Recognizing Opportunity: Powerful Women is Just the Start

I’m now nearing my fifth month as President here and I hope you all have started to notice the changes. Admittedly when I started I saw many problems with how our business was conducted. However, as I’ve spent meeting, presenting, and listening to individuals in our industry, I’ve began to view a problem as an opportunity.

Starting this month, we will embark on an incredibly ambitious editorial calendar. Our direction aims to break the mold of a traditional B2B publisher. One that doesn’t act like a cheerleader – rather one that seeks to push, drive, and create conversation around the challenging, prescient, and necessary topics for the Consumer Technology industry.

Establishing recognition for women in the Consumer Technology industry was one of the first items on our list. Why? Because for an industry to thrive, it needs to retain, nurture, and most importantly attract top talent. Talent matters for industries and companies. Talent goes beyond knowledge. And talent doesn’t have a gender.

To be clear, when it comes to being a woman in the workplace, to quote an old South Park: I get that I don’t get it. I’m not a woman. I’ve never had kids. I haven’t had to deal with the repercussions of the ‘boys club.' But I can empathize that it might be harder for a woman to work in an industry that is primarily male.

Our inaugural Powerful Women in Consumer Technology list not only aims to recognize women who have performed at the highest level but also strives to create conversation around the representation of women in an industry. Finding a strong representation of women in various leadership capacities in this industry was not easy. And that is a problem.

In full disclosure, some women did not want to be featured. And we can understand the hesitancy. Often ‘gender diversity’ gets used as a buzzworthy phrase by social justice warriors. This is not that. This is not the craven pandering that many are so used to. This is not a gimmick. There won’t be pink. There won’t be flowers. The font is not wavy.

The logo is black and white. The font is commanding. We identify the people in this issue by their achievements because it is a business issue and they deserve it. They are the real deal.

When I was a kid in Houston, there was a rehab center commercial featuring a doctor who looked sternly into the camera and stated: “It’s not your fault, but it is your problem.” That phrase has still resonated with me because it highlighted that correcting issues first requires acceptance of personal responsibility. But maybe, in this case, it needs a tweak first.

Lack of women in consumer technology is not our fault, but it is our opportunity.