diversity matters but more importantly
for this particular moment we’re here
also to model why it matters which is
why you have both of us so first it’s my
distinct honor to introduce to you Suzi
Levine the ambassador the US ambassador
to Switzerland in Liechtenstein now you
think she’s an ambassador she’s got it
made in the shade this must have been so
easy but the essence of Susie’s career
path has been about it being nonlinear
and so if you look at the image behind
me that is the grande st. Bernard pass
which is about the least linear road I
have ever seen in my life and that
describes what Susie has gone through
she started at Brown University with
degrees in English and mechanical
engineering with aerospace applications
she’s a rocket scientist and her dream
was to be an astronaut she went from
there to Microsoft where she worked on a
variety of operating systems was the
first person to publicly demonstrate
Windows 95 and then to Expedia both as
part of Microsoft and when it’s spun out
then she left the paid workforce to be
home with our kids for four and a half
years and I say paid workforce because
raising a family is still work while she
was doing that as well though she kept
quite busy no grass grows under Susie’s
feet and she started two different
nonprofits one focused on Jewish
community and another on early childhood
brain development literally studying how
baby’s brains work she went back to
Microsoft focusing on education and got
to see schools and teachers doing some
of the most innovative things in the
world with technology
she left the workforce again and then
she had gotten involved with both the
President Obama’s campaigns as a
community organizer as a volunteer the
administration knew about her and they
called her up and asked her to be the
ambassador here so that’s me
but more importantly I want to introduce
you to my extraordinary love of my life
and the partner who enables everything
that I do
Eric Lavine now our careers and our
paths have been almost like a double
helix in terms of in and out of the
workforce
how they are parallel you can see here
as we sort of shifted a little bit
Eric graduated from Harvard University
with a degree in history he also went to
Microsoft which was how we met worked
there for 13 years on a technology that
I suspect most of you have used and it
is the error reporting when something
crashes there’s that little dialog box
that pops up so he Co invented that with
himself and a couple of other people and
what he did in that was basically
address and stop software from crashing
hey thank you very much
and in that process he learned a lot
about databases after our second child
was born as you can see with a little
girl in the tulips
he took his knowledge of databases and
married it with his passion for wine and
he created what is now one of the
world’s largest wine websites that he
isn’t so he is an entrepreneur who has
created this extraordinary business but
he also has a deep love for how our
communities doing and so he got involved
in an organization called Jewish family
service that supports the social safety
net not just for Jews but for the
community writ large in Seattle
most recently President Obama named him
to the United States Holocaust Memorial
Council for the purposes of this
conversation what’s probably most
salient though is the job that he has
right now which is as work at home dad
and as the person who joins me and what
I do most pretty much every day and of
course in still being an entrepreneur
but being here with you so speaking of
being a dad so here we have an image
probably 1950s you can see dad in the
background his shirt looks terrific
mom’s in front she’s feeding the baby
dad is a bystander probably the last
thing he’s gonna do is pick up this baby
heaven forbid he gets something on his
shirt so the next image is sort of a
modern dad a revolution in fathering a
dad Ellucian and so here you’ve got a
guy he’s holding his baby he great job
by the way matching hat and shirt I know
when I went to dress my daughter I was a
little boring and so she at a very young
age learned how to dress herself because
my choices were too boring for her but
this is sort of the societal image of
how Parenthood is changing when I think
about how I was raised and my
he was a man of incredibly high
standards he himself went to Harvard
magna laude Phi Beta Kappa he
reminded me of these facts probably
every five minutes of my life
and and I remember when I was 5 years
old probably this tall he pulled me
aside and said Eric to succeed you need
to go to Harvard and then Harvard
Business School
he set really really high standards now
I also had two amazing older sisters and
so I was really disappointed to learn
later in life that his standards for
them were that they needed to find great
successful husbands and make lots of
babies and so you know any it’s fine for
any grandfather to want babies that’s
terrific
but why didn’t he want them to go to
Harvard why didn’t he want them to
succeed in academics and in business why
two different standards in society so as
we think about what we’re doing we think
about the fact that society today will
tell you that boys do math and science
and girls will do literature and writing
there’s no genetic basis to that but
that actually takes hold at about five
years old for kids and so as we think
about our kids our daughter Talia one of
the first things she got really excited
about was Lego and robotics and FIRST
LEGO League and I think if we were to
stay here she would want to be a
robotics engineer and an apprentice
separately she is very excited about
fashion and she likes to design dresses
on paper and so you think robots dresses
what’s up with that
but again her mom studied English and
she’s a rocket scientist so why not now
our son Sydney is a poet he wants to be
a math teacher but we’ve seen the most
amazing thing over the last couple of
years we do a lot of events where he
gets to babysit for other kids from the
embassy community and watching him it’s
like watching the Sun come out from
behind a cloud he sees little kids he
lights up and they gravitate to him they
just stick to him and he is so
unbelievably nurturing so this notion in
society of boys do this and girls do
that we just want to throw it out the
window and so we’re making progress but
we actually need more support from our
leaders so one of the most exciting
things for me to watch in the last
couple of years has been Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau and in his first official
act he introduced to the world his
cabinet
men half women the first question to him
from a woman reporter was why was that
important and his simple response was
because it’s 2015 and he could have just
dropped the microphone and he has been
setting such an amazing example and
talking about these issues and he
continues to call himself a feminist and
people have a strong reaction and so he
says he’ll keep doing that until people
stop having such a reaction because men
can be feminists too and so we got a
chance to see him speak last year this
past year at the World Economic Forum on
an amazing panel on gender and diversity
and what really stuck with me was him
talking about the fact that he tells his
daughter every day she can be anything
she wants to be but his wife had to
remind him that it was just as him
important for him as he talks to his
sons to remind them to respect women and
