Thank you, women in tech, for having me here today to share my perspectives with this, incredible type of, women women leaders and technologists. Let me start with introducing myself.My name is Rupa Jeraman. I'm the chief technology officer at Odessa. I have an incredible privilege of leading a diverse global workforce with over 40% gender diversity. Now being part of a workplace with 40% gender diversity is more than just a metric. To me, it's a commitment and testament that diversity matters. But why does this metric matter? We live in a world which has a biological order of fifty fifty or 49.6 to be precise. Yet our reality is polarized with inequity. If you look around the technology landscape, 28% of women hold tech related jobs. And then as we go up the carrier ladder, the number drops significantly. Less than 10% hold leadership positions. And this metric really concerns me. Now let me rephrase.

This metric makes me angry. It's always amazing to look around and see women blitzing trails, breaking barriers, moving into unchartered territory, and making real world impact. And I do think that the whole notion of asking women to lean in is deeded. Women are leaning in, and they're seizing their carriers. I wanna change the narrative here. I wanna talk to you today about pushing our ecosystem to lean in, pushing our ecosystem to committing to building a workplace that's equitable. And that's what I will unpack over the next few minutes. I really want to nudge organizations and leaders to move beyond rhetoric into reality. And that's what sustainable DEI practices are about. It's not about showmanship. It's about sustainable practices and commitment. Now let's start with where we need to begin the conversation. Now, to me, diversity starts at the top. As leaders, it's just not about having fireside chats, having the right posters, or well crafted policies.

As leaders, it's all about deep conviction and commitment to move our intent to action, to make sure diversity is not an event, but an everyday commitment to make sure it's a long drawn solution to the inequitable workplaces that we have today. Now as a leader, when I look about look at this problem statement, I look at it through the lens of a career journey, an employee's career journey, a woman's career journey. And that starts with hiring. And hiring to me is not about just filling roles. It's not about meeting your targets to do the work you need. It's about having a hiring culture that truly believes that diverse skills and perspectives will make all the difference. And how I like to go about this is simply by busting a few key myths. I'll start with the first one and the often used one, which is when we go to the go to market to hire talent and diverse talent, the first thing that gets told to you is, well, there just aren't enough women candidates.

Now let me tell you that's not true. Let's make data our friend here. In fact, we have a lot of talented women across the world who are looking for opportunities. But as an organization, you need to reimagine how you hire. It's not about traditional practices. It's about making sure you're mindful and intentional about the hiring challenge, whether it's going into campus and hiring graduates, being part of women forums where they're thriving and sharing sharing their knowledge and their perspectives. It's about zoning in on those channels to ensure we have the right people walking in the door to interview with you. Now that's just the first step. Once we have a diverse pool of people having conversations with you, for the roles that you have, One thing that's very, very important is to ensure that the assessment evaluation is structured to be free from bias.

I think we all see this around us. We talk about diversity. But when it comes to hiring, we're very focused on familiarity. When I say familiarity, it is about a pattern of sameness. We reward sameness and consistency over diversity. If we keep fishing in the same pond, we catch the same fish. Now how do you change that? Here, Dida suggests that if you have an unstructured method in assessing talent, oftentimes, unconscious bias takes the better review. Here, we need to step back and have structured assessment that can challenge that. We need people who are speaking to candidates to constantly check themselves in terms of a few key principles. Let me name the top three that come to mind.

The first one is, are we valuing potential over a pattern? A pattern of sameness? Second, are we valuing loud confidence over poised competence? And the third one, are we overvaluing just tech skills without looking at the broader authentic persona in terms of having ability to build empathy and have grit so that we have a holistic person in the role as opposed to just the person with the most important tech jobs. All of this create a check-in balance in terms of the people we hire. But let's face it, the decision maker needs to be diverse as well. Here, I'm a very, very strong proponent of having a committee based hiring model, and let me explain what I mean by that. Every hire we make in the organization goes through a cross functional committee. People from different groups, different experience levels, and, of course, diverse pool of people assessing the person who's coming in and looking for the role.

This committee based approach does two things. It makes sure there is an inbuilt check and balance. And more importantly, for a person who's interviewing for the role, it gives a very different experience, an experience that makes them see the diversity and the inclusion they're they're gonna be hired into. So to me, it's a twin, twin goal that can be achieved by having a nice cross functional committee. And I think when you have all these prongs come together, you you myth, you bust the pipeline myth, you have structured evaluation, you have diverse panels, I think what sets us free is the data. It's not just saying that you're doing it, but making sure through the data across your hiring pipeline, you're constantly checking that you are in fact giving a chance for the right people to come in and creating an intentional hiring culture. Now that's the first rung of the journey. Because once you're hired, that's when the work really starts for us as leaders.

