Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Geek Girl Rising
WORK NOTES: with Heather Cabot
PSEUDONYM(S): Walravens, Samantha Parent
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.samanthawalravens.com/
CITY: Marin County
STATE: CA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://geekgirlrising.com/about/ * https://us.macmillan.com/author/samanthawalravens * http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/geek-girl-rising-heather-cabot-samantha-walravens-interview
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married; children: four.
EDUCATION:Princeton University, B.A.; University of Virginia, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, journalist, editor, public speaker, and work-life expert. Speaker and presenter at meetings, conferences, and corporate seminars. Guest on television and radio programs. PC World, former technology reporter; Tumbleweed Software, former leader of marketing communications.
MEMBER:Phi Beta Kappa; Pipeline Angels (an angel investment network for early-stage, women-led startups).
WRITINGS
Contributor to print and online publications, such as the Huffington Post, Forbes, PC World, Healthy Women, Urban Baby, Salon.com, Modern Mom, and Disney Online.
SIDELIGHTS
Samantha Walravens is a writer and editor who specializes in technology, work-life balance, and women’s careers. She lived and worked in the American technology capital, Silicon Valley, where she served as a technology reporter for PC World magazine. She has also been a marketing communications specialist at Tumbleweed Software, an early tech startup that produced security software. Currently, Walravens is a technology investor and business export who works with women-led startups through networks such as Pipeline Angels, an angel investing group. She was educated at Princeton University, where she earned a B.A. and membership in Phi Beta Kappa, and at the University of Virginia, where she obtained a M.A. in literature and women’s studies.
Walravens is the editor of Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career, & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood. In this volume, forty-six women describe their lives, careers, and the difficulties they have in balancing the needs of motherhood and the demands of maintaining a career. The contributors reveal a number of creative solutions to their dilemmas, in most cases coming up with ways to have both a satisfying home life and a profitable career. The text does not avoid discussion of the difficulties inherent in the choice to be both a mother and a career professional, but the insight provided can give those who are facing a similar situation a source of inspiration and advice on how to cope. The book also includes material from mothers who are not on a traditional career path, as well as unemployed mothers and single mothers.
Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking up Tech, a collaboration between Walravens and Heather Cabot, tells the stories of numerous women working in California’s Silicon Valley and in other technology hotspots around the country. The authors intend the book to be an antidote to the perceived, and too often real, bias against women in technology, in California and elsewhere. They do not doubt that many women in tech have experienced personally and professionally jolting instances of sexism, discrimination, and harassment. They present the stories in this book to not only show how women have been treated in the technology field but to illustrate how determined individuals can resist and overcome the sexism to create a satisfying and lucrative career in an admittedly difficult field.
Walravens traces the origins of the book to a conversation she had with a friend of hers who worked in technology. She was a twenty-year veteran of the tech field and, at the time, was serving as head of sales for a Silicon Valley startup. “She had just had her performance review. Her sales team had hit their numbers out of the ballpark, but her manager, she told me, was more interested in sharing with her comments from her team and from her colleagues that she was too aggressive, her manner was too abrasive; and he asked her if she could tone it down a little bit because she was scaring people around her,” Walravens told interviewer Carrie Compton in a podcast transcribed on the website Princeton Alumni Weekly. To make matters even worse, the woman was told by her manager to tone down her outfits, her makeup, and her jewelry.
In response, Walravens began seeking out other women working in the tech industry to find out their stories of sexism and discrimination. She found these types of stories, certainly, but to her surprise, she also found something else. Walravens told Compton: “What I saw was that while yes, many of these women had experienced some form of sexism at work, whether it was overt, or unconscious bias, death by a thousand cuts, they wanted to talk about their companies that they were building.” In the case of many of her interview subjects, “they were like, ‘Yeah, we’ve experienced this. Most women have. But let me tell you about the company I’m building.’ So they wanted to share how they have overcome these obstacles, not dwell on the negatives, right?,” she further remarked to Compton.
The authors make several suggestions for how technology concerns, in both business and academia, can restructure their environments to make them more inviting for women. One of their major arguments is that “environments where women support other women offer the most hope of success and that tech companies must reach a tipping point where women will be encouraging the growth of other women,” noted a Kirkus Reviews writer. In the authors’ view, their book “counters the age-old stereotype of sharp elbowed women competing against each other. What we saw over and over was the exact opposite: women cheering each other on, passing along opportunities, helping each other get ahead. It’s incredibly important because women haven’t had the access and the contacts to succeed in the past and here they are creating their own network,” they told interviewer Swapna Krishna on the website Syfy Wire. Notably, “that network includes men who recognize that diversity and inclusion is good for everyone,” they commented.
