Thanks for joining this session. Um I'm super excited to be part of this conference, Women in Tech conference and um continue our support, elevating women in workspace and in leadership positions.This is something we at VTS trying to move the needle at the individual level and at the organization level through talent acquisition by creating an inclusive environment and also by participating in events such as this in partnership with women Tech Network. I am Deepa Moli Krishna and I'm the VP of product management at VTS. I'm here to share my experience as a women in technology going through my career for the past 25 years. And what are some of the strategies and practices we have established in BT S as well as we as women leaders. How can we help bridge the gap and uplift more women into tech? Women for a long time has been underserved in tech. Although 48% of our total work workforce has women, the the gender gap is pretty high specifically in fast growing jobs and highly paid jobs such as computer and engineering. We it is improving. It's gone from 7% to 25% but that's still a huge gap which we need to bridge the gap. All right. And this is a real problem.

It's a real problem because as you all know, most of the companies are going through digital transformation, one of the most critical challenge we have is filling the gaps in the critical roles. However, we haven't figured out how to un tap how to tap the untapped women, tech technology skills, which is women in technology field. So I do, I do believe fundamentally, there are two big challenges we are currently facing and I'm sure most of you would agree with it. Number one is what we call the leaky pipeline, right? With the gender stereotype starts very early on in our childhood. By the time we hit college, a lot of women and girls and women drop out of stem and move away from stem even before they hit college. The second challenge we face is which most of us can relate to. Once we make it to the workforce, we have challenged with work family barriers. So the research actually shows highly talented, skilled women in their mid thirties choose to put more value are on family relationship, the society relationship and the and they typically take over the primary caretaker responsibilities, which is proven during pandemic, one in four women actually downshifted or moved away totally from workforce.

So what can, what can we do think through better understanding and weaving advocacy? We can encourage women to pursue and advance decorated careers by providing opportunities, making sure we have the right environment and provide the right work life balance, equity with men, help build confidence and help reach our professional and personal goals. So I'm gonna start off talking a little bit about my personal journeys. I often get this question asked, have you faced gender bias at your workplace? Um The answer is yes and I'm pretty sure most of you can relate to it. The answer is yes. But I need to start off talking a little bit on why I believe the reason. Um I face those challenges, right? So a little bit about my background, I come from a city called Chennai in South India. And where I grew up is it's the the roles of a boy and a girl is clearly defined, right? We are from a small knit family. Boys are trained to study hard, work, hard and take care of the family. Girls are trained to cook clean, be respectful elders, education is important. We have to be knowledgeable, but we are not required to earn, earn income. So we had, I mean, I had a great childhood.

We had my dad made sure that we have a good comfortable family, we had all the comfort we need. But when we grew up, my brother, my brother took over my dad's business. My sister and I were trained to train. We were raised and trained to believe our sole purpose is to make a good home. Right. We are, we are raised to believe that we need to get married. We need to have kids. We need to build a good home. So I got married when I was 21 and it was an orange marriage. I've seen my husband only once and I moved to UK. He's a doctor and I've been married for 25 years now and I have two lovely kids. Everything is, everything is great. Um The challenge though is when I got into the workforce in my early twenties, I have, I had a very good, very good career path for the first few years. But when I was trying to move on from an individual contributor to a managerial role, I was expecting to receive a promotion and I didn't get it. My, my male counterpart did receive the promotion. And the feedback I received was you need to mature more, you need to more show more confidence, you need to be self-aware and be not emotional. So those were, those were the feedback which I received.

And I, I was reflecting on myself and I strongly believe that those are valid, those are valid feedback, but those are all symptoms of my upbringing, right? How my upbringing really influenced how I showed up in career. It came across, it was perceived as I'm I'm unconfident and I might, some of my emotional feelings might have triggered in some of the situations. So I OK. Good, good feedback. Let me work on it. 10 years after that, I had the same problem, right? And I truly believe which a lot of women in workforce we do face this challenge where it it comes across as, as a male, you tend, we are promoted and you prove as a woman, we just need to work much harder. We need to prove that we, we can do the job before we get promoted. So in my late thirties, I, I had the same challenge where I had to work much harder to get the next promotion. And what's, I mean, these are, these are learning, I think as we go through this and as we establish our policies and assessment in our, in our organizations, we have to make sure we have a well balanced assessment process and we create an inclusive environment for, for all, for all genders.

But what was even more interesting for me is in spite of going through this, in spite of having all these, all these e experience I see doing the same mistake to my kids. I have a boy and a girl. I tend, I, I put my, I signed up my boy in computer classes in computer summer camps. I got a medical set, um sorry, mechanical sets and I got doll houses and kitchen set for my daughter and I signed it up for dance classes. So it was very interesting for me to see like it starts in our home, we have to be able to identify these bias, these gender bias, which happens at home, be able to take actions. That's the only way we will be able to break, break the stereotype cycle and bring in more younger women into workforce and into tech. The other um some of the other challenges are tough decisions. We as women are often have to make is choices, right? Both men and women have to make tough choices as we go through the career. But it is what's interesting in our, when it comes to women is I have several women leaders who have inspired me as I've navigated. But what sticks to me the most is um Indra Noi, who's the ex CEO of Pepsico. She talks a lot about how a biological clock and a career clock are in constant conflict for women, which is, which is so true throughout this career.

