[Podcast] Meritocracy, Sponsorship, and Being the Only Woman in Leadership

As some of you may know, I’m currently the only female executive team member at my company and that experience — like the experiences of many women around the world who are also in the same boat — has its ups and downs.

Because of this experience (among many things), I’ve become increasingly passionate about helping other women in the workplace find their voice and footing, and to empower them to be their true and authentic selves.

Recently, I sat down (virtually) with my friend Marisol Camacho on her podcast, The Woment, to talk about what I’ve learned from my experiences thus far and things that I wish I knew before. Her podcast is all about women coming together having real honest conversations; check it out and do reach out if you want to talk more about this!

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Here’s an excerpt from the podcast:

Camacho: Tell us more about your experience navigating the work environment given that you are one of few women especially in a leadership position.

Chiang: A little bit more context for our listeners today — currently I’m one of three women at the company and I’m the only female executive team member. In the history of the company, we’ve had three [female executive team members].

Going back to your question of how do I navigate to being as well as being one of few women at the director level here at Yup — when I first joined Yup back in 2015, there wasn’t a woman leader at the company and there was a really long span of not seeing a woman in the leadership team until I joined the executive team in 2017/2018 or so.

At the beginning, I really believed in — for a lack of a better word — meritocracy. I thought that if I worked hard, I would make it. But what happened and how I got to where I am today was actually a combination of so much more.

Yes, I worked hard and yes I was a little lucky, but at the same time I had really great sponsorship from my previous manager who really looked out for me and really hone my skills so that when the opportunity did arise for someone to join the leadership team, I was ready for it.

Without that sponsorship from my previous manager, it wouldn’t have happened.

Reflecting on this term, meritocracy is a word that is extremely prevalent in the tech community and something that I’ve realized is that I’ve always imagined a non-biased understanding of meritocracy and what good work is. And I found out that it’s not that simple.

For example, what does confidence look like? How does that tie in with someone’s perception of what is good work? Then the next layer down is are there any subconscious biases that someone may have around what assertiveness or confidence in the workplace should look like.

[Editor’s Note: This is not to say that men or the majority group do not experience something similar, but rather that women or the minority group have to overcome these hurdles and biases that work against them]

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McKinsey did an interesting study on women in the workplace and there is one article that really resonated called “oneliness” where you are the only one in the group — for example, you’re the only woman in a group or the only x in a group— and they found that when there’s only one woman in an executive team, that woman would experience on average more discrimination.

All of this ties together because it is important to talk about not only how I became a director but also what it’s like.