In the interview with Krishna, Walravens and Cabot described their intentions in writing the book. “We wanted to crush stereotypes of who works in the tech world and what they are really like. We believe that one of the biggest hurdles to closing the gender gap in tech is the deeply gendered notions of who is an engineer, who is an entrepreneur, who is an investor, who is good at math and science,” they told Krishna. They “intentionally followed women whose efforts focus on debunking the myths,” they further said to Krishna.
With Geek Girl Rising, Walravens and Cabot clearly show that while women in tech are a “minority in this historically white, male industry, they are an inspirational force to be reckoned with,” commented Julia Smith in a Booklist review.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2017, Julia Smith, review of Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking up Tech, p. 6.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of Geek Girl Rising.
ONLINE
Authors Guild Website, http://www.authorsguild.net/ (February 9, 2018), biography of Samantha Walravens.
Babble, http://www.babble.com/ (February 9, 2018), biography of Samantha Walravens.
Forbes Online, http://www.forbes.com/ (February 9, 2018), biography of Samantha Walravens.
Geek Girl Rising Website, http://www.geekgirlrising.com (February 9, 2018).
Modernmom, http://www.modernmom.com/ (February 9, 2018), biography of Samantha Walravens.
Princeton Alumni Weekly, http://paw.princeton.edu/ (February 9, 2018), Carrie Compton, transcript of podcast interview with Samantha Walravens.
Samantha Walravens Website, http://www.samanthawalravens.com (February 9, 2018).
Syfy Wire, http://www.syfy.com/ (May 26, 2017), Swapna Krisna, “Geek Girl Rising: Interview with Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens.”
Samantha Walravens is an award-winning journalist, work-life expert and author/editor of the best-selling anthology, "TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood," praised by the New York Times as a book "filled with the voices of women trying to solve an impossible equation, all doing the best they can" and hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a welcome addition to the body of work of books about the work/life balance." Samantha writes for Forbes, the Huffington Post, Disney Online and Modern Mom, and gives workshops and talks nationwide at organizations from Google to Goldman Sachs on the topic of women, career and work-life success. She has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America and NPR. Samantha began her career as a technology reporter for PC World magazine and worked in product marketing for Tumbleweed Software, a Silicon Valley tech startup. She is a member of Pipeline Angels, an angel network that invests in early-stage, women-led startups, and serves on the Alumni Schools Committee for her alma mater, Princeton University. Samantha resides in Marin County, California with her husband and four children.
Read more about Samantha at www.samanthawalravens.com.
Join the digital revolution at www.geekgirlrising.com.
SAMANTHA WALRAVENS is an award-winning journalist, work-life expert and author/editor of the best-selling anthology, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, lauded by the New York Times as a book "filled with the voices of women trying to solve an impossible equation, all doing the best they can" and hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a welcome addition to the body of work of books about the work/life balance." Samantha writes for Women@Forbes, the Huffington Post, Disney Interactive and Modern Mom, and is a sought-after speaker on the topic of women, career and work-life success. She has spoken nationwide at organizations including Google, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Deloitte, Princeton University and the Society of Women Engineers, has been interviewed on Today, Good Morning America and NPR. Samantha began her career as a technology reporter for PC World magazine and led marketing communications for Tumbleweed Software, a Silicon Valley software security company. She is a member of Pipeline Angels, an angel network that invests in early-stage, women-led startups, and serves on the Alumni Schools Committee for Princeton University. Samantha resides in Marin County, California with her husband and four children.
Samantha Walravens is an award-winning journalist and editor of the New York Times-acclaimed book, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood. She writes about women, career and work-life issues for publications including Forbes, The Huffington Post, Disney Interactive and Modern Mom and speaks to audiences nationwide on the topic of work-life success, including groups at Google, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, UBS, Northern Trust, the Society of Women Engineers and Princeton University. She has been a guest on the Today Show, Good Morning American and NPR. Samantha started her career as a technology reporter for PC World magazine in San Francisco, led marketing communications at Tumbleweed Software, and is currently uncovering the stories of women changing the face of technology for Geek Girl Rising. She is a member of Pipeline Angels, an angel network that invests in female-led companies, and serves on the Alumni Schools Committee for her alma mater, Princeton University.
About Samantha Parent Walravens
Samantha Parent Walravens, the “Torn” Mom. Samantha is a journalist, author and mother of four children. She is conflicted on a daily basis between the demands of motherhood and career, and is on a search for the elusive “work-life balance” (please let her know if you’ve found it!) Samantha is the author and editor of the anthology, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, and is a frequent speaker about work-life issues. She has been a guest on the Today Show and NPR News, and has written for numerous publications including Salon.com, the Huffington Post, Healthy Women, Urban Baby, Yahoo! and PC World. When not writing or driving her kids to countless activities, she can be found hiking the hills of Marin County, California, where she lives with her husband and children. You can follow her on Twitter at #nosuperwoman.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tornthebook.
amantha Walravens ’90, co-author of Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech (St. Martin’s Press), discusses how women are making their own opportunities in the supposedly male-dominated Silicon Valley.
