A Different Mirror

As a leader, how do you show a commitment to diversity in your organization?

So for us, it's about finding role models to enable other young people to look up and find people that look like them, that talk like them, come from places where they're currently at. So finding a diverse network of mentors to support young leaders is critical. We actually have more female young leaders in our network than men. When I talk to them about this, they tell me, it's you. You're the role model.

That's got to feel good, right?

Oh, absolutely. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I built SOA, because I wanted to give more young women the opportunity to have the courage, to have the mentality of being able to build something on their own. And similarly, this past cohort of entrepreneurs we accelerated, we had more female founders than men. And that is unheard of in Silicon Valley accelerators.

Well, good for you. You're breaking some barriers there.

Thank you. And it's truly about opening those doors and helping people believe in themselves. I think that's such an important element of this conversation of diversity, because one thing is to open up jobs and seek for candidates, another thing is to help people even see themselves as candidates. And to me, it's like getting to the core of having those conversations and helping them instill that courage and instill that self-belief that often people don't have when they come from different circumstances.