Allison Grinberg-Funes
Content Writer, Simply Business; Connection Catalyst and Entrepreneur, agfunes.com
“It’s interesting that you say you work in tech, since you’re a marketer.”
As a woman working in tech that doesn’t come from a STEM background or work as a software engineer, I always ran up against a stigma. After all, I wasn’t the one building the technology.
Tech-adjacent roles
I started out in tech at an e-commerce company where five of the 30 people I worked with were women. Since we all held roles in admin, talent, customer success, and customer support, we didn’t garner the same respect as our male counterparts in engineering and product.
But tech isn’t created in a vacuum. We need female voices in tech-adjacent roles.
A marketer, for example, may not build a product or design a service – but we’re responsible for selling it to customers and ensuring retention. And to strategize and execute on those things, a good marketer will have a good understanding of the tech. That’s a crucial role. All of these roles are important – administrative, sales, customer support, customer success, people ops, and others.
Diversity matters
Things have changed a great deal in the last decade, but there’s something to be said for the women in tech-adjacent roles. Building teams with gender diversity in adjacent roles helps to build a community of support for women at the table. Years ago, when I got involved in organizations like Tech Ladies and She+ Geeks Out in an effort to advocate for inclusivity in the workplace, I was unprepared for the type of camaraderie between other professional women.
I’ve met many brilliant female founders and executives, not all technical, leading a disruption in their respective spaces. But I’ve also met many women like myself, equally as intelligent, who are just as happy to be part of the larger machine as our engineering and product-focused counterparts. We’re all moving in the same direction.
I’m not sure if I still believe in a glass ceiling. These days, it feels more like a bubble. And to create good tech, it helps to have diversity driving the community that builds it, holistically. Together, we can pop it.