This is the first in a new series of interviews with alumni and faculty. PAW podcasts are also available on iTunes — click here to subscribe.
Samantha Walravens ’90
Courtesy Samantha Walravens
TRANSCRIPT
Carrie Compton: Hi, I’m Carrie Compton. Today I’m speaking with Samantha Walravens, Class of 1990 and co-author of Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech. Walravens is an expert on work-life balance and writes for Forbes, The Huffington Post, and Disney Interactive. She is the editor of the 2011 anthology Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career, and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood.
CC: Samantha, welcome.
Samantha Walravens: Thank you for having me.
CC: Absolutely. So, let’s start with painting a picture for our listeners here about what the climate is like toward women trying to work in Silicon Valley, especially in tech.
SW: Sure. So the way I like to put it, Carrie, is if you’re a woman, let’s say just out of college and you’re arriving in Silicon Valley, maybe you’re starting your first job. And you open up the newspaper or your web browser and read some of the headlines about women in Silicon Valley, you get back on the train, or you run for the hills, and go back to where you came from. So, the picture painted in the media about women in tech, and especially women in Silicon Valley, is pretty ugly. You know, every quarter or so there is a new story about a woman that has been harassed or experienced some form of sexism, often subtle but sometimes overt. So recently there was Susan Fowler who was an engineer at Uber who wrote about her tremendously horrible year working as an engineer and being propositioned by her boss over and over again, and then being shut down by human resources when she reported it. So those stories are very much in the mainstream. And these stories are important. I’m not discounting it. Women need to tell their stories. And companies need to respond.
But the problem is that these stories are keeping women out of technology. So the other side of the story that people don’t tell is the story that we tell in Geek Girl Rising, which is about the women in Silicon Valley and in tech hubs across the country: Women who are starting companies, they’re investing in other women-led companies. They’re building these networks of support that we call “the sisterhood,” or “the girls’ club,” to help each other succeed and to really stake their claim in this digital revolution that’s happening today. And these are the stories we want to tell because these stories are often overlooked and replaced by the more salacious, you know, juicy stories of sexism and harassment.
CC: Absolutely. That’s very much something that gets highlighted a lot in my field of vision anyway. I come across those stories a lot. So your book does definitely tell a story that is not being told. I’m curious. What led you and your co-author, Heather Cabot, to write this book?
SW: Sure. Yeah. You know I call myself a “first generation Silicon Valley girl.” So, I started working in Silicon Valley in 1995, which dates me.
CC: Wow.
SW: Yeah, it dates me. But I was a reporter for PC World Magazine in San Francisco, and I was covering the rise of the dot-com companies like Netscape, and Yahoo, and eBay, the very, very beginnings of the Internet when consumers were just having access to — you know to search the web. So I reported for PC World. And then I got the Internet bug and I went to work for a start-up in Redwood City called Tumbleweed Software, which went public in 1999 right before the dot-com bust. So we all saw our fortunes rise on paper and then disappear into nothing within a matter of months. So it was a really crazy time, and many of my closet friends today are from those days of working in the Valley.
So, the inspiration for the book though came a couple years back. It was 2013. I was having a conversation with a friend who’s been in Silicon Valley for 20 years now. She’s one of the dot-com survivors. And at the time, she was heading up a sales division at a start-up in Silicon Valley. She had just had her performance review. Her sales team had hit their numbers out of the ballpark, but her manager, she told me, was more interested in sharing with her comments from her team and from her colleagues that she was too aggressive, her manner was too abrasive; and he asked her if she could tone it down a little bit because she was scaring people around her. And then he also proceeded to tell her that they had complaints about her makeup. She’s a beautiful woman, she wore makeup and jewelry, and he asked if she could tone down what — her outfits a little bit as well.
CC: Wow.
SW: So, yeah. She was horrified. Needless to say, she didn’t stick around long at that company. But that conversation spurred me to explore this issue. She wanted me to write about her story. And I said, “Before I write about your story, I’d like to research [and] talk to some other women and see what’s going on.”
And this was really before the Newsweek article about sexism in Silicon Valley, and before the Ellen Pao [’91] trial, and before this issue was part of the mainstream media. This was before that. So I start reaching out to women in the Valley and also in New York, in Silicon Alley and around the country to hear their stories. And I saw a pattern emerge. And what I saw was that while yes, many of these women had experienced some form of sexism at work, whether it was overt, or unconscious bias, death by a thousand cuts, they wanted to talk about their companies that they were building. There were entrepreneurs who were building artificial intelligence companies. They were investors who were investing in women who were building robotics companies. They were developing these new next-generation technologies.
