In 1989 I landed on the 2-person skunkworks team that developed the first proto-CRM system (Customer relationship Management is the fastest growing software market — estimated at $40Billion in 2017 — https://www.information-age.com/crm-fastest-growing-software-market-2018-gartner-123471378/) — and I believe one of the reasons CRM emerged in this way, is because a woman (me) was instrumental in designing a prototype that was “people-friendly” and another woman, Elaine managed the roll out to the Oracle Direct Marketing Division that highlighted user feedback making sure the software continued to evolve to respond to users and achieve outcomes. And women managers, among them Sally, Mary, Anneke and Teresa banded together to create an environment where everyone’s contribution was valued regardless of gender. It was not an accident that CRM has emerged as the fastest growing after 30 years.
Before that happened:
At age 15, my uncle told me I would never be any good at math — later my MS from MIT was in finance where I studied under future Nobel Economics winners and also Fisher Black
At age 24, I was told that there was no leadership path for women in the Multi national corporation I worked in.
At my first Silicon Valley job at Intel — I was told I was not technical enough — even though I had been an assembler programmer at Shell for 2 years as my first job out of college.
That which does not kill you, makes you stronger — all this push back made me learn to be stronger. It really is like push-ups and running till exhaustion — its hard but it develops the muscles to take on the really big challenges. As women, we have to use the obstacles to get stronger. And recognize that we must work and support each other.