While I am preparing a sales pitch for some new clients I have earmarked, I came across the most amazing blog. It is called Lady Geek  http://ladygeek.org.uk/. They help businesses sell technology to women and are based in the UK. As a firm that helps businesses “teach men how to sell to women” I was immediately intrigued. We have a division in our business designing and building technology—an  industry that is still very male dominent. There are some great women technical architects out there, but the numbers are still few and far between.

Lady Geek posted an article on May 30 that  immediately caught my attention, so I am going to include it in my post today. Xerox has hired a new CEO. Her name is Ursala Burns and she is the first African American female to lead a major US corporation. WOOT as they say in Twitter. Now for all our male readers—and for the men that work with us at bcad Group—I  am personally rooting for and committed to achieving diversity everywhere. When that can be attained (and it has begun to happen) the best of the best will lead all of us into a promising future. Inspiration can now be found for all children and they can dare to dream that they truly can be anything they want to be. Especially young girls, in light of this new appointment.

As Belinda Parmar says in the “About US” section of the Lady Geek site, “It’s clear that there are very few companies within the tech space who are effectively targeting women. Those that do fall in to the clichés and stereotypes and end up pinking up and dumbing down their products and end up as one woman said, ‘treating them like a special needs case.’ Those that don’t even have any communication strategy targeted at women are missing our on £600million that is just going begging for the taking. Hello boys!”

Best Nicole

There are not many female CEOs of companies around. Although women are traditionally underrepresented in technology professions, there were a number of high profile CEOs in the US in recent years. We can think here of Carly Fiorina, formerly of HP, and Anne M. Mulcahy, of Xerox. Now Xerox has entered history books by appointing the first African American female CEO to lead a major US corporation: Ursula Burns. Interestingly enough she is also the first female CEO who succeeded another female CEO.

 

Burns had a long-term career at Xerox. Burns, who holds degrees from NYU and Columbia University, joined Xerox in 1980 first as a summer intern and then in product development and planning. In 2000, she was named senior vice president, Corporate Strategic Services and in 2007 she became president of Xerox.

Business Week suggests that part of reason that Xerox appointed two female CEOs in a row is Xerox’s commitment to diversity. 30% of Xerox’s executives are women and 22% are minorities. Xerox has a long tradition of affinity networks. Xerox also had a Executive Diversity Council early on. In addition there are leadership programmes that foster diversity and managers are evaluated in their performance reviews on their ability to recruit, retain and promote underrepresented groups. If they fall short of expectations their chances of promotion are diminished and they pay is negatively affected. This shows that diversity programmes do have an impact – even though it might take decades for them to unfold their power.  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Marketing to Women. Tagged: AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN, ANNE M MULCAHY, BCAD GROUP, BELINDA PARMAR, BLOG, BUSINESS WEEK, CARLY FIORINA, CEO, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, FEMALE, LADY GEEK, NICOLE MCKINNEY, NYU, TECHNICAL ARCHITECTS, TECHNOLOGY, TWITTER, UK, URSALA BURNS, XEROX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.