And they were like, “Yeah, we’ve experienced this. Most women have. But let me tell you about the company I’m building.” So they wanted to share how they have overcome these obstacles, not dwell on the negatives, right? So I teamed up with Heather. Soon after I started interviewing these women, I reached out to Heather and she said, “Hey, you know I’m kind of working on this topic myself. I’ve been interviewing women in — she’s in New York — in Silicon Alley, and in the entrepreneurial space.” And we ended up partnering, and here we are 40 years later, Geek Girl Rising is finally coming out.
CC: Wow. Fantastic! So tell the listeners a little bit about, a slice of what you found out from some of these women.
SW: So one of the founders we interview, Tara Reed, started a company called Apps Without Code. And she told us — she said the dirty truth about being an entrepreneur, and especially a tech entrepreneur, is that is can be really lonely. So what we found is that finding a community, finding your tribe, as a founder is so critical to be successful in this world. So the good news is that over the past few years, a number of groups have popped up around Silicon Valley and beyond to help women and support them in their entrepreneurial and technology journeys.
So we saw — just to give you a couple of examples — we saw this sisterhood in action in spaces like — in accelerator programs, like Women’s Startup Lab, which is in Menlo Park. I spent a week down there with eight female founders and they spent two weeks — I was there for a week of it — they spent two weeks getting trained on how to develop their pitches, on actually developing their products. They were connected with mentors and advisors and investors. And the two weeks ended up with a pitch deck where they would pitch their companies to actual investors in Silicon Valley. So this kind of support system is so crucial to actually following through as an entrepreneur. And we also saw the sisterhood like, on college campuses for example. Stanford has a program she++, which is women in engineering, and they have a gala every year. And these women are just incredibly excited and smart and there to help each other to feel not so alone in what they’re doing. Because the fact of the matter is, there are fewer women in tech than men and it’s hard to succeed when you feel like you don’t have support. That’s one of the big takeaways.
CC: Did you get these impression that these women are — are they vocal about having a different experience or are they focused on something else? Are they very optimistic?
SW: Yeah, they’re really optimistic. The she++ women at Stanford, what their program is interested in — because what they do is they partner with high school girls across the country, and they work with — remotely — they work with these high school girls to start programs in the girls’ local communities. So just to give you an example, I have two daughters who are 9 and 13. There is a high school senior at Tam High School in Mill Valley, which is you know five minutes down the road from us. And she started an after-school robotics program in my hometown of all things, in Tiburon, California. So my girls go after school and they build robotics with other girls. And they love it because it’s all girls. And they feel like they can experiment, they can play. Their robots don’t work, they don’t mind. They don’t feel like they’re failing or — you know, it’s okay.
So but this high school girl who partnered with the Stanford students to start this program — so there’s so much energy in, not just creating communities but to pay it forward and to try to inspire the next generation of girls to try out technology. Because you know it’s really fun.
CC: Right. So as a woman, hearing all of these stories, what kind of effect did writing this book have on you? What was — what really resonated for you?
SW: Yeah. You know one thing that really stuck with me as I interviewed all of these different women is that one thing that is really holding women back in the tech world is the fear of failure and of making mistakes and always trying to be perfect. And the fact of the matter is is that computer science and engineering is not an easy field. Being an entrepreneur and starting a company is not easy. And you’re going to experience setbacks. You’re going to experience failures. In school, you’re not always going to get an A in that computer science class. And the women who are really smart sometimes shy away from coding because they don’t want to fail.
So there’s a great story in the book about a woman named Dona Sarkar who is — she’s currently a software engineer at Microsoft. And she talks about experiencing failure — and not just the fear of failure but she actually fails her first computer science class in college. And she was at the University of Michigan, and she said was too afraid and too embarrassed to raise her hand in class because she was one of the only women in the class, and it was all guys, and they were all know-it-alls. And she said many of them had taken AP computer science in high school. She had never taken a coding class. And she was embarrassed to raise her hand so she ended up failing the class. And she said, “It’s kind of like riding a bike. You know, when I started — when I learned to ride a bike as a kid, I fell off and I skinned my knees and I cried and I said I would never get back up on that bike again. But I got back on. And guess what? Now I can ride a bike.” She said she got back and she took the class over again and got a B+ and she ended up majoring in computer science, and then, is now working at Microsoft as an engineering lead.
So, you know, the message we have in our book for women is, “Don’t give up on your goals.” If it doesn’t work the first time — you know, it’s like, “I ran a race. I wanted to win first place, but I came in second so I quit running.” You know, a lot of people don’t go for things because they’re afraid they are not going to succeed. So what I’m trying to teach my two daughters is you know — take the risk. Be bold. It’s OK to make mistakes. And that’s how you learn. That’s how you get ahead.
