Executives Share Insights on Career Advancement, Professional Development
Image by Joy LeDuc
06/21/2019
By Katharine Webster
Be true to yourself 鈥� because it will help you in your career, several speakers told the nearly 300 women who attended the fourth annual .
鈥�86, director of marketing at Instinet Holdings and the opening keynote speaker, described how in her first job as a consultant, she worked hard to be taken seriously in the male-dominated financial services industry. So she wore pantsuits and glasses and pulled her hair back into a severe style.
鈥淥ne day, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, 鈥業鈥檓 in drag!鈥欌�� she said.
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Boucher let her hair down, shed the glasses and started wearing more colorful, comfortable clothes 鈥� evolving a style she calls 鈥渂usiness boho.鈥� Here鈥檚 what she discovered: When she wasn鈥檛 so preoccupied with fitting in, she could focus more energy on her actual work.
Boucher, who won Markets Media鈥檚 for women in finance, said she has likewise learned to use her sarcastic sense of humor at work, especially to disarm bosses who are inclined to bully their subordinates.
鈥淲hen you think about a brand, it starts from within. It鈥檚 about being true to yourself,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou need to use your personal background, your unique take.鈥�
This year, for the first time, the conference included a special focus on the tech sector. Chancellor Jacquie Moloney, who founded the conference in her first year as chancellor, spoke about the university鈥檚 efforts to level the playing field for women in the STEM disciplines. Moloney just won an award from the Massachusetts Higher Technology Council for her pioneering work in web-based learning and integrating entrepreneurship into higher education.
In a workshop on demystifying the tech industry, three women in senior, nontechnical positions debunked some common myths about high tech companies, like that you have to work insanely long hours.
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Ann M. Barry, director of global risk management for Juniper Networks, said she worked in the retail, government and financial services sectors before taking a job at a tech firm. She has stayed with tech ever since, in part because of the more flexible hours 鈥� and the excitement.
鈥淚t鈥檚 cutting-edge,鈥� Barry said. 鈥淭he work is challenging, and the benefits are great.鈥�
Jane Circle, senior manager at Red Hat, said she got into tech 鈥渂y accident鈥� while earning her master鈥檚 degree in opera performance. She loved it.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e working with all these people with great ideas. No coding is required for great ideas,鈥� Circle said.
Lalitha Gunturi, associate general counsel at NETSCOUT, earned an engineering degree in college before going to law school. After working as a patent attorney for a law firm for a decade, she joined a tech company. She said she likes the less hierarchical structure, and that her role has expanded from simply offering legal advice to acting as a partner and project manager.
鈥淚t鈥檚 very collaborative. You feel you鈥檙e more valued,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ecause of my role, I know a lot about what other people are doing, so I can connect them. I spend most of my time communicating and collaborating.鈥�
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Moderator Elissa Magnant, visiting professor of management in the Manning School of Business, noted that women still only make up 26 percent of computing professionals in the U.S. At high tech firms, men dominate the technical jobs while women gravitate toward other positions, in part because if women lack one skill listed in a job description, such as coding, they won鈥檛 apply.
The closing keynote speaker, , vice president of emerging technology partnerships at IBM, holds 14 patents and is heavily involved in the company鈥檚 research on artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain.
She spoke about the importance of building relationships and support networks, both at work and for her family. Her first husband died young, leaving her to raise three children on her own while building her career at Xerox, where she rose to chief technology officer.
鈥淭here are so many things you think are important in life, and they鈥檙e really not important,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he most precious thing is time, because you absolutely cannot do everything.鈥�
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That means prioritizing and saying 鈥淣o鈥� a lot, she said.
鈥淵ou give up things, like my kid is wearing the same t-shirt to preschool three days in a row,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 stopped writing Christmas cards.鈥�
While she didn鈥檛 fuss over her son鈥檚 clothes, Vandebroek did step in when she discovered that her daughter and several friends who were good at math had been relegated to the regular fourth-grade math class, while the advanced math class was packed with boys. Vandebroek organized the other girls鈥� moms and demanded that the school move them up.
鈥淚t鈥檚 something unfortunate in this culture that parents need to stay on top of,鈥� she said.
Especially if they want their daughters to go into tech 鈥� on the coding side.