It's about making sure that we're able to grow, nurture, and retain talent and talent across the board, across the roles. And here, what I've seen work is having intentional frameworks, and I'm gonna leverage what I call the four c framework, which is which I've used widely in my career over the years. And it just boils down into four key prongs. The first one is connect. To me, connect is about creating that deep mind share that diversity is integrated into business outcomes. It's not this outside in construct that we just comply with, but we truly believe that a diverse workforce will create a workplace that is innovative, create a workplace that is profitable, create a workplace that can, in fact, scale and have resiliency. So having that mindset is something that's super critical.

And as leaders, it's important that we have key key performance indicators that connect not just for you as a leader, but for the rest of the organization that diversity, in in fact, can lead to higher impact. Now this does not happen overnight. This needs constant nurturing and support and needs relentless communication and connection of intent to action. Now the second thing, and this is very critical, is how are we creating the right career experiences and journeys for women leaders to grow? The data here is quite alarming, especially, within the tech landscape. 50% of the women in tech drop off the carrier journey right midway. Now this is the broken wrong problem we always talk about. What we need is systems. Systems that don't nudge women away, but in fact, catalyze their growth. Catalyze their growth by having a good understanding of the talent experiences that they need to sustain various life events.

And the truth of the matter is, as an organization, it's incumbent on us to create the right talent journeys and experiences. And this is for all genders, but more important for women because, let's face it, there is a tax that comes with playing dual multiple roles. And as an organization and in as an as as a as women working in these organizations, we see it all the time. We're always juggling multiple priorities. And here, reflecting on those tipping points is very key and ensuring that there are alternate nonlinear parts that are provided to ensure long term stickiness much beyond the early stage of the carrier. And there are tactics that can be used, you know, having options to play roles through lateral moves, easing women back to work, after their pregnancy or any life event they've gone through, and not testing the commitment. For me, the commitment is given. It's about nurturing to make sure you help women stay the course.

And, of course, if you're an organization with flexible work policies or for the hybrid role or roles that can provide flexibility for that point in time. The third is care. Of course, we're all caring organizations. We have strong policies that support it. Here, I wanna talk about one key aspect. This is about flexibility. And flexibility to me is not a perk. It's a principle. Now if you look at it, the pandemic really tested our limits when it came to flexibility. And guess what? We found that it was feasible to be flexible and financially profitable. So that broke a myth that has been touted for years that flexibility comes in the way of traditional productivity metrics. So here, it's important to embrace a design that supports flexibility.

This includes carrier design, org design, policy, team design, all of the things that come together to ensure that you provide a workplace that's equitable. Now the fourth one and perhaps the most important one is, are we celebrating stories around us? I think we underestimate the power of storytelling. And storytelling is not just about storytelling of women leaders at the top or senior management. To me, storytelling is about everyday wins. It's about amplifying the voice of the hidden figures or actually breaking the barriers and making it count. And here, the stories are not about vanity. The story is about making sure you are explaining and having real authentic conversations about how challenging it can be and creating the safe spaces to celebrate the diversity and more importantly, motivating women to continue their journey much beyond mid career. Now all of these come together nicely, and if you are an organization who was invested in it, we still have one more key impediment or problem.

We do have a broken rung when it comes to senior leadership. We don't have enough women leaders, especially in the c level, to be able to make these mindful decisions and foster inclusion. And here, the leadership wide widens over a period of time, and then this gap becomes very hard for us to converge. I think here, very important for organizations to ensure we use data driven methods to promote the right talent, weed out unconscious bias, challenge ourselves to give high impact projects to women that are deserving. Again, not testing commitment or creating attacks on a light event they've gone through, but challenging the organization to give the right opportunities and making sure those opportunities and those pathways from a carrier perspective are transparent. Because with transparency comes better representation.

So if you're transparent about the flexibility, if you're transparent about the nonlinear parts, there is higher chance that we have women sticking through the entire journey and achieving the leadership potential they can. And these this is what will make it a long term, impact for organizations who truly believe diversity matters. Now just a few closing comments, and let's now move beyond showmanship to sustainability. Because to us as leaders, it's not about statements anymore. It's about systems. It's about systems that facilitate the right talent experiences and sustainable DEI practices. And when we build these workplaces which facilitate this participation and representation, we design for equity. We don't just uplift women. We uplift the workplace. We have stronger teams. We have more innovation, and we have bolder companies. Now we've talked. We've committed. Now it's time to act. And my concluding comment is act intentionally. Act unapologetically. This is not something for us to apologize.

This is something for us to push the ecosystem to lean in. And I think we need a sense of urgency that matches a scale of the challenges that's ahead of us as women in tech and women in the workplace. So with that, I wanna conclude my session today and turn over for any questions.