Women IT leaders take center stage

Judy Balaban has seen firsthand how stepping into the professional spotlight, even on a small stage, pays dividends.

Early in her career as a program management specialist at AT&T, Balaban became an active member with the Project Management Institute’s New Jersey chapter, which put her front and center at plenty of events. She considered her commitments to PMI as a way to give back to her professional community. But they also brought her increased recognition which helped her land a job, in 2003, as director of the Dow Jones project management office.

That turn of events taught her the importance of visibility to professional success.

“People say with hard work you’ll be recognized. Well, yes and no. You may get a pat on the back, and the recognition might last 10 minutes. But for true recognition, you have to have a presence beyond your company,” says Balaban, who has had multiple senior-level IT positions and was most recently a director in the Office of the CIO at waste management company Covanta.

Others can learn from Balaban’s insights.

“All leaders need to be visible: You cannot brand yourself as a thought leader if you’re not publicly sharing your thoughts,” says Kristen Lamoreaux, president and CEO of Lamoreaux Search and founder of SIM Women, part of the Society for Information Management.

Visibility defined

Balaban’s experience provides a particularly valuable lesson for women in IT about the importance of building a well-recognized professional brand to advance their careers and bring gender equity to corporate leadership.

“Cultivating visibility matters for a few reasons,” says Kathryn Guarini, a former IBM CIO and now a board member at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. “First, you serve as a role model. There’s a pipeline of people watching, and if you’re visible, you’re demonstrating what’s possible and you can inspire others. It also gives you opportunities to be known for what you’re delivering and the impact you’re making, and that will often lead to new opportunities or [responsibility for] additional scope.”

Guarini defines visibility as “being seen as an expert or someone best able to tackle an issue, lead a team, or solve a problem.”

“You want to be the one considered for opportunities to have an impact,” she says.

Guarini and others acknowledge that some may seek visibility simply for name recognition, but most leaders define visibility as being known in one’s profession as an expert who can successfully execute and help others do so, too.

“It’s not about seeking the limelight. Visibility to me is about the impact you’re creating, your openness to help others reach their full potential, and your openness to learn. That’s how you create extraordinary outcomes,” says Meerah Rajavel, CIO of Palo Alto Networks as well as a board member at three companies.

Visibility yields significant benefits. Professionals with some level of prominence within their organizations or in their respective fields bring positive attention to their achievements, their teams, their colleagues, their companies, and their professions. They help shape opinions, best practices, and even regulations, because when they speak, others listen.

“It’s being brought to the table for conversations and discussions. It’s helping influence decisions and being part of that group of people making decisions,” says Karen Stine, head of data at insurance firm Willis Towers Watson.

Initiating recognition

Stine recognized the importance of visibility in the early years of her career.

“I started networking and building presence and then started to get invited to speak or to be interviewed. Once that started to happen, I realized that I needed to put some thought into it,” she says.

So Stine focused on raising her profile in the data profession by writing white papers, posting thoughts online, working with professional organizations, seeking speaking engagements, and seizing high-profile opportunities at work.

“It really does take some planning so you’re doing the right things at the right time,” she explains.

Others are similarly strategic.

Guarini, for one, says she understood earlier in her career that “it’s necessary to be good at your job but it’s not sufficient.” To boost her visibility, Guarini sought high-profile projects, greater organizational responsibilities and opportunities to lead bigger teams. She shared her insights within her company and with the external professional community, while also hosting office hours and writing blog posts.

“I made an overt effort to share my voice and what we do and to recognize the good work of the team,” she adds.

Guarini adjusted her strategies based on what resonated with each audience. For example, she found forums for two-way communication — such as live question-and-answer sessions — were more effective than push notifications for building a well-regarded professional persona within the company. And she concluded that “it was more important to be transparent and authentic and to share a perspective that wasn’t overly scripted and polished” when speaking and being interviewed.

Leaning on mentors, coaches, and trusted confidants also helped Guarini to find her voice and provide her feedback on messaging, tone, and delivery.

Author, keynote speaker, and former CIO of GE Healthcare Global Services Daphne E. Jones, says she, too, saw the need to build visibility when she started her career at IBM.

“Initially it wasn’t only about my gender being scarce and underrepresented — it was also my race. Black folks were not often seen in the halls of digital companies, let alone women,” explains Jones, founder and CEO of The Board Curators and a member of three corporate boards.

“As I saw people getting promoted that may not have had as much to offer as I did, but may have simply fit a certain demographic, I decided that I would not take that lying down,” she says. “I decided I would spend the rest of my career learning how to play the game so that I, too, would be promoted at the right time and provide needed value to the company I worked for. That determination parlayed into a mindset of learning how to win.”

