It was 2013, Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In had just come out and its mantra of female empowerment in the workplace was stirring discussions. As a young engineer at the preeminent conference for women in tech, I listened to Sandberg as she warned that the numbers of women in the industry were dropping. I appreciated the consciousness raising, but I wondered, where exactly were these numbers? How could a data-driven industry track no data around diversity? How could any change happen without it?
I wrote about the lack of public data around women in the tech industry, shared the numbers from my own team—I was one of only 11 women out of 89 engineers at Pinterest—and encouraged other tech workers to share their stats too. The post went viral, and my voice was credited for pushing new diversity initiatives at tech companies big and small. It felt like we were entering a new era, one where old doors were cracking open for people who’d never had access to important rooms before. In more recent years, as a founder, I’ve been heartened to see more women and people of color in roles of leadership and capital allocation.
