Sarah, Selena, Lauren, Annie and Kelly

I met Kelly over dinner as she explained some of the important things she’s learned about recruiting top talent at Riveria and Oracle. Her current focus was product and engineering executives, so it felt natural to ask, “You work in a space where it’s particularly hard to get great female candidates. How do you find them?”

She turned to me and said, “You’re right. It’s a big problem.” Then silence.

It hit me hard: here was this big known problem — and sitting around a table agreeing it was a problem was no longer okay. So I decided at that moment to do something about it.

In technology, we know we need more woman at more tables in more discussions solving more problems. We also know that the gap in numbers of women in management, particularly for women of color, begins at the very first rung, and we continue to lose ground with every step. Having more women at the board and executive levels simply requires having more women at the first and second levels of management.

Our team at Costanoa thought about the best women we know at each of level of management. They were:

• Sarah Leary, VP of Marketing, & Co-Founder of Nextdoor
• Selina Tobaccowala, former President & CTO of Survey Monkey
• Lauren Mullenholz, Global Head of Insights at LinkedIn
• Annie Case, Global Strategy & Planning Associate at Uber

And we invited them to join us for a Seat at the Table — a candid conversation with the intent of sharing skills, advice, career turning-points, challenges and small steps each one of us can take to raise everyone’s game. This event is about helping more women in tech have more seats at more tables — at every level of management — and what we can do better to collectively make a big difference. We hope this is just the first conversation of many.

This event is open to anyone. Please spread the word and join us. We welcome your questions to our panelists using #techseatattable on Twitter.

Seat at the Table

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 5:30 p.m.

Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens St, San Francisco, CA 94158

Register here.

www.costanoavc.com