Introducing ‘Beyond the Elephant in the Valley’

Three years ago a friend and former colleague, Hillary Mickell introduced me to Trae Vassallo. A former partner at Kleiner Perkins, Trae had recently testified in the Ellen Pao trial. You can read more about that case and her testimony here. The most surprising aspect of the experience for Trae were how many women — friends, acquaintances and strangers — reached out to let her know she wasn’t alone. Each of them had experienced similar mistreatment and sexual harassment in the valley. Trae’s desire to quantify the extent of harassment and gender bias in Silicon Valley, led Hillary to introduce the two of us. This was the beginning of Elephant in the Valley. You can read more on our website about the original study, and see a link to the two of us participating in a keynote at SXSW in 2016. For me, a highlight of the trip was seeing my face on the same powerpoint slide as Barack Obama (!) who was also a keynote speaker that week.

I was delighted when this ‘labor of love’ project became a media sensation. After Trae and I unveiled the research on Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode podcast, the study was cited in dozens of publications, ranging from the Irish Times to Vogue magazine. The survey was in the field during the summer of 2015 and collected responses from 200 senior level women in Silicon Valley. The survey generated enormous interest. I credit this to the severe lack of information in the period before the #metoo movement. Rumors were plentiful and anecdotal evidence was widespread, though nobody knew the true scale and scope. The conscious and unconscious bias that women in Silicon Valley are subjected to on a daily basis hadn’t been properly quantified until Elephant, and the findings were a wake-up call.

My career has been focused on consumer insights. On behalf of my clients, I often research media preferences and buying behaviors, then leave the work of marketing and product development in their hands. Similarly, my goal here is to describe the working environment experienced by professional women in Silicon Valley. While I can’t prescribe solutions to the problems of unconscious bias, active discrimination and harassment, I hope to support the many dedicated women and men who are working to find those solutions. Specifically, I want to be sure they have good data with which to work.

When asked about the impact of the study, I usually cite these two outcomes: Building Awareness and Benchmarking.

• I feel it’s critical to build awareness of the scope of unconscious biases and overt actions that negatively impact women. This is especially true for the workplaces of leading-edge companies that really should be more enlightened and welcoming. Within these companies, many men who consider themselves liberated and feminist are shocked to learn the prevalence of hostile workplace practices, unreasonable colleagues and invisible barriers to advancement.
• It’s also important to create benchmarks for specific points in time and for specific industries so that improvements can be prioritized and progress can be charted.

Since its launch in 2015, the survey instrument from the Elephant in the Valley has been repurposed to measure gender bias in the automotive industry, the advertising business, and my own field of marketing research (spoiler alert — I chose a relatively good profession for women ;). I have just re-fielded the survey among women in Silicon Valley to see how the climate has changed in the past 3 years. In upcoming weeks, I will share some of the highlights from the latest survey as well as some insights from survey results across several industries.

I welcome your questions and feedback. And please contact me if you are interested in fielding the survey in your own industry.