my allies who are helping make the industrious, more inclusive on bringing you tips on how to build a successful career in a supportive community. Welcome to Women in business. Welcome to Episode 17 of Women in Business and Technology. I'm Sonia Dara and I'm calling O'Brien. We're kicking off this episode with the conversation that I had with Lauren Westley Wilson, the founder of Color Calm, an organization for women of color in communications.

And then we'll jump into an interview I had with Jonathan Sposato. Ah, serial entrepreneur investor and the author of Better Together Eight Ways. Working with Women leads to extraordinary products and profits. Finally, we'll wrap things up in our cutting edge segment with the discussion about a New York Times article entitled Women in Cryptocurrencies Pushback against Blockchain Bro's. But before we jump in Colleen, I want to check in on your coaching status. Is your team headed for championships? Very funny. So some of you may remember that back in Episode 15 I had gone to a training program aimed at getting women involved in coaching. And while I haven't taken the leap, I've officially witnessed a recurring theme of leadership in athletics at a bunch of the events that I've been checking out in the Seattle area recently. Case in Point the F Bomb Cocktail Club, which is brought to you by the same people who hosts the F Bomb Breakfast Club last month. They featured the owners of the Seattle Storm,

the W N B. A team here in the city. Lisa Bromell, the former executive vice president of Human Resource, is here at Microsoft, is one of the co owners, and it was really cool to see her working with her team of other co owners to build up greater support for women's athletics Here in the Pacific Northwest, you get re acquainted with Lisa. She's been gone for a while, so have you actually ever seen the storm in action? I'm really embarrassed to say that I have never been to a Seattle Storm game. No, me neither. I really want to, and we live like within walking distance is walking in the studio of the stadium. I'll buy us tickets.

But you know, after hearing from Lisa Brummel on the other co owners, I was pretty easily convinced. And I got tickets for the opening game, like of your taking me. Yeah, the 2018 season. It's against the Phoenix Mercury. So bring it on Arizona. And after hearing from that team, it really made sense for me to be voting with my dollars. And buying these tickets was an easy way for me to live my values and support women in their pursuits. Nice. And you said this was a trend, that you've been seeing it among different events, that what else is bubbling up at this intersection of empowerment through athletics.

So another program that I checked out last month was the Seattle Ignited Women Project, which is a gathering dedicated Thio redefining what success and strength mean as a woman. The event featured a killer panel with amazing women in sports, including CrossFit champion Elisabeth Akinwale a, the former U. S. Soccer women's national team midfielder Laurie Lindsay and ESPN journalist Diana Rossini. Of course, the event was coordinated by health and fitness coach Alison Tenney, so this theme of strength and confidence was really present throughout the evening. You know, on this show we spend a lot of time talking about the intersection of business and technology, obviously, but the panel was this great reminder for me that women are championing for equality and leadership and industries across the board. Eso calling your full fledged sports Finn? Uh,

well, I'm definitely dipping my toe into the water of sports fandom, but I am pretty steadfastly a supporter of women listeners. If you're up for some fandom to, you can check out W n b a dot com forward slash tickets to cheer on your local team. Sonia, I'm gonna make you go to that Web site after this. Yes or I conjoining for your tickets as well. The next game. You can stay up to date on the latest aft bomb events at F Bomb Breakfast club dot com, and you can read more about the Seattle Ignited Women Project at Seattle Ignited Women project dot com. You know, I played basketball for three years in middle school. I didn't score. Once excited to see the story, I think you're going to get some really great tips in advice and visual guidance from the professionals community Connect,

Get involved and stay connected. Last month, I Skyped with Lauren Westley Wilson, the founder and president of Color Calm, a networking organization focused on advancing the visibility of women of color in communications Marketing, advertising and Digital. Lauren. One of PR Weeks 50 Most powerful NPR honorees Walk me through the history of the organization. We've been around for about seven years now, and we really started off as a luncheon and then we grew to this community and into this corporation. But back then we had no intentions to be where we were. We really wanted to gather women to talk about how we could advance women of color in this space and Seymour women of color in leadership positions while color calm had humble beginnings. The corporation now offers dynamic programming and multiple ways to get involved. We have the color com network. We're in seven cities, is a professional membership organization,

and we have over 1000 paid members inducer 360 a year, and we're in D. C, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco. In Dallas, we have ah fellows program. We have a jobs board. We have a number of different things and work with various brands on recruiting and retention before people in their companies. So all in all, we reached more than 40,000 professionals of color in the communications marketing, advertising a digital space in addition to Evergreen programs, color calm hosts to annual conferences Lauren described with those events have looked like in the past and what she's looking for a tooth This year,

we also produced two conferences. One focuses on executive leaders Arianna Huffington, Gloria Steinem, Lisa Ling Will be Goldberg have joined us for our annual conference that in Miami every year this year it's going to be in Maui, Hawaii, for our fifth year. We're really thrilled to be there. And then we have our next generation conference in New York, hosted at Bloomberg headquarters were really bringing together the next generation of leaders. Lawrence own experience in the communications industry provided the motivation to start color come well. I was actually my experience when I was working at Hill and Knowlton, where I didn't see a person of color of leadership. And that's often times in cases when you work in these type of environments, where many of us feel like we're the only one syndrome where there's only less than a handful of people of color where we work. And even in our industry, it's an industry dominated by women as middle managers,

but at the top are leaders and executive leaders is men, and sprinkled in between are a few people of color. So was prompted through my experience of not seeing people who looked like me and leadership. I mean, we're start only there in president at the entry of mid level. But when it comes to leadership, how do you know you're gonna be able to grow in that company if you don't see people who look like you? For more information about color calm, including a men of color and communications community that launched earlier this year, visit color com network dot com. That's color com spelled c o l o r C o M M. You can also read more from Lauren on the topic of women of color in business at Forbes dot com. And now let's get on with the interview. E. I am so thrilled to welcome to the studio. Former Microsoft E serial entrepreneur and author of Better Together, Jonathan's Masato Jonathan.

