Press Releases
04.30.2021

“Can You Find Us A Female CTO?”

Authored by: Lindsay Angelillo

An Opinion Piece: Authored by Lindsay Angelillo ft. Yvette Pasqua, CTO @ Exos & Christina Wick, CTO @ Flowcode

“Can you find us a female CTO?”

As I hang up my last call for the day after hours of pitching companies, combing through LinkedIn and Top 30 Female CTO in Tech lists, I can’t help but think about that very question I am asked by almost every CEO I work with. Everyone wants to diversify their executive teams and especially their technology teams, yet the numbers tell a different story.

Innovative technology and high powered, highly functioning engineering teams are the backbone of our tech ecosystem. To have a world class CTO or VP Eng that attracts talent and can build a team that operates at the speed of Facebook with the diversity of Gusto is the ultimate goal. If you can be one of the great companies who lands a diverse, outstanding CTO, you’ve “made it”. So why is it that other functions like Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, and COO roles have seen quantifiable change with the rise of the #womenintech movement over the last 5–10 years, but Technology still falls short?

As a woman who helps lead my firm’s Engineering practice and as a member of the LGBTQ community, I understand the need for diversity on an executive team, but do people actually care about that? Or are companies more concerned about what their About Us page looks like on their website? On the flip side of that, why do we even refer to female CTOs as female? Why aren’t they just CTOs? Does it make the problem worse and set us back further in truly getting equal representation? Regardless of why, we have a severe supply and demand issue at hand. Why are the number of women graduating with computer science degrees dropping? Do people pivot out of these roles when they are told they aren’t as technical as their male counterparts?

I invited two of Technology’s top CTOs (who just happen to be women) to discuss the gender issue at hand as we try to understand what can be done. Joining us for this discussion is Yvette Pasqua, a self-taught technical executive who has dedicated the tenure of her career to building diverse tech teams at Meetup, Haven, and is now working alongside Sarah Robb O’Hagan at Exos. Also joining us is Christina Wick, a legendary pioneer who built new technologies for Amazon, AOL, Venmo, Harry’s and is now the CTO for Tim Armstong’s latest venture, Flowcode.

Pasqua and Wick each share their experience, their journey to the “seat at the table”, and the ‘why’ behind the need for this conversation now.

Interview w/ Yvette Pasqua, CTO @ Exos

There’s obviously been a lot of pushback from female founders being referred to as female first and founder second, and being a female CTO yourself, does it bother you that people lead with your gender? And do you think it makes the problem worse or better?

I certainly don’t think it makes the problem better, I imagine that it creates a stigma in people’s heads that you’re not really a founder, you’re just a female who happens to have landed in this role. There’s some weird connotation there, like you don’t qualify like white male CTOs, for example, who get to go by CTO all the time. So, while I don’t really have quantitative evidence that it makes the problem worse, personally it feels worse to me when I hear someone refer to me as a female CTO. I don’t really want to be thought of as a “female CTO” or even a “gay female CTO”, I think that seems like a separate category than just a great CTO.

I’m a part of a CTO club in New York, which is a great support group for me and there’s a group of women in there and we get together as a women CTO club. That feels okay to me because we’re supporting one another and it’s a safe space for us to build camaraderie. But it’s unclear to me when somebody doesn’t know me at all, or when someone who’s not a woman refers to me as a female CTO. In that case, what does the qualifier really mean and what’s the purpose of it? It just makes me uncomfortable.

There have been a few studies that I’ve looked at recently that have shown that the number of women graduating with computer science degrees now has dropped significantly from the 80s. Why do you think that is?

I’m coming from a place where I don’t have a CS degree myself. I have a biology and neuroscience degree, and for that reason I was largely self-taught over the years. For the first seven to eight years, I was a hands-on engineer and wrote code, and then I went into management. I learned enough on the job to be a good CTO and when I look at candidates, I don’t care what degree and what school they went to at the end of the day as long as they can be high performers in the job. I’ve been known to tell my recruiters to not send me Ivy League graduates with high level CS degrees for inclusion reasons, and they initially look at me like I’m crazy. It actually makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up when recruiters lead with degrees when describing a candidate to me. If I had to postulate anything, it would just be that women are smart and they’re looking at the industry and they’re saying “man, this is pretty f****d up, I’ve been wanting to get into this industry but to be honest it’s not friendly or inclusive and on top of that I’d rather be in an industry that is more inclusive and welcoming to me.” I think it’s hard for women to look at the industry and feel super safe or inspired to stick it out.

