Episode Summary
You’ll find a lot of companies advocating for gender equality and stressing the importance of having women within executive roles. But the reality is a bit different. Although women are present in the C-suite, tech is still a male-dominated industry.
It is time for us to go beyond talking about equality in the tech space and take concrete action towards achieving it. As our guest says, “…promoting women leaders is not about replacing men; it is about adding talent, perspective, skills, abilities, experience, and value to the industry.”
In this episode of Recorded Content, our host Justin Brown chats with Christina Brady, the Chief Strategy Officer at Sales Assembly and the host of Taking the Lead, a show about female leaders in the tech space.
Christina shares her story about Taking the Lead and pinpoints things she has learned since starting a podcast. Justin and Christina also discuss what makes a podcast successful and why relevance is an essential component.
Guest Profile
Name: Christina Brady
What she does: Christina is the Chief Strategy Officer at Sales Assembly
Company: Sales Assembly
Noteworthy: Christina is the host of Sales Assembly’s Taking the Lead podcast, a show dedicated to introducing and sharing stories of female leaders in the tech space.
Key Insights
- The female experience in tech is everybody’s experience in tech: As Christina points out, Taking the Lead is a female-focused podcast introducing and sharing stories of female leaders. However, the podcast is speaking to everyone regardless of gender eager to learn more about the tech space, address inequalities, and drive the change.
- Companies talk against gender inequality but don’t do enough to fight it: Although women are present in the C-suite, that’s still a tiny percentage compared to men in such positions. Tech is still a male-dominated industry, and it’s time for companies that promote equality to take concrete action.
- You want your content to be relevant: One of the things Christina learned since starting a podcast is the importance of proper timing. A high-quality podcast depends on the host’s organizational skills and the ability to estimate the right time for a particular topic.
- It’s important knowing we’re in a niche: But doing that niche really, really well.
Episode Highlights
Although it is female-focused, we didn’t want to make a podcast that was only for women
The idea to have this be one of our outlets for highlighting women came from our CEO. We knew that there is a voice here that is missing. There are a lot of voices that are missing in tech, but this one is somewhat easy to tackle because it’s a large part of the population.
And so our CEO Jeff actually said, “I think for some thought leadership it would be pretty cool if we had a podcast. And what if the podcast is female-focused?” And I was like, “I love that, let me run with that.”
We didn’t want to make a podcast that featured women and that was only for women because the whole idea is that some of these incredible female icons in tech are leading the way to the future. Their information, expertise, and advice are for everybody, not just for other women.
So I knew the content needed to feature these incredible female leaders in tech, but I didn’t want it to be only for their ears. I wanted it to be a podcast that anybody can listen to and get something out of. And so it was about finding that balance of how do you highlight women without excluding every other gender.
Taking the Lead is all about diversity
Variation doesn’t mean that a white cis man in tech isn’t welcome. It means we want variation. We want other cultures, races, genders, and professional journeys to also be a part of the story.
So when you want to learn how to interact professionally in tech or up-level your career or get advice, you have the opportunity to hear that from a myriad of different people who can help you broaden your scope and your horizon, which is going to make you a better professional.
I think one of those differentiating factors is that we’re not aiming to drown out the voices of anybody who isn’t female; what we’re trying to do is add to them. Here’s another flavor. Take a look.
How has the podcast helped Sales Assembly on the thought leadership side and content front
It gives us an outlet for it and it gives us an outlet in the way that people absorb content because you’ve got two things you have to think about when marketing. One is what is the material itself? Is it good material that builds upon itself or is it stale, is it relevant?
And then you also have how do people want to interact with this? How do people want to digest this content? And if you don’t have a good balance between the two, you could have really good content that nobody sees.
Having a podcast as one of your elements for thought leadership is an incredible way to do that. You’re meeting people where they are; it’s just about making sure that the content is really good and hyper-relevant.
My show is about my guests and their story
In my episodes, I try very hard to take a back seat to the guests and truly highlight them. And when I am a guest on somebody else’s podcast, that’s my time for my story. But my show is about my guests. And my promise to them is I’m giving you a platform and I want to do everything I can to get this thought leadership out into the world.
There are so many voices in tech that deserve to be heard
If you are going to start highlighting diversity, I mean women, but I also mean BIPOC and LGBTQ — any voices in tech that don’t currently have that stage. If anything, this is proving that there’s an appetite for that.
I want this podcast to be a catalyst to that change. And I also want the long tail effect to be that women feel comfortable sharing their stories. Talking about what went well and what didn’t, and they feel comfortable.
It is about being confident and being known for knowing what they’re doing. This idea of women needing to have modesty and a very low ego to not ruffle any feathers — I’m going to shake that up. I want there to be a microphone that extends far beyond this podcast.
And maybe this podcast is one of the first examples that there’s something here. There’s a catalyst to this. If it’s just that, if it’s just a firestarter, I’m happy with that. If it’s more, I would be happy with that too.