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Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me here. I'm so glad to be here. It's kind of a homecoming

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of sorts for me. Yes, absolutely. And we're gonna dive a bit into that later in our conversation. But I'd love to start off by talking about your book. Your book is entitled Better Together Eight Ways. Working with women leads to extraordinary products and profits, and in the book intro you outlined some critical and, quite frankly, some jarring figures. Very few women are leading Fortune 500 companies. The number is now at 32 in the technology industry, female founded companies comprise only 3% off startups that are funded by venture capitalists. What do we all have to gain by moving the needle on those numbers?

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Yeah, thanks calling. That's a great question. I think that there are two things that we can all gain that kind of fall into two categories. One appeals to the heart and one appeals to the mind or to the bottom line, the business mind. So let's start with the heart first. I truly believe that it is the year 2018 and gender equality and women thriving in the workplace without any fear of sexual discrimination or sexual harassment, is still the number one unsolved social issue of our time. There are plenty of other social issues, of course, but this one has been going on for a long time, As we all know, since the suffragettes and while there's been some great progress being made, were not at the goal line yet, and there's still a lot of work to be done. And so the hard part is really appealing to our overall collective sense of fairness and how women are actually a little bit over 50% of the world's population.

But yet they're always pushing out larger rock up a steeper hill to get the same gains. A CZ you mentioned are only 32 female CEOs in the entire Fortune 500. I think that of itself is a pretty hard going stat in my mind. Women still earn in North America about 79 cents for every man's dollar. That's for white women, by the way. So if you're a woman of color, those numbers are even lower, and they're still, as we know in the headlines prolific instances of tolerated sexual harassment at various companies. So I think that the hard part is that it's just not right, and it's not fair, and we need to do better now. The more brain part of it in terms of the bottom line and how it impacts businesses. As it turns out, what I was really passionate about is talking Maura about the fact that women make incredible leaders and they make incredible board members and vice presidents and CEOs as a matter of factors.

All this research and eyesight in the book, we're just, for example, you take one company where it's an all male board and another company where you add three women to your board, maybe 10 board members. You add three, not even accounting for what you might discuss or what issues get hashed out at the board meeting's Just The presence of those three women will add to the return on investment on that second company, where three female board members by 46%.

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Wow,

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So just adding women is gonna add to the bottom line. There's a long term study that followed. 80 Female CEO is kind of a mixed segment of, like private companies, public companies, large and small in different business segments. Those 80 female CEOs. It was found that the outperformed their male peers on the S and P 500 by 226% return on equity that a startling percentage over noting that is definitely worth noting. And so I have this belief that there are leadership qualities or leadership attributes, management attributes that are more commonly associated with the way that women lead, that we should really, really talk about Maura and explore and try to unpack what things we can learn from that so that we can actually all be better together and that male and female leaders can adopt a lot of these compound attributes.

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Thank you for diving into. As you said, matters of the heart. I think that's really worth calling out. And I appreciate that you brought both the qualitative and quantitative answer

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to the well, yeah, you're welcome.

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Jonathan. You are the chairman of Pick Monkey, the chairman and cofounder of Geek Wire, the founder of We count dot or GE and hold on. Have to catch my breath here. The former CEO of both Fat Bits and Picnic, both of which were sold to Google. Your resume suggests that you are incredibly passionate and innovative when it comes to business. Why have you now set your sights on this topic of gender equity

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in the workplace? Great question. So in a nutshell. I think you do get to a point if you're if we're all lucky enough, and by the way, I've been more lucky than good. Let's just put that on the table. But if we have been lucky, if we have been a little blessed with some traction and some success, I do think this is not about sort of satisfying one's own needs. That's not what we're all here to do. At some point. I think it's very important to activate and to think about what can I do every day that can make the world better. And in fact, actually, I think recently Bill and Melinda, I think in time for Valentine's Day did also have a similar message.

I think they were answering some tough questions and one of the answers. I didn't listen to the whole thing, but one of the ones that I did here was this aspect of what can we all do every day and I think it was Melinda that answered that. What are you thinking about and doing moving forward that is goingto help people that's gonna make the world a better place, that I really it sounds sort of perhaps a pie in the sky. But I really believe that often times in life, the big changes that big, inspiring things that happen in your life are oftentimes a result of simple and clear insights. They don't have to be complex. You don't have to be overly clever. And so if you make a decision that you want to make the world a better place for me than it was taken, what I observed, actually, as an angel investor investing in various startup companies, my deal pipeline was very full. People wanted to get on my calendar,

pitch me on their start up, have coffee, all wonderful things. I'm very lucky that people want to do that. What I was noticing, though, was that maybe two guys from Amazon or from Microsoft they could go out and raise $1.2 million it might take them 90 days, 120 days to do that. No problem, because they're smart, they've got a great value proposition. A total addressable market is interesting and you know, so they got a great concept. You take two women may be equally great. The concept there equally smart, maybe in some cases,

even smarter. It might take them over a year to raise that 1.2 million. Maybe not even ever that they'll raise that. Maybe they do a race that's about half a numerically large. So I saw that over and over again, and then I would kind of probe y. And I would hear from these impassioned, smart female entrepreneurs about how they're just trying so hard and our doors won't open or they get told certain things that sometimes I can't believe that are said and so And by the way, I'm not maligning any one single individual. I think that we've all sort of men and women inherited, Ah, legacy, broken system, my called actions that we need to look very hard at. That s O. Because I started hearing those impassioned stories and noticing that women were struggling still in the year 17 4018. That's why I wrote this book. I felt like certain things needed to be said and talked about more.

