Seventy-seven cents.
That’s how much, on average, women around the world currently make for every dollar men make, according to the United Nations. That’s a startling 23 percent difference. And the statistics aren’t getting any better. At the rate we’re headed, equal pay won’t be a reality until 2069.
The United States only outranks the global average by six cents. And in California, women lose $87 billion — yes, billion — every year because of the state’s gender pay gap.
But women’s equality in the workforce depends on more than just fair and equal pay. It depends on opportunities, too: to learn, advance and teach. McKinsey and Company and LeanIn.Org’s Women in the Workplace report found women made up less than 25 percent of executive-level positions in 2021.
Not only is it unjust, it’s also a shame, because the same study found that women in leadership positions provide stronger emotional support, check in more frequently on employee well-being, take more action to manage employee burnout, and contribute more to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts than men.
Plus, gender-diverse organizations with higher representation of women across the board have higher revenues.
That said, certain companies are stepping up to advance inclusivity, equity and equality for women in the workplace. They’re providing personal and professional support through employee resource groups, and professional development with mentorships and learning and development stipends. They are elevating women, listening to them and making space for their voices.
Acknowledging that women take on the brunt of caregiving work means providing flexible schedules, strong caregiving benefits and generous parental leave to help female employees balance work and life. Not only are these organizations doing just that, they’re adapting inclusive language while hiring to attract more women. And they’re implementing equal pay policies and frameworks to ensure women are paid just as much as their male counterparts.
Built In Los Angeles sat down with driven, goal-oriented women from nine tech companies to learn how the companies they work for support and elevate them, and how they use those strategies and benefits to provide the same opportunities — and more — to the women who come after them.
eduMe offers solutions to onboarding, training and ongoing development for deskless workers to help them find success in their roles.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at eduMe?
Rather than aspiring to a particular title, like chief people officer, or aiming to work for a company of a certain size, my career goals have always been to work somewhere that values me, values its employees, provides me with space to grow, and enables me to continuously learn and better myself. eduMe is the perfect environment for this. It places a huge focus on looking after employees and genuinely putting people first. Being part of the team that turns these values into reality is so rewarding. I joined as office manager three years ago when there were fewer than 20 people on staff, and I now head up the people and talent department with a wonderful team of eight people and nearly 100 employees across the U.K. and the U.S. One of my favorite parts about my role is that I have the opportunity to teach and mentor people on my team and give them opportunities to grow and learn like I had.
We’re helping to remove the outdated stereotype that only the primary caregiver is expected to take time off to care for a new child.”
What benefits or professional development resources does eduMe offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
Supporting and elevating women in the workplace is a key part of our people strategy, and we’ve introduced multiple policies and benefits to ensure we do this. We offer generous parental leave in the U.K. and U.S., including enhanced leave to both primary and secondary caregivers. With that, we’re helping to remove the outdated stereotype that only the primary caregiver is expected to take time off to care for a new child.
We also have flexible working hours; historically, mothers can struggle to work within the confines of a traditional working schedule. Flexibility enables mothers — and all caregivers — to balance their family life and working life. We also have a flexible working location policy and provide a generous work-from-home stipend to further support work-life balance. Employees have a monthly health and well-being budget, which can be spent on anything from child care to massages.
In terms of personal and professional development, we provide an annual learning and development budget for everyone to use how they choose. We encourage everyone to take the time to learn and grow.
How has eduMe built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Studies show that women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes and that women are less likely to negotiate their salary. Our salary framework model, which aligns competencies and behaviors with a set salary range for each level, ensures eduMe is fair and equitable. Previous salaries have no impact on the wage we offer to new joiners, which means that historically underpaid demographics receive the appropriate salary, and we guarantee pay raises are fair across the board. Our job postings use inclusive language; we have a mix gendered interview panel across all roles; and we proactively source for candidates who identify as women, non-binary and who are from minority backgrounds.
We created a safe space for women and non-binary people to connect, too. We have a private Slack channel, and regular social events allow us to spend time together in person. We also provide free sanitary items and our sick policy covers menstrual leave.
Relativity Space built the first 3D printed rocket from 100 times fewer parts and in less than 60 days. It’s on the forefront of software-defined manufacturing, fusing 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robots.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Relativity Space?
I really enjoy working on highly complex technical systems and problems, and at Relativity, I’ve had the opportunity to work on everything from the engine system to our rocket’s stages to a fully-integrated launch vehicle. I love operations, and I’ve been immersed in ops on a regular basis while building a kick-ass engine ops team that I’m super proud of.
