As a woman, I’ve been a minority my entire life. But, it wasn’t until I entered the male-skewed tech industry that I realized how defined gender bias can be. I’m not just talking about the standard workplace gender issues we read in news headlines, or the aggressive overtones that require both men and women to suffer through poorly acted HR training videos; what strikes me most is the isolation, the disconnectedness the culture fosters between men and women, and more specifically, among women ourselves. While these divides present challenges, they also present opportunities to challenge the status quo.
It’s because these chasms exist that I’m inspired to write this series with a goal of providing a platform for women to connect and men to expand perspective. Through these interviews we will notice, celebrate and discuss the contributions of women through a single lens.
With that out of the way, I’m thrilled to have had the chance to sit down with Grace Perry, founder of SEE HER BUILD, a program that encourages women to break into male-dominated industries by offering workshops and practicums around mental toughness. As a motivator, mentor, and trailblazer for women in tech, I spoke with her about where she sees the female role within the world of emerging technologies. Grace breaks stereotypes regarding roles for young girls and succeeds because of her impeccable drive and spirit. Because Grace answered with such descriptive energy, I felt the best way to present this article is in Q&A format so you can feel her voice shine through. Please share your thoughts, reactions and ideas below in the comments section.
April: What is your approach to navigating a male-dominated industry and what do you do to go above and beyond gender bias to bring more equality to the field of technology? How can women and men both learn from your approach?
Grace: I’m glad you brought up this topic because one of the themes of my discussion today was around the whole concept of the playing fields being level. For women, it really is emerging technologies pushing us forward in terms of breaking those biases that you mentioned because it’s about our skill sets. Skill sets are more related to solving problems, and a lot of times, new perspectives to solve problems are at the forefront of these emerging digital transformations that are happening.
April: Can you tell me a little bit about the SEE HER BUILD program? Do you find there is a connection between sports and technology?
Grace: The whole idea happened as I was coaching basketball. I was a basketball player in high school and in college, and then I built my career in technology basically by accident. I came out of a liberal arts college, and then I worked for a publisher and they cut our division. I was working for the software division, so I was able to basically break into high tech. But essentially, I wouldn’t have identified with technology on my own or through my own preparation, even though I went to good schools. It just wasn’t something that was introduced to me from mentors or advisors. I didn’t seek out technology, but [in] the market, [there] was really a shift where technology had the best opportunities for growing, and that’s why I pursued technology.
And then about a decade into a good career, I started volunteer coaching in the morning before work. But then I would go to work and try to recruit people into this high-tech company and was struggling to find strong candidates and very rarely found women candidates. So then I had this “Aha,” moment where I was on the basketball court I said, “You have very high ambitious women who are dedicated and working out [at] 5 a.m. in the summer just to get better at something. Why are we not tapping into this talent for high-growth markets like technology and engineering? I surveyed hundreds of girls and typically it was like 90% that said they didn’t see themselves fitting in to tech or engineering careers, and they, just as myself, hadn’t been introduced to enough concepts or mentors.”
I initially started doing field trips. I would take teams of girls into technology companies, and 90% and above would be interested after the visits. I realized that once they were introduced to the concepts in the market itself that they were interested in pursuing careers. That was the first piece of introductions. The second piece is that I realized that there was a continuous problem…women don’t stay long enough in technology careers or engineering careers. The average is around seven years. I realized there was this component of not sustaining and that we had to focus more on inclusion and that’s where I built these workshops. The workshops are now part of professional development.
Even though I do a ton of outreach to the younger generation for existing women within technology-related careers, I conduct workshops which are focused on doing a practicum around becoming an optimal performer by leveraging mental toughness. All of the concepts were related to sports because of Title IX, and the movement of sports over the last 50 years has advanced quite significantly for women as opposed to any other movement for women. I generally looked at the areas within a sporting environment.
Most of the biases are broken, right? Girls are told to be aggressive. Girls are coached to be competitive. Girls are coached to advocate for each other. These are all the things that are not typically endorsed for women in other areas, such as a traditional classroom setting or in media outlets. I was really focused on enabling women to identify for [themselves] that mental toughness piece, so that they kept on taking on challenges, because that’s the inclusion piece to move things forward in terms of sustaining more women in these jobs and also for promoting them.
April: What company are with currently with, and how have you weaved these workshops into your professional environment?
Grace: I’m with one of the larger high-tech companies in Boston called PTC. PTC is at the forefront of a lot of emerging technologies, and they are allowing me to do these workshops within our company. It’s become a part of the inclusion process, and it’s proven to be really effective because at the end of the day, just think of it as a practice. If you did a sport or you played an instrument, you have to constantly practice. The same is true of your mental framework. It’s all built off of a Harvard study based on optimal performance, where they looked at like every single industry and why somebody would excel, and it all came down to a person identifying that they had to push themselves out of the comfort zone they had to be a little bit stressed to be a strong performer. They had to keep taking on challenges, but they also had to stay in a frame of mind where when they reached the point of success that they could enable themselves to be in the moment, to just do the task at hand and not worry about making mistakes.
