500+ Professionals Join ModelExpand's Women In Leadership Breakfast
During our #WomeninTech Leadership Breakfast, we heard from executives at Slack, CodeSee, Autodesk and Netflix as they discussed their leadership models and their strategies for fostering diverse and inclusive teams. We reached professionals from across the country and beyond with 1,500 RSVPS, 500 folks watching and over 100 joining in the Virtual Networking Session.
“Research the experience that is required for your desired position and be strategic about going after opportunities that will allow you to garner the skills you need.”
Panelist Discussion: Key Advice from Experienced Leaders
The Path to Leadership
Set a goal and chip away at it. Research the experience that is required for your desired position and be strategic about going after opportunities that will allow you to garner the skills you need.
Addressing Racial Injustice
Create a space for your team to openly communicate and acknowledge that it is okay to make mistakes and possibly say the wrong thing. We have to be okay with being wrong in order to make changes, understand systematic racism and work to be truly anti-racist.
Imposter Syndrome
Leaders at all levels experience Imposter Syndrome. Sharing your personal experience allows teammates to know they're not alone in this feeling. Accepting this phenomenon as a part of professional life helps to navigate around insecurity.
Learn More about the Panelists for a Little Inspiration:
Erin Figueroa
“I do an exercise of documenting what I observe as my own strengths, and what my stakeholders observe as my strengths, and intentionally hire for the opposite. Some of the people on my team that I have worked with for many years are quite different than me in this way, and I have found this to be very successful. This approach automatically brings diversity into team building.”
Erin Figueroa is the Senior Director of Operations at Slack, where she built the Program Management Organization from the ground up, and recently brought Workplace Operations under her umbrella as well. Erin has led Slack’s Covid-19
response team.
Connect with Erin via LinkedIn
Shanea Leven
“It’s been very interesting for me to be on a leadership team as an only. There is a feeling that we shouldn’t have the responsibility to educate others on the experience of People of Color or Black people. But, as a leader, it is actually our job to educate and share. I chose to share personal stories with my company so they would know this is not an at arms issue. It was a challenge to be vulnerable but leaning into that discomfort is the only way we can invoke change at a grander scale.”
Shanea is the CEO of CodeSee, a developer platform that helps developers master understanding codebases. CodeSee's mission is to build software better. For the
last decade, Shanea has been a product leader in developer tools at some of the top developer-facing companies in the world: Google, Docker, Cloudflare and Lob.
Connect with Shanea via LinkedIn
Susanna Holt
“An approach that didn’t come naturally to me was giving time for team building. It is easy for me as I lead the team as well as my team members to just want to get on with it. We often feel like these activities are a waste of time when there is real work to do. But, I do believe you pay the price for this later. Investing early on in getting the team together to build relationships really pays off in the long run.”
As Vice President of Forge at Autodesk, Susanna Holt drives the strategy and development of Autodesk’s design-to-make platform – an ecosystem of building blocks and web services for software developers.
Hear more about Susanna in our latest Blog Post, Spotlight Profile: Susanna Holt, Vice President at Autodesk.
Connect with Susanna via LinkedIn
Devika Chawla
“When it comes to addressing racial injustice with my team, we are all worried about saying the wrong thing, upsetting someone or hurting someone. For the conversations I had with my team, I wanted to make it okay to be wrong and perhaps say the wrong thing. I encouraged my team to lean into and be comfortable with learning. We have to be okay with being wrong in order to make changes, understand systematic racism and work to be truly anti-racist.”
Devika is the Director of Messaging & Customer Contact Engineering
at Netflix - she leads the engineering teams that build the product and platform
for communicating with hundreds of millions of customers globally to drive acquisition & retention.
Connect with Devika via LinkedIn
Join Us for Our Next #WomeninTech Breakfast
If you missed this event, stay tuned for our #Womenintech Leadership Breakfast in September!
Partner with ModelExpand
If your company is interested in sponsoring an upcoming event, please complete the sponsorship form.
ModelExpand is a diversity recruiting strategy firm that helps companies through strategic consulting, workshops and events. As tech continues to grow, ModelExpand's mission is to ensure people from various backgrounds are included. The #WomeninTech Breakfast Series is open to all.