I have goals to build large-scale, highly-functional teams that are constantly striving to optimize and improve the work they do but while maintaining their well-being. I started doing that with a team that has grown from two to 10 people and counting. Watching my team seek out ways to improve our processes and make a real difference in our work is incredibly rewarding.
Inclusivity of the aerospace industry is also super important to my career, and I work on this at Relativity. I’ve experimented, especially in the hiring process, to attract and retain a diverse set of highly qualified team members.
What benefits or professional development resources does Relativity Space offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
I’ve had some awesome mentors, managers, coaches and HR partners at Relativity. Since moving into a leadership role, I’ve had a support network of people who help me learn, grow and succeed in my work. I directly reached out to some of those folks, but many of them were part of the company leadership infrastructure that’s there for this reason. They help me with hard technical problems, challenging or new leadership situations, and maintaining solid mental health that stretches me to grow very quickly.
The resource I’ve personally benefited from the most is our learning and development stipend. I applied it to work with a professional leadership coach who helped me grow immensely as a leader and a human, and I am grateful for that opportunity.
We build a culture that is intentionally inclusive of varied perspectives.”
How has Relativity Space built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
At Relativity, people listen to each other and seek out ways to make this feel like everyone’s team. I was not hired into a leadership position, but people asked me my opinion, listened to it, and took action in response to it. I was used to seeing that treatment of only leaders’ opinions in other environments, and I was pretty floored by that. My boss regularly encourages me to speak up in meetings, asks me for advice and tells me he values my input. My peers do that, too. I don’t think this is an experience unique to women at the company. We build a culture that is intentionally inclusive of varied perspectives and honors what individuals are bringing with them to the table. And because of all the other ways this doesn’t happen in society, I think that benefits women a little extra.
Audible is a creator and provider of audio storytelling, including audiobooks and podcasts.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Audible?
I was working at a start-up before I came to Audible and I was looking to work at a larger company with more of an opportunity to make an impact on customers. After I heard about Audible and what it does, and the ability to work through different problems at a large scale, it seemed like a very interesting opportunity.
When I started here, I learned that Audible focuses on developing and supporting their employees’ growth and also spends a lot of time ensuring that people enjoy their time here. You feel the warm and welcoming culture from the beginning of your interview process through your whole career here.
Recently I was promoted from software development engineer II to software development engineer III, and it’s a lot more ownership and being involved in strategy. It’s definitely interesting working with this higher level of technical complexity. I have the opportunity to work on designs that empower my team members, and that’s been amazing.
It’s really about creating opportunities for belonging, encouraging women in tech in their career and building that sense of community.”
What benefits or professional development resources does Audible offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
I’m a leader of one of our employee resource groups, Women in Technology. WIT@Audible hosts hackathons, collaborates with local organizations and nonprofits that give us all the opportunity to give back to the next generation of budding technologists. There are lots of opportunities within and outside of Audible to share my knowledge and give back. The group also provides a network of support and mentorship. For me, it’s really about creating opportunities for belonging, encouraging women in tech in their career and building that sense of community.
How has Audible built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
There are so many opportunities to transition into tech these days, and sometimes people change their minds late in their career or come back after a long break. At Audible there are a lot of programs in support of nontraditional career paths. Our returnship program supports people who want to return to the workplace after a break in caregiving, and the program is open to any caregiver, but it happens to support a lot of mothers who took time off work to raise children.
I also had the opportunity to present at the Grace Hopper Conference in 2020. It had always been on my bucket list to speak at this conference, and Audible supported me every step of the way as I developed what would have been an internally-focused topic of load testing for the holiday season into a paper and eventually a full talk that was filled with takeaways I wanted to be useful for the audience.
Hoag’s customer-centric product management, design and engineering unit, Hoag Digital Health, brings together primary, urgent, and preventative care and specialty care for personalized healthcare services
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Hoag?
No matter the industry, I want to leverage my knowledge to innovate and solve problems that are meaningful to people. The goal is to create better products and experiences — not for the sake of using technology, but to drive impactful outcomes. As chief digital officer, I get to paint that picture and work with my team on delivering that vision.
What benefits or professional development resources does Hoag offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
We as women always need to find ways to mentor and help other women on the elevator up. Hoag has many benefits that focus on professional development and skill building, like product thinking classes, mentorship and opportunities to explore other roles. In addition, we have the opportunity to join networks like Chief, Advancing Women Engineers and others. Hoag has also made significant investment in and focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and plans forward.
We as women always need to find ways to mentor and help other women on the elevator up.”