to enable that the interesting question
here is enabling women and gender and
diversity just a social good right
women’s rights are human rights human
rights are women’s rights which is in
fact the case well when I started my
career at Microsoft as Eric shared I
worked in operating systems more
specifically I worked in the Jurassic
period of Technology on ms-dos which for
those out here who know ms-dos
congratulations you’re as old as I am
and I was the only woman on the team at
the time when I joined and in fact there
had been a woman on the team prior but
she left a week before I started because
I think there was a conservation of
women in technology at the time and I
went to my first big business meeting in
my first week at work and I went in
there and it was all guys and me and I
was probably the shortest I certainly
was the youngest and they were
discussing feature names for the next
version of ms-dos now the name that we
landed on was data protection technology
however that scintillating brand name
was not the first choice instead the
first choice the fellas came up with
that they shared in the room was
something like maxi protection
technology now I hear some laughs in the
and that’s because those people
understand what I subsequently said at
that moment I raised my meek little hand
and I said gentlemen I’m sorry but that
sounds like something that people are
only going to use once a month to their
credit because they’re all amazing
people and they have amazing spouses
they listened and they did not choose
the name that would have been extremely
embarrassing instead went with the name
that was relatively boring but it speaks
to the point that women are an
incredible percentage of consumers more
than half of consumers out there women
are an incredible percentage of the
decision makers so gender and diversity
isn’t just good for the soul it’s good
for business and study after study is
now showing that companies get better
results when they have more diverse
groups and it’s not just okay to have a
token woman in the room what I love
about this particular study from
catalyst is you show the benefits of
three or more women in these kinds of
decision-making spaces and that way you
can amplify each other’s voices and be
able to have a better impact in there
now a key thing about diversity is that
it doesn’t always feel good when you
have debates about things you churn and
you discuss and it feels a little rough
in fact in some studies it shows that
more diverse groups underrate their
performance as compared especially with
more homogeneous groups who might be
sort of high-fiving each other we got
the high five today we often miss that
we could synchronize another thing but a
physical movement is not our Forte
so in terms of homogeneous groups they
may think that their work is terrific
because they all came up with it
together but it is probably not as good
a result as bringing a diverse group
together so the way I try to position it
with folks is that gender diversity is
corporate fiduciary responsibilities and
if I went to a company and said you
could improve your results five to ten
percent let me tell you how I shouldn’t
have that conversation with the
diversity manager I should have that
conversation with the CFO but diversity
is not just about gender diversity
it’s about diversity writ large whether
that’s racial diversity gender diversity
sexual orientation diversity age
diversity religious diversity we are
better when we are more diverse and in
this amazing iconic image what you see
is also a young boy able to envision
himself as the President of the United
States of America the president bent
down to allow this boy to feel his hair
and know that he is just like the
president incredible an incredible
moment and something where we need to
allow our young people to see themselves
in these leadership roles
speaking of leaders when we think about
diversity one of the key challenges is
around gender we do need more women
leaders we need more people like Suzy
but to enable that we need to create
space we need men behind who can do what
it takes at whether as dual professional
couples or just men at home to create
space so women can lead now for us over
here in the last two and a half years
this has been a really interesting
experience where I am very decidedly
behind
she’s the ambassador but it’s been a
remarkable learning experience for us
now one of our secret weapons is that
her mom has come to Switzerland with us
and so that enables us to get out a lot
at night her mom is an incredible part
of our team and is helping to raise our
kids but fundamentally she is
babysitting when we are out at night
I have acts
we had multiple people all women who
have met her and met me and have come to
me and said Eric you are so lucky your
mother-in-law is raising your children
for you now people laugh and you think
about it but it’s it’s a little
insulting on two levels so this is
unconscious bias people look at the
situation and they say well mom’s an
ambassador she’s she’s working so she’s
clearly not doing it
dad’s guy so he’s not doing it so it’s
gotta be grandma right so even if that
were the case then the next level is
they say Eric you’re so lucky I’m happy
I’ve outsourced to kids all right I as a
guy as a dad why would I want to do this
so again as society we need to do a
better job to create space and dignity
for families to make their own decisions
so we can create more women leaders so
today is not just about listening we
need you to do something we need you to
be a part of this and to help enable
what we are talking about today so we
have three recommendations that you can
take away with you as you leave this
amazing facility number one if you are a
business leader or a manager or if
you’re somebody who’s looking for a team
or who’s choosing a team in the near
future
hire people who don’t look like you work
for a company that is diverse and again
this isn’t just about a social good this
is about performance you want to be on a
team that’s gonna do really well you
want to manage a group or have a company
that’s going to perform really well and
to do that requires diversity and you
need to be the ones who demand it or who
make it happen so he for she is a UN
initiative we need in a nutshell guys to
roll up their sleeves to get engaged to
create space for women to be role models
children need more male parent figures
in their lives who are actively engaged
now Eric and I visit a lot of companies
here in Switzerland and we are so
impressed with the work that’s happening
here but we also see especially in the
technology areas that it’s mostly young
men so the last request that I have is
for you all to get involved in getting
more girls into tech
and getting them into the pipeline so
that there are no excuses for getting
more girls and women up through that
pipeline into leadership this image that
I have here is one from APF Elle’s
internet for girls program that along
with various kids robotics clubs are
great ways to get more girls involved
because you know what girls love tech
too and they’re really good at it and I
need all of you to think about how can
you mentor how can you steward how can
you answer little girls and say you can
do anything that you want to do so with
that we thank you so much for having us
here today
and we look forward to being in
connection with you
this is just the start of the
conversation thank you
[Applause]
[Music] you