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It sounds like you were in this unique position both as an angel investor and as a people manager. And did you feel like it was sort of a moral imperative. Like there were so few people in your position that had this per view that maybe you yeah, you felt like it was your responsibility to speak

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up. And I did. I absolutely felt that was my responsibility. There are a lot of other people who are doing great work to advance gender equality in business, especially in this ecosystem and Microsoft. And, you know, everybody here is doing their part. But I did feel like I was in a fairly unique position to talk about it, because most of my companies that ones that you cited, if not all of them are incredibly gender balanced. We have women in senior management positions if they're not also co founders, and they have great cultures that are very family forward and female forward that support the development of women. And I talked about a lot of that stuff in my book. So because of that experience, and then also because I wear the Angel investor hat where I do have this very robust pipeline of company's new companies that are trying to get started, and then they're telling me very robustly what the issues they're encountering are.

I just felt like that I was in a unique position to see a lot of this data. And I think because of my chairmanship of geek Wire that also affords me a little bit more of a platform to talk about this stuff, too. So I think all of that stuff came together and which embolden me with some confidence to ah, write this

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book. And with this perspective on the industry in 2015 you became the first male investor to vow on Lee to fund startups with at least one female co founder. Yes. Can you explain your reasoning behind this position? You've noted a few stats in our first question. How the investor community has responded.

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So Number one, I said that because I truly, truly believe that your company and your product and your customer satisfaction the culture that you eventually build and grow as your company scales. I believe all of that will be better, much better if you have ah, female co founder and someone at the very highest levels at a company where you have that gender inclusion. If you start there, that's a great place to be, and they're just gonna be a lot of positive benefits. So I said it because of that. Truth be told,

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when I said it,

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I didn't think it was going to be controversial precisely because I thought, Well, isn't that pretty easy? I mean, you're say, you're a guy, you're trying to do a startup and you're trying to put a prototype together. Say that's usually like a common step or you're trying to put together your deck. You know that we're gonna pitch investors like me or venture capitalists. I don't think it's that hard to find a female colleague who's maybe very, very awesome in this product space or a really great U ex designer, or is also technical or is more on the market. Whatever it is, I don't think it's that hard to find a female co founder, so I didn't even think the statement would be controversial.

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I just accidentally Radic

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was accidentally radical. Exactly is good term. So that's another reason that I have to kind of disclose that I didn't say it on purpose to be controversial, but I But I felt it very strongly, authentically as an investor. Unlike you know what? I'm gonna go here. There are plenty of started towards a couple of three guys from Amazon or whatever. I'm gonna go here where I think there's more interesting space and perhaps companies that are kind of being overlooked. And as an investor, I hope I'm not being a dumb investor. I think this is a smart strategy. Sometimes you do want to go where there's untilled field. Sometimes you want to go where others are not looking. And so that was also a part of it now. What was the reaction on the investor community? It was very mixed.

As you might expect from something like that. I think most of folks that I encountered a lot of folks in town who are venture capitalists, who I'm friends with. Other angel investors have been very, very supportive, and I'm appreciative of that. As a matter of fact, I think that they're all many of them are kind of a class act because maybe they were sort of doing that stuff anyway and supporting the development of female lead companies, but in a less official or overt way. And so the fact that they were doing that perhaps even before me is totally deserves kudos. But then there were there was a more broader kind of Internet reaction, which was surprising but a lot of negative reaction that this was the dumbest thing ever. That technology is one of those spaces where it's a true meritocracy. So the fact that you don't see a lot of women raising large amounts or succeeding at their startups or they're only, you know, so few female CEOs and a fortune in and of itself is testament ineffective.

Perhaps they're just not as qualified some people, and I think this is a more subtle way of perhaps expressing a latent sexism. There is that it's always a pipeline problem. I think that there may still be a pipeline problem in the very most core technical positions. But I think for larger companies where you have multiple functional areas, I think that that's no longer really an excuse. That you could have any more is particularly if you look at some of the data again. I think it's in my book about, you know, male female college graduation rates in stem fields, actually just as many women graduating from stem fields as men now, so which is fantastic so there was a lot of backlash from some people, which I I thought was good ultimately, because you then know where they stand and you do know that that exists. Still on that. We shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that people, some people don't actually still think

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that way. Interesting. Jonathan. I first heard your story back in December at the Riveter, which is a co working space founded here in Seattle, focused on women and wellness. And you are now the distinguished entrepreneur in residence there. What does that title mean? And how are you using it to advance this concept

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of gender equity? Yeah, so I was one of the more significant investors in a Riveter because I really believed in Amy Nelson and her concept and having this co working space that's very female, forward, female friendly. They don't exclude men, which is great, but it's a space that we're you know, it's not like a bunch of ping Pong tables and noisy and arcade games and things like that. If they're for people, toe work and focus, and it's very genteel and kind of, Ah, beautiful, relaxing atmosphere. I'm highly highly supportive of that. That's actually environment that I like to work and when I walk into a co working space,

and so my title as distinguished entrepreneur is really myself. Leaning into that, I began talking with Amy about in addition to just being an investor. What else can I do to help you? What a non monetary ways that I can help you? And so we came up with this distinguished entrepreneur thing. I wanted to note that I actually show up at the Riveter and I sit there and I sort of have office hours and anybody who wants to chat with me or get advice on funding or capitalization issues, structure issues, team building, Ah, product design, any of that. I talk with them and try Thio. Help them along.

