Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Working as a Woman in Tech | Maggie Chan Jones - The Founder of Tenshey

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Lessons - Working as a Woman in Tech | Maggie Chan Jones - The Founder of Tenshey · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  What was your experience as being a really incredible women tech leader as you rose through
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  the ranks?
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  Have you noticed anything because I'm sure that of course over the years it's gotten
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  a little bit better compared to when you first started during the dot com and whatnot
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  as you rose through the ranks, talk to me about your experience being a woman leader
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  in tech.
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  Well, so I personally feel really fortunate that I, you know, let me take a step back.
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  So if you look at the broader industry as an example, you know, McKinsey and Lynn and
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  every year they do a study on women in the workplace.
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  And over the last five years, when you look at the percentage of women in the C suite
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  and the percentage of women of color in the C suite, they don't really change that much.
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  And you know, right now is roughly only about 21% of the C suite of women and only 4% are
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  women of color.
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  So you know, when you look at the workforce starting out at 50 50, well, how do we get from
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  50 50 to 20% or to 4%.
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  So knowing that and also being in tech, I remember in my early days in tech, most of the time
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  I would be in a meeting and I was the only woman in the room or definitely the only woman
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  of the of color in the room.
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  Nowadays, that still happened and it doesn't, you know, I mean, we do the thing that I like
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  and I love seeing the progress is I definitely a lot more meetings now when I go into that
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  I see, you know, like I definitely see more diversity, but it is still a minority is not
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  an equal playing feel yet.
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  So that is why I personally believe that when you think about sponsorship and when organizations
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  thinking from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective, you have to be very intentional
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  looking at your workforce, seeing where you have gaps, where you have, you know, opportunity
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  to improve and focus on development area that can help you to really create an inclusive
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  environment.
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  And my, you know, my view is that until you have representation, you're not going to
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  have inclusion and until that happened, then that's where people, everyone can feel
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  like they belong allowed you to get that CMO position at SAP.
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  How can we unpack that strategy that allowed you to not, I guess not strategy, but of course
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  the mix of your career skills, plus the fact that perhaps you had sponsorship, plus you
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  had a company that wanted to bring in just the best talent and that's what they were
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  looking for and they brought you in.
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  I'm trying to figure out, how do we get more, you know, Maggie's, you know, CMO, SAP,
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  how do we get more of those and what we've had to get there?
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  Yes.
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  I, first and foremost, is really understanding or knowing where you want to go and having
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  the clarity, having that clarity for your career north star, right?
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  Not everyone want to be a CMO, so you have to at least, you know, first point is, is
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  that where you want to go?
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  And then the second piece is, how do you take intentional steps to get there?
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  Because you know, you may say, you know, for example, I may be mentoring an executive
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  and, you know, and one of the things that I always say to people I mentor, especially when
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  they are thinking about their career journey is, where do you want to go?
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  Where do you want to take your career?
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  Which was the exact same fashion that I got back in the days at Microsoft and so understanding
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  where you want to go is important and then the steps that you take has to be very intentional.
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  And more so when I talk with executive women, right, they may be at, you know, one or two
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  level be, you know, they may be at one or two level below the C suite.
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  Those steps become very critical because that would determine which path you are going
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  to take and will help you to get those type of roles.
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  So going back to, you know, my own journey, I was having a lot of fun at Microsoft, I,
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  you know, my career was going well.
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  And that was back in 2012 and Cloud was taking off.
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  So that was great.
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  At the same time, I also knew that, you know, there were so many layers between where I was
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  and where to achieve marketing officer role it was.
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  So I'm like, okay, you know, when I was looking at opportunities, I actually was offer a role
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  to go to China to, you know, to do a business unit lead for the marketing side.
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  And then another opportunity came across was to be a senior vice president of marketing
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  at level three and level three at that time was a Fortune 500 company.
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  So between the two roles, even though both were really amazing and, you know, honestly,
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  if I could clone myself, I would do both.
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  But, you know, knowing that my longer term goal was to become a CMO one day, then, you
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  know, taking the role, taking a bigger risk to leave the company I was comfortable with
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  and going to level three at that time was, was very intentional.
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  And then, yeah, go ahead, Scott.
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  No, no, I was going to say so what I also want to understand though.
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  So that makes sense to me.
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  So being intentional about where you move your career.
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  But the reason why what I'm trying to unpack is, why is there that 4% that 4% of underserved
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  groups, marginalized groups and women see sweet leaders.
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  I'm sure a lot of women, I'm sure there's a lot of women that for, I'm sure a lot of everyone
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  that doesn't have that clear direction, but I think a lot of them probably do.
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  So it's about having that clear direction as to where you want to take your career.
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  But then after that, how do you, how do you move the needle on that?
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  How do you bridge that gap?
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  See a lot of women that do have that very purposeful driven, like, you know, laser vision
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  on what I need to do next, this, this and that to get to the C suite.
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  That is exactly right, Scott, like you have your ambition, you know what you need to do
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  from building your own competencies.
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  Then it's really about sponsorship.
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  It's really about getting the right sponsors and who can advocate for you, who can give
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  you visibility and open doors to new opportunities.
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  So in the case of my own journey, getting to become the CMO of SAP at that time was, you
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  know, an executive recruiting firm reach out to me about this opportunity.
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  And you know, that took a while at the beginning, but one side spoke with the chief HR officer
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  at that time, Stefan Rees, and we really connect and use like, you know, you need to speak
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  with our CEO, Bill McDermott.
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  And after speaking with Bill, that's when things became clear.
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  Bill was a sponsor of mine and, you know, I went through the rest of the interview process
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  knowing that I have his support and, you know, getting to that was very critical.
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  And, you know, and on the other side, someone like Bill and Stefan really understanding that
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  they need to make big bets on talent is also very critical because without that, I wouldn't
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  I wouldn't have got to where I got to.