Adding More Voices to the Table

How have these personal experiences as a woman of color working in tech, experiencing bias sometimes and presumptions made about who you are and how you conduct yourself as a leader, how have all those experiences inform your view of diversity at the workplace? And how does Poshmark value and promote diverse teams at every level?

Yeah. It’s something I didn’t know I would sign up for. I didn’t realize when I was younger and started my career, I didn’t realize this was an issue and then as I got older and I realized that it was an issue, it took me a while to realize I can help change it. But now I’m at a point where I can really actively support diversity. And here are a few ways that we do it.
I’m so in tune to my power dynamics through room, for example. So when I am in a meeting, I’m very aware of all the levels of the people that are in the meeting with me. And this is something I didn’t always do, but now I’m pretty adamant about it. I should not be the loudest voice in the room if I’m the most senior person. And I want people to feel like they can contribute, regardless of their title, or their level or their background.
And so really setting the example and giving people room to express an opinion is an example of one way you intentionally get—maybe not diversity of people but diversity of opinion and perspectives, they’re equally set out. And then you make your decision, make the best business decision you can and you move on, right? So that’s one example of how I intentionally change the way I lead and manage in order to get more perspectives at the table.
I think when you have a larger organization like Poshmark, you have to be very intentional that diversity is important. So, at every level it’s really important to look at the composition of your team and say what voice is missing that I can have as my next hire? And it could be gender, it could be ethnicity, it could be age, it could be, like I said earlier, from a different industry, just anyone, anyone who can add more voice, especially for us, the customer, around the table, we will make better decisions. So, we do look at it at every level and we proactively try to add more voices to the table.