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It's so great to hear that it wasn't just a a financial transaction tradition to demonstrate your investment, especially in this time of me to lean in. And Surveymonkey just put out this survey that shows that senior men are more nervous than ever to interact with junior women on the job and the call to action there from Cheryl Sandberg and lean in. It's four more senior men to be mentoring just Yeah, and it's so great to see that you're putting that into

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action. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So I absolutely agree. That sentiment, that what Cheryl said about the fact he don't be afraid to talk to you. Women in fact, engage Maur. And in my book, I actually have this concept of reverse mentoring that I think it's also important that a senior man in the organization engage with maybe some of the up and comers the women in their organization, that they also flip it around maybe 50% of the time. Or maybe all the time, where it's a reverse mentoring relationship you don't Perhaps somebody else can come up with a better term for that. But what I mean by that is that it's really important. To listen is really important to actually pay attention to the needs and sort of the career aspirations and the goals of the junior women in the organization and listen to them about, you know,

how can the culture change? How can we change certain policies or just maybe even tweak them so that the environment and culture is more supportive of women in the workplace and women advancing in the leadership positions. And so so this concept of also reverse mentoring, I think, is important,

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too. I thought that was a great anecdote in your book because it not only made you privy to, you know, some of the cultural accommodations you could make for more junior women in your organization. But you know, there's business insight there, too. How do we better tap into, ah, millennial audience? What type of content can we be generating to better attract new audience members

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and actually Bilgi still say, build you? Bill Gates? Uh, old habits die hard. I remember there was a seminal memo that he wrote when I can't rember the exact year sometime during the nineties. You know, the world remembers him in 97 writing the Internet memo, but I remember that prior to that he wrote a memo that was equally impactful to me as a young employee. When I was in my twenties, which was around the time, I think that he was maybe coming up to being 40. Maybe he was like, maybe in his late thirties, and he wrote this memo to the whole company talking about how you know What usually happens to companies is that as we've been very successful and we've taken risks and we've done these great things, but what always happens is that as companies mature, they grow in size.

We also age up and we get older and more conservative, and we stop growing and learning new skills, he said. That and I think that that's a testament to how oppression he was back then. And I really believe that that it's important that no matter where you are in the organization, you could be the CEO, our senior vice president. You could have been at the company 30 years. You could be in your fifties, your middle age, like me, but it's not too late to learn, and I get continue to get so much out of my interactions with people who are younger than I who have fresh ideas. And all you got to do is listen

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what a great sentiment. And, you know, speaking of these old habits, this conversation here on Microsoft's campus is a bit of a homecoming for you. You previously worked in Microsoft's consumer division and were a manager on the Xbox team, and since that time Jen first X box. Yeah. Wow. You know, since that time, gender in the workplace has become a much hotter topic and something that larger corporations are bearing a lot more scrutiny for. Jonathan, can you comment at all on your experience in corporate America here at Microsoft versus the start up world? And how you saw those gender politics playing out

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in those arena? Definitely. I think there's kind of an interesting arc there that I also allude to in my book, which is that I was blown away when I came to Microsoft in 92. And I don't know exactly how many employees there when it was small, like you knew everyone, right? And you play soccer out in the field at lunch and, um, I was blown away by how progressive the company waas. There were a lot of things that fell to me at that time were only things that Microsoft was doing inclusive of to sort of even HR policies like, I think you could have a same sex domestic partnership that your spouse, that same sex domestic partner, could be also eligible for health insurance. Things like that, I think I don't think many companies were doing that at that time. So Microsoft gets kudos for being really rather innovative.

There no surprise that, for example, in the consumer Division, my mentors were a Patty Stonecipher. She was the senior vice president of the division and division had probably like six or 700 people there. Reporting to her was Charlotte Guymon, who was the general manager of the Lifestyles business unit. Right? And then my direct manager was also a woman named Lisa Mackey, who's a product unit manager at the time, and I just just sort of learned so much from them, and it also seemed like it was pretty 50 50. It was different in research, different in systems, But I did feel like that. It was something very novel and new and good.

What I saw that happening. Now here's where the are changes. Then, at some point the women started leaving, or what would happen is it's kind of more subtle, right? Like maybe they would have family, they would have kids and it would take leave, but then not come back. Or they would come back for just a little bit and then not stay. And so That was very puzzling to me in a little bit worrying. And then as the years progressed, it seemed like instead of things getting better, that things were more gender balance. There were more women in senior leadership. Things were actually getting a little bit worse.

And again, there's no single individual that should have the blame. It's it's that we've all inherited some sort of legacy system and there are certain policies or practices in place that the framework itself is what is doing this. But you still have hope that still, by the late nineties, early 2000 you're still thinking like, Okay, the world will get better assuredly. I mean, this is how the world works. Everything gets better.

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And then in a start

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up world, it was also I felt that it things took another sort of step down, that you could see some of the things starting that I have alluded to it and pass women were getting your harder for them to get funding if there were even founding companies at all. And so I feel like that there's still a lot of work to do. The current focus and attention on this stuff is ultimately incredibly good. If I could wave a magic wand, I might have more of the mix of the conversation be less about what is assuredly very important issues of sexual harassment or sexual discrimination. And maybe focus a little bit more in the solutions and talking about how we can overall solve some of the economic disparity. Tow wage disparity, income disparity between men and women in technology or in business in general. And some of the policies that we have place in corporate America that do affect women to

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the adverse working here at Microsoft. I feel a lot of protection, like HR is doing their job, and I'm now starting to focus more on How can I use the platform that I have here to make sure that we are, you know, directing more attention to women outside of structures and corporations where there is more accountability?

