Haas Hosts Discussion With Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao
Ellen Pao, the Kapor Center for Social Impact’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, spoke at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last week, discussing her tumultuous time as Reddit CEO, her new book, and the difficulty women face in business culture.
The Berkeley Forum and Asian-Americans@Haas co-hosted the discussion, which was moderated by Berkeley sophomore Shaina Zuber.
Prior to her much-publicized stint with Reddit, Pao, a Harvard Business School MBA graduate, worked for law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, WebTV, and several Silicon Valley companies, including BEA Systems. She joined Reddit in 2013 as the head of business development and strategic partnerships, and quickly filled in for the recently-departed CEO Yishan Wong in late 2014. She and the company had a mutual agreement for her resignation the following year.
Last month, she released “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change” (Spiegel & Grau), which chronicles her unsuccessful 2012 gender bias lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, as well as her time in Silicon Valley and with Reddit.
Pao discussed her seven years as a junior partner at Kleiner Perkins as a way to touch upon a number of topics related to how we need to work together to level the playing field for women and people of color.
“Throughout my career, there would be little things I noticed but brushed off,” she noted. Pao argues she was routinely excluded from communication, meetings, and decisions.
“Despite evidence showing that the women’s investments were doing better than the men’s, none of the women, who seemed to have more education and work experience, received promotions,” she recalled.
Pao says her colleagues distanced themselves from her and avoided in-person contact during the lawsuit. However, she did receive encouraging private messages that commiserated with her battle and confirmed the company’s sexist culture.
Pao emphasized “the importance of workplace relationships in career-building.” She concluded, “Everyone has a voice. There is a systemic problem where people are not being included. And we need to change the whole system so everybody gets included fairly.”
You can read more from the Pao interview here.
Penn State BOSS Program Honors A Decade of Promoting Diversity
Penn State’s Smeal College of Business recently celebrated the ten year anniversary of its BOSS program. BOSS (Business Opportunities Summer Session), organized by the Smeal College of Business Office of Diversity Enhancement Programs, lasts two weeks each summer, and is specifically designed for business-minded high schoolers from underrepresented populations to gain exposure to college life.
Jamie Campbell, Assistant Dean for Diversity Enhancement Programs, said, “BOSS is designed to show students that no matter your color, creed, or socio-eceonomic background, there is a support system at Smeal that will enable a student to reach their very best.” Campbell went on to say that, “During these two weeks, students are given a crash course on what it means to be a Smeal student. BOSS engages the cohort in everything from accounting to the Smeal honor code.”
According to Campbell, industries and schools are coming around to the fact that having including people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives is essential to success in business. Students in the program have the chance to take college prep courses, taught by Penn State faculty, that help them gain an understanding of fundamental business principles. Participants spend the two weeks living on Penn State’s University Park campus located in Happy Valley.
Over the past decade, the BOSS program has inspired many successful students. Close to 200 students have attended the program, and over 60 percent of which have gone on to apply to Penn State. Of the BOSS graduates who have applied to Penn State, 91 percent have been accepted.
Diag Davenport, one of the program’s earliest participants spoke highly of his time there, saying, “I left Penn State fully energized to study business and I was certain that Smeal was the right place for me to do so. I saw that BOSS was the bridge between my ambition to succeed and the opportunity to make it happen.”
YouTube CEO and UCLA Anderson Alum Susan Wojcicki Responds to Google Memo
Earlier this month, Google found itself in the midst of controversy after an internal memo from now-former employee James Damore was released to the staff. His out-of-nowhere diatribe claimed, more or less, that women are less biologically capable of being software engineers than their male counterparts. The document, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” was later released to the public, instantly causing scrutiny. Continue reading…
Co-Op Students Bring Innovation According to Ted Rogers Dean
Do you want your company to be more innovative? The key could be hiring more co-op students. At least, that’s what Steven Murphy, the Dean of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, recently told the Globe and Mail. According to Murphy, co-op students help catalyze innovation in companies thanks to their “tech-savvy, resourceful, purpose-driven and unburdened” outlook. Continue reading…
Business Needs Diversity Says Ivey MBA Student
While many MBA programs around the world tout their diversity, what does that mean for the students? Does a student from China really feel like they can be their self if they attend school in America? Or can a Canadian remain unchanged when attending school in London? These are the questions that Frances Guo, an Ivey Business School MBA ’18 candidate, asked herself in a recent blog entry. Continue reading…
HubSpot Chief People Officer And Sloan Alum Hacks Diversity in Tech
Late last month, MIT Sloan spoke with Cambridge-based HubSpot Chief People Officer Katie Burke, MBA ’09, in advance of her talk at the upcoming Sloan Women in Management Breaking the Mold Hackathon whose prompt is “Hacking Diversity.”
