If you are the only woman in a room full of men, go out and get some women to join you, says a woman who has excelled in a field dominated by men.
"Embrace diversity. Diversity is strength and gender diversity brings success," Judi Hess, the CEO of Copperleaf Technologies, said when she accepted her 2017 Influential Women in Business Award from Business in Vancouver.
There are more than 100 employees at Copperleaf, which supplies decision analytics to companies managing critical infrastructure. Thirty per cent are women and 30 languages are spoken.
"You are one conversation away from getting to know someone who's different and you're 10 conversations away from getting to know them better and having them influence you," she said at the Fairmont Waterfront luncheon on International Women's Day.
Two days ago, she got an email inviting her to a leadership conference. There will be 12 speakers and as she scrolled through the CEOs' bios, she realized all of them were Old White Guys. "I don't have anything against Old White Guys because I married one but they should not have a monopoly on leadership.
"The next time I get an email I want to see some women in the pictures. I want more women supporting women to make a difference.... Let's get women supporting women so they can reach their dreams."
As she reminded the crowd of the Geraldine Ferraro quote, "Some leaders are born women." And in the words of Warren Buffet, "We've done pretty well using 50 per cent of the population but imagine what we can do if we use 100 per cent of the population."
You can read the Business in Vancouver profile of Judi Hess here.
