In recognition of International Women’s Day, I shared the below email to the company about our team of Wize Women, so we can stand in solidarity to improve gender diversity. Wizeline is committed to democratizing technology, from building startup ecosystems in cities like Guadalajara to its commitment to gender inclusion. The tech industry is about iteration and moving quickly. This is exactly why women in tech have embraced this opportunity to lead by example and continually improve equality. Within Wizeline and the tech industry at large, we see that more still needs to be done.
Team,
Today is International Women’s Day and in light of that, I wanted to share some data about our team of Wize Women.
Above is the gender diversity at Wizeline vs. the industry average. This places Wizeline’s gender diversity just under the average of Facebook, Google, and Apple, which is a great goal for us as we continue to foster diversity of all types across our offices. Wizeline is committed to democratizing technology, and gender equality and inclusion efforts are a core part of that mission.
Here is the breakdown across Wizeline’s global offices. Since Mexico is our largest office by far, and has a high concentration of engineers, we can certainly do more to close the gender gap within the product & engineering teams. We are already working on that – two women will join the Mexico product & engineering teams from Canada and Egypt in the coming weeks/months!
When I started my first job at a startup in 2005, I was the only woman in the company of all male engineers. Fast forward a few years to when I joined Wizeline’s founder and CEO, Bismarck Lepe, at his first startup. The entire executive leadership team was male. As a young woman in the Silicon Valley, these situations were their own industry standard. It was so common, that I had normalized this status quo. I never thought I’d be a woman exec at a Silicon Valley tech company, working with such an inspirational group of Wize Women. The women of Wizeline have earned PhDs, have studied in Japan, have side passions as ballerinas or opera singers or standup comedians. We may have grown up not knowing opportunity was possible, but are empowered daily by fellow Wizeliners.
So I leave you with this on International Women’s Day: in today’s tech environment, we’re seeing women have more opportunities than in other industries. But what you do with those opportunities is what will create the path for women following in our footsteps. As Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Lean In, we “need to shift from thinking ‘I’m not ready to do that’ to thinking ‘I want to do that- and I’ll learn by doing it.'”
Go get ’em, Wize Women. Today, we applaud you.
Wendy Johansson 