Dr. Judith Spitz: How to Get More Women into Tech—and Why It Matters

Dr. Judith Spitz knows a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in the tech industry. She served as Verizon’s chief information officer for 10 years, and one thing she’s quick to point out is that having other people believe in her and see her potential along the way —even when she didn’t see it in herself—was crucial to her rise. Now, as the founder and CEO of Break Through Tech, that’s exactly what she’s doing for a new generation dreaming of careers in this influential sector.

Break Through Tech, an initiative of Cornell Tech, offers undergraduate students who have traditionally been underrepresented in tech the skills, training, and opportunities they need to break into the field. At a time when so many leaders have scaled back their commitments to diversifying the workforce, Dr. Spitz remains firm in her belief that women, especially women of color, should be “fairly represented in the rooms where technology decisions are being made.”

We sat down with Dr. Spitz to talk about the importance of this goal, the solutions she wishes more leaders would adopt, and tangible things that each of us can do to help more women thrive in tech.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

First and foremost, why is it important to have more women in the tech industry?

Dr. Judith Spitz: You may or may not know that the very first airbags designed for cars actually injured women and children pretty seriously—because they were designed based on the size and skeletal structure of the men on the design teams.

Fast forward to AI: The earliest speech recognizers struggled to recognize speech produced by the female vocal tract.^{1Google’s speech recognition has a gender bias} Why? Because it was mostly men in the labs that produced the training data. It turns out that the acoustics of the male voice are different, so the models were overtrained, and they didn’t work very well on women. They also didn’t work for people with accents.

Up until a few years ago, if a person was introduced at the beginning of a document as a doctor, the language translation algorithm automatically referred to that person as a male person throughout the rest of the document.^{2Gender Bias in Machine Translation and The Era of Large Language Models} I could go on and on. But really, what it comes down to is that if you don’t have a diversity of people in the room, including gender diversity, you’re going to end up with solutions that have very narrow perspectives, biased results, and potentially unfair, unethical, and sometimes dangerous outcomes.

Right now, only 26.4 percent of technical positions in the industry are held by women.^{3Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics} What is keeping them out of these roles?

Dr. Judith Spitz: One of the biggest problems is that we are fishing in the wrong pond. We are consumed with the idea that we have to look only at the top 20 or 25 universities in this country to source talent. That simply isn’t true; rather, it reflects our tendency to conflate privilege with potential. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of women, especially Black and Latina women, who are studying tech don’t go to those universities; they’re going to 1,300 other universities around the country. These students, and there are hundreds of thousands of them each year, have all the potential in the world. What they don’t have is the privileged access to simply show what they’re capable of.

In addition to changing how we recruit, industry leaders need to be more intentional about developing talent. We’ve seen this in other industries. Think about law students who clerk with judges or the medical industry and residencies and teaching hospitals. Someone recently said to me, “We need teaching companies.” I think that’s a really interesting idea.

To diversify the tech industry, we have to reimagine how we recruit and develop talent. That’s where industry needs to come to the table and be part of the solution.

As hard as it is to break into the tech industry as a woman, it’s even more difficult to reach the top—fewer than 10 women lead tech companies that are part of the Fortune 500. What advice do you have for leaders who want to get more women into leadership positions?

Dr. Judith Spitz: Pay attention to mid-career women. Women often become invisible in that middle stage of their career. They get promoted a couple of times because they keep their head down, work hard, and do an excellent job. And then they become invisible. Their names don’t come up when senior leadership is having conversations about who’s on the promotion track. The way to counter that is to be intentional and proactively ensure that you engage with mid-career women. Invite them to meetings where they can have a seat at the table. Put them on projects that are the most forward-looking, strategic projects so that they get seen and heard.

And then something that each of us can do, regardless of our role, is to hold a mirror up to women, as was done for me. When you hear somebody say something that’s just incredibly smart, go up to that person and say, for example, "I really appreciated the way you translated that technology into business value. That’s a real leadership skill. Have you thought about applying for this position that just opened up?"

You can sniff out talent in other folks, and instead of just keeping it in your head, go and tell that person what you see in them. It will pay dividends down the line.

That’s a great insight about mid-career women. How can leaders develop or give opportunities to folks who are mid-career?

Dr. Judith Spitz: It can’t be a one and done. You can’t give somebody one shot and either they succeed or fail. If it’s an individual project, then choose a project that’s lower risk and you can see, are they stepping up to the table? Are they outperforming your expectations or not? But you have got to let them make mistakes. As someone said when I messed up, “Rookies make mistakes.” The question is whether they learn from them the next time.

Part of your job as a leader is to develop talent. If all you ever do is highlight and promote the people who everybody already knows are talented and successful, I don’t think you’re doing your job as a leader. You have to coach folks. You have to give them chances to succeed and fail. You also have to put them in an environment where they’re called forward, where they’re called upon to step up to the plate. Then give them the chance.

It’s harder to create that environment in the virtual world. How can managers create those opportunities if you and your team are working a hybrid or fully remote schedule?

Dr. Judith Spitz: Two things come to mind: First, schedule one-on-one time with the people that you’re trying to get to know or that you think have potential. You have to go out of your way and say, “Let’s schedule a call.” Be intentional about those one-on-one conversations.

Second, engineer your meetings to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak. There are folks who just won’t raise their hands, or they’ll wait until everyone else has spoken. It’s very easy to engineer a meeting to say, “Okay, today we’re going to go counterclockwise” or “We’re going to popcorn so everyone gets a chance to contribute.” You have to be intentional to make absolutely sure that women and other folks who are fading into the background get a chance to speak. You’d be amazed how often the ones who had to be “voluntold” to speak often have something fantastic to say.

Whether you’re in the tech sector or not, this is a tough time for a lot of people who care about creating a more equitable workforce. What makes you feel optimistic right now?

Dr. Judith Spitz: All I have to do is spend time with our students to feel optimistic.

I sit with these young women and men of all races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status. They’re going to schools that would never get them past a screener on a resume. But if you put them in the right environment and ask them to work on something interesting and challenging, they astound you with how extraordinary they are. You just sit back, and you think, “Wow, this talent is out there.” It’s not just talent. It’s passion.

I’ve worked with industry partners all across the country, and they say, "Your students, Judy, they’ve got grit." I say this with a little hesitation, but this is the phrase I’ve heard: "They know how to take a punch and get back up." They get placed on an internship, and they’re not whining and complaining about whether it was exactly the one they wanted or not. They are enthusiastic and passionate about being able to prove what they’re capable of. The students tell the story.

All we have to do is level the playing field, and we will greatly expand the size and diversity of the nation’s tech workforce—and that’s a win-win for everyone.