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Yeah, that's right. If I may, I don't know. You probably were about to move on your next question. Dots actually wind a book. I did have both because I'm not an awesome writer and I couldn't organize it, are fit it as well as I wanted to, but But I think also because I think that sometimes these issues that women confront are very, very subtle. They can be small things, and it could be like death by 1000 cuts. So I had to construct a way in a book to kind of capture sometimes these little 1000 cut things. And so I have these little snippets. But in between the chapters and I called straight talk. And so they are sometimes just like this thing is not enough for, like,

an entire chapter or entire topic. But they are very real. And they're exemplary of the things that women face in the work place all the time, over and over again every day. And one of them is just as an example. A couple of colleagues have mentioned that you know what happens all the time to women is that they're in a meeting and there are a lot of men in the room, and maybe they're the only female. Or maybe there maybe is like one other. The woman has an idea, and it's a great idea, and the conversation kind of moves past. And then 10 minutes later Ah, man has a nice guide or the ground. That guy, I'm not blaming him, but he has the same idea.

And then everybody rallies in, you know, it's like, Oh, Bob's idea is awesome. That's great. Yeah, let's do that. And those kinds of things can be incredibly frustrating Way sort of laugh a little bit about it, But these things do you happen every day, and those are the kinds of things that I would encourage us to all take stock of the very human day to day interaction things.

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I really appreciated those straight talk moments in the book because as a woman working in tech, I see those things every day. I'm constantly looking for a way to sort of, like, capture the moment and explain it. Thio the men in my life who have made themselves available to listen and want to help, and they want to consider themselves allies and understand the moments in which they can be helpful. You know, just this morning I take the 5 45 bus from Capitol Hill, Thio Redmond, and when I approached my bus stop, there were 18 people waiting for the bus. All of them were men, and in these moments, when you're all getting on the bus to go to the same place, it's just a reminder of your otherness. And I thought, like, should I take a picture of this right now so that I can show someone? You know? Here is a moment in my day which may seem inconsequential but makes me feel very other

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day. You know, calling. I'm really glad that you brought that up and if I may just kind of Segway a little bit. You mentioned my work with We count dot award, which is a nonprofit that I started to help individuals experiencing homelessness. And there's this concept in A in that area of work, which is that there can sometimes be. They call it environmental violence against someone, which it's not actual physical violence. But it's this concept where a lot of little things makes someone feel their otherness and feel sort of maybe left out or less. Stan. That's the worst part of it, right? And so I think that those are important things that we again take stock of and notice and just really appreciate any other person. Let's work hard to not exacerbate that feeling of otherness or less than in someone else. Yeah,

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you mentioned Lisa Mackie as one of your leaders at Microsoft. She's the CEO of Pocket Doc and authored the forward of your book. Better together, she writes, Jonathan's experiences starting with the circumstances of his birth, make him very uniquely qualified to address any issues surrounding bias and inequity. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and your upbringing that provided the foundation

35:18

for Yeah, Yeah, I'm happy, too. So I was born to an unwed mother in 1967 in Brooklyn. What? I was actually born in London, but then we shortly after I moved to Brooklyn. So that's where we were and she could not make ends meet. And I witnessed firsthand how hard it was for her to struggle to make it both being a woman of color and also being a woman to struggle to make it in a man's world. And so she sent me to live with my grand parents in a foreign country in Hong Kong. I've never been there, didn't speak the language. I did not speak Chinese at the time, and so then I was basically raised by my grand parents. And so the reason why I appreciated your prior example of your commute and feeling other I right or wrong? I've always felt the sense of other nests wherever I was during my early years,

whether I was actually in Brooklyn. I think I was the only Chinese kid there on then at the time, and then when I was in Hong Kong, I was the only non Chinese speaking kid that was born in England. And then when I moved back to the United States to Edmonds Washington, I felt that even Maura cutely and so I do think Lisa's right. That activated me to always try to think in most circumstances when you're interacting with someone, what the other side's perception might be like and what it might feel like to be in the minority what it might feel like to even sometimes to have bad things happen to you. You know, I had a tough childhood, you know. People picked fights with me and I had to learn to stand my ground and and I think those experiences galvanized me. But at the same time, it's activated me to pay attention to how sometimes there can be like a mob mentality, and those in the majority don't realize some of the privileges that they're afforded that are just not even spoken. I mean, they just are

37:3

there, even though you come from this background in this foundation, where you understand what it means to be other. I really appreciated that you went on this journey with a partner who was writing the book, Just you, researching of you. You referenced your working relationship in a chapter called With Grace Kong, which, of course, refers to the Emmy and Peabody Award winning journalist. Can you tell us a bit more about how you worked with Grace to bring this book to?

37:34

Absolutely, absolutely so Actually, it's really kind of an example of better together and or other people I collaborate with on this journey as well. One of them is Kristina Watt, who is also very smart about these things, and it's someone that who's interaction I really benefit from the overall effort benefits from so she gets credit. The reason why she has that acknowledgement in the book is because she was the one that actually really goaded me to write this book. She walked into one of my companies into pick monkey. And, you know, we were expanding and hiring more and more people, and she visited me at these new offices. It was a lovely visit, but she kind of looked around. Okay, hold up. This is not like any other tech company I've ever walked into.

What she was noticing was, actually, I think at the time, numerically we were greater than 50% women across the ranks and there were women in engineering. It's not like we had your they're all in marketing or something like that. There were women and engineering. There were women in you. I design U ex design, all that functional areas, and she was very pleasantly surprised by that. So she says, Jonathan, you have to write a book about how you did this. And so I thought that her sort of instincts were very, very sharp there. And so that's how we jumped into this. She wrote one chapter of the book that I felt was best done coming from a female perspective, and I think that she wrote it very beautifully and the book is, you know, all the better because she's involved.

