Satenik Barseghyan Synopsys Journey of Women Empowerment

Satenik Barseghyan
Senior Learning & Development Specialist for EMEA
Automatic Summary

Women Empowerment in Tech: A Synopsis Journey

Hello, there! Welcome to our riveting journey of empowering women in the tech industry. My journey began at Synopsis, where, starting from a junior position, I evolved into a senior level professional; thanks to an inclusive environment that encouraged learning and development.

The Heart of Innovation

At Synopsis, we engineer technologies that craft our smart future. Being at the heart of smart everything, for over 35 years, we have fostered innovation in diverse markets ranging from the Internet of Things (IoT) and self-driving cars to smart wearables and medical devices.Striving for quality and performance, we provide professional services in secure financial services, machine learning, and computer vision.

Our versatile abilities have positioned us as number one in the EDA market. Besides boasting the largest IP portfolio, we are esteemed leaders in application security testing, as per the Gardner report, for six consecutive years. Our global presence spans 30 countries with approximately 19,000 employees.

Our Culture and Values

At Synopsis, we believe that our accomplishments rest upon our core values of Integrity, Execution Excellence, Leadership, and Passion. These values guide us toward a smarter future. To continually inspire progress, we incorporate a 'Yes, if' mindset, which bolsters the belief that there's always a way to make things possible.

Commitment to Inclusion and Diversity

Our mission of inclusion and diversity aims to inspire innovation, promote equity, and empower all our employees. This commitment rests on three principal pillars: Connect, Innovate, and Grow.

  • Connect: We foster a professional environment based on inclusion, respect, trust, mutual understanding, and authenticity.
  • Innovate: At Synopsis, we channel different viewpoints and ideas into new-fangled approaches.
  • Grow: Internal growth is nurtured by investing in employee talents.

Our special emphasis on nurturing female talents in the tech industry molds a diverse workplace in the organization.

Our Global Programs

We extend our efforts across different geographical regions to attract and empower top professionals worldwide through several professional workshops. A few of our well-established programs include:

  • Inclusive leadership: Encourages a non-discriminative working environment.
  • Unconscious biases and diversity: Raises awareness about the subtle prejudices in the workplace.
  • Coaching women to lead: Aims at helping women breakthrough professional barriers and occupy leadership positions.

Reverse Mentorship: A New Concept

We recently developed an innovative program called 'Reverse Mentorship,' where emerging female leaders mentor established male leaders. This idea intends to encourage a change in mindset and foster an inclusive and diverse work environment, pushing all professionals regardless of their gender, to continually challenge themselves and evolve.

Striving for More Female Leaders Through Networking

Building an environment conducive to the growth of women in leadership roles often begins with creating a strong network. Under the "Women in Leadership" program, we hold peer coaching sessions where professional women share their challenges and learning experiences, creating a network of mutual support and encouragement.

Helping Girls Go Engineering

We aspire to empower women not only within Synopsis but beyond. The "Girls Go Engineering" program targets ambitious girls pursuing disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). The program is backed by both financial scholarships and professional development opportunities such as attendance at technology conferences, mentorship, and potential internships at Synopsis.

Conclusion

Despite the significant strides we have made in creating diverse opportunities and fostering women's growth in tech, we are fully aware that there is always room for more improvement. If you proactively support women's empowerment in tech and wish to contribute to our journey, we would be thrilled to welcome you at Synopsis. Feel free to check out our job openings here.


