Puppet
Yvonne Wassenaar is CEO of Puppet.
- Women still account for just 18% of the chief technology and information officers at the largest public and private-sector companies in the US.
- As female tech leaders rise up the ranks, Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar says they should take more risks, do a better job advocating for themselves internally, and network more broadly.
- Wassenaar, for example, considered not taking the job of chief information at software firm New Relic over concerns it wouldn't work out. It wasn't until a friend pointed out her hesitancy that Wassenaar realized how risk-adverse she was being.
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The amount of female tech leaders that make it to the job of chief information or technology officer is increasing, but the overall numbers are still abysmal.
Just 18% of the top 1,000 public and private-sector companies in the US have women in those roles, according to a recent study. It's a reality that Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar knows all too well.
"Most of the decisions are still being made, at least in my world, by white men," she recently told Business Insider.
To help remedy the situation, Wassenaar says up-and-coming female CIOs or CTOs need to do a better job of advocating for themselves to gain the diverse experience necessary to lead a company's digital efforts, as well as expand their network beyond other women.
She can speak from experience as one of the few CIOs - male or female - who made the jump to CEO. In 2017, she left software analytics company New Relic to become the head of drone maker Airware. In 2019, she moved to become CEO of IT automation firm Puppet.
Aspiring female leaders need to take risks and 'raise their hands more'
Tech leaders are increasingly tasked with leading major digital overhauls at organizations, giving them a closer connection to the top brass.
But the expansion of the role beyond overseeing back-office technology has also required those executives to develop a more diverse skill set that allows them to understand the needs of not just the IT team, but all business units across an enterprise.
One way for aspiring CIOs or CTOs to gain that knowledge is by taking roles in teams outside of IT. But women may be more risk-averse to pursuing such a step, argues Wassenaar.
"'I'd encourage them to raise their hands more for stretch assignments and to ask for more," she said. "It's not as risky as it feels."
Females, Wassenaar says, tend to still hold the notion that by working hard, the opportunities will present themselves. "If you want to get to the CEO job, you need to reach for it. It's not typically just going to happen," she said.
Wassenaar was hesitant, for example, to leave VMWare to become chief information officer at New Relic. At the software firm, she made "very good money" and "had moderate independence." It took a friend pressing her on these concerns, asking questions like "Are you trying to tell me you couldn't get another big company job if that didn't work out?", to put them in context.
"We tend to sell perceived risks that may not be real," Wassenaar said.
Don't just focus on female-only networking opportunities
The lack of female leadership across corporate America is driving executives to arrange women-focused networking groups and events. While those are powerful and important, Wassenaar argues it's important to expand your network more broadly.
You need to "make sure that you're getting sponsorship across a diverse set of people in power," she said.
Often, that means white males. Caucasian men still hold 66 percent of all Fortune 500 board seats and the vast majority of chairmanship positions, according to a recent study by the Alliance for Board Diversity and Deloitte.
Having the "broadest set of exposure" can ensure that your name comes up when opportunities arise, Wassenaar says.
And those advocates are critical.
A recent study found that workplace sponsors can help women more easily climb up the career ladder, with 65.5% of female executives claiming to have such a support system internally.
But who your advocate is remains important. Many women of color, for example, are at a disadvantage because their mentors are most commonly also non-white females. Having more women in positions of leadership, however, could begin to correct that imbalance.