We are often asked to make choices because we cannot, we cannot perform great in the job and we cannot be a great mom at home if our work life balance doesn't support that if you are not able to make those critical choices at the right moment. So I, I think at several points during my career, I did take a step down or I have to take an individual contributor. I've made choices throughout my career as I had two kids and I was navigating between work and family. But the key here is these are choices which are made by me. And I think these are choices which should be made by women on what they want to do. The choices shouldn't be made for us and how as organizations we can help. It is making sure we have the right primary caretaker policies, flexibility around, around work both for primary and secondary caretakers. So I think we have learned these and at BT S, we we are very conscious about what support we should provide for women. And we have great policies around flexibility and um flexibility, flexibility and paternity and maternity leave for for the primary and secondary caretakers. The something else which I think a lot about is also around as a women. What's as a woman leader. What is important for me, we need more women leaders, we need more women leaders. We need to bring in different perspective into workforce for us to be successful at the business. But for us to have more women leaders, we number one need a seat at the table.

So when we, when we bring more women and we have, we have our seat at the table, we also need to be able to bring our whole self and be authentic. So it's critical for us to have a seat at table, be ourselves and being authentic so that we are not trying to fit ourselves to a mold which we have been molded into, but we are we are being able to be authentic, we bring a different perspective and really help, help grow more women leaders.

So as an organization perspective, I do believe that embedding den I strongly within our culture is very critical, creating an inclusive environment where we have a space for all the different voices to be heard at every level in the organization is going to be very important for us to create an inclusive environment for us to be successful.

And um is there, is there an important tip I could provide and based on, based on my experience, I'm sure a lot of you guys will agree to this as well. I think one of the greatest thing which happened to me throughout my career is having a good sponsor is having a good coach and mentor for me because as I was navigating people who have done that, it could be both. I mean, in my case, I was fortunate to have both men and women sponsors and mentors. It's important for us to get support and help, help, help them educate us and navigate us as we go through a career choices we make. So I would highly recommend finding a good sponsor and mentors as a woman as you're trying to grow into the workspace. Um Again, at BT S, we have great mentorship program. We, I think 48% of our mentees who participate are women here and it's super, it was super critical for me as I was trying to navigate my career and become leader. And I would highly recommend that approach for anybody who's looking to have a career growth within technology as well. So um just talk, let me, let me talk a little bit about um we ts and what are we doing?

Like, how do, how are we trying to create an environment where we are continuously looking to uplift women in, in workspace generally and in tech specifically. And um also how are we creating an open and fun environment for, for women to be authentic, a safe environment for them to, to identify when there is any, any level of bias happening? We just need a safe and open environment for us to be able to recognize that, call it out and change it. So VTS is one of the, is the number one S a provider for commercial real estate and we are one of the fastest growing crop tech companies. Our mission here is to transform the $30 trillion industry CRE industry. And um since our founding in 2012, our vision is to transform every transaction that's happening throughout the life cycle of a building in commercial real estate. We are around 600 plus employees worldwide.

We have 45,000 users using our platform and a company like us where we are growing very fast. This is a great achievement when we see that we are consequently being called out as a great place to work. Our co CEO is rated pretty high on glass door and a recent survey conducted by great place to work also shows that 92% of our employees says this is a great place to work. So truly, we are doing something well where we are creating an inclusive environment and we are able to achieve these diversity um equity and inclusion isn't, is a core value of everything we do here. And I'm really why that's important. Our co-founders, both Nick and Ryan strongly believe for us to continue innovation and grow. It's important that we have different perspective in our organization happening at every level. So den I is something core in everything we do are differentiated as people and we focus a lot on the value and our value. Uh the values of our companies you would see is emperor in everything we do right from hiring, how we train, how we do the interview process, how we operate and do performance review. So it's critical for us to make sure we are living by our core values.

Some of the um some of the DN initiatives which has been pretty helpful and successful, helped us as an organization to be successful. We definitely mentorship program is highly recommended. As I mentioned, 48% of our mentees are women. We have excellent employee resource groups.

There are several groups catered towards new moms minority groups. It's just like different groups, ship group that groups where people want to come together and help each other to be successful. We have ongoing trainings, which is important because we follow the Ronnie rule.

We also make sure job descriptions, we do gender decoding. So nothing comes across as it's is bias or is there any level of bias happening in a whole process? We participate in several DEN I events as well and some of the highlights is in partnership with diversity partners like women tech, like inner side, pursued with the several events we've been conducting. We are trying to also learn from our experience and other experience and how we could continue bridging the gap and elevating women in workforce, the apprenticeship pro Partnership with Pursuit. We also try to bring in more underrepresented candidates into our organization. A proof of all these different approaches and strategies and how DN I is uh is rooted in the values we do here is, is shown in a survey, 91% of our employees truly believe they're included and they accepted at VTS. So um happy to talk more about this. And if you, if any of you are interested in exploring more, either the experience of women here at BT S or are approaching how we do things here. We're happy to connect with you either through VTS com or vts.com or through linkedin. Um Before I open up for the Q and A if you could take a moment answering the poll on the right side on the screen. Um What do you believe? What do you believe is the value or what motivates you the most from an employer?

So if you guys want to take a quick second and then I'm available to answer any specific questions we have. So I see pro actually ask for feedback. I asked my boss peers and staff, what can I do better or different to support you and meet your needs? As your manager, the feedback tends to be more authentic, direct and honest because it open the dialogue and then on. Yeah, that's, that's great. That's great. I think that's, that's true. I think it's true, the more, the more we become authentic. I'm pretty sure people open up and we're gonna have a direct uh the a very uh open conversation. So any advice for finding a mentor outside of your current company? I definitely use my past network. Actually, you'll be surprised how many people truly want to help um help us succeed. And I use my network, my past network to help. And I asked, I reach out to them and ask them for help to connect me, connect me with other mentors. So definitely leverage your networks outside your company. And I have request them to connect you with other leaders in your, in your field or your industry for you to make a connection. OK. Shilpa. Happy to connect with you and talk about it if you want me, if you want to send a quick note to linkedin and happy to chat around this more. And it was great being part of this and um enjoy your rest of the conversation, the conference.

Thank you for being here.