Women need to step up: hire women, promote women, and mentor them

DistribuTECH 2018 was a whirlwind for all of us at Sitetracker. Thankfully, we had amazing visitors to our booth who all wanted to learn about our project and asset management platform. As well as our new mobile app!

If you can excuse the humble brag, because we were so run off our feet spreading the news about how we are changing the game for utilities, I was only able to sneak away to one networking breakfast – Women in Utilities.

The event featured an amazing panel of three influential speakers: Nancy Bui-Thomson (Sacramento Municipal Utilities District Board of Directors), Lisa Ann Pinkerton (President and Founder of Technica Communications), and Carolyn Shellman (Chief Legal and Administrative Officer for CPS Energy).

I was most inspired by Nancy’s call to action for the group. She rightly pointed out that it’s not just men who hold women back in professional settings. Women also suffer from unconscious bias and often act as roadblocks for other women who are trying to rise up and take on more responsibility. “Women need to step up: hire women, promote women, and mentor them,” she said.

Nancy also reminded us that women tend to be less self-promoting than men. As a female leader and frontline manager, I am committed to making data-driven decisions and seeing the true impact of my team members — not just reward those that promote their own accomplishments. But at the same time, I am going to take her insight to my team and ensure that everyone is promoting themselves appropriately to ensure their personal success.

I also jotted down Carolyn’s sage reminder in a similar vein that “the learn it all, will generally come out ahead of the know it all.”

I’m inspired by these women and their accomplishments in an industry that continues to be dominated by men. Navigating the disruption and an accelerated pace of change in Utilities is going to require the diversity of thought and backgrounds that these women bring to their organizations.

At Sitetracker, we live and breathe these values and more. Not only do we recognize our diversity and embrace it but we celebrate it.

Drop me a line if you want to chat about your workplace – especially if you need a new way to manage your projects.