How has Hoag built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Hoag has a task force with support from outside consultation on how to embed diverse, equitable and inclusive thinking across the organization. Beyond that, it is a culture that supports female talent and gives opportunities to them, from individual contributors all the way to leadership roles. I’m a minority woman in tech who was brought on to lead digital transformation — that in of itself is an example of what it looks like in action.
A two-factor authentication system helps Telesign deliver account security and fraud prevention to its customers so they can secure billions of accounts around the world. The mobile identity solution makes the registration process seamless, all while improving the user experience.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Telesign?
For the last 25 years, I have led various B2B customer-facing teams covering the entire customer journey, from lead generation and prospecting, sales, to customer success, renewal and retention. I quickly found out early in my career that building and leading high-performance teams drives me. Seeing an individual’s progress over time is incredibly rewarding. My passion for creating new working practices, transforming outdated procedures, developing team members, and rethinking business processes within a department allowed me to successfully progress throughout my career and bring value to the companies that I’ve worked for.
Overall, I seek to constantly grow, work on new challenges and take on more responsibilities. At Telesign, I’ve had multiple opportunities to reframe the form and function of my department, grow the team, expand internationally and solve various challenges. I truly feel that I have been able to exceed my career goals here.
What benefits or professional development resources does Telesign offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
Being a woman in the corporate environment brings some challenges. Like many other women, I have experienced multiple situations of inequality and biased decisions throughout my career. What I like about Telesign is the strong presence of women across the whole company, from entry-level positions to executive roles. There are also various programs focused on the role of women in the workplace such as our Women in Telesign employee resource group, which creates a safe and open space for women at the company to grow and thrive. I believe that surfacing these topics, challenges and openly tackling them creates an environment of strong support and growth.
Telesign has created an environment where it is encouraged to speak fearlessly.’’
How has Telesign built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Telesign has further progressed in creating an inclusive and equitable culture. There is an increase in women in leadership positions, which shows the success of such initiatives. ERGs were created to make an open and safe space to celebrate each other and build a strong community. The purpose of these initiatives is to celebrate successes and to provide a place to share experiences, grow and learn together.
There is also a webinar series about women in leadership positions, which empowers career exploration and encourages us all to drive change. Most importantly, Telesign has created an environment where it is encouraged to speak fearlessly and wisely and give one another professional and personal advice.
FIGS is a direct-to-consumer healthcare apparel and lifestyle brand.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at FIGS?
One of my career goals is to make a greater impact on our global supply chain through process innovations, which in turn improves production efficiencies and builds diversity and sustainability. The digital platform tools we have at FIGS allows me to track both personal and team performance to ensure that we remain on track to achieve our goals. I’m very grateful and proud of what our team has achieved so far, and it’s just the beginning.
What benefits or professional development resources does FIGS offer that help support and elevate women in the workplace?
I’ve seen many opportunities for individuals to further develop themselves professionally here at FIGS. Recently, for example, I attended a two-day off-site leadership training. Also, having strong female mentors in leadership who share their own personal experiences in our monthly “Fruitful Talk” program is inspiring. FIGS supports new mothers by offering 100 percent pay over maternity leave and a one month ramp-up period as they ease into returning to work.
The inclusive and equitable culture at FIGS is hard-wired from the beginning.’’
How has FIGS built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
The inclusive and equitable culture at FIGS is hard-wired from the beginning. We have two amazing female co-founders who care more than anyone else, and the company provides programs and events to celebrate and empower women. On National Women’s Equality Day in 2021, we partnered with Bumble to honor all of the trailblazers who created a path to a more just and equitable future for women in medicine.
Blueprint Test Prep offers online courses, private tutoring, study materials and application consulting services for pre-law, pre-med, medical students and aspiring nurse practitioners.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at your Blueprint?
There’s no question that I’ve found my calling in operations, and at Blueprint, I’ve crafted an operations role that plays to my strengths while furthering the objectives of the business. My role at Blueprint combines the things I love and excel at: creating efficient operations and ensuring the highest-quality experience for our students. My team has already accomplished great things, and we look forward to continuing to grow and develop the operations team so we can keep delivering stellar results.
What benefits or professional development resources does Blueprint offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
The most important thing a company like Blueprint can do to support women is trust in their ability to tackle big projects. I’ve had the opportunity to build my department over the past two years from one full-time employee in early 2020 to my current team of around 15 full-time and more than 400 part-time employees. It’s been the most rewarding career experience of my life, and it wouldn’t have happened without senior leadership believing in my ability and providing the support for me to do it.
Blueprint offers me a seat at the table when it comes to the biggest decisions.”