CC: Yeah. Absolutely. Are there any other overarching themes that you expect that or you hope that readers will take away from your book?
SW: Oh, there’s so many. You know the other big theme — the other big thing as a theme as I said earlier is to find your tribe. Don’t do it alone, whether you’re working as an engineer at a tech company or you’re starting your own business or you’re trying to take some coding classes in college. Find other woman in similar situations, and if the group doesn’t exist already, create your own group. So there’s so many groups and companies. We’re speaking at Google next week. And there’s a women-at group for women engineers. I mean, there’s no shortage of organizations and networks to bring women together. So you don’t have to feel alone. Find that support or create that support.
And the other method is really to not compare yourself to others. Another really great story in the book is about Tracy Chao who is a former engineer at Pinterest. And she talks about her experience in college feeling like the odd woman out in a computer science class. And she was, you know, getting surrounded by guys who are bragging about how quickly they finished their programming projects. And then one semester her professor asked her to be a TA for the class. And she said to the professor, “Are you sure you want me?” She got a B in the class. She didn’t feel like she was worthy or smart enough. She got a B in the class. He said, “Yeah, no, I want you.” She said, “Well, are you sure it’s not another Chao because there are a lot of” — I’m using her words — “there’s a lot of Asians in the class, maybe it’s another woman you’re thinking about.” He said, “No, I want you.” And she became a teaching assistant and she said she was able to read all the coding and the programming that the guys — who were so bragging about their, you know, their great code — she said she read over their code, and it was terrible. Her code was much more efficient, much less sloppy. And she realized that she had been suffering from this lack of confidence, this imposter syndrome that she wasn’t smart enough, and she was totally, 100 percent cut out for the job. And she went on to have a very successful career in Silicon Valley. So don’t compare yourself. Do your thing.
CC: Yeah. Very universal message. It almost applies to everything, not just technology.
SW: True. Yeah.
CC: So what’s next for you? What’s next for the book?
SW: So we’re traveling the country speaking, it’s interesting, you say it’s not just technology. We were asked to speak at Visa in June because a lot of the themes touch on sort of universal themes of building confidence, stepping outside your comfort zone, juggling work and family, all these themes that apply to many different industries. But for me, one of the best parts of writing Geek Girl Rising was getting to meet and interview so many incredible women founders and investors and innovators who are truly, truly building the future of technology. We have a column on Forbes. I’ll continue to write about these women on Forbes and also The Huffington Post and just spread the message and encourage women and girls to join this revolution. After that, I’m not quite sure, but I’m noodling around the idea — I also have two teenage boys — so I have three teenagers in my house now, and I’m noodling around the idea of writing a parents’ guide to surviving the teenage years [laughter].
CC: Oh boy. We might have to have another podcast on that topic.
SW: That’s a big topic. I’ve learned a lot of lessons and I’m still learning. I feel there’s not a fun sort of funny manual out there to help parents through this process because man, it’s full of a lot of ups and downs.
CC: Oh boy. I can only imagine. Well that sounds fantastic. I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about anything we didn’t already discuss. Was there anything else you’d like to say?
SW: Yeah. You know, we have a lot of resources on our website — I hate to be promotional but it is — it is really our mission — our mission is really to inspire women to join the tech revolution. And we have resources on our website (geekgirlrising.com). So if you are thinking — if you have a daughter who is interested in technology, or maybe not even interested in technology, you can go to our website and find out some of the resources for tech toys that will inspire your girls in science and technology and engineering. There’s also resources for professional women, if you’re feeling like you need a meetup, you know, you need to meet some people who are in your area and you are just feeling kind of alone. You don’t have to be alone. That’s kind of my main takeaway is find your posse, find your tribe. You don’t need to feel alone.
CC: That’s great. Wonderful message. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really appreciate it.
SW: Yeah. It was super fun. Thanks for having me.
Samantha & Heather take you inside the sisterhood shaking up tech. FULL BIO
Heather Cabot & Samantha Walravens are journalists working to fill the "visibility gap" of women in tech by uncovering stories of female entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, technologists & educators. As mothers to young daughters who go to coding classes and play with LEGOs and circuits, they are passionate about increasing opportunities for women in the innovation economy and providing role models of successful women throughout the field. Their book, Geek Girl Rising, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2017.