Ultimately, what frustrates you about this topic? And what do you think actually needs to change in the industry?

What frustrates me the most isn’t that we have a “women in tech” problem, it’s that we have a lack of diversity and equity in tech problem. The problem I want to solve is the lack of people of color in tech and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. To be perfectly honest, even as a gay woman in tech, I’m still a white woman who went to a private university and I’m more privileged than many others and it’s really easy for me to hide behind that privilege.

Getting that first or second break, I got hired as a software consultant out of college simply because of the school I went to since they targeted Ivy league graduates. They would hire you for cheap and train you up and bill you out for a lot — that’s how I initially learned to code on the job. Those opportunities are not available to many people so to be perfectly honest; I think to solve the women in tech problem, we first need to solve the diversity and equity in tech problem as a whole. I think it’s really easy to solve the problem for rich white women because people don’t want to talk about systemic racism within tech, they’d rather focus on gender inequality because it’s an easier conversation to have.

I personally wouldn’t be remotely satisfied or even feel like we have made the progress we need to make if all we did was just have a bunch of white women feeling more included and thriving in Tech. That to me would be like a Band-Aid on a gaping wound we really need to change. I think we need to have a diverse set of perspectives at the decision-making table to really make sure we don’t create products and algorithms and company policies and cultures that are biased and harmful. You really have to acknowledge and do the work across all underrepresented groups.

What do you think companies, executive search firms, recruiting firms, and executives overall can do to make a change in diversification at the executive level or the company demographics overall?

I always answer this question the same way: do the work, do the work, do the work. Don’t outsource the work to your junior people or to people from underrepresented groups. As a leader, you have to do that work yourself and grow your network by reaching out and meeting people from underrepresented groups. When I’m in recruiting mode, I’m sourcing people myself and doing the research; I’m reading articles and blogs, I’m scouting at conferences and talking with people, and I’m even making cold calls. We’ve hired 5 or 10 people so far, but I haven’t used a recruiter. This year, I probably reached out to 200 people from underrepresented groups, and I probably ended up getting virtual coffees with about 40 or so of them. You have to start with the top when you’re talking diversity, equity, and inclusion because if your leaders aren’t a diverse team, and if you’re not interviewing a diverse slate of candidates for your leadership roles, you’re not modeling the behavior you need and are asking of others.

Pre-pandemic, I used to go to tons of meetup events when I worked at Meetup and a lot of them were geared towards women of color starting off in Tech and the biggest thing I learned from them was when you see no representation at the top, it’s really demoralizing, let alone what follows next: the discrimination that happens inadvertently. I’ve literally left companies because none of the leaders were women. So, to all the leaders at the top, we need to do the work and set the example and build up our networks so that when a role opens up, you don’t just go with the fastest best option, which is almost always a white male. As an ally, just do the work and don’t let the women or people from other underrepresented groups do the work for you.

Interview w/ Christina Wick, CTO @ Flowcode 

Not only are you an incredibly notable CTO in industry, but you are one of the few ‘females’ to hold this title. When you look back on your career, what have been some of the most challenging hurdles you’ve faced as a female engineer?

This is interesting because this requires us to talk about two really difficult realities that became apparent as I progressed through my career as a woman in a male dominated field 1) there exists a predisposition that being a woman makes you a less qualified software engineer and 2) it is necessary to fight against blatant, and often not-so-blatant, workplace bias and harassment.

1. Let’s talk about this predisposition about female engineers being under qualified. One of the main reasons I qualified for the PhD program at Virginia Tech was to prove myself to the other engineers I went to college with. There was this preconceived notion that if you were a woman studying computer science and succeeding in your courses you must have had a boyfriend or a male friend that was helping you complete the technical programming assignments — which by the way was sometimes true. In order to get accepted into the program, you had to take a qualifying exam, a two day test, demonstrating your proficiency in programming languages, algorithms, and operating systems; clearly something you had to do by yourself. What many don’t realize is that a lot of people fail the first time. It often takes multiple attempts to actually get into this PhD program. I made it my mission to take this exam immediately after I got my Masters, which I got in one year, so when I passed the exam and qualified after my first attempt, nobody questioned whether or not I was capable.