38:57

I appreciated so many parts of the book I'm gonna jump into one part in particular this quote from software engineer Kate Huddleston, who you referenced in your book. This is gonna take me a minute to get through, but I think it's all very valuable. Women in Tak are the canary in the coal mine. Normally, when the canary in the coal mine starts dying, you know the environment is toxic and you should get out. Instead. The tech industry is looking at the canary wondering why it can't breathe saying lean in canary, lean in. When one canary dies, they get a new one because getting more Canaris is how you fix the lack of canaries, right? Except the problem is that there isn't enough oxygen in the coal mine. Not that there are too few canaries. I think that this is such an awfully beautiful metaphor for the predominant focus on recruiting more women into Tak instead of looking at the full funnel including retention mechanisms that might make it truly more comfortable for women to stay better together, outlines eight solutions that people can commit to in the quest for gender equity in the workplace and among those improvements to the recruiting process. But I'd actually love to dive into one of the retention solutions that you call out. What does it mean to create a family forward culture? And how tactically does that get executed?

40:26

Yeah, great questions. So a whole chapter on that it's like a grab bag of many, many things. I think they're like seven or eight that I talk about in that chapter. So So some of those things are policy things, really. It's that kind of Steve Jobs notion of like once you realize that all of these policies and laws are really just the ideas of people, and you can change them thin, your Baltimore empowered. And so, but then the second part of some of these solutions is really they're actually physical things, designed things in the space and how you can equip your employees to do their jobs better. There's really good stuff there, too. So let me talk about the policy things. One very,

very simple one again. It's not about being super clever and tricky. It's really, sometimes the most simple and elegant solutions. Not having meetings start before 9 a.m. I know that that can be a tough one for a lot of companies. But here's why. At least back when I was writing a book and when I was a CEO of Pick Monkey, I found out that the Seattle school District, or at least parts of the Seattle School district for kids in grade school actually school didn't start until 8 30 In the statistics on child rearing is that even in the year 2018 where you have very, very enlightened husbands, enlightened fathers, the vast majority of child rearing and that responsibility of drop off, pick up getting breakfast, getting the kid bathed, dressed all of that stuff falls still much more on the mother, right?

So then, if you believe that's that, what happens is that if you have a scenario where the school district doesn't start until 8 30 if you have meetings start early like you have an 8 a.m. meeting or an 8 30 meeting, what happens is that woman can't spend time with her child, and it cuts, throws a lot of other compensating factors into motion that ultimately makes that employees less fulfilled, less happy and less productive. So that's one of things that I advocate is that let's not put women at a disadvantage. Let's not have that person walk into a meeting at 8 30 Sort of just dropping and cold from having spent a lot of time getting the kid ready or driving out of the loop. Contact exactly other things when you have an opportunity to schedule like a kind of a semi nonwork event like a morale event or like a new office party, actually do those things in office and include families, right? Make it, you know, four o'clock, right?

Don't make it seven o'clock and it's at a bar or or even happy hours at a bar. And then people sort of have toe debit their time away from families right to be a part of it. Otherwise, they feel like they're not caught up or they're out of the loop. So if you make those things in office and families are included again, you get more fulfilled employees, happier employees. So those are just two examples of policy things. Another one, which I love, is also making sure that, and I know what Microsoft that you guys are already do that, but at large in corporate America. The vast majority of companies don't have this yet, which is giving the men equal parental leave as the women right. And the reason why that's important is because it lessens that feeling of being less Stan or other.

When women typically re enter the workforce, women typically re enter the workforce after being gone three months, five months. They feel like they're vastly out of the loop, and companies sometimes don't really take the extra step toe adequately. Bring him up to speed. And I think that if more men, and particularly male managers took the same amount of time off and they were mandated to, it's not just a go golfing and change a couple of diapers on occasion, it's really toe partake 50% in a child rearing. That's the other component that has to happen at home. Then when they come back, it's Maur of unequal situation. I think there's much more sympathy for what happens to women, so that's another one. Okay,

I've gone long on that thing. Physical things are I have photos that kind of speak 1000 words in the book, but we've designed our office spaces to include play areas sort of living room spaces or play room spaces where there are low tables for kids where their kids books where their kids activities were their Legos. And it isn't uncommon for some of our employees. If there's like a gap like, you know, something happened at the school in the morning is cancelled, and so there's no backup child care. It's not uncommon for employees to bring their kids, the school aged Children and just kind of parking that work, and they're not far from them and it can watch him. And in fact, sometimes people was sort of pulling together like there may be three kids in the office at the same time. And one of the somebody who's a program manager or a test manager might, who's also a parent, is also looking after the three kids.

And sometimes that can just take the edge off so that that employee didn't necessarily have to take the day off. And, more importantly, that employee didn't have to feel guilty that she often she had to make some sort of sacrifice, that she had to choose work or kid that we can enable

45:11

both all great examples and very tactical opportunities for implementation. And I think you know this commonality that I see both in the policy and the physical space is making it more comfortable to bring your whole self tour. Yes, that's a great way

45:29

to put it for your whole

45:30

self to work. Yeah, I think we get very familiar with the work personalities that we encounter in the workplace day to day and getting to know people more holistically. The values that they have, the people that they're surrounding themselves with can on Lee make. Are working relationships richer?

