This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments that feature these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
So far we’ve explored what it means to be resilient and how to carve out time for ourselves amidst the chaos of life. This episode, we look at the unique set of challenges that being a woman, or a woman of color, presents in overwhelmingly white and male spaces. Being a trailblazer is powerful, but it can also be incredibly demanding, having to continually prove worth, ensure one’s voice is heard, and take action to also raise up others. Those are just a few of the extra taxes our guests - and so many from underrepresented backgrounds - pay to fight prejudice in their fields.
Featuring:
- Amy DuRoss, Co-Founder and CEO of Vineti, a company that’s defining a whole new software category for precision medicine therapy management by enabling vein to vein supply chain documentation and analytics for these breakthrough new therapies.
- Julia Collins, Founder and CEO of Planet FWD, a company helping to reverse climate change by making craveable snacks from regenerative ingredients.
- Julie Wainwright, Founder and CEO of luxury consignment juggernaut The RealReal.
- Mariam Naficy, Founder and CEO of Minted, an online stationery store that solicits designs from artists all over the world and one of the biggest crowdsourcing platforms on the Internet.
- Dr. Odette Harris, MD MPH, professor of neurosurgery at Stanford -- America’s first black female tenured neurosurgery professor ever.
Want more WoVen? Check out all our episodes here and wherever you get your podcasts.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
LAURA: You're listening to Woven, a podcast from Canaan. WoVen stands for Women Who Venture, and represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.
This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments that feature these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
So far we’ve explored what it means to be resilient and how to carve out time for ourselves amidst the chaos of life.
This episode, we look at the unique set of challenges that being a woman, or a woman of color, presents in overwhelmingly white and male spaces. Being a trailblazer is powerful, but it can also be incredibly demanding, having to continually prove worth, ensure one’s voice is heard, and take action to also raise up others. Those are just a few of the extra taxes our guests - and so many from underrepresented backgrounds - pay to fight prejudice in their fields.
First we’ll hear from Dr. Odette Harris, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford and America’s first black female tenured neurosurgery professor ever. But, despite all her achievements, she still finds herself having to justify her position.
***
ODETTE: Usually, when a patient and their family asked me to describe my training, it's a question that they would not ask my white counterpart, male or female for that matter. And so a lot of times when I'm asked to describe my training, I'm almost asked to validate my training and validate my existence or my credentials, or why I am the selected surgeon..... I've surveyed some of my colleagues and they don't get asked as frequently like, you know, where did you go to school or what have you.
NINA: If you could wave a magic wand to change two or three issues to increase the number of women and the number of minorities in medicine. What structural changes would you make or what advice would you give to the world?
ODETTE: Wow. I think to change that would require an incredible change in our country period. I don't think it's specific to medicine. I really don't. We were having a conversation on Saturday night about the number of minorities in private schools here. And everyone was sort of like, Oh my gosh, you know, and I said, but let's take a step back, like, what's the minority population of Silicon Valley? period? All right. If you pull that thread, and keep going back and back and back, you realize that the problem is not now there's a problem. It's not neurosurgery. Medicine, per se. It's a systematic problem, right? It's jobs, its income, its housing, its education, it's opportunity. It's everything and you're just keep going back and back.
Honestly, I think a solution that hinges only on medicine will be short term, and short sighted. I really think that we have to think bigger and I spend a lot of time thinking about what the pipeline looks like, and how to get people into the pipeline before they even get to that decision tree about medicine, right? And trying to fill those gaps, right. It's not who applies to neurosurgery. It's kind of like how you succeed in math in third grade. And how do you eat and where do you live? And you know, what do your teachers look like?
***
LAURA: Dr. Harris asks how her industry can better attract and develop diverse candidates, starting with school children. Julia Collins, who you’ll hear from next, continues this line of thought and digs into the tensions in the restaurant and food industry between innovative thinking and traditional, even stagnant, practices. Julia is Founder and CEO of Planet FWD, a food platform helping to reverse climate change.
