Ami Mehr, VP, Strategy, CDMS MedTech, at Veeva Systems, joins ChedHER to break down why fostering a culture of inclusion for women in the tech industry is so important.

Opening Bell

Paving the Way for Women in Tech

well, the tech industry is known for being very male dominated but the tides they are changing and more women are rising up into leadership roles and paving the way for the next generation of women in tech. So joining us now, Amy Mayer, VP of Strategy C. D. M. S MedTech at cloud computing company. Viva Systems aim is such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. So you're paving the way for women over Aviva and you create viva women's community. So tell us what sparked the idea to create this community here. Absolutely. And first of all, thank you for having me today. Um I actually went to an all women's college which I didn't plan to. Um and that's really where my passion for women's leadership started and I worked for a high tech company that I helped found a women's community before I came to Viva. And when it came to Viva I wanted to continue to give back and have that opportunity for other women, just like I had had before. So I actually went to my chief marketing officer, I went to my Chief people Officer. We started chatting about how this would be very important to be able to support women that work in the high tech space. And from there, the women's community got launched. Okay, so how does this program work? This is really interesting and what really do women gain from this? At the end of the day, At the end of the day, women are provided a safe environment to be able to collaborate with other women. Um we actually have well over 500 women um that participate as thought partners and learners or mentors and mentees in our community. They are matched with a personality survey as well as their location as well as things that are important to them. And you're provided the opportunity in a safe place to be able to enjoy with another woman. I myself have significantly appreciated working with other women as part of my career, especially in the high tech space. You're competing with a lot of men. There's a lot of men in the boardroom and being able to learn skills and have a safe place to practice those skills with another woman is just so important. Absolutely. So let's talk about how this specific program has now led to the creation of other minority communities over at Viva here. Yeah, so it's interesting, we got going with the women's community. Um we're actually our largest diversity community at viva. Um and around the same time our asian black and pride communities got started. So we actually use a platform to match our learners and thought partners for the women's community and were planning to use that platform as well for some of our other diversity communities. Um and the great thing is especially obviously as we all know, we all just went through Covid. Um you know, viva is a work anywhere company. Um so you know, trying to have commonality with people. Sometimes it's very difficult To find when you're in a remote environment. So being able to use a tool to be able to connect people whether it's women or people in our Asian or black or pride communities, it's been great to see this continue to grow at Viva. Okay, so let's talk about the success from all of this because you guys launched Viva women's community back in December 2021. So what kind of success has this program seen thus far? I've been really impressed and really proud of the success that we've seen. Um We've had well over 1000 hours of time logged by women in the women's community that have collaborated as thought partners and learners. Um We're actually concluding um a cohort. Um and even before the second cohort starts to register, we already have 80 women in a line waiting to get involved in the next cohort. Um so, you know, the outcome has been very positive as well as we've seen through statistics that one of the top topics from these conversations is career development as well as work life balance. Being able to, you know, obviously manage Children in the home life during the pandemic, we've been able to, you know, see great success and want to continue to provide that opportunity for other women. We have so many business leaders that come on this show every single week and talk about mentorship programs and how they were incredibly important to them and how they got to where they are right now in your mind, why is mentorship so critical when it comes to career development? It's super important and I appreciate you baker asking that question um you know, it's very difficult um as a woman um and you know, I hate to say this, you know, it's still challenging, We obviously are continuing to work very hard, but you need to have other women surrounding around you, you know, I learned very early in my career from other women and female leaders that played a strong role that I needed to essentially build out a toolkit, um have women in that toolkit that I could leverage to have difficult conversations um get an email before someone before a very important meeting to say, hey you got this, you're gonna do great. Um as well as be able to have a say safe place to have difficult conversations, you know, not everything that I've gone through in my career has been easy, but at those times where I needed my mentors the most I was able to reach out and manage through those situations. Absolutely. So for those who are watching this interview right now, for employers or leaders that want to implement some similar programs or employee led communities to support others, what sort of your advice to sort of get them started here? Absolutely, what I would say is definitely, you know, if you see something, if you see that something needs to be done at your company, I mean that's exactly what I saw. You know, speak up your voice, um your passion, um your enthusiasm is so important. Talk to your HR leaders. Talk to other women at the company as well as I would not be afraid to look for software solutions. We use a software solution to actually match women in our community. We started out with a spreadsheet um in our very first round um but we've advanced and now do it in an automated way that makes it very easy to to track as well as match women with common traits. This is really incredible, congratulations on all the success that you're having with this. Amy Mayer is the VP of Strategy at C. D. M. S. MedTech at Viva Systems. Thanks so much for joining us, AMy.