Samantha Walravens is an award-winning journalist and author of two books, the New York Times-acclaimed TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, and Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech. Samantha writes about women, career and work-life issues for Forbes, The Huffington Post, Disney Interactive and Modern Mom and speaks to audiences nationwide on the topic of work-life success. She has been a guest on the Today Show, Good Morning American and NPR. Samantha started her career as a technology reporter for PC World magazine in San Francisco and worked in product marketing in Silicon Valley. She is a member of Pipeline Angels, an angel network that invests in female-led companies, and serves on the Alumni Schools Committee for her alma mater, Princeton University.
SAMANTHA PARENT WALRAVENS
Samantha is conflicted on a daily basis between the demands of motherhood and career, and is on a search for the elusive “work-life balance” (please let her know if you’ve found it!) She is the author and editor of the anthology, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood and is currently working on a new book, Geek Girl Rising: Unleashing the Power of Women in Tech. She writes for several publications including the Huffington Post, Modern Mom, Healthy Women and Marin Magazine. She lives in Marin County, CA with her husband and four kids.
Samantha Parent Walravens has been chronicling the highs and lows of motherhood since she had her first child in 1998. An award-winning writer and author/editor of the New York Times-acclaimed book, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood , Samantha is a frequent speaker on the topic of work-life integration. She is currently working on her next book, Geek Girl Rising: Unleashing the Power of Women in Tech. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Huffington Post, Modern Mom, Healthy Women, Yahoo!, Salon.com, Marin Magazine and several “mommy blogs.” She has been a guest on The Today Show, Good Morning America, NPR and the Huffington Post Live. Samantha graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University and has a Masters in Literature and Women’s Studies from the University of Virginia. She lives in Marin County, California, with her husband and four children.
WEBSITE
samanthawalravens.com
FUN FACTS
Myself, in three words or less:
Fun, fearless and focused.
One thing I wish I knew before having kids:
That I would never sleep well again.
The amount of coffee I drink in a day:
2 cups in the morning. One iced green tea in the afternoon.
Samantha Walravens is a work-life expert and author of the New York Times-acclaimed book, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career& the Conflict of Modern Motherhood.
A Forbes and Huffington Post contributor, Samantha has spoken at organizations including Google, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Northern Trust, Deloitte, the Society of Women Engineers and Princeton University and has been a guest on The TODAY Show and Good Morning America.
Her work has also appeared on Disney Interactive, Salon.com, Women 2.0, Modern Mom and Healthy Women. She is currently working on a new book, Geek Girl Rising: Unleashing the Power of Women in Tech (link to www.geekgirlrising.com) (St. Martin’s Press 2017), which looks at the new generation of women who are changing the face of the tech industry. Samantha lives in Marin County, California with her husband and four kids.
Swapna Krishna
@skrishna
May 26, 2017
The issues that women in tech careers, or women aspiring to these kind of Silicon Valley jobs, face are numerous, but there's real progress being made. There's a new culture of "geek girls" in the tech world, and that's the subject that writers Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens tackle in their new book Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech (St. Martin's Press, May 23).
The authors generously agreed to talk about the book, the status of women in tech and what we can do to further improve and help women succeed in these difficult careers.
Where did the idea for this book come from? What are your backgrounds?
Heather Cabot: Aside from our daughters who all love tech, the light bulb moment for me came during my years as an on-air digital lifestyle editor for Yahoo from 2007 to the end of 2012. My entire job was to study what was going on in consumer tech and to craft those findings into informative TV segments for shows like TODAY, Rachael Ray, Martha Stewart, etc. There were tons of amazing companies being started by women at the time and or that had leadership teams that included women which I featured in my stories. Companies like Rent The Runway, Gilt, Red Stamp, IndieGoGo, Kiwi Crate, and on and on.
The research took me inside the world of startups and when I left Yahoo, I started doing a bit of angel investing and stumbled into the world of investors focused on female-led companies. That's where I realized there was a larger story about the sisterhood of women in tech across the ecosystem—it wasn't just about founders. The movement encompassed investors, educators, advocates around the country and that felt like a really big story no one had told quite yet. And by 2015, when we were deep into writing the proposal for the book, the Ellen Pao trial and its revelations emerged as a rallying point for a lot of the anger and frustration over sexism in tech and it just felt like this force for change was growing at the grassroots level — there was another side to the story of women of forging their own paths in tech and that empowering narrative is what we decided to cover.
Sam Walravens: I'm a first-generation "Silicon Valley Girl." I started my career in technology in 1995 as a reporter for PC World magazine, covering the rise of the dot-com world and companies like Netscape, Yahoo, and eBay. Then I got the "Internet bug" and went to work for a startup called Tumbleweed Software, which went public in 1999, right before the dot-com bubble collapsed. We all saw our fortunes rise (on paper) and disappear within a matter of months! It was a crazy time. Many of my closest friends and mentors to this day are from those early Internet days. We went through a lot together.
