In another episode of Cybersecurity Talk, we’ve got two special guests: Jennifer Minella and Uma Gupta. We talk about special subject as well: women in tech.
Jennifer Minella is VP of Engineering and a consulting security engineer with Carolina Advance Digital. She manages the team of engineers there working on infrastructure security issues across the United States.
Uma Gupta is a professor of business at the State University of New York. She’s also a consultant and delivers keynotes and leadership workshops around the country.
Women in IT: challenges
Paula:
Let’s get to the female factor maybe at the very beginning. What kind of challenges do you see that women have in IT industry, that you see from your perspective?
Jennifer Minella:
I’ll hop in that first because I do specifically work in IT and I think Dr. Gupta has a much broader view of this … Sorry, Uma. She hates it when I call her Doctor. We were actually just talking about this at lunch, just a bit ago today. Some of the challenges are, I think, that women are going to have problems when they come into the industry, and so we’re priming them to have this kind of shield up. This is a defensive system, and they’re looking for people to treat them differently. What if we just break that barrier and you just assume you’re going to get treated as a professional and you act like a professional? There are going to be a few exceptions where you’re treated differently but nine times out of ten, you’re just going to be treated as a good professional.
Paula:
That’s definitely what we all want. Sometimes, in some countries that are more macho types and so on, then it could be still an issue, but I’m always saying that knowledge defends itself always. Any position.
Uma:
I think what Jennifer said is exactly what we need to do. We need to train women and girls to think broadly, to be tough, to come in and give their best day in and day out, and to be willing to learn new things. If they do that, then whether they are men or women, there are so many wonderful leaders out there that are looking for talent, the industry is understaffed, it needs more people, and they are going to go wherever the talent is. So I think it’s important for us not to say early on, “Oh, that’s a bad industry, or that’s just geeks” but instead to keep an open mind, to go out there to give your best, to be a learner, learn new things, meet new people, and a have a great life. I think it’s a wonderful life to be in.
It’s challenging and it’s interesting, so why not?
Paula:
There are new things that you have to learn. You cannot stop. Seriously, you are on vacation for two weeks and then you come back and the world has changed.
Jennifer:
You said something earlier, you said: resilient. You said, “Let’s raise our kids and especially women to be resilient,” and I think that’s a big factor that we’re not getting offended if something does miscarry a little bit, we’re just going to keep our chin up and keep walking and move through it.
The skill set you need to have to be successful woman in the IT industry
Paula:
Yeah, absolutely. What do you think are the skills, by the way, that the women that are already in the IT industry should have to be promoted, to be better, and so on? What are those key factors that make them successful?
Jennifer:
It varies so much from company to company. We were using some examples, and I’d asked specifically my organization what were some science-based things we could do to kind of vet and get the right candidates in for what we were looking for. She brought up some good points because she said, “Take the IT stuff out of it. Let’s talk about just the skillset you need.” So the conversation was really very specific to what skill set do you need for that role or that company. Because different company’s cultures are different, the job descriptions are different.
Uma:
What did you come up with when we were talking about you? You came up with … What did you say was the most important skill for you?
Jennifer:
I thought creativity. Creativity was number one because we’re pulling a lot of pieces together and integrating a lot of stuff in an infrastructure and you’ve kind of got to not be pigeonholed into one piece of technology, and think outside the box. Creativity for us definitely is a way to move up.
Paula:
Would be the skill that you would define that brought you to your position?
Jennifer:
Probably so, yeah. Because people call us, and they know that we’re going to solve a problem, and it might be in a non-traditional way. So that plays a factor.
Uma:
I think the skills when you look at it, it runs across industries, right? Somehow we have made IT be something totally different from every other industry. But there’s a lot of common ground across industries. So, if I were having this conversation with a retail executive, what would they say? They would say, “Women should speak up more. Women should go after the really difficult strategic projects, not to be quiet and to sit down and wait to be asked”, right? To go out and to find the right mentor. As I said, excellence is an important thing. You have to be great at what you do. You have to be willing to reach out, you have to be willing to speak up.
Paula:
Regardless of gender, right?
Right. As Jennifer said if there’s somebody that’s offending you or something that somebody said that they didn’t think was offensive, and if it is offensive to you, you speak up. Nobody’s expecting that they hire a powerful, wonderful thinker, a strategic thinker, and they’re not expecting you to be a little mouse that sits in a corner and eats your little cheese, right? Instead, you go out there, and you be great, and you understand the strategy of the organization, and you’re always thinking strategically about what is the future, where is this organization going, and how can I be a critical player? Also, pay attention to the industry. Think big, and look at the big forces that are shaping your industry and company. That’s what CEOs want. They want people who can think strategically, and who speak up when it’s time to speak up. That would be my two cents.
