Medium.com/Anjali Ramachandran: 5 Things I Learned Running a Global Network for Women in Tech

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Anjali Ramachandran
Editor — Partnerships & Syndication at @HowWeGetToNext, co-founder at @AdasList
Sep 22, 2017
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5 Things I Learned Running a Global Network for Women in Tech

By Anjali Ramachandran, co-founder of Ada’s List

When I was invited to be a co-founder of a community for women in technology, about four years ago, my first concern was that there was no need for another community for women in tech. I thought there were plenty already, doing excellent work.

How wrong I was.

The need for a place like Ada’s List is real. That has been, and sadly continues to be, reiterated by the existence of the gender pay gap, the lack of women in leadership roles across most technology verticals, and sexual harassment cases just this year that have thrown men like Travis Kalanick, Dave McClure and Justin Caldbeck (previously in leadership roles at Uber, 500 Startups and Binary Capital, respectively) under the bus.

It’s not even restricted to Silicon Valley, where all the men I just mentioned are based. The UK has no shortage of sexism-related incidents, and it would be naive to imagine that the rest of the world is clear either.

Ada’s List is a global network for women and non-binary people, committed to changing the technology industry for the better. It is an email-based community where members can talk off the record about professional issues, share jobs, announce conference panels and calls for proposals, find talented women to feature in news pieces, find support (especially for those who are entrepreneurs, freelancers or innovators who are blazing their own trails without an organisation to back them up), get informal mentoring, and announce tech-related events. The goal was to create a tight-knit group of people who were powerful individually, and even more powerful together.

We started small as a Google group on Ada Lovelace Day in 2013, naming our network after the computer programming pioneer. There were a few dozen UK-based members to start. I don’t think it would be amiss to say that at the time we had no idea what it would grow into. Here are five things I’ve learned over the last four years, as Ada’s List has become a global network, with over 4000 members and growing.
1) A lot of people need professional support but aren’t in situations where they easily have access to it

The daily rigor of a 9-to-5 job (or early morning-to-late at night, more likely for the technology industry) doesn’t suit many people: freelancers come to mind, but also entrepreneurs or part-time employees who prefer flexibility for caring for young children or elderly family members. There are also many women who aren’t necessarily based in the technology hubs of London, New York, or the Bay Area. For these people, online communities are a boon; it gives them access to people and resources they wouldn’t have otherwise. One of our members, for example, lives in rural Yorkshire in the UK and values Ada’s List as a source of inspiration, given the lack of people in her field where she is based.

Ada’s List brings together women from all kinds of backgrounds who have been through similar experiences. For example, where women decide to take up technology-related degrees (we form only 16 percent of undergraduate degree takers in computer science in the UK and 17 percent in the US) and make it through to their first jobs, they often aren’t mentored to the next level, mid-career. Where they’re mid-career and may be struggling with fertility issues, or deciding to have kids, they’re not often supported through the stresses of fertility treatment, pregnancy and parental leave. Where they do receive adequate support, they may find things are different when they get back to work — they might be demoted, passed over for promotion or given tasks below their skillset that make them want to leave.

Where they finally make it through to leadership, they are now one of a hallowed few in what is often a boys’ club (women hold only 12 percent of board seats globally, with only 4 percent chairing these boards). There’s a clear need, therefore, for women to turn to others who might not be right where they are physically (i.e in the same company, or the same city even) but understand where they are professionally, and are willing to give valuable advice or mentoring that they don’t otherwise have access to. Peer-to-peer mentoring is too often overlooked as a source of support.
2) Setting the right tone for a community has to be done at the start.

We were very clear about what we did and didn’t want the community to model when it came to behavior. We wanted it to be confidential, supportive, inclusive and encouraging. That didn’t mean we wouldn’t brook criticism — we very much do, as long as it’s constructive criticism that helps people (and us) be better. But we wanted our members to know that if they wanted to air their grievances about something that happened to them, or ask for solutions to tricky workplace problems, then they could do so confidentially. The last thing people want when they are airing sensitive topics — that often take a lot of courage to bring — is to be put in the spotlight by someone else who wrongly thought they had a right to do that. This is a very tricky line to walk where you have journalists as part of a community of more than 4000 members, but by and large everyone respects this guideline.

