Author: Stewart Rogers / Source: VentureBeat
Silicon Valley has a well-documented problem: There are not enough women in executive roles.
The reasons are many and varied, and far more nuanced than sometimes they appear to be when reading article after article on the subject or when talking with people in the Bay Area about the cause of inequality.
One way to address the issue is to stop talking about the problem and instead do something tangible about it.
Today, Juvo — a company that establishes financial identities for people that are creditworthy yet financially excluded — has announced two significant female executive hires, both of whom have high profiles in the Valley. This brings Juvo’s senior leadership team to 40 percent female.
Meg Bear, a 20+ year veteran in high-growth technology companies, has joined as senior vice president of product and engineering. Lisa Haugh, a seasoned expert in human capital and culture-focused leadership, will serve as vice president of people and culture.
Adding two female executives in itself is rare. A look at gender diversity in Silicon Valley executives by Observer in November 2017 paints a bleak picture of what many consider the world’s leading tech ecosystem.
While these appointments is a move in the right direction, at Juvo this is a small part of a much larger story. I visited the company’s headquarters in San Francisco this week to find out more about its attitude toward hiring, diversity, and equality.
With offices in Miami, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Amsterdam, Manila, and Jakarta, the Juvo team is diverse, global, and employs people that collectively speak over 20 languages.
That gives the company a different perspective on the issue of equality from the outset.“First, to be fair to the tech industry and Silicon Valley, this problem exists across a wide range of industries,” Steve Polsky, CEO and founder at Juvo, told me. “That said, the tech industry can and should lead the way in instituting change. I believe rather than looking at the ‘why,’ it’s more productive to look at the ‘how.’ How companies can continue to ‘Press for Progress’ and adopt an equal and balanced place for women and men from all backgrounds to work.”
“Press for Progress,” of course, was the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, calling on people to accelerate gender equality in the face of the recent World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap Report findings, which concluded that gender parity is over 200 years away.
Polsky believes that actions speak louder than words and that if…
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