***
LAURA: Do you have any advice for other founders, or VCs in terms of how to make sure you aren't one of the only women, and one of the only black women, in this position?
JULIA: I'm so glad you asked, you know less than.2% of all venture capital activity in the last two years has been related to black women, so as a person who lives at the intersection of both my identity as a woman and my identity as a black person I am aware every minute of every day how unequal this current system is. And at the same time I am always so encouraged by the unapologetic desire to innovate that is really the centre of what we might call 'silicon valley culture'. It's all about moon-shots, it's all about using technology and innovation to change the world.
So, how do I reconcile those two things? This incredibly unequal reality with this really high minded and innovative visionary culture? And what I can say is, I'm committed to using my life, my work, my voice, to change what's happening. If I could give advice to funders, to capitalists, to venture partners, it would be, you know it's unlikely that you're going to develop in the boardroom a fluency that you haven't already practiced elsewhere in your life. So take a look at your social network, take a look at who you're spending your time with, do you have any friends that are black women, do you have any friends that are queer people? Do you have any friends, or people that you spend time with, or people that you're influenced by, that are fundamentally different from you? And if you don't... maybe start there.
The second thing I would say is there are so many incredible entrepreneurs that are coming from these under-represented backgrounds. And it doesn't really take too much work to reach out to organizations like All Raise, or Black Women Raise, or Black Women Talk Tech, or Afrotech, it doesn't really take that much work to reach out to those organizations, and identify these incredible founders. So, most of what I think needs to happen, needs to happen on the side of the funders. I think as under-represented founders we need to continue to create spaces where we can share our pain, we can share our victories, where we can share community with each other, but unfortunately the onus is still on us to do a lot of the reaching out and identifying opportunities to meet people in the venture space.
LAURA: Do you find that your role or status in this position puts undue pressure on you? or a different type of pressure, to represent, or kind of be often the only one in the room?
JULIA: When I think about what my great-grandmother, what my great great great grandfather, what my parents, what my grandparents went through, as black people in this country, I don't think twice about having to be a representative. I have been so blessed to be living at the time that I am living in. To be born to the family that I was born to, and if I need to show up for this conversation I will show up 365 days of the year.
LAURA: Thank you for continuing to show up, for so many founders and people and team members.
JULIA: I appreciate that.
***
LAURA: Our next guest shines a light on what the younger employee or student can do from the inside, rather than waiting for the wider industry to change. Julie Wainwright is founder and CEO of The RealReal, an online luxury consignment site. Julie took the company public in June of 2019, and is one of only a handful of female founder CEOs who have accomplished that feat. So, how did she push herself to reach this level in such a competitive environment?
***
JULIE: I would say the biggest thing I've done is to not be the man, to be comfortable with who I am, and not try to fit into a man's perception of what a woman should be in business... just to be more comfortable in my skin.
The other thing is, without a doubt, I had to know my numbers faster, I had to work harder, I had to call people on their stuff and not let them do a one over on me. You know how young girls often get sidelined in math and science classes? I was a really good student, you know, if there was someone smarter in the room, I was gonna learn from them, but nobody was going to be better than me. I was gonna be as good, if I possibly could, unless they were a genius.
It's very very interesting, sort of like the animal dynamics, if you study the animal world at all when people want to subordinate you. You can choose to go along with it or you can choose to side-step it. But I would say the first thing is, find out what you really love to do, go deep, know it well, speak up, and recognize you're worthy.
The other thing is, in a company... companies love people, regardless of gender, that can take on more, that are really smart, that are cautious but yet brave also, that apply analytics, and in the case of the tech world, that know how to work with others in a cross-functional world.
The other thing that I would say is really important, you need to own something that's yours. So if you are in a support group, take a project. Own that project, and if you're successful no one can claim that they did your job, you did it. So the more you take discreet ownership of something that higher probability you are of being successful and then move to another level, if that's what you want.