Video Transcription

OK. Hello. Hello. I can see people are joining. Hello. Hi, everyone. Sorry about the delay. We had some technical issues as it always happens with peak conferences. So sorry about that, but I promise we will do our best to finish in time. Ok.Let's give people a couple of more minutes to join. Hello. Hello, to those who have just joined. Uh huh. And once again, sorry about the delay and just one more minute and we are good to start. Hey. Hello. Hi there. Ok, great, great, great. I think we are good to start once again. Hello and welcome to synopsis, meet and greet session. Uh I am very excited to host you today and share our journey of women empowerment. I hope you will not only learn a little bit about synopsis, it's culture uh but also leave the session motivated and empowered and full of new ideas to ready to implement in your own environment. If uh at any point, you will have any questions. This is the way to let me know. It's just to chat and I suggest we test it now. Uh I can see al already. Some people are testing great. But let's do the following. I suggest you type in the chat. What is the location you are joining us today from w uh which part of the world you are? It would be interesting to know for us, Barcelona, Netherlands, Yerevan, Poland. Great, India, Germany. Wow. What a diverse audience, Paris, UK, Armenia, Mexico. Wow, Ireland. Thank you. Great. Please continue.

Hi Pink. Please feel free also to share your uh contacts like in mail linkedin in the chat, introduce yourself and uh network with each other. Get connected. Uh As for me, I am join, joining you today from Armenia Yerevan. My name is Satanic and let me start first in introducing myself. Then uh share our story. So I joined synopsis about uh five years ago as a contractor to a very junior position, junior level and to tell the truth, both um talent and the development and inclusion and diversity were kind of fields unknown uh or new uh for me. But uh I progressed in my career to a senior level and uh thanks to a workplace environment which uh supported my learning and development and in general, I uh majored in international relations, international relationships, uh relations. And um I gained some specific skills and knowledge which now allows me to uh understand a broader range of human experiences and work with people of diverse backgrounds. Uh I came to synopsis from a tech industry and I was sure there will be nothing unknown to me in synopsis, but to tell the truth, semiconductor industry is a different world.

And if you also have no idea about semiconductor industry or just a little idea, let me introduce you to it and uh let you know what synopsis does. So let me open my slide. It has some anim animation. So better if I open it all just in case we will have any more technical hiccups. OK, great. So at synopsis, we say wherever smart everything is you will find synopsis. I know it might sound a little bit like a cliche and it is actually a cliche, but it is also the truth for more than 35 years, we are making innovations in different markets and industries uh such as internet of things, uh self driving cars, wearables like smart clothes, um smart medical devices.

We are in secure financial services, uh machine learning, computer vision and so on. You name it synopsis. Is that the heart of innovation and uh heart. Uh It's at the heart of smart e everything with its uh world's most advanced uh technologies for cheap design verification IP integration and uh software, security and quality services as quality testing. Sorry as you can see, we are number one in ed a market with our automation tools and services. We have the largest IP portfolio uh in the market and we are considered a leader in Gardner uh for application security testing. Uh for six. Yes. Six years in a row. In general, we have 19,000 employees all over the world in 30 plus countries, almost in every continent. But the region, me and my team are responsible for our Europe and Middle East region where we uh cover uh 17 countries. And uh um these are the markets, we are um transforming, these are the primary markets we serve as you can see here. We have uh we are in many industries and technologies and this is thanks to a combination of Ed A IP and some form of software. So combination of these three allows us to influence all these markets. And uh here are some facts about us. Uh I can say that um every um almost every electronic device in the world runs with has some part of synopsis technology in it in itself.

So we help our customers innovate from silicon to software and to bring new amazing products uh to life. So why we do so many things? What makes us great place to work, innovate and empower? Not why but how we do this. Uh We do this all thanks to the culture and values we have here at synopsis for more than three decades. So 35 plus years, our values remain the same. It's uh integrity, which means do what is right execution excellence, which is uh which means get it done. Leadership, which, which means always look for word and passion. This is the the differentiator, which uh means uh which actually drives us all. Uh do uh everything uh do everything with fun, with passion and uh empower others. So these are the foundation of our work toward a smart future. But we are always looking um for uh looking uh uh for to the future and see what's next uh for us. That's why we have another um not a value but its mindset. It's yes, if mindset which helps to bring our values to life, it means that there is nothing impossible. We never see a problem, a challenge or an issue as impossible. We always challenge ourselves and each other and see how we can make uh things possible and uh inclusion and diversity as an important part of culture. Um Here. Uh OK. Just to be careful, I will open again the slides animations to um avoid any technical hiccups.

