What Being an Ally Means to Me — As A Male Engineer and the Executive Sponsor of Women@HubSpot

In October 2017, as the #metoo movement was just beginning, I watched as story after story emerged of women coming forth telling their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. The highest profile cases came from female celebrities. Alyssa Milano. Gwyneth Paltrow. Ashley Judd.

And then the movement jumped from the land of Hollywood and celebrities to friends and family. I remember when a female software engineer I work with posted her #metoo tag on Facebook and it brought it home for me. While I don’t know her story, it was crushing to know that someone I work with regularly had a #metoo story to tell.

A few months later, I was talking with another female colleague and she told me a story of applying for her first job in tech. The interviews were going well and she was excited to join the company. And then the recruiter asked her out on a date. She went home and cried, wondering what to do. She called her mom. And her mom told her, “Welcome to the working world.”

When she told me this story, I was mortified. I was first and foremost disgusted that someone, in a position of power — like the recruiter running the job interview — would think that it was in any way acceptable to abuse their position of power and cross the barrier between the professional and the personal. To me, this was an aberration and something to be horrified by.

But it was her mom’s reaction that hit me even harder.

To me, this was unthinkable. But to her mom, this was the norm.

I am not a woman in tech and I will never truly know what it feels like to walk in a woman’s shoes. I have never had to deal with people making comments about my physical appearance while I do my job. I’ve never had people wonder whether I earned my job based on my performance. I have never had co-workers flirting with me or asking me out on dates while I was focused on becoming the best engineer I could be. I have never gone through an interview process where none of the interviewers looked like me. I have never gone into a leadership meeting, and looked around to realize that I was the only person in the room of my gender. I have never had to worry about the weight of feeling like I was representing an entire population when I speak. I have never had to worry that maybe I am not being compensated fairly compared to my peers.

I will never be able to walk in the shoes of a woman in tech. While I can try to understand what it’s like, I’ll never actually understand the depth of it.

While there are a lot of things I will never experience, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a role to play or that I should sit on the sidelines. There are many things that I can do.

I can listen and be an active ally.

I can lead from the top to help create an inclusive environment where women are treated fairly; where they are compensated according to their performance; and where they are given the freedom to focus on their craft and become great engineers, designers, product managers, and UX researchers.

I can lend my voice to the cause to amplify messages that might otherwise be lost. I can make sure everyone knows that inappropriate and unjust behavior will not be tolerated, and can ensure that we have a zero tolerance policy for anything that creates an unsafe working environment. And, most importantly, I can open my door so everyone knows I am there to listen and hear how we can improve our culture.

I can try to be a role model for all of the other men in the organization to help them be conscious of how our behaviors, big and small, can impact whether we are creating an inclusive and safe environment. As a male, I can demonstrate that women should not bear the brunt of educating and creating change and that men, too, have a core responsibility to listen, learn, and buy into making their workplaces not just ones where women survive, but where they can thrive.

As a member of the executive leadership team, I can ensure that this initiative has buy in and support from the top levels of the company rather than leaving this to the individual employees to drive.

This is why I became the co-executive sponsor of Women@HubSpot. An employee resource group available for all HubSpotters globally, Women@HubSpot is meant to build and promote a culture that empowers women at every stage of career growth through programming and professional development.

My role is to act as a voice, at the executive level, for women throughout the organization, and to help enact changes and bring awareness to challenges and issues. As a male engineer, my role is to listen to the group while helping to activate other men at HubSpot who want to help but don’t know how to.

Brian Halligan, our CEO, often says that we are out to create a company that our children and grandchildren can be proud of. To me, this means helping to create an environment in which Rose, Zoe, Cimmy, Olga, Kerry, Katie, Sarah, Sara, Angela, Libby, Chelsea, and all of the other women in product and engineering and all of HubSpot can come to work every day to do their best, grow, and thrive in their careers, without having to worry that they are being treated differently based on their gender. More broadly I want to create an environment where all people, regardless of background, gender, ethnicity, or life experience can grow and thrive in their careers.

I have a lot to learn, but hope I can be an advocate and ally for women at HubSpot.

Through this, I can help create a company we can all be proud of.