Women in STEM Through the Product Lens, and more

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn on November 8, 2016.

Few months ago I had the privilege to speak at the Women in STEM Summit organized by the Innovation Enterprise as an open forum discussion on the role of women in this rapidly evolving and dynamic industry. Even though I keep up to date on the latest research highlighting gender bias issues in education, workforce and beyond, and more importantly live the life of a woman in STEM every day, this was my first attempt at organizing my views on the topic. I structured my talk to share my personal journey for context, my perspective on the intersection of gender and STEM through the product thinking lens, how I hope to contribute to the solution with reimagining and transforming math education, and gave, obviously unsolicited advice to a younger version of myself. My slides are below, but for additional color, read on.

Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now

Growing up in an academic family of math and literature professor parents in Soviet Uzbekistan, I was fortunate to have a computer at home at an early age (no one I knew at the time had one). This not only led me to learn how to program in BASIC and Pascal, but also helped me earn money by typing up my grandfather’s (renowned Uzbek poet) poems. Being constantly surrounded by my father’s students with balanced representation of gender and nationalities, my interest in math, technology and sciences grew as I grew. Furthermore, starting my tutoring business at the age of 9, and turning it into a successful business with a salary adults would envy by the end of high school gave me an early taste of financial independence and entrepreneurship.

However, despite growing up in a very progressive and supportive household that inspired me to dream astronomically big, taught me I could achieve those dreams if I loved my work, believed in myself and worked very hard, as I grew older I realized the rest of the society did not work that way. Treatment of women as second class citizens frustrated me. Society did not expect much out of me beyond getting married, bearing children and raising a family. The top education USSR was known for was rapidly declining post Soviet Union collapse, and the nation was well into its journey towards hopeless sheepism. I decided to move to America.

I spent countless hours in British and American libraries listening to TOEFL-prep cassette tapes and reading every English language textbook I could find (internet was not a thing then), while helping my dad write a soon-to-become-a-bestseller English textbook. Then one summer day as a shy, optimistic, stubborn, ambitious, and brave 17-year-old, I waved goodbye to my family and friends, hid the 900 USD my parents gave me (>3 years worth of professor’s salary) in one of my shoes, and made the biggest jump of my lifetime to the land of opportunity. Ok, to be fair, my parents were the ones who were brave to let me go.

Jumping steps, hopping ladders

As I arrived at the University of Tennessee my advisors underestimated my math and coding skills, and suggested I followed a set curriculum loaded with prerequisite courses. Perhaps this was partly because I was a foreigner and adjusting to the new culture and language is not something to be taken lightly, or perhaps because the entire education system was based on a curriculum with iterative, comfortably challenging progression of steps. After getting a liberating ‘screw that, you can handle more advanced coursework‘ advice from my father’s former doctoral student (a badass lady with whom my parents trusted me in the USA, which determined my college choice in the first place), I bluntly ignored the prerequisites and enrolled myself in courses such as Calculus 2 instead of the suggested Algebra 1 (Calculus 3 would be more up to my level, but I had already pushed the system too much) and data structures in C (without having coded in C before). I finished the very challenging semester with straight A’s, and that set the pattern for the rest of my undergraduate tenure: at the beginning of every semester I hung out at the dean’s office convincing the dean I could handle the above maximum course load while working the maximum number of hours permitted for international students. Oh, and I wanted them to waive my prerequisites as I had already finished the classes they were supposed to prepare me for. (As Grace Hopper said, “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”). This worked more often than not, at least enough times to award me a B.S. in Computer Science with Mathematics minor at the age of 20.

After a valuable graduate school period that exposed me to the magic of Machine Learning thanks to Dr. Michael Berry, and working with the scientists of the Oak Ridge National Labs, I entered the workforce eager to solve real-life problems. Founders of the companies I worked for inspired me with their vision and creativity. I was determined to learn from them while having impact on customer’s lives, until one day I would create something amazing on my own to help move the human race forward. Corporate America provided the playground for me to learn and grow as an engineer and a product manager. However, to my surprise, the setting was a very conservative one. I often found myself confined within the walls of my job function, grounded by the gender biases of my peers and management (to the point I thought I was either invisible, had incomprehensible English, or must have some sort of a speech impediment), frustrated by the unfair corporate ladders, and bruised by invisible glass ceilings every time I aimed high.

Unlike my parents and professors, many of my managers were not skilled at, nor were they interested in, pulling me up and exposing me to higher ventures (frankly they had their own careers to worry about), and my repeated feedback on lack of challenge was met with ‘I don’t have an opportunity at this point’. I could not convince my boss’s boss’s boss that given the opportunity I could master my boss’s boss’s job. It would be a stretch, and I would undoubtedly fail in the beginning, but in the following weeks and months I would master it. Because I had done it so many times before. Because I had it in me. Over the years, brilliant women I knew either dropped out of tech or were stalled in their careers without reaching even a fraction of their potential. I struggled to find role models. However, the most frustrating part was that I could not say “screw this” and start (and crash :P) my own startups as I was on a long and painful road called Legal Immigration (or what I call a modern form of white collar slavery) towards a green card.

Through the product lens

Being an intrapreneur product manager in various tech organizations for the past 10 years, I have identified the biggest problems users face, imagined a better future for them, and built products to bridge the two. Naturally, I apply the product thinking approach when I think about gender issues in STEM as well. What is the problem, for who? What’s the reality now? How did we get here? Why are we here? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? Refer to the “Through the Product Lens” section of the slides below to capture a glimpse of my early attempts at answering these questions. I will be sure to share more in the near future as I refine, evolve and occasionally revolve my perspectives.