45:47

Yeah, that's right. That's right,

45:49

Jonathan. I was really struck by your call out of two broken systems that you hacked to be more inclusive in the book. First off, when it comes to recruiting, you give a larger referral bonus for non male, non white candidates who are hired in. And I understand that that incentivizes your employees to make diversity a priority when they're considering their networks for referral. But ultimately, that points to an HR recruiting system that is not currently sourcing the diversity of candidates that you're looking for. And then when it comes to promotion, you recommend advocating for women who exhibit classically female attributes like high integrity and respect, toe all levels of constituents in a system that rewards classically male attribution sze traditionally like aggression and results orientation. Both of these solutions are hacks to broken systems. Are these workarounds wth e on leeway to eventually fix the system, you know, will flood the system with women and then we can make it better. Or should we be working both on these hacks and in parallel to remedy the systems themselves?

47:7

Yeah, that is a fantastic question, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about that. I do think that both of those solutions really do move the needle, but they're not all inclusive. Of course, I did underscore them a lot or talk about them a lot in the book precisely because they've been shown to bear great results, right that if you do really give large, large, like, sort of extraordinary, noticeably large bonuses, like double or even triple what you would normally get for an employee, a referral, people notice and they work on it. And then, more importantly,

you send this message that you mean business, that you really mean it because you're willing to put your money where your mouth is, right? It's not like a token thing. So that's been shown to move the needle on a lot of companies these days. So and I would say that as much as I kind of bash the startup ecosystem a little bit earlier for having a greater gender problem, I would actually say that one of the things that I love about the startup ecosystem is the rapid pace at which change can in fact happen. And we're seeing this being executed right now today into Seattle attack, ecosystems, started ecosystem and a lot of companies reporting that they're getting great results. In

48:12

terms of the second hack, I thought

48:15

that it was also really important to officially codify in the company values in terms of what we value the most in like the canonical best employee, that those values are very, very clearly inclusive of both male and female leadership attributes. Because they are both important. I really sort of believe in this sort of compound leader that exhibits both of those traits, right?

48:43

You mentioned that there is great progress happening in the Seattle community and I took great pride in reading about the pioneering that we're doing here in the Pacific Northwest. You stated that I think the Seattle Tech ecosystem will eventually lead the way on gender equality and be a role model for other tech hubs to follow. What do you think is unique about

49:7

our city? Yeah, So there is this magic that's happening right now, right under our noses that we may not even realize, which is that we have the most amazing confluence of First we're on on the West Coast, so we tend to be younger. We tend to be a more liberal, more progressive and are thinking so. That's already kind of a part of our culture that's also present in the Bay Area also. But what we also have here in the Northwest is a certain sort of gentility, a certain like maybe the bad part of it is that sometimes people say Seattleites are kind of passive aggressive or something, but and that's probably that's probably true, but right. But the good part of it is that we're not all, like at each other's throats were not all combative and hyper Ah, hard core competitive with each other. We're not quite frankly,

as just culturally. I think these things are all kind of different facets of the same core. We're not as showy, we're not about displaying overt status, things or tokens of wealth. And I think that we've had a lot of really great captains of industry and business leaders in the region that have kind of set that tone for the rest of us. And so we have all the attributes where there's a little bit of humility. That's what I'm saying. And then there's also 1/3 thing is that there's a really great orientation towards philanthropy and doing good and this kind of concept of that. I think President Obama said in, like maybe 2012 the concept that you can do good and do well at the same time and so I feel like that's very unique to our region. And with all due respect to our friends down in the Bay Area, Ah, couple of those elements that I just described don't exist. They're or don't exist as strongly. I think people are a little bit later to activate to civically virtuous things or philanthropy.

I think there's a little more just a harder edge of competitiveness. They're not not just amongst companies, but also amongst people, right. There's a little more people move around a lot more from company to company. There's more competition for talent, and they'll go to the the higher paying job and leave their past job that they've only been out for a couple of years. There's a lot more of that going on that I think causes a little bit more noise and chaos where these really good things can't take. Hold a cz well, as they can hear in the Seattle region in the Northwest region. The fourth thing that I'll say about that why I truly believe that we can lead the way is because we have incredible leaders here in this region. We in fact, have a lot of really great business leaders that are doing great things and doing what they can at their companies, and some are a little less vocal and I I'm getting a little bit of a spotlight now because of the book, but there's a nice critical mass and a groundswell happening that is really great to see here.

51:49

I've witnessed so many of those qualities about Seattle that you referenced here. The interest in building sustainable businesses, sustainable communities. I haven't felt that in such a way that I feel living here in the Pacific Northwest and this notion of philanthropy. Of course, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the pioneers here, and we have this great culture of philanthropy here at the company. Growing up, I didn't really know that I had the power to be a philanthropist and coming to work at this company. We have, ah, great giving campaign. That's right. I remember awesome. You know, matching benefits are our donations matched. And I think,

yeah, there's a lot more coaching on what it means to be a philanthropist. That's sort of systemic here in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, that's exactly

52:39

right. I mean, I could remember, or I know I'm not just what I remembered when I was an employee here, but I actually even know from the outside all of the great things that this company is doing right now, what Brad Smith is doing. I know he He's one of those that leads by example in terms of how much he leans into things like the United way or or Washington State Opportunity scholars. And I think people take notice of that and assuredly a lot of this stuff. I'm somewhat speaking in platitudes, and it's anecdotal. But when I've been at other companies visiting the Bay Area or, you know, times when I've worked down there, you don't quite have that critical mass. Or at least people who are doing great work, our little less visible on a philanthropist.

53:18

Jonathan. In the introduction of Better Together you call a your audience. Specifically, the goal of this book is to provide managers, CEOs, board members and business owners with a blueprint to attract, recruit higher and build a sustainable gender balanced workforce at all levels. And you wrap the book with the Better Together pledge, which commits people too. One. Remove bias against women in recruiting to fully support women's development within the organization. Three. Listen louder and support women's communication. Four. Create a family forward work culture. Five. Not tolerate sexual harassment regardless of the perpetrators performance.

