Blog: Can You Hear Me in the Back?

by Brook Lee, Director of Channel, ScalePad 

Hey IT girls! Can you hear me in the back? How you can be in a room full of women and still feel alone. The musings of an IT geek. 

I started my career in IT waaaaay back in the day working for internal IT departments as a server and network admin. I moved from there into the MSP space several years later.  I had a wonderful opportunity to do consulting with MSPs for about four years and met some amazing people.  Some of those people were in the channel space and had great stories about all the cool things they were doing over here. So, I decided to make a move. The move was fraught with stress and uncertainty.  But I was beyond excited for an opportunity to be able to further my career by moving into SaaS in the channel space where I had been previously as an MSP.  About two months into the space, let’s just say my excitement was dialed down quite a bit. 

 So, the good:  

There are more women in the channel space than any other market I’ve worked in. I’ve been in tech since college in computer science and have worked with maybe two to three technical women over my decades of being in the business. So, arriving in the channel and seeing so many faces “similar to mine” was refreshing.  

Let’s dive off into the not so good: 

I was very fortunate to be able to attend dozens and dozens of events in my first year and always made a point of attending any “Women in Tech” panels or sessions that I could. So, you can imagine with me going to over 60 events in a year globally I got to hear a ton of women speak.  While I did get this opportunity, what I discovered was a lot of these sessions and panels had no technical women on them. Like zero, zilch, nada.  They were mostly sales and marketing women, not technical.  When I asked a few people that I respected in the channel about why there were no technical women I got two frequent answers. One: the women you see have been here for a while and they dominate the space. Two: there aren’t any technical women in the channel.  So now I was on a mission, go to every single “women in tech” anything at every single event I was at and see who was there. I attended one panel session all year that had technical women on the panel.  Yes, you read that right, one panel over more than 60 events globally.  

At a recent event I attended, there was a Women in Tech panel with four women (none of which were technical). A question from the audience was asked “why do you feel young girls don’t continue their education in STEM fields?” One answer was “girls lose interest in tech after about 8th or 9th year because they become interested in boys.” My jaw hit the floor. How in the world did these words get said aloud and in the realm of a technical panel and by a woman? Another question “what fields can we get women into STEM and have it not be IT?” The answer “technical nursing, women are empathetic”.....again a woman on the panel said this. There was also massive conversation regarding having children and families.  What did I learn from sitting in on this session? That we didn’t discuss anything technical. We said girls liking boys makes us not go into tech. That all women are empathetic. That all women want children.  We alienated so many women in the room it was appalling. I was embarrassed.  These questions and topics would never have even been asked to a men’s panel on anything. They would have been asked questions about technology or the topic of M&A or AI. What did I learn? We have a LOT of work to do.  

How do we fix it: 

When you are confronted with a problem you can continue to complain about it, or you can jump in and solve it. I’m a fixer.  We had two issues as I saw them. The first was breaking down the walls that have been put up and are staunchly defended by the women who have been in the space for a long time. We also needed a method to shine a light on the technical women that ARE in the channel space. First step was I used my CompTia NA Executive Council position to chair the AWIT committee. I thought let’s make changes from the ground up. From this I was able to start several initiatives to bring more technical women to the space as well as working on navigating how to convince the sales and marketing women that we can collaborate together and there is room for all of us. There seemed to be a concern that the channel women had to guard their space as they only had the one. My goal with my AWIT committee was to show that at no time do men see their panels and say “we have too many men on this panel” or “we have 17 sessions and there are more men than women”.  So let’s have MORE panels with women, from ALL areas of the channel. Let’s get more marketing panels. Let’s get more sales sessions. Let’s get more logistics sessions. Let’s get more event sessions. For the tech side that is AI, M&A, MSP, Leadership, Growth sessions, let’s not only advocate, but let’s demand that we see more women.  Let’s hold events accountable for requiring diversity on their panels on sessions. Let’s get MORE women onto MORE stages everywhere.  

So, this year alone we’ve been able as a community to have multiple sessions and panels about women in tech with technical women speaking, hosting and moderating. We will not be relegated to talking about work life