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February 28, 2000

Women At Work
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Illustration by Rick Smith

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At Schwab, IT workers can participate in the Management Development Initiative, a program that runs for five months. Eight mentors help 15 IT staffers of both sexes develop their management skills through classes and team-building activities. Ashauer has participated in the program as a student and as a mentor. "The program helps me validate my management skills as well as update them," she says.

Networking is also a good way for women to keep in touch with the opportunities within their own companies, says Laura Higgins, lead program manager for Windows 2000 at Microsoft and chairwoman of Microsoft's female employee network, called Hoppers (named for deceased Navy Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, who helped develop the earliest computers).

The camaraderie of Hoppers helps Microsoft employees develop their careers and tackle work-related problems. The group sponsors an E-mail service in which members can anonymously ask sticky questions and get advice from other members.

Hoppers also helps support Microsoft's recruiting efforts, such as speeches to high school girls intended to get them interested in IT careers. "We'll do whatever we can to get teen-age girls to think, 'I can do that, that's cool,'" Higgins says. That includes showing girls that there are skills and talents other than technical ones that can translate into IT-related fields.

Other companies, especially dot-coms, are finding that the nontechnical skills of some women are invaluable for building a new business. Jay Simmons, chief operating officer at eNamics Inc., a Stamford, Conn., developer of modeling tools for transforming traditional businesses to Internet enterprises, says women are often good change agents and project managers because they're typically better than men at juggling many responsibilities at once, are frequently better communicators, and are generally better at motivating people through coaching. Women, Simmons says, are better at listening to different points of view--and in an IT organization, that results in solutions that better meet users' needs.

GE's Morrison says women are just as tech-savvy as men, but as IT has grown, it offers more career opportunities for women who might have more diverse interests, experiences, and skills. "Before, IT had been seen as having only highly technical jobs," she says. "But IT work has expanded to include so many other talents." Morrison's nearly 20-year IT career has included jobs in marketing, manufacturing, and supply-chain management. Her range of experiences prepared her for her CIO post. "They allow me to see across the enterprise and learn how technology is linked together," she says.

"The need for women in IT positions is growing, particularly in dot-coms," says Paul Daversa, president of Resource Systems Group, an IT executive search firm. "The dot-com talent pool is very male-dominated--there's about one woman for every nine men." That's bad, Daversa says, because companies need a mix of skills and a culture balance to succeed.

"I'm proof that you don't have to be technical to pursue a career in technology. I've got a fine-arts background in interior design," says Microsoft's Higgins, who joined the company's IT organization two years ago. Before that, she ran a film production company.

Higgins' first IT job at Microsoft was explaining to customers how the software vendor uses its own products to run its IT department. It was in that job that Higgins learned about remote networking, security, and how to run a procurement system, she says.

The most important skill Higgins brings to her job is a knack for communication. "It all boils down to being able to tell a story," she says. And that's vital to advancing in IT. Everyone from project managers to CIOs must be able to communicate with technicians and businesspeople to deliver successful IT solutions.

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