So synopsis inclusion and diversity mission as an important part of our culture is all about uh to invest uh in all our people, empower their actions, inspire innovation and of course, promote equity. Our program uh rests on three pillars. First one is connect, it's about how we cultivate the culture of inclusion, belonging, respect, trust and authenticity. Second one is innovate. We always look for new approaches. Uh We invent uh new approaches by valuing uh different viewpoints, opinions and thoughts and of course grow, we want to grow and we do it through investing in talents Uh But today, I'm going to talk mostly about how we invest in female talents in women in tech. So having these three pillars in mind, uh we globally uh develop, create and develop different programs. But today, I'm going to share what we mostly do in our region, Europe and the Middle East. So uh we create and develop uh different uh programs to be uh a career destination for uh top professionals across the world. And uh we have special uh training uh programs on important topics. I suggest uh inclusive leadership, uh biases and cautious biases, um diversity, uh coaching women to lead and so on and so on.

Uh While the traditional leadership uh education programs and traditional mentoring are necessary and we all have this, but we also look uh forward as I have already mentioned and try to go extra mile to build an inclusive environment. So uh it's no secret that fe uh that women um are more likely to face discrimination and bias in workplace uh which uh can make it difficult for us uh to break uh through the glass sing and reach the top of our profession and having this in mind we created uh and recently completed the first cycle of reverse mentorship.

You have probably heard about reverse mentorship as a program where junior specialists uh mentors um more senior specialists on uh some tools which are uh known to them like um or generational mentorship uh like where when younger person uh mentors. So I don't want to say the older.

So, so let's use senior uh professional on some like social networks uh tools and so on and so on. In our uh case, we took this idea and uh implemented in it in our um include and diversity uh program from the point of view of women development. So what we did, the idea of the program is to have uh emerging female leaders, mentor, already established um experienced uh male colleagues, male leaders share, share with them their different perspective, uh challenge their already established mindset and help them better understand what we need and what can they do for, for the women in their teams to make the environment more inclusive.

This is mutually beneficial program uh for which emerging uh female leader uh develops mentoring and leadership skills uh courage, which is very important, self-confidence. Uh She also gains visibility and she speaks up as for um male leader, already established. Male leader, he moves beyond his comfort zone, tries new ways of thinking, working and learning. And of course, it changes the environment within their teams. And as you can see from this slide, we never missed any occasion to celebrate uh diversity and raise awareness about um inclusion and diversity through um uh educating experience, sharing and empowering panels, uh webinars, events and campaigns. I can see that we have questions in Q and A if you do not mind I will uh answer to your questions in the end. Thank you. And let me present what else we do under innovate, innovate. So again, we all know that we need more women, especially in leadership positions. Not only because it's good for women, it's also good for uh business politics, societies. I am sure that uh for everywhere and for everyone. Uh but unfortunately, despite significant progress, the proportion of women in senior management roles um is not very high. It's about 25 to 30% depending on the industry.

So women are still uh underrepresented in leadership positions and to have more women in leadership positions in management roles, we uh need to build an environment where women can grow and develop in leadership roles. I know that I'm kind of repeating myself, but it's all about the environment.

You need to be build an environment first to let um the female grow and uh develop. So uh the environment can have many components uh based on our experience. Uh We think that one of the most important component is network, is the network. Uh And um having this in mind, we created uh a network for women within our organization, which is uh called Women in Leadership program. We are successfully implementing this program for four years in a row and we have uh even received an award from Women Tech Network in 2020 as the best diversity and inclusion in initiative uh of the year. So what we do in this network, it has different activities. Um And one of them is peer coaching. First activity is pure coaching. Uh We are organizing a series of meetings uh for women. And each time one woman shares her challenge, it can be anything like return from maternity leave or um establishment um in a new role and so on and so on. And she gets coaching, she gets tips, recommendations from her peers. It's not only about sharing and getting recommendations.