More than anything, however, it was the Agenda that we published in 2015 that clearly set out the tone for who we were, and who we wanted to be. It clearly outlined the action-oriented nature of the community, charting out how people could change their environment for the better through small micro-actions at an individual level (overcoming stage fright to speak at conferences and become a visible role model, for example), a workplace level (by supporting colleagues and hiring more diverse teams if in a position to do so) and an industry level (recommending other women for opportunities, changing policies as a part of industry bodies and making non-diverse conferences politely realize the folly of their ways). We received very positive feedback when our Agenda was released, and many members have acknowledged that it is a key part of why Ada’s List consists of people who share common values. (That also doesn’t mean common opinions, not necessarily, as that leads to groupthink — but we do have common values).
3) Be there for people when they raise issues, but know where your priorities lie

I’d be lying if I said community management was easy. It isn’t — especially not when you’re doing it in addition to a full-time job and other personal responsibilities — but it is absolutely crucial. If anyone is running a community without responding to members’ needs, then they have a problem, and the cracks will begin to show sooner rather than later.

Having said that, it’s important to know what your priorities are, because there will be times when you won’t be able to resolve issues to everyone’s satisfaction. In the beginning, it was easier to say “yes” to almost all member requests and answer questions quickly, but as the community grew from a couple of hundred to 20x that size, that became difficult and impractical to sustain. This is a common startup problem.

I’ve been through plenty of startup pitch decks as a mentor and advisor, and those who succeed in growing past a small group of users are those who listen to most community concerns in the beginning but ruthlessly learn to prioritize as they grow bigger and bigger. With Ada’s List, our challenge was similar, though admittedly we are not a for-profit startup but more a social enterprise.
4) If everyone doesn’t approach teamwork in the same way, progress will stall.

Some of the biggest movements in the world have been built on the shoulders of people who feel strongly about a cause — from the Occupy movement, to the Arab Spring, or even something as crucial to modern democracy as political parties. Ada’s List would not have been able to achieve what we have without our team of dedicated volunteers. A friend of mine once said that if you are passionate enough about something, you will find the time to do it no matter how busy your life already is. Our volunteers are all incredibly talented people with growing careers and personal lives, and we are very grateful for the time they put aside to help us move forward in our goal of making the technology industry a better place.

The best way to allow people to contribute is to let them choose the pace. We tell our volunteers that it’s OK for them to dip in and out of responsibilities, as long as they let us know in advance, so that we aren’t taken by surprise. We respect their time but equally we are working on an important mission, and it’s important for all to acknowledge that.

Equally important for smooth and rapid operations is something we realized a little late in the game: rather than have specific committees and give people set tasks, we found it more useful to for people to choose specific “projects” to take on. This automatically meant quicker action and more frequent communication. The subtle difference in framing created a visible change.
5) There is no time like the present

The biggest enemy of change is inertia. The easiest thing with Ada’s List, which has a growing membership body primarily through word of mouth, despite hardly any budget to speak of, would be to let things stay as is. Things are technically going well — the group is growing — without having to do too much. So why try to do anything?

I’ll leave you with why I constantly feel the need to move things along with Ada’s List, by borrowing the words of Theodore Roosevelt:

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

If the technology industry is to become a more conscientious, fair place, then we need Ada’s List to do all it can, we need our many male allies to support us, and we need the financial and personal resources of anyone who believes in us enough to invest in us — individual, corporate, government, non-profit all included.

Here’s to a better future for the technology industry as a whole.

—

If you’re a woman (or identify as one) who works in technology, join us at adaslist.co/join

If you’d like to support our work, get in touch at feedback@adaslist.co
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Go to the profile of Anjali Ramachandran
Anjali Ramachandran

Editor — Partnerships & Syndication at @HowWeGetToNext, co-founder at @AdasList
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