Paula:
It’s a great tip. I was at a meeting yesterday, and there were a bunch of people, approximately 15 people. And two people were just not engaged. That actually made me thinking, regarding what you said, “Speak up,” and so on. People were exchanging comments and thoughts and so on, so what was the gain of those two people out there? Probably they didn’t really learn anything? Because you learn every day, and if you don’t open your mouth to other people to exchange your thoughts, then what’s the gain? Then they just left the meeting and so on, so maybe they were not feeling well on the other hand, but I was thinking about that part. Being shy, it’s because IT’s a men’s world, and because there’s like a lot of men always around and so on, that could make us shy a little bit, that could be additional motivation to be even louder. To speak up about our ideas and so on, because that’s what brings experience.
Uma:
So, I always give this as an example. If you look at nursing, nursing has more women than men, although that’s slightly shifting now. But we don’t use the words “women dominated”. We don’t use those words when we talk about nursing. And there are men who are brave enough to go into this women’s world and to really be exceptional caregivers. I think it’s also important that we shift this conversation, that we shift this perspective from “There are more men than there are women.” Well, that’s history. What are we going to do today, now, to make things happen and to move forward? So I think, this is my view, I think there are many men who really want women who succeed. And there are many women who want women to succeed.
Uma:
So it’s not a gender issue, it’s a human issue. I think we should talk about it in human terms, not gender terms. But that’s just me, and I’m in the minority here.
Jennifer:
I’m with her, though.
Professionally, all of my mentors growing up in my career have been men. I’m reaching out because to me diversity is important as well, and I’m trying to expand my mentor pool. I consider Uma a mentor and someone who I learn from.
Uma:
And vice versa, she is a mentor too. Absolutely.
Jennifer:
But definitely, everybody should want everybody else to succeed, and we aim to just help each other, whatever that means.
How many women work in IT security?
Paula:
Well said. Do you see a lot of women in your company? Or in the industry, in a professional field, so how … what’s the percentage if we could ask?
Jennifer:
I love statistical and data analysis, but the problems are we don’t really have enough data around these things to have a conversation about it.
Paula:
Yeah. That’s true.
Jennifer:
And to come up with numbers. So, ISC-Squared, I’m on the board of ISC-Squared internationally, the nonprofit part of that does the GISWS, the Global Information Security Workforce Study, and they have a women’s part of that. The early results are in from that and I have some numbers in my head from that. They’re releasing it March 8th, which is International Women’s Day. But still, we had I think 20,000 respondents, but when you look at a pool of 120,000 just ISC-Squared members worldwide, and you look at a pool of hundreds of thousands and maybe a million IT professionals aren’t necessarily in security. It’s just that much. Or maybe that much. And so it’s really hard to say how many women are in these organizations. I see a lot of women now, especially here at RSA, definitely 10, 15 years ago, it was less.
So I think we’re making progress, it’s just hard to measure that, I think. Especially when we keep talking about it. Sometimes the conversation builds the wall and then shines the light on the wall.
Uma:
Yeah. Exactly. I like the way you put that. We build the wall, and then we shine the light on the wall. I think the message for young girls is if you’re smart, which most of them are, you want to be challenged. If you want to meet very interesting people, if like to travel all over the world, what other profession gives you this opportunity? Tell me. Right? It’s just an amazing industry to be in. As you said, you’re challenged. You go on vacation, you come back, everything has changed.
Paula:
Yeah. You have to learn everything.
Uma:
It’s a very exciting industry. I think we have done injustice by talking about it as male-dominated or geek, we need to shun all of that language. We need to invite our girls to come in and to be leaders and to take this technology to the next level. Because, and this is probably another topic for another day, we need to be more humane about technology. We have self-driving cars, we have robots, we have drones, we have all of this coming in … what does it mean to keep the human component in it? Girls can be great contributors to the conversation.
The issue with parities…
Paula:
Absolutely. When the girls are motivated, we know that we are really motivated, yes? We always accomplish the goals as we set them up. What I see from my perspective is there are more and more women coming to different types of technical universities, and there are different types of programs supporting those so that they can actually come. And also, I’m sure that you got those experiences, that in different types of enterprises … for example, Jennifer, you’ve been working for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, there are requests for women to be hired in certain positions.
Jennifer:
Part of the challenge is if you do this program where you’re saying, any kind of minority, that you’re trying to hire in. And you’ve set aside a certain role or a certain number of slots in the organization for that, then the problem is your peers knew that, and then you really do have to prove yourself, because they don’t know if you were brought into the program because you were qualified, or where you were brought in because you were filling that little check box. That’s not fair to the person you’re bringing in.
Because he or she may be perfectly qualified, but they’re going to have to work really hard to overcome the stigma that they may not be qualified. So we’re really just shooting ourselves in the foot when we do that. I hate those programs. I understand the intention is good.