As part of her determination to be seen, Jones volunteered for projects that were difficult, important, and visible — a strategy that paid off.

“I found a project I was told was impossible to do, gathered a team together, got some funding, and did it. Not only did my team perform well on this global assignment, we were showcased with the company group chairman. After that I got promoted to VP,” says Jones, author of Win When They Say You Won’t.

Others are using different tactics to boost their profiles.

For example, Natalia Melniciuc, an IT mediation manager for Orange, a telecommunications company based in Paris, focuses on her online presence, which has provided her a conduit to other opportunities for recognition.

“I started to invest in developing my LinkedIn profile thoroughly, keeping it up to date, sharing achievements [and] successes, and following persons of interest,” she says. “Getting the recognition and feedback influenced my self-confidence and desire to do more. Participation in professional events, conferences, and summits enabled my connections with the great people from the IT domain with whom I would not intersect in my usual life. [These] boosted my professional network, where I found additional inspiration and support.”

Taking steps that matter

Cultivating and maintaining a public professional image takes work and ongoing attention, agree the sources for this article. They also say the amount and type of work varies, based on individual career objectives, personalities, and strengths at any given time.

“It’s not one-size-fits-all,” Stine says. “People have different goals and different things they’re trying to achieve. Everyone has to define it for themselves.”

Stine has also learned that not all strategies are helpful. For example, she authored a white paper about data and Europe’s value-added tax that didn’t elevate her profile. “It’s great that I wrote a white paper, but the audience was wrong. I wasn’t focused on a European market [professionally], so that didn’t really add a lot of value to what I was trying to achieve,” she explains.

Others have similar opinions, saying that assignments, commitments, and volunteer roles that are too far outside their professional spheres may be personally and professionally fulfilling but do not generate increased recognition among peers.

On the other hand, sources say they also had to guard against doing too much; not only does it take time away from other professional and personal commitments, it may diminish the impact of one’s efforts. As Jones observes: “Being overexposed can be just as dangerous as being underexposed.”

Others share similar stories, saying that common missteps include oversharing at times, failing to strike the right tone when speaking, and giving into fears of being inadequately experienced to be considered an expert.

Unique challenges for women leaders

In most ways, the importance of a public professional persona, the strategies to craft that persona, and the challenges of doing so are the same for everybody (in tech and beyond), regardless of gender, according to career advisers and researchers.

But there are challenges women face because of their gender.

To start, research shows that women still spend more time on family responsibilities than men, leaving them less time to pursue opportunities for crafting their brand, says Erin Lloyd Gordon, senior principal analyst at Gartner.

Moreover, research shows that men and women demonstrating the same leadership traits are often perceived differently, Gordon says. For example, a man taking charge is considered a boss; a woman is bossy — a generalization that has been documented enough to earn a name: “role congruity theory.”

“It’s pretty much the technical term for a double standard,” Gordon says. “It’s not fair, but it exists. So [women must ask themselves]: What are you going to do about it?”

Gordon advises female IT leaders to be cognizant of this issue, seek feedback from trusted peers to understand how they are perceived, and use that information as they see fit.

Such issues can keep women from pursuing opportunities help them build recognition, Lamoreaux says.

“They don’t want to be seen as glory-seeking, and that holds women back more than anything else from public speaking,” she says. “Men are often encouraged to go out and share their thoughts, but there is still a lot of bias against women doing that. And when we demonstrate our thought leadership, there can be a backlash.”

Those factors may contribute to the low percentage of women in IT leadership; one report found that women hold only 20% of the CIO positions in Fortune 500 companies.

That figure may be discouraging, but Anita Kijanka, founder and president of the Poland-based organization Strong Women in IT, says it has a silver lining.

Conference sponsors, event organizers, corporate officials, and others increasingly recognize the gender imbalance within the tech community and are looking for ways to bring more women into the profession, she says. As part of those efforts, they’re more attentive to having women in forums, panel discussions, and the like.

“I hope in 10 years this is not an advantage [for women]. But right now it is, so women should use it,” says Kijanka, whose organization published a 2023 report, Strong Women in IT Global Edition.

Chrissy Healey, a vice president analyst at Gartner, says women aren’t the only ones who should seize on such opportunities.

“Companies and allies are in positions to lift women up, to demonstrate that women have the expertise [to be center stage],” she says, explaining that those entities and individuals are in position to recommend women for board positions, leadership roles, event speakers, and the like.

She continues: “Companies should want their women leaders to do this, because they should want leaders to be part of the discussions that shape industry rules and regulations and standards. And companies need to recognize that it’s important to be willing to elevate women to these roles because there are organizations evaluating them on whether they have women in such positions.”

“We always say women should take ownership,” she adds, “but companies need to take ownership, too.”