You know when you’re playing basketball and you want to be in the championship team but you have to win every game to make the playoffs? Then you have to win the playoff game, and you have to basically execute play-by-play? You want to coach your players to do the right thing in the moment and not get caught up with being down by ten points. The same applies within your career. You know that you want women to understand that they are probably going to be uncomfortable in a male-dominated environment. For example, I’m currently the only woman in my group of augmented reality (AR) sales and field sales. But I’m already prepared to be a little stressed by the fact that it’s a little uncomfortable, and then I just handle myself and then I you know I kind of coached myself through this worksheet of you just take on the challenge. That way, you don’t get burnt out and the other nice thing is that we do these workshops with a whole roomful of women and so we’re also building self confidence, self-assurance, and relaying that communicating back to the group, and people are advocating other women, so you get this concept of team within an organization you know may not have too many women. Women then feel connected and advocate for each other. They champion each other, and they’re taking that kind of vibe and applying it into the realm of emerging technologies.
April: Do you see any untapped areas of potential for women in the world of augmented reality?
Grace: What I see with augmented reality is more of a general statement. My experiences and customers are very driven by a creative mindset. I’m currently working with Wellesley College because they have an initiative where they’re featuring a woman artist who will be leveraging augmented reality as part of the entire experience of displaying her artwork. You will have an interactive viewing of her pieces, so right there is both a technology that definitely has creativity. Beauty and art which definitely open new perspectives and new interest then traditional engineering. The way that augmented reality is really evolving is requiring less development and more creative content that delivers the experience. In general, I would say it would appeal to more women in the sense of tapping into the creative, storytelling and emotion. These are things that they might not normally be associated to traditional engineering and computer science. The younger generation had access to Pokemon GO, but there’s a lot of augmented reality that’s being applied to areas that will have more exposure beyond gaming. They’re starting to build in a lot of augment reality with components to it – like GPS and layering in the distance from where you’re driving to where you go. I think we’re going to see a movement in general where it’s technology like speech recognition where it’s more appealing to everyone.
April: What advice would you give to a young girl that’s just graduating from high school or college with an interest in a career in tech?
Grace: I always advise that you get as much experience as possible and that you prioritize learning. I think it’s really important to prioritize learning early. I would prioritize learning and taking on as many experiences so I would advise to do an internship as early as possible. Have as many informational interviews as you could possibly have. Volunteer to shadow people. Put yourself in situations, real work situations.
Come up with a career plan early and have an overview of your skills and passions. Do some market research to understand where that fits in and then be proactive about filling in the gap so you know have a strong understanding of what you like to do and what you’re good at. Then start to relate that to a growing market so you’ll have greater success.
April: Given your passion coupled with your strong will and determination to really be out there and be a leader in and making a change, it makes me wonder – did you have a role model along the way and in your life that inspired and encouraged you that you’d like to mention?
Grace: Family was my role model. I have five brothers and a sister. I’m number six. I benefited from having really strong models and my parents were teachers and coaches. Family in general was the strongest concept, and we ran a family business when I was ten. My family started a restaurant business so I really owe so much to that early experience. Education was at the forefront of learning and at the forefront of everything we did. We had family goals and we that’s what we worked towards. I had that unit that really helped me sustain a lot of good decision-making.
I’m very inspired and motivated to continue moving forward with my organization, SEE HER BUILD, because I didn’t have enough women mentors in high-growth fields. I didn’t have strong models in engineering, or technology, or at the forefront of finance, or any of these fields that were growing. I think that we should all as a community give back so that the next generation is really at the forefront of these transformations.
April: In closing, what are your thoughts on ending the gender bias? Is it really something as simple as inviting women to the table?
Grace: I read this great quote once and it said that, “Women shouldn’t be looking for a seat at the table; they should be going out building your own table.” I think that’s true, and I think that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t like what was happening around me, and I wanted to see more women around me. More ambitious women. So I created my own organization where I go out and build my own stable to allow more women to step up to the table and I created an inclusion project to enable more people to see strong woman.
I really think that the ways that we’ll find the strongest movement forward will be for us to continuously do that- build our own chairs, build our own tables, and essentially start asking others to join us.
I just recently introduced my workshop to men and coaching them on how to encourage and advocate for women, to show them the tools that we’re using and actually make them more aware that a comment they stay or an assumption that they make really impacts us and how we perform our jobs. If they were part of the workshops and were part of the practices that they would actually be more aware, and obviously awareness is very important for us to sustain a healthy work environment. That is something new I just started, and I still do the woman-only event, but I realized that at the end of the day, we all have to go back and work in these environments together.
