Crossroads - Summer 2014

words in 2013 at the Clinton Global Initiative. More recently she showed intent to encourage more diversity in STEM fields [ 1]. For whatever you are looking to do, it is highly likely there is a woman out there who is capable of helping you out and currently not operating at 100 percent of her own potential.

2. DEVELOP INDIVIDUAL
CONFIDENCE IN ORDER FOR YOUR
TEAM TO LEVERAGE DIVERSITY.

There are ideas left off the table when a particular group is excluded. Therefore, newcomers should not have to prove themselves in the context of an existing framework. This can be difficult to practice in rigorous STEM en-

Bringing more women into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields is an important objective recognized from the top-down in many organizations. According to whitehouse.gov, women already make up 41 percent of graduating PhDs in STEM. Yet, the lack of exceptional role models still makes it a
challenge for women to join the workforce.

While every woman who currently participates in STEM is responsible for proving herself
in one way or another to the community she respects, the real burden of change lies on the
shoulders of top-down decision-makers. Every opportunity I ever received was the result of
vironments where established math-
ematical metrics already dominate.
One thing I realized is responsibility is
the mother of confidence. It is also the
universal currency for proving yourself
while defining new metrics and put-
ting new ideas on the table. Remember
the key motivation for encouraging di-
versity is to generate new thinking; di-
versity is lost if one is forced to play in
the existing framework with the exist-
ing metrics or if one becomes doubtful
and ends up following the status quo.

3. RECRUIT WITH RESPECT.

When it comes to successful recruit-
ing, respect is a combination of pa-
tience and open-mindedness. Imagine
both men and women ahead of me de-
ciding it would be worth taking a risk
on me: Professors who chose to spend
more time with me and teach me, em-
ployers who decided to hire me and
pay me, advisors who back me up, and
mentors who reach out for me even
when I’m not looking.

Effective teams composed of mentors and students are all aware of the benefits of diversity. The following are 10 action items I propose for having diverse participants in an effective team.