2. The second piece to answer your question about “hurdles” revolves around early workplace behavior and biases. When I think about it, there have been so many instances throughout my career where I was either dismissed or objectified, albeit it wasn’t universal and it wasn’t all the time, but it did create impediments for me.

I use my first job as a really powerful example because on the first day my boss looked at me and said, “I didn’t want to hire you because I don’t believe in the type of work that you do, I think it’s bulls**t, but my boss told me I had to hire you so here we are.” I thought to myself, “What did I do?” I had just left college to pursue my professional dreams, and now I am questioning myself. Did I make the right choice? Is it safe? Needless to say, my first day was pretty intimidating. Throughout my career I have had co-workers, senior leaders, and even direct reports violate professional boundaries. It became so extreme that at one point, I lost confidence in myself. I will leave you with this: While I don’t consider myself fully recovered from these experiences yet, I do know that allowing others to influence that feeling of imposter syndrome is something you MUST fight. You have earned your place, prove things to yourself, and yourself alone.

Overall, #WomenInTech have seen quantifiable change in marketing, the people function, sales, and even product. Why do you think these functions have come a long way in comparison to Engineering and head of vendor roles?

First, women make 19% less than men (when talking about the general gender pay wage gap). The Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimates that we won’t actually reach parity in pay until 2059. In Tech, it’s actually worse. We make 29% less than our male counterparts. The gap is also worse based on ethnicity and gets wider as we get older. This is frustrating and discouraging, and can’t possibly encourage women to build tenured careers in Tech. Did you know that 50% of women who take a Tech job drop it by the age of 35? And a third of the other half who do remain are still in junior positions?

So to answer your question, we are seeing less women enter the industry, and the ones that do enter abandon their technical training and career path mid career. Coupled with the fact that women are promoted into management positions at a smaller percentage rate as men and you end up with a small pool to draw from, and it gets smaller and smaller as you go up the ladder.

I’ve heard from speaking to other female CTOs in tech that they’ll go to interview for a job and they won’t get to the next round, and they receive feedback that they are not “technical” enough. Do you think there’s a stigma around women not having the same technical ability as men?

Definitely. Trust me, I don’t want to be that person that says all the challenges women in tech face is because they are a woman, but there is some hard data to ignore.

Github did this really interesting study recently and they found that code written by women was accepted 4% more than code written by men, but only if gender wasn’t disclosed. So code written by women was accepted 78.6% of the time which is 4% more than code written by men, but the moment you disclose the gender, it skewed the results. I don’t think it’s intentional, it’s called unconscious bias for a reason, but it is hard to say there isn’t an issue here given this data.

What can company leaders, executive recruiting firms, and the tech industry in general do to close the gender gap at the VP and C level within tech roles?

It’s really about committing to diversity, equality, and inclusion. In general, creating a company with the culture and values that support those initiatives and drive awareness around gender and unconscious bias, all while providing resources to those groups is a good place to start. I think that having Executives that are explicit about sponsoring will also help move the needle. I would also say on a personal level, give your girls Legos instead of Barbies, expose them to women in leadership positions at a young age, don’t feed into the whole stereotype, and encourage them to engage in STEM. There are many things that we can do to encourage our children and expose them to these functions so that we don’t keep falling for that stereotype that “girls are good at English and boys are good at Math”.

Now sitting in your seat as a recognized leader in technology, let alone a recognized female CTO, what’s been the most rewarding thing throughout your career?

I think the thing that’s most rewarding is the fact that I finally have a seat at the table. That’s what I’ve been fighting for and now that I am here, it is really rewarding. I now have the opportunity to grow others to the fullest depth and breadth of the top most level in technology.

Not only are you an incredibly notable CTO in industry, but you are one of the few ‘females’ to hold this title. When you look back on your career, what have been some of the most challenging hurdles you’ve faced as a female engineer?

This is interesting because this requires us to talk about two really difficult realities that became apparent as I progressed through my career as a woman in a male dominated field 1) there exists a predisposition that being a woman makes you a less qualified software engineer and 2) it is necessary to fight against blatant, and often not-so-blatant, workplace bias and harassment.

