International Women’s Day 2022: A Fireside Chat with Some of Altana’s Leaders

I was proud to host an International Women’s Day discussion at Altana, which acknowledged the contributions of females to the company, tech, and the sciences at large.

The panel:

• Lena Bartell, Manager of Data Science and Tech Lead: Lena has a PhD in physics, with a background in biomedical engineering (she says she’s dissected hundreds of cow knees). In biomedical engineering, Lena “fell in love with analyzing data” using Python and other programming tools. Prior to Altana, Lena was working in the federal government sphere, building AI-based anomaly detection algorithms.
• Cadie Naquin Hopkins, Federal: Cadie transitioned to Altana from the intelligence community, where she served as an analyst for the Department of Defense. Prior to DoD, Cadie worked on the industry side as a consultant for aerospace, defense, and technology companies. Cadie also co-founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the Command Purpose Foundation with Altana colleague, Erringer Helbling. The non-profit serves veteran women who are transitioning out of active-duty military service and into the civilian world.
• Heather Graybill, Solutions Manager for Shipping & Logistics: Heather began her career in the fintech space, doing UI UX design before shifting into sales enablement. She then joined OneTrust as one of their first sales operations hires and helped build out everything from Salesforce to internal operations while the company experienced extreme growth. Prior to Altana, Heather worked with Flexport for three years, most recently launching a team at Flexport that managed all EMEA clients moving goods into and out of North America.

The following are excerpts of our conversation that have been edited for clarity and brevity.

“The word ‘female,’ when inserted in front of something, is always with a note of surprise. Female COO, female pilot, female surgeon — as if the gender implies surprise … One day there won’t be female leaders. There will just be leaders.” – Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and Founder of Leanin.org

Ali: Which females do you admire most that helped shape you?

Cadie: I come from a family of firsts in many ways. My dad was the first in his family to go to college. My mom was one of the first computer scientists back in the 80s. And so I think they really never limited my belief of what was really in the realm of the possible. But I think, similarly, the women I really admire professionally are those who don’t fit in a box, and who forge their own path. I have mentors who have taken risks, defied norms, or even made hard decisions to leave the workforce for several years. This empowers others, including myself, to do the same.

Heather: Yeah, so the “fun” thing about the supply chain industry is it’s not historically diverse. So, unrelatedly, somebody I love to pull from is the mentality of Stacey Abrams. She impacts change that is bigger than just her by examining whole processes and uplifting others. This mentality is something I try to pull from in my day to day but also as I try to uplift other minorities in the industry.

Ali: A Harvard Business Review article reported that women asked for raises just as much as men, which is interesting since this is a common argument for why the gender pay gap still exists. But this study found that women ask for raises just as often as men, however, men have a 5% higher rate of “success.” What stats on females in the workplace stand out to you most?

Cadie: One of the most interesting studies that I've ever seen on this topic was the analysis of over 80,000 military performance evaluations for the words that supervisors used to describe subordinates across gender lines. So for a man, one might describe him as “analytical,” and for women, they might describe her as “compassionate.” The study also found that leaders perceived performance in men and women in fundamentally different ways – supervisors used more positive words to describe men than women overall. It’s helpful to understand the ways that subconscious bias can pave different paths for advancement for all genders in our organizations.

Lena: My ethics class in grad school discussed biases in hiring for people with science skills. I think one of the more surprising things to me was that subconscious biases are sort of easy to prove in hiring and, interestingly, both men and women managers all show equal bias. So it's something we should all be more conscious about.

Ali: Next, let’s touch on breaking barriers but first, wanted to acknowledge Grace Hopper’s contribution to our industry. She was the mother of computing, who also coined the term “computer bug” and debugging. She was an American Navy admiral, who also said:

“The most dangerous phrase in the English language is we've always done it this way.” — Grace Hopper

In your professional life, have you ever felt like you had to overcome biases or barriers?

Cadie: I have noticed, in my own personal career, but also through the Command Purpose Foundation nonprofit work is: when you look around and see people who don't really look like you, there's this real pressure to conform—and kind of, sand the edges a little bit. These one-size-fits-all models don't really always work, because they were built by the majority for the majority, and don't always work for minorities—and not just gender minorities. And so I think favoring too much rigidity or structure over having some flexibility can often be to the detriment of minorities and to the detriment of women. Because of their own pasts, their leadership will just fundamentally look different, because they are different.

Lena: I'm very lucky enough that I haven't experienced any overt sexism. But I do have like a few interesting stories from my a previous job that are sobering to some extent. And it's worth pointing out because I think they're more subtle. 

In a previous job, I worked very closely with customers in the army, so I had to fly out to support flight tests out in Arizona, and the army folks would be there, especially when we had big demos and things like that. I was there representing my company and the product. I remember on our final big demo, they brought in the sort-of highest-ranking officer. It was a woman, which was really exciting to see. Because usually, when I went on these trips, there'd be like, 50 people, and I would be the only woman in the room. So it was nice to see her as a leader representing women in the industry.

But the first day, we were all hanging out getting to know each other, she was chatting and telling stories with everyone in the room. And because everyone's very sort of tuned into status in the army, when she talks, everyone else shuts up and listens. And I'm just some engineer in the back, that she's never met before. She started complaining about some problem that happened. And she looked over at me across the room, and said, “You know, how catty woman can be right?” And made this comment in front all of my customers and all my peers. I had to just swallow that and, and continue to work with her and the customers for the rest of the week. Especially as she was in such a perfect place to influence the perceptions of women in the industry, it was disappointing to see her lean into that stereotype and reaffirm this harmful narrative.

Heather: Once, I was managing a tense situation with a former customer of mine. We had a few back-and-forth emails until finally, I wrote a well-crafted email that identified all the issues we were dealing with, and what had to change. He replied saying something that was extremely inappropriate and had no context to the email conversation we’d been having. It was one of those things. I was newer at the company, working on a very established account and he was someone who was very reputable in the industry. And I was like, ‘Would you have done that to the male guy that owned the account before?’ 

Ali: Very sorry that happened, Heather. Sharing these realities every so often helps remind men in the workplace that they can and should do better.

I have one last quote that I think really touches on both the human and business side of the issue we're discussing:

“Anyone can replicate a product. There are lots of brilliant minds out there that know how to code, but there’s unique DNA to a brand. You cannot have a brand without people. That is the most important asset you will ever have.” – Whitney Wolfe Herd, Founder and CEO of Bumble

Ali: So lastly, what advice would you give to employers to consider as society works towards gender equity in the workplace?

Cadie: I think the pandemic has had a large role in allowing people to be their whole selves at work, to counter this earlier notion that we can just separate who we are in the workplace and who we are as people. I think the pandemic shattered that for many of us. So I think just allowing flexibility and building institutional support for one another.

Thanks Lena, Cadie and Heather for joining this important conversation.