K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Female representation in corporate leadership roles has been a widely discussed topic recently. In the last five years, gender representation has improved at every level in the corporate pipeline. Despite this, women still occupy less than a quarter of current C-suite positions. One woman who has proven herself despite this trend is the cofounder and president of AiFi Inc., Ying Zheng.
Ying is one of the premier computer programmers in the world and an accomplished business leader. After stints at both Apple and Google, Zheng used the knowledge and experience she gained in those positions to launch AiFi with fellow co-founder Steve Gu. Her rise in tech has been meteoric. However, the industry remains a challenging arena for females in the U.S. Big Tech companies still have lower female representation than the rest of the U.S. civilian labor force.
Despite these statistics, Ying believes that the industry is moving in the right direction. “The U.S. and E.U. are very progressive markets for female leaders, at least from my experience,” says Zheng. “We have seen massive support from investors such as Plum Alley and Qualcomm Ventures, both of whom take a proactive approach to funding and encouraging female leadership in tech. These companies and dedicated funds allow us to improve on the change that we see in the tech industry already.”
While entrepreneurship is high on policy agenda throughout the world, “there is rarely a focus on diversity,” suggests Birkbeck Professor Helen Lawton Smith, who recently disseminated her Regional Studies Association funded research on ‘Addressing regional inequalities in innovation opportunities for BAME and disabled groups.’ She concluded that a lack of connectivity between organizations of all kinds, with a silo mentality beginning to be broken down. “The political agenda is changing, but there is a need to build a better system of building communities through institutional change.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2022/02/03/women-are-still-underrepresented-in-tech-leadership-heres-how-to-change-that/?sh=a31c8c168321
Ying is one of the premier computer programmers in the world and an accomplished business leader. After stints at both Apple and Google, Zheng used the knowledge and experience she gained in those positions to launch AiFi with fellow co-founder Steve Gu. Her rise in tech has been meteoric. However, the industry remains a challenging arena for females in the U.S. Big Tech companies still have lower female representation than the rest of the U.S. civilian labor force.
Despite these statistics, Ying believes that the industry is moving in the right direction. “The U.S. and E.U. are very progressive markets for female leaders, at least from my experience,” says Zheng. “We have seen massive support from investors such as Plum Alley and Qualcomm Ventures, both of whom take a proactive approach to funding and encouraging female leadership in tech. These companies and dedicated funds allow us to improve on the change that we see in the tech industry already.”
While entrepreneurship is high on policy agenda throughout the world, “there is rarely a focus on diversity,” suggests Birkbeck Professor Helen Lawton Smith, who recently disseminated her Regional Studies Association funded research on ‘Addressing regional inequalities in innovation opportunities for BAME and disabled groups.’ She concluded that a lack of connectivity between organizations of all kinds, with a silo mentality beginning to be broken down. “The political agenda is changing, but there is a need to build a better system of building communities through institutional change.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2022/02/03/women-are-still-underrepresented-in-tech-leadership-heres-how-to-change-that/?sh=a31c8c168321