1. Let’s talk about this predisposition about female engineers being under qualified. One of the main reasons I qualified for the PhD program at Virginia Tech was to prove myself to the other engineers I went to college with. There was this preconceived notion that if you were a woman studying computer science and succeeding in your courses you must have had a boyfriend or a male friend that was helping you complete the technical programming assignments — which by the way was sometimes true. In order to get accepted into the program, you had to take a qualifying exam, a two day test, demonstrating your proficiency in programming languages, algorithms, and operating systems; clearly something you had to do by yourself. What many don’t realize is that a lot of people fail the first time. It often takes multiple attempts to actually get into this PhD program. I made it my mission to take this exam immediately after I got my Masters, which I got in one year, so when I passed the exam and qualified after my first attempt, nobody questioned whether or not I was capable.

2. The second piece to answer your question about “hurdles” revolves around early workplace behavior and biases. When I think about it, there have been so many instances throughout my career where I was either dismissed or objectified, albeit it wasn’t universal and it wasn’t all the time, but it did create impediments for me.

I use my first job as a really powerful example because on the first day my boss looked at me and said, “I didn’t want to hire you because I don’t believe in the type of work that you do, I think it’s bulls**t, but my boss told me I had to hire you so here we are.” I thought to myself, “What did I do?” I had just left college to pursue my professional dreams, and now I am questioning myself. Did I make the right choice? Is it safe? Needless to say, my first day was pretty intimidating. Throughout my career I have had co-workers, senior leaders, and even direct reports violate professional boundaries. It became so extreme that at one point, I lost confidence in myself. I will leave you with this: While I don’t consider myself fully recovered from these experiences yet, I do know that allowing others to influence that feeling of imposter syndrome is something you MUST fight. You have earned your place, prove things to yourself, and yourself alone.

Overall, #WomenInTech have seen quantifiable change in marketing, the people function, sales, and even product. Why do you think these functions have come a long way in comparison to Engineering and head of vendor roles?

First, women make 19% less than men (when talking about the general gender pay wage gap). The Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimates that we won’t actually reach parity in pay until 2059. In Tech, it’s actually worse. We make 29% less than our male counterparts. The gap is also worse based on ethnicity and gets wider as we get older. This is frustrating and discouraging, and can’t possibly encourage women to build tenured careers in Tech. Did you know that 50% of women who take a Tech job drop it by the age of 35? And a third of the other half who do remain are still in junior positions?

So to answer your question, we are seeing less women enter the industry, and the ones that do enter abandon their technical training and career path mid career. Coupled with the fact that women are promoted into management positions at a smaller percentage rate as men and you end up with a small pool to draw from, and it gets smaller and smaller as you go up the ladder.

I’ve heard from speaking to other female CTOs in tech that they’ll go to interview for a job and they won’t get to the next round, and they receive feedback that they are not “technical” enough. Do you think there’s a stigma around women not having the same technical ability as men?

Definitely. Trust me, I don’t want to be that person that says all the challenges women in tech face is because they are a woman, but there is some hard data to ignore.

Github did this really interesting study recently and they found that code written by women was accepted 4% more than code written by men, but only if gender wasn’t disclosed. So code written by women was accepted 78.6% of the time which is 4% more than code written by men, but the moment you disclose the gender, it skewed the results. I don’t think it’s intentional, it’s called unconscious bias for a reason, but it is hard to say there isn’t an issue here given this data.

What can company leaders, executive recruiting firms, and the tech industry in general do to close the gender gap at the VP and C level within tech roles?

It’s really about committing to diversity, equality, and inclusion. In general, creating a company with the culture and values that support those initiatives and drive awareness around gender and unconscious bias, all while providing resources to those groups is a good place to start. I think that having Executives that are explicit about sponsoring will also help move the needle. I would also say on a personal level, give your girls Legos instead of Barbies, expose them to women in leadership positions at a young age, don’t feed into the whole stereotype, and encourage them to engage in STEM. There are many things that we can do to encourage our children and expose them to these functions so that we don’t keep falling for that stereotype that “girls are good at English and boys are good at Math”.

Now sitting in your seat as a recognized leader in technology, let alone a recognized female CTO, what’s been the most rewarding thing throughout your career?

I think the thing that’s most rewarding is the fact that I finally have a seat at the table. That’s what I’ve been fighting for and now that I am here, it is really rewarding. I now have the opportunity to grow others to the fullest depth and breadth of the top most level in technology.