***
LAURA: Amy DuRoss, Co-founder and CEO of healthcare tech startup Vineti, joins Wainwright in saying that we need to own our work, and speak with confidence, knowing that we deserve to be at the table, on the board, and leading the company.
***
NINA: How have you felt as a female founder, female executive, in what is a much more male dominated territory of founder/CEO?
AMY: So, really lucky to be in this role, in this moment in history, when there's more awareness, when there's more women in empowered positions to really engender change. So we collectively have a lot more work ahead of us, but it takes a certain amount, a leap of faith, to just to say 'I deserve to be here, my voice is important, it may actually be the most important voice at the end of the analysis''
I do think the future is so bright and I am so excited to see what comes forward on the investing side and on the entrepreneurial side and in senior leadership and for all sorts of diverse humanity in the future, because I can say, it makes such a huge difference, and it's an important one, so more is better.
NINA: Yeah and I think what you're alluding to too is it's not just about sex or sexual orientation or skin color, it's really about how do you bring cognitive diversity and diversity of backgrounds so thta you get the richest possible problem solving set
AMY: Absolutely - and that my experience speaks for itself.
***
LAURA: Our final highlight comes courtesy of Mariam Naficy, Founder and CEO of Minted, an online design marketplace based on crowdsourced designs from a global community of artists. Mariam is no stranger to an eclectic community. She is the daughter of Iranian and Chinese immigrants and lived all over the world growing up. She points to these diverse experiences, and the experience of so often being an outsider as the foundation for her ability to approach entrepreneurial problems from a new perspective. We spoke to her about an ever-present issue: women down-playing their successes, and how she encourages her own employees to make their voices heard.
***
LAURA: You penned a medium article, on the topic of ‘she bragging’, I absolutely loved it and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that concept and kind of, you know what inspired you to write that post?
MARIAM: I'll say first that I've always gotten along really well with men and some of the people who have supported me and helped me the most in my career actually have been men. So I really love men. I think what I've noticed over time has been society and the many insidious ways it probably tells girls and women to not showcase themselves and to not promote themselves. And I think it gets to the point where it can be very unhealthy.
My mom... she told me from the very early days that I should really consider myself an equal to boys and that there was like, no question about that in our household. There was literally never a question.
So for me, I never had the confidence problem, the academic confidence. I never had that. I've seen that though, subsequently with my own children and other children, right. And the reason I wrote the post was just to kind of encourage people to think about, are they diminishing themselves a little bit too much, are they really maybe setting themselves to a higher bar than men actually in terms of when they should say something good about themselves. So that was the reason for the post.
LAURA: From a company value standpoint. How do you think about instilling that concept of she bragging or making sure that women are thinking about an equal bar within Minted today?
MARIAM: Well we have a very gender balanced executive team, that I'm very proud of, of diverse in many ways. And I keep scratching my head and wondering, Well, why can we have no problem with diversity in our senior management team? And so many companies are talking about having a problem, right? To me, that speaks to just probably a lot of entrenched bias in the interview process at other companies. Because for us, it's super easy. Yes, super easy. We just hire the best person and the best person is often female. And that's just the way it is. There's no problem.
So I think we do try to encourage women, just everybody here, frankly, everybody to speak up. So especially junior members of the team are counseled constantly here to speak up and have their opinion heard at meetings. We want to hear their voice. It's really important because then we can understand how they think, what are they thinking? Especially if you are encountering a younger female employee who is not as confident I'd really try to encourage them to speak up.
***
LAURA: When we encounter prejudice, biases, or workplaces that favor an army of carbon-copy employees, it can be hard to push forward, embrace our differences, and contribute our unique perspectives, but these women prove that when we each take those difficult steps, we start to effect change.
While being a role model can be yet more unpaid labor for women, we have to take pride that it means role models exist where they did not before.
Were you inspired by these women? Be sure to listen to the full interviews on any podcast app and find out more at canaan.com/woven