In 2011, I published my first book about women and the work-life juggle, TORN: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, and was writing for several publications about women and work. Over lunch one day, a girlfriend and fellow dot-com survivor was telling me about how horrible it was to be a woman in Silicon Valley these days. She was the head of sales for a software company and had just had her performance review. Although her team had hit their sales numbers out of the ball park, her manager was more focused on complaints he had received from colleagues about her "aggressive" demeanor and asked if she could "tone it down a bit." He also told her she wore too much makeup and jewelry. She was horrified. Needless to say, she didn't stick around long at that company.
That conversation prompted me to explore the issue of sexism in Silicon Valley, which hadn't hit the mainstream media yet. In my conversations with women executives, entrepreneurs and engineers, I saw a pattern emerge: while a majority had experienced some form of sexism- either overt or subtle- they were more interested in telling me about their work—the companies they were leading and the cool technologies and products they were building. They wanted to share how they had overcome obstacles to find success, but not dwell on the negatives. I teamed up with Heather in 2013 when we learned we were both researching the topic of "women in tech." Four years and 300+ interviews later, Geek Girl Rising was born!
You tell the story of women in tech, and the way we are transforming the industry, through personal anecdotes and stories. It made me feel like I got to know these women. Was that the reason you structured it that way, to put a human face on the issue?
Heather & Sam: Our goal from the outset was to curate stories that would resonate with other women who perhaps never thought of themselves as having a stake in the digital revolution or who see tech as something that makes their lives easier by don't envision themselves as creating it. We wanted to crush stereotypes of who works in the tech world and what they are really like. We believe that one of the biggest hurdles to closing the gender gap in tech is the deeply gendered notions of who is an engineer, who is an entrepreneur, who is an investor, who is good at math and science. So the descriptions of women, including what they wear, what they like to eat, what they do with kids or during their time off was deliberate. And we intentionally followed women whose efforts focus on debunking the myths.
We also wanted to put a human face on the numbers. There's a lot of data out there that show how hard it is for women in tech today. 56% of women in technology drop out mid-career. The number of college women majoring in computer science has dropped from 37% to 18% over the past 30 years. Less than 3% of venture capital-funded companies have a woman CEO. Frankly, it's pretty depressing. What you don't hear about are all the success stories of women who are bucking the trend and starting companies, creating "sisterhoods" of support and rallying their younger sisters to join the tech revolution.
Geek Girl Rising focuses on awesome women in tech, but it also focuses just as much on how women can help one another succeed. Why do you think that's important?
Heather & Sam: It's essential because it counters the age-old stereotype of sharp elbowed women competing against each other. What we saw over and over was the exact opposite: women cheering each other on, passing along opportunities, helping each other get ahead. It's incredibly important because women haven't had the access and the contacts to succeed in the past and here they are creating their own network. And by the way, that network includes men who recognize that diversity and inclusion is good for everyone.
We saw this "sisterhood" in female-focused co-working spaces like HeraHub and The Wing, in accelerator programs that support and invest in female founders like the Women's Startup Lab and MergeLane, and on college campuses, where women in engineering and computer science were forming networks to address gender disparities and inspire the next generation of girls in tech. As Shelley Zalis, CEO and Founder of the Girls' Lounge, says, "A woman alone can be powerful. But collectively, we have an impact."
There are more and more young women interested in tech careers. Do you have any advice for them?
Heather & Sam: Find other women in similar situations, within your workplace or outside. Many companies today have women's groups that allow you to share your experiences, learn from each other and even learn from experts who are brought in to teach and give workshops. Because of the gender ratio in tech, you may find yourself the only woman in a meeting, or class or in your area of the office. The support that comes from finding others in similar situations can help that isolation.
Don't compare yourself to others. Tracy Chou, former software engineering lead at Pinterest, tells a story about how she felt intimidated by the guys in her computer science class at Stanford, who bragged about finishing their programming projects faster than her. She was one of the only girls in the class and was demoralized. When her professor asked her to be a TA for the class the following semester, she was able to see the actual code that her male classmates had written, and she realized her code was way better than theirs! It turned out she was cut out for the job. She kept it up and it led to a successful career in tech.
What surprised you the most about writing this book?
Heather & Sam: How similar writing a book is to launching a startup!
What do you want readers to know about Geek Girl Rising?
Heather & Sam: There are two things we want people to know about the book:
(1) We didn't have to look far to find incredible stories of women forging their own paths in the tech world. There were too many to fit in the confines of our book. So when you hear people say they can't find a woman to be on a panel or to be interviewed for a news story, they really are not looking in the right places. It's too easy to say "Well, there aren't very many out there." That's true, there could be many, many more women entering the field and staying on. But that shouldn't be an excuse to overlook the amazing women who are there persisting and succeeding.