Six. Adopt the Equal rights amendments language for the organization. Seven. Encourage women to support women and eight sets the right example for the next generation. How would you recommend getting this book with all of these great and tactical things you can d'oh into the hands of more people in power so that they might take this pledge.

54:31

Yeah, thank you for that. I really appreciate you reading that because sometimes when you hear it coming from another person, it's ah, it sounds different and sometimes better. So that's great. Um,

54:41

I would

54:42

say the best thing to do is, you know, enabling more opportunities like this. So if there's anybody out there listening to this podcast and if you have a platform for me to speak with you and to engage with you and your audience and hopefully a delightful and fun way in an informative way, just like you know, you and I have been doing Comey, I would love to do more of that just to get the word out and coming back to you. Colleen, I'm just deeply appreciative of this opportunity and speaking with you, I've actually learned just a cz much talking with you. Just kind of listening to that. What's implicit in some of your questions in terms of what's important to you? Azaz, I hope I've been useful s o I think opportunities like this. I definitely seek to get the word out more. And the book is in fact, available at,

you know, all the major book outlets Barnes and Noble and Amazon and things like that. So I am told it is a quick and enjoyable 200 pages. So, yes, you can tell

55:34

me if it is it. 100% is an all share a hack. I have tried to build relationships with my manager's where there is a constant feedback loop, and I just dropped this book onto the desk of my manager of the other day when I wrapped it up. So, um, pay it forward. You know, I think as junior women and technology, we tend to speak amongst each other. But I think it's really important to give feedback to the leaders in the direction that you want them to be leading you and dropping a book on your manager's desk and explaining why that book was impactful for you. I think is a great step that we can all

56:12

take wonderful. That actually makes me feel really great stuff. Thank you for that.

56:17

Yes, Jonathan, where can our listeners find you? on the Internet aside from the places where they can find your book,

56:24

right? So I have a website www j Sposato dot com That's you know the letter j and an S P O s a t o dot com. And of course I'm on Facebook. Instagram, Twitter.

56:38

Yes, all of the places. That's right. Thank you so much for making the time today for making this your mission. I really appreciate the work that you do and that you made the time to come talk with us. Here.

56:50

You're most welcome. Calling This has been a total pleasure and I had a lot of fun. I hope you did,

56:54

too. I did, of course. Cutting edge take on stories in the business and technology world. In this cutting edge segment, we're going to take a look at an article written by Nelly Bowls that was published in the February 25th issue of The New York Times. Entitled Women and Crypto Currencies Push Back against Blockchain. Bro's bulls explains that while virtual currencies and Blockchain were intended to be democratizing forces, a gender imbalance is already creeping into the crypto currency world. According to the article, some studies estimate that women account for only 4 to 6% of Blockchain investors. Bulls emphasizes why this is important. Quote The early days of an industry are often when the fortunes are made. The article cites a few different incidences of overt sexism in the Cryptocurrency community, but I was most surprised by the coverage of the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami, which happened this past January. The program originally slated 86 men and one woman to speak after complaints investor and organizer Mo Levin shifted the programming to feature 84 men and three women.

Oh yeah, 11 explained. It just coincidentally happened that there were more men than women speakers. It's not intentional not to include them. It's just we don't have time to include them. 11 also decided to host the conferences after party at a strip club. This is not fake news. This is not fake news. So, yes, some early female investors are speaking out in the midst of the trend, including venture capitalists Alexia, but not so's who tweeted quote women consider crypto. Otherwise, men are going to get all the wealth again. Britain cofounder Brit Morin even held a Blockchain gathering and Lifestream for women and over 16,000 tuned in.

Yes, she originally decided tow, have this event and needed to move it to a larger room. 500 people attended in person, but there was way more in trust, so I thought it was cool that she did. Also, in addition to these individual calls to action, bulls also points to the creation of the Blockchain diversity advocacy group called the Collective Future, which will create a diversity pledge for Crypto Cos. Committed to stemming the tide of current representation trends. My favorite part of this article is tthe e input from Arianna Simpson on early Cryptocurrency. Investor reminds women that it doesn't take expertise or a PhD to thrive in the ecosystem. Simpson states. And it's the best we've been. Always question if they're qualified.

But look at these clowns around us. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Women in Business and Technology. I'm so glad we were able to host Lauren Westley Wilson to tell us more about the Color Com Network and the conference coming. And thanks to that amazing and also somewhat depressing Lee hilarious New York Times article, I am definitely now more aggressively getting up to speed on Cryptocurrency and how to get into the game. Good for you. And of course, we were honored to host Jonathan Sposato in the studio. I highly recommend picking up a copy of his book for yourself and maybe a few for the people in your leadership chain again. The title of that book is better together. Eight Ways. Working with women leads to extraordinary products and profits. As always, please remember to rate review and subscribe to the show. All of those actions helped more people find us. You can find us on apple podcasts,

Google play Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts, and our website is W II be t dot com. And if you have any feedback or questions, please email us A W i b t at Microsoft dot com for tweet us at Microsoft Women Your mission for this episode, if you choose to accept it, is to subscribe. Thio, the broadsheet. The broadsheet is an email newsletter from Fortune that is distributed Monday through Friday. Kristen Bell, Strom and Valentina Zaria, right, quote the dish on the world's most powerful women. It's obviously one of my favorite email newsletters and helps me determine the themes and content that we prioritize on this show. The broadsheet is free. You just have to head to fortune dot com forward slash get broadsheet Check the box for the broadsheet. Enter your email address and country and click Sign up Now Happy reading.

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