It's also about uh recognizing that you are not alone in your struggles in your challenges. That many uh women in your same organization are also struggling from the uh same issues or have struggled before and overcame and are ready to share their um experience. Uh We have another uh peer coaching exercise which is called networking exercise. In this case, we have uh it's not challenge uh sharing activity. It's like um uh practicing idea pitching in front of your peers in safe environment, getting recommendations uh in advance before presenting your idea or your project in uh to the customer or, or to a leadership team. So it's all about uh sharing and getting recommendations, coaching, practicing.

Of course, we talk a lot about uh leadership in this network. We, we read books, have book chats, discuss these books, we watch TED talks on leadership topic and not only discuss them and most importantly, in my opinion, we meet uh female leaders, female leaders from us, our organization top executives because it's always motivating to um meet and listen already established.

Female leaders understand her path and get motivated from her path, learn from her lessons um and follow her steps and what else we do? Yeah, we have uh of course some professional workshops like uh personal branding as an important part for a leadership. We have uh training some courage and so on and so on. And we have uh women networking breakfast activity, which is um a meeting with not synopsis, leaders, but external leaders. Outside of synopsis, we try from time to time in invite successful female leaders from different industries.

Like we had uh female leaders from art uh fashion from Nongovernmental organizations such as charities from financial sector, insurance and so on and so on. Uh This is another way to get empowered, motivated. Uh listen to motivational career talk, um understand failure, why not?

And uh lessons learned and do all in very like uh relaxed environment, enjoying your morning coffee or breakfast and of course, network and build a connections, networks and uh finally grow. As I have already said, we do our best to attract top professionals across the world and empower women in tech uh not only inside but outside of synopsis. So we have a, a program which is called Girls Go Engineering. It's a scholarship and professional development opportunity for.

So we mean pursuing um engineering studies, not only engineering but uh studies in science um technology, engineering and mathematics time. And we first piloted this program in 2019 in Armenia and Portugal. First year we received about 40 applications for seven uni universities from these two countries.

But over the years, um uh the number of applicants have doubled, the number of universities have reached up to 2020 plus. And uh this year, we decided to involve +22 new countries which are Poland and Portugal. So what is the idea of this program uh is it's uh two uh support and empower female students who are pursuing career in stem we uh select these students based on their motivation, letters, academic records and final interviews. Uh Selection criterion is based on the promise that applicants have demonstrated uh through their academic work. But there are also mix of soft skills uh which we consider are important part of the overall uh figure uh or poten overall potential of the applicant uh such as motivation, innovation, mindset, uh leadership, communication skills, and so on and so on. We provide scholarship to these students but we also uh uh offer them uh in addition to financial scholarship, uh professional development opportunities such as um attendance to uh technology conference or mentorship opportunity as well as why not synopsis internship if they are interested or if the, their profile matches to our uh requirements.

Uh The number of uh as I have already said the number of participating partner universities have climbed year over year and uh from like a few weeks early June, we are going to announce uh the next uh round of girl school engineering scholarship in my next slide. I have QR code. Uh If you have uh if you know any students or if you are your of a student from these countries, you can uh scan the QR code. Let me open it now, scan this QR code, have the link, fill uh the interest form. And when we open the applications period, I will uh we will contact you and let you know that so that you can apply. So just to sum up Armenia uh Poland, Portugal and Romania. If you are a student in these countries, or if you know students in these countries who are pursuing stem career um encourage them to apply. But I would like to talk about other programs uh what we do uh to encourage and support um female uh women intake outside of synopsis. And one of them is mentorship uh mentorship through uh this uh women tech network. Uh We cooperated with uh women Tech network from 2020. And during each cycle of mentorship, we, our collects our leaders of these leaders um uh serve as mentors and mentors.