Paula:
I see your point. On the other hand, all these corporations, they’ve got different types of IDS. But I see the point – the skill should defend itself, and that’s basically what we should care about, yeah?
Uma:
Absolutely. I think you have to be sensitive to the fact that sometimes the hiring manager, the hiring team, they may have a tendency or bias, sometimes it’s a known bias, sometimes it’s an unknown bias, to eliminate a certain category of people, whether it’s women, whether it’s minorities, whether it’s young people. They might say, “Oh, they’re too young, I don’t think they can do this”. Whatever it may be, we all have our biases. I think to bring those biases to the surface over and over again, to train people… I think there are very few people who get up in the morning and say: “I’m going to go and be evil and stupid in the workplace.” I really don’t believe that. I think most people do want to do the right thing. If we can have training programs to bring out the unknown biases that we all have in the workplace, then I think we can succeed. Then I think we can see the confidence and pride if I’m the right person for the job. And by the way, they happen to be a woman, they happen to be whatever category. I think taking that approach saves the individual, but it also helps the company.
I think Jennifer is right in that, because we’ve brought some many people into these slots, and they suffer.
Jennifer:
There was a panel during the security and diversity day on Monday, and the there were three women on there, moderated by Alison, and a couple of them had really good ideas about ways they’d overcome that bias with the blind resume reviews. They strip the name off and things like that.
They go through the first few resumes with it’s anonymous. There is an interesting book that I was telling you, the Thinking Fast and Slow.
One of the things that the studies that it referenced in this book were, and you’re going to have to help me fill in the gap here, it had to do with just names. They were able to correlate with really high percentages of how familiar and comfortable and pronounceable a name was with election results, fake election results … Do you have some more to add to that? Because it was really interesting.
It’s what we don’t realize: a bias
Uma:
Absolutely. Again, it’s the same thing, right? It’s what we don’t realize is a bias. So if I can read a name, the last name, then I’m going to feel within my comfort zone. If it’s a name that I cannot read, unknowingly, there’s a bias that says, “Who? Who is this? So let me go back to someone I can pronounce.” Minella, I might not be able to pronounce the last name. So it’s not something that I’m doing intentionally, but I’m going to gravitate towards Minella because I can pronounce the name. So that’s why ideas like this where we strip things, and how did we learn about this, right? Because somebody brought that to the surface: that aha, here’s a hidden bias. So I think that’s the approach to take.
Paula:
Hopefully, all the other people out there, they will take the approach based on their skills, yeah? But you’re absolutely right about the name. Like, when I’m introducing my presentation, I always introduce myself as Paula J, and then people laugh because people laugh and they’re like, “What’s the other part?” What is missing out there?
Jennifer:
Well, that’s why my Twitter handle is JJX because initials were always JJ, and that’s what people called me because my maiden name was Jabush, which is spelled like it’s pronounced and pronounced just it’s like it’s spelled, but no one could spell it. Strangely enough, everybody misspells Minella more than they misspelled Jabush, but it’s definitely easier to say.
One tip for women that want to get into IT industry
Paula:
Okay, perfect. If we could come out at the end with one tip for people that want to get into IT industry, what would it be?
Jennifer:
We were talking on Monday about being that constant learner, and I think that’s true in a lot of industries, and that is probably one of the things that if there is something different about the IT industry, it’s probably that you do.
Paula:
Or the security, maybe, lets’s put it that way.
Jennifer:
Yeah, or IT security. Especially security. You have to want to be that constant learner, and want to have the passion, the appetite, to ingest and learn and figure your way through new things. That’s a special kind of bird. So, if you’re inquisitive and you’re curious and you like puzzles and you’re creative, definitely, this is an industry for you. It’s a broad industry, there’s a lot of paths to it, so go for it. Find somebody, find a mentor, it doesn’t have to be a mentor in this industry. It doesn’t have to be a man, it doesn’t have to be a woman, it can be somebody with a month of experience or ten years of experience, find somebody that will help you, and there’s plenty of them out there.
Paula:
But you have to be the best.
Women tend to choose the companies where they believe they can do some good
Uma:
What I would say, young people, have to reject everything negative that they’ve heard about the industry. That it’s only for geeks, that you don’t get to talk to people, that you sit your little cubbyhole and you do the programming. They have to reject all of this, and they have to come into the industry with curiosity and to say: I have some skills, I have some talent, what can I do to make the world a better place? What of the things that we all know, women tend to gravitate towards companies, and jobs, and industries, where they believe they can do some good. It’s very important for women. So let’s talk to them about all the great things that technology has done to make the world a better place. I think that’s how we attract women. I think we need to change the conversation. It’s not a negative field, it’s an amazing field, and I think that’s what they need to remember.
So forget anything bad that anybody has ever said. They don’t know what they’re talking about. You just come into this and you have a blast. Have a great time.
Paula:
Sounds like a fantastic recommendation. Thank you for the talk!