(2) The stereotype of the nerdy "geek" guy coding away in a dark basement is fast becoming a relic, like the 1980s Revenge of the Nerds-type movies that created it. In all honesty, this image is completely false. Women have always been part of "geek" culture, from Ada Lovelace in the 19th century to Grace Hopper in the 20th to Marissa Mayer in the 21st. But like the movie Hidden Figures illustrates, women been largely kept out of the narrative. The good news is that, in the past several years, women have started making their voices heard about their "geeky" passions and love of technology. Geek Girl Rising is on a mission to elevate the voices of women in technology and encourage women and girls to join the digital revolution — and create the future!
What's next for you both, now that you've written this book?
Heather & Sam: Of course, we are eager and hopeful to see how the scripted TV series takes shape. We loved the reporting and process so much during this project. We'll definitely will continue to follow up with women in the book and profile amazing women in technology on our digital platform, www.geekgirlrising.com.
Heather: But I am also eager to tackle a different topic and subculture and hope to be digging into another juicy long form, nonfiction writing project soon. It was a gift to be able to spend so much time on this one.
Sam: I'll continue writing about women and work for Forbes and The Huffington Post. I'd also like to work with the "CS for All Initiative" to get coding built into the public school curriculum across the U.S.
Walravens, Samantha: GEEK GIRL RISING
(Mar. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Walravens, Samantha GEEK GIRL RISING St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 5, 23 ISBN: 978-1-250-11226-2
Concentrating on the years 2014 through 2016, journalists Cabot and Walravens (editor: Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood, 2011) tell the stories of dozens of women who are working in or leading tech companies.With considered optimism, the authors relate a few accounts of failed companies led by women and present statistics indicating how small a percentage of women are involved in tech jobs, but they keep most of their attention on those who have managed to break through and thrive in a tough business environment. Some of these leaders took off from relatively small internet niches and parlayed them into much larger presences, such as YouTube star Michelle Phan, creator of the e-commerce cosmetics company Ipsy. Others found areas that their male counterparts ignored: Sheila Lirio Marcelo, for example, was motivated to form a site for seekers and purveyors of domestic help by her own "struggles with balancing babies and aging parents." In addition to tech leaders, the authors consider female "angel investors" like Joanne Wilson, who invests in female startups, or the group of Chattanooga female movers and shakers who invest their collective cash in businesses run by women. Cabot and Walravens make a point of seeking out minority women, whether women of color or lesbians, to include in their account. While a majority of the book covers high earners, one chapter follows women who have pieced together tech work at home following the births of their children and suggests that such work will be increasing in the future. Using evidence of colleges where computer science departments have managed to maintain female students, the authors argue that environments where women support other women offer the most hope of success and that tech companies must reach a tipping point where women will be encouraging the growth of other women. A well-organized if sometimes-superficial survey of the successes and occasional failures of women working in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Walravens, Samantha: GEEK GIRL RISING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485105128/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fab778e3. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105128
Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech
Julia Smith
113.15 (Apr. 1, 2017): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech.
By Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens.
May 2017. 272p. St. Martin's, $26.99 (9781250112262). 602.
Despite increasing jobs in the tech industry, the number of women pursuing these careers is in decline. However, Cabot and Walravens admirably show that though women are a minority in this historically white, male industry, they are an inspirational force to be reckoned with. This book dismantles stereotypes surrounding women's capabilities, highlights obstacles impeding their entry into the tech "boys club," and encourages women of all ages to persevere and follow their passions. Cabot and Walravens accomplish this task by profiling a wonderfully diverse range of female entrepreneurs, financiers, company founders, and mentors--all of them intelligent, driven, and committed to creating a supportive community for women in (or trying to break into) tech. Included are such figures as Debbie Sterling, creator of GoldieBlox engineering dolls; Sheila Marcelo, founder of Care, com; and Michelle Phan, YouTube celebrity and Ipsy cosmetics company founder. This enlightening read reveals many problems embedded in start-up culture, but, more importantly, it is an invigorating call to action and testament to the wide-ranging successes of women in this field.--Julia Smith
YA: Any teen with an interest in coding or STEM careers will find inspiration here, but girls in particular will be drawn to the strong female role models filling its pages. JS.
YA RECOMMENDATIONS
* Young adult recommendations for adult, audio, and reference titles reviewed In this issue have been contributed by the Booklist staff and by reviewers Michael Cart, Laura Chanoux, John Charles, Carol Haggas, Kristine Huntley, Bethany Latham, Colleen Mondor, and Louisa Whitfield-Smith.
* Adult titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with particular curriculum value; YA/S, for books that will appeal most to teens with a special interest in a specific subject; and YA/M, for books best suited to mature teens.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Julia. "Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2017, p. 6. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491487806/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3db9cace. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491487806