Based on my observations and personal experience, here are my main hypotheses on why women are underrepresented in STEM fields:

• [Not so] Great expectations: Society in general does not expect women to innovate, make discoveries, or solve world’s colossal problems. Women are however expected to be pretty from an early age, and are given pretty dolls to play with. I firmly believe we need women to improve the lives of not only the womankind, but also the entire humankind.
• Opportunity to play: Women don’t get as much opportunity to play in STEM fields as men do (biased interview processes, getting groomed for promotions, etc.). No matter how talented you are, if you don’t play, you don’t make mistakes. You don’t fall. You don’t get up. You don’t grow. This is especially crucial in the fast changing world of tech. Missed opportunities might appear small at each step, but they add up, and over the years women lag more and more behind. If you are a manager, a mentor or a parent to a woman, I have a friendly request: pay attention to her talents, pull her up (peers will do the pushing, you need to do the pulling), expose her to challenging areas, give her a chance. Fundamentally, you have an obligation in front of humanity.
• “I don’t belong”: Many women themselves feel they don’t belong within STEM. Role models are few and far between, and sadly storytellers tend to forget or undermine the contributions of remarkable women in history. Plus, the first two points above don’t help either.

Reimagining mathematics education

Most people would probably agree — current education system is outdated and is not optimized for today’s generation, especially when it comes to mathematics. Frustrated by the current state of math education and the blooming ignorance of the population leading to major social and political crises in the world, my father with over 45 years of experience in mathematics research and education has taken on a grand vision — to reimagine and transform how math is taught. I am collaborating with him on a book in hopes of inspiring, teaching and equipping humanity, especially women, with creativity and skills needed to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

By reforming both the content and the style using an interconnected teaching approach that combines mathematics, language, philosophy and art, we aim to instill mathematical culture in a reader, while making even the most advanced concepts comprehensible and applicable. Or as my Lyft driver simply put it once, if I can really teach math to every human being on earth, there will be no terrorists. You can find more info here and stay tuned for the book.

Advice to a younger me

Based on what I have experienced and learned in the past few years, if I could go back in time I would give myself some advice. Certainly I don’t claim to have it all figured out, nor do I think what works for me will work for everyone. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but I know what it’s been like to be me. That said, if any of it resonates with you, take it and pass it forward.

Start > Finish. The world puts too much emphasis on finishes, yet the hardest and the most important part is to start. The earlier you start, the better. You don’t have to finish early however. Just start early and noodle on things for a while. (Context: I am a hopeless procrastinator. According to Adam Grant in his book Originals, creative people tend to procrastinate, but they do start early).

Dream crazy big. Want to be the 3rd (!) woman physicist ever to win that Nobel prize? Want to become the next self-made billionaire? Want to make women equally represented in STEM in your lifetime? Why not?

Spend more time in your head. I am the most creative and productive when I have time + space, in solitude. I am happiest when I create.

Poke your head above water. From time to time, zoom out, step out of your bubble, skip a beat or two, intentionally. Where am I? Where am I headed? Am I true to myself? Am I in tune? Am I making progress towards my dreams? Do I feel alive? Do I feel in control or am I being swept by the bigger currents? If you’re off course, correct your path, change directions if needed. If you’re out of tune, the best thing to do might be to skip a beat, to take a pause to breathe. Also, beware of the workplace equivalent of unpaid work. If you keep finding yourself in situations of getting your bosses (but not yourself) promoted for your awesome work, or helping a man land on the moon without recognition, go to the next advice.

F*ck this shit! Don’t put up with crap. Escalate, make noise, leave (but don’t give up on STEM for the wrong reasons)! Don’t wait too long, before you know it, you will start adapting. The bigger currents will swallow you, and you will find yourself running, so very hard, in place. (Frankly, I’m still working on this one). Remember, like it or not, you’re paving the road for future “you”, for the next generation of women. From time to time, jump! Best things happen when “you jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down” (Reid Hoffman).

Be kind to yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve come a long way. There’s even longer way to go, but you are on the right path. If not, you’ll fix it.

BREATHE. When I was a kid, I used to get severe motion sickness. In those dark moments, my mom would constantly give me a simple, yet the most helpful advice: breathe deeply (“chuqur-chuqur nafas ol”). To this day, in my darkest moments, when I feel lost, she reminds me to be free to be me. So every time you feel like patriarchy is too much, when you get killer cramps before an important meeting, when the world just seems unfair, remember mom’s advice: take deep breaths, breathe deeply.

And one more thing. When you’re sick, for kindness sake, take a sick day. The world will wait. The virus does not.

We live in times where being a woman in STEM is not ideal. Yet this is the best time in history to be a woman, and this is the most exciting time to be in STEM. I am incredibly fortunate — I stand behind generations of brilliant women in STEM and beyond, who worked tirelessly, sacrificed their entire beings and paved the way for me to have the life I have. I hope to do my share for the next generation of women, so one day we can stop talking about gender (or any kind of) inequality. I hope the next generation is not flooded with depressing articles on gender bias issues with all talk, but very little action. In fact, I already see new women engineers and product managers entering the workforce with more favorable conditions, and I feel very optimistic for the future.

It is time to act. Gender issues are not the problems of women alone. They affect the entire humanity, hence should be solved by everyone. Needless to say, we need men allies. Some of my guy friends tell me they are not included in conversations where gender issues are discussed and solved. If you feel similarly, I urge you to actively raise your hand and be a part of the solution.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. What are you doing to solve for equality?

Be cool. But also be warm.

#WomankindIsHumankind #WomenInTech #WomenInSTEM #ProductManagement #MathEducation