“It’s been 15 years since I entered the workforce, but some things have yet to change,” says She Loves Tech co-founder Leanne Robers before recounting her career journey with Options. “There were a lot of eyes on me when I started my first job in an engineering conglomerate in the UK because I was a minority — an Asian female who was quickly promoted to become one of the youngest managers. To fit in, I was told to learn how to drink beer, play golf, wear pants and put on spectacles to look older.”
However, she felt uncomfortable doing those just to become “one of the boys”. After all, how does being feminine (such as wearing dresses) affect work performance?
Fortunately, her supportive boss did not believe she should conform to these norms. “During my performance review, my boss asked why I was struggling to lead and find my place in the company when I was a high performer in terms of work. When I voiced my challenges about fitting in, he told me he hired me because I had the best potential and believed I could bring fresh and different perspectives and ideas. That was one of the memorable lessons I learnt: To always be your true self,” Robers recalls.
A platform for women by women
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With this belief, Robers started Singapore-headquartered She Loves Tech together with her co-founders, Virginia Tan and Rhea See, in 2015. Robers explains: “We wanted to create a community and platform that helps women be the best possible selves and feel comfortable to thrive, [especially in the tech field]. From experience, being the only few females at a male-dominated tech conference or start-up competition is daunting. When I was pitching to investors for the other companies I co-founded in the past, some investors completely looked past me to ask business-related questions to my male co-founders even though I was the CEO. This is why She Loves Tech was established based on providing a supportive place for women [entrepreneurs and technologists] by women.”
While She Loves Tech began as a start-up competition, it has also focused on building a global ecosystem to facilitate greater visibility, funding opportunities and a sense of community among women in technology. It does so by hosting annual women in tech conferences and providing training and mentorship to help women-led early-stage start-ups accelerate and thrive.
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Robers says: “We’ve developed lessons with psychology underlying them. Our proprietary curriculum includes understanding the psychology of a founder and how to build high-performing teams.”
She continues: “We’re committed to closing the gender funding gap. We’ve begun investing in our start-ups and aim to build a venture capital fund long-term as we believe women are investable. [Since we’re working closely with female founders,] we also have created the world’s largest database on women tech entrepreneurs. We’re looking to make this database publicly available by 4Q this year so that organisations can use it to discover female-led start-ups in a particular industry or country [that they could invest in or partner with].”
She Loves Tech has assisted more than 13,000 start-ups across 70 countries through its start-up competitions and accelerator programmes. It has raised over US$300 million ($397 million) for women-led and women-impact tech start-ups.
In March, Robers was presented with the “Monte-Carlo Woman of the Year” award at the annual Monaco Women Forum in recognition of the contributions she and She Loves Tech made to empower female entrepreneurs. She is the first Singaporean and Asian to win the award, recognising women who have utilised their skills and activities to achieve remarkable goals in their everyday lives and careers.
The award, says Robers, recognises her team’s commitment and dedication to helping women technopreneurs thrive. “My team has been doing many amazing things despite having limited resources. I hope this award will give us more visibility globally which can help us grow in partnerships and revenue. It also helps put Singapore on the map, [positioning] the city-state as a hub for women and technology.”
The role of men
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Effecting a change in gender inequality calls for men to do their part too. “Although She Loves Tech has a clear mission to support women in technology, everything else we do includes men. We ensure a 50:50 gender ratio for our programmes’ speakers, judges and mentors. Men need to be in the equation for us to make a change in this world,” says Robers.
Being an ally is one way men can help. She explains: “Being an ally is an act of courage because it, may require you to do things that make you uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to put your hand up when you disagree and point things out when they aren’t right. Men also need to put women front and centre or throw their [female colleague’s or mentee’s names] in the hat [for a promotion, for instance] when all the other names are men.”
Moreover, men need to be aware of unconscious bias. These biases, says Robers, are not intentional, but exist outside of conscious awareness due to past experiences or the environment we are brought up in. Awareness of them can help prevent discrimination and build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
Walking the talk
When asked why progress is slow when many corporations have programmes around diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), Robers points out that not everyone is walking the talk. She says: “Most companies today have a chief diversity officer or at least some form of DEI initiatives. But some of these organisations are DINOs — diversity in name only — that see DEI as a nice-to-have instead of a necessity.
“DINOs usually see DEI as a checkbox exercise. They won’t allocate a budget for it. Some also expect employees to voluntarily form groups to drive DEI efforts outside of their core job. [This a difficult task] as that means employees have to manage their regular tasks and champion DEI, apart from managing their families and personal lives.
“A company that truly cares about DEI would financially back up those efforts and bake it into their employees’ job scopes and KPIs [key performance indicators]. Doing so will benefit them in the long term as studies have shown that diverse teams build better business outcomes, so DEI is not only socially good but also brings revenue growth and economic prosperity.”
Robers adds that some companies require help developing effective gender equality programmes. “They should collaborate with [experts like She Loves Tech] instead of going at it alone or recreating the wheel. Since we work closely with female founders through our acceleration programmes, we have a lot of data on the real challenges they face and the support they need, so we can help companies build programmes that truly support female technopreneurs. This is why companies like Microsoft and the Asian Development Bank Ventures are partnering with us [to help close the gender gap].”
Announced in November 2021, the partnership with Microsoft aims to ensure that female founders are supported with resources for accelerating product development, hitting their targets through fundraising, and scaling know-how. She Loves Tech start-ups are given access to Microsoft’s solutions — including Azure cloud platform, coding, analytics, artificial intelligence and security tools — to pilot born-in-the-cloud innovations and scale from idea to unicorn. They will also have access to a global ecosystem of industry experts, deep technical and co-selling expertise for faster go-to-market, and a community for mentoring, skilling, and funding.
Gaining more visibility
Visibility, highlights Robers, is also lacking regarding women in tech. “Although many men and women want to support and promote female technopreneurs, it can be challenging when women tend to sell themselves so short most of the time. A common feedback from mentors of our programmes after a practice round of pitching is that they wish the participating female founders had communicated the amazing things they have done to come up with their groundbreaking solutions. That way, they will be able to convince investors better [to financially back their start-ups].”
Robers advises female technopreneurs not to underplay themselves. “I’m not saying you should fabricate things as those will eventually be discovered. But if you’re doing good work, you need to talk about it and [when you do so honestly and with passion], your story will come through, and people can resonate with it. Having a personal board of directors can help too — they can hold up that mirror to remind you of how awesome you are when you’re underplaying yourself and make you feel that you’re not in this alone.”
To help women tech founders gain more visibility, She Loves Tech plans to host its flagship conference globally. Besides that, Robers expresses her interest in building an inclusive women’s festival which sends out the message that technology is not to be feared.
“I want to encourage women to be less fearful of technology and instead adopt it in their lives so that they don’t get left behind. [Since these events will feature successful women in the industry as role models,] I also hope they will inspire women to believe they can succeed as technopreneurs and reach for the stars.”