How has Blueprint built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Blueprint continues to impress me with their support for women. Blueprint offers me schedule autonomy, flexible remote work, and most importantly, a seat at the table when it comes to the biggest decisions. I continue to be inspired by the incredible women leaders at the company and look forward to growing and learning with them more over time.
Smarkets Limited is a peer-to-peer exchange platform for sports and political trading.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Smarkets?
My mission is to inspire people to do more and do better. It is not about working harder, though it is about working smarter without losing sight of quality of delivery. Thus, my career goals are tightly connected to having the influence that allows me to realize this mission: progress in leadership roles. I aim to reach a director, or similar level, position by Q2 2023.
At Smarkets, I’ve proven I have what it takes, and I’ve been given space and opportunities that hopefully serve as a stepping stone in my journey. That includes actively owning forecasts for my department, getting buy-in from the C-suite to realize the vision I have for my team and being included in meetings that high-level stakeholders participate in.
What benefits or professional development resources does Smarkets offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
Smarkets is not simply concerned about supporting women: We aim for an inclusive workplace that goes beyond gender. From a $1,000 learning and development budget per employee, to leadership development programs and a diversity and inclusion committee, of which one subgroup is dedicated to women, there are plenty of resources focused on supporting and elevating everyone in the company.
Personally, I provide mentoring to members of my department and other people in the company, including a younger female manager.
I’ve been given space and opportunities that hopefully serve as a stepping stone in my journey.”
How has Smarkets built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Smarkets is a tech company and most of, if not all of, our senior management seem very aware that historically the tech industry’s workforce has been composed predominantly of male employees, especially when it comes to tech roles. That’s a good first step and mindset to have when building an inclusive and equitable culture for everyone, including women.
I’ve seen a considerable effort from the people team to change that reality, whether by ensuring our hiring processes are fair and biases are reduced, by investing in and listening to female leaders, and by implementing and reviewing policies with diversity and inclusion in mind. For example, when Smarkets was looking for a chief people officer, leadership decided to promote — upon her return — a person who was enjoying the enhanced maternity leave benefit we offer.
Outer is a direct-to-consumer outdoor furniture brand with a focus on durability, sustainability and comfort.
What are your overall career goals, and how have you been able to fulfill them at Outer?
I aspire to bring more products to market that improve the lives and experiences of consumers while continuing to grow as a leader in product development. My career has revolved around understanding customers and their pain points, building products from scratch and seeing ideas that significantly improve consumers’ experiences come to life. I find it very gratifying to see customers benefit from the products that I help to develop.
Outer’s mission is to create intuitive innovations that are at the forefront of sustainable design and practice, that get you outside more and that take away the little inconveniences. I work in a cross-functional role in product development, and I have had the opportunity to collaborate with functional experts in marketing, sales, customer service and supply chain, as well as a very creative team of highly experienced designers and engineers. I love to hear about customers’ pain points, brainstorm potential solutions, and then execute on bringing these products to market in order to make an impact. Outer has provided a dynamic and team-oriented environment for me to learn. I feel incredibly inspired and see myself contributing in a big way to Outer’s mission.
Outer also provides benefits that support the mental and physical health of its employees.’’
What benefits or professional development resources does Outer offer to support and elevate women in the workplace?
Outer has created a work environment that is very supportive of women. Outer promotes a flexible work environment that includes a work-from-home option, which enables women to be key members of their team and hold leadership roles while maintaining schedules that work for them and their families. Employees can take unlimited paid time off, subject to their supervisor’s approval, which promotes a better work-life balance. Eligible employees can take 12 weeks of PTO to care and bond with their families following the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child.
Outer employees also receive Carrot, a benefit that provides unlimited guidance on the pursuit of parenthood through fertility, adoption, surrogacy or other avenues of building a family. Outer also provides benefits that support the mental and physical health of its employees, which include a membership to ClassPass and Headspace.
How has Outer built an inclusive and equitable culture for women?
Fifty percent of employees at Outer are women. Furthermore, 50 percent of the vice presidents are women, and 38 percent of the senior executive team are women. At Outer, it is rare that there are only a few women in a meeting. Even at senior executive meetings, about half of the attendees are women. This balance creates an opportunity for women at Outer to have a seat at the table and a voice.
Outer has established a women’s group, Women of Outer, that creates opportunities for women employees to build community and network with each other. WOO meets every three weeks to focus on a particular agenda that is helpful to professional development. This forum provides an opportunity for women to connect with role models and mentors, support each other, share professional challenges and advance professionally.