Uh not only students uh but also any professional uh who is, who is, who needs a mentorship in technology sector. And the all applicants of girls go engineering scholarship, regardless of their status are always offered this w this mentorship opportunity uh through women tech network.

Also, you know that uh mm to start from universities is not enough to have more uh female women in tech, we need to uh start from schools. We acknowledge this. We know this and that's why we started to cooperated with tech innovation. I don't know if you uh have ever heard about Tech Novation. It's a global program. Uh It's prep program uh that empowers girls uh to be leaders and they help girls uh to build school girls to build tebas solutions to solve community problems in their environment. And they operate in uh about 120 countries. So we started to co-operate with them and our colleagues regardless of their gender, um support this uh organization and uh provide a mentorship to teams. The same is about women tech network. We have both female and male colleagues serving as mentors. Um And of course, we encourage uh participation in different events. This is also about uh building networks uh events outside of synopsis, like conference uh conferences, campaigns, um such as women tech conference.

We worked together uh for three years already. And I know that today, my colleagues from different parts of the world have joined to support me so warm. Hello to synopsis, collects and um what else? Uh Yeah, just as a reminder, this one, as you can see around the region. We are creating different programs, events to recognize women's strengths, contribution. Uh not only in our organization but outside of synopsis, we mentor, we support, we encourage them, but we know that this is not enough, we are proud of what we do, but we also know that we need to do more. And if you feel that this is a place you would like to be or work with us, I would be happy to meet you at synopsis. So I'm leaving here another QR code which will take you to our job applications and let me check what questions do we have? Ok. So we have two chats here. Does everyone have a mentor code or are there conditions to join the program? Ok. If you are talking about the reverse mentorship program or um in case of reverse mentorship program, it was the first cycle. So we um had a call for volunteers and emerging female uh leaders applied to it uh as for um established leaders, we selected them.

But for the next round, we will have more open call and to involve uh both mentees and mentors uh from different regions. Um For this first uh cycle, we had eight peers. How active are the coaches and mentors? Is it monitored for progress from both sides, mentors and mentors? So they don't stop being entitled? Oh, ok, good question. Uh So, uh during the, the program itself lasted one year and uh during this one year, they uh were meeting on a regular basis. Uh Mostly once in a month, we left them uh to be more uh uh FM more flexible. Uh some of the payers, most of the payers uh after the completion of the round agreed to continue their collaboration uh because it was very successful uh for both of both of the parties. Uh So, uh yes, we monitor their progress. Uh There have been great action plans. Uh All eight payers come with great action plans and uh we are already seeing some results in the team. Um So I hope you, I answered to your question. Uh How does synopsis deal with man's resenting feeling all this attention to women? Uh There has been some backlash on my company that not enough was being done for men's career. So it would be interesting to know from your good question. Actually, we recently had something like this.

A question came not from majority, but few of our male colleagues um uh reached out to us. Uh And that what we do for men, why we do so many for female? And we have organized a great uh workshop for them during International Women's Day celebration. Uh positive action uh versus positive discrimination to explain them uh that we are not discriminating them. We are here is the situation here is the condition and we all including themselves have to do something to have more women in tech and in their environment. So I hope I answer to your question as well. Let me check this second chart. Uh uh uh um Thank you. We have loved the mind. Yes, if mindset, thank you, Sarah. We love it. Also, Sandra says she never heard about uh reverse mentorship. So I hope you will go leave this session and go to your companies to your environment. Share this idea and start doing something. Why not to implement this in your com company? We are not jealous, ready to share. OK, let me check the other one. Yeah, I think I have answered all the questions. If you have something else, let me know and of course I would be happy to stay in touch with you. And here are my contacts. Synopsis L linkedin. It's very easy, Sni Bartel and I would be uh very happy to be in touch with you because this is also a part of uh creating the network. So let's stay in touch.

And if you will have any questions about this project, um me and my team are always happy to share. OK. Thank you and have a nice rest of the day and enjoy all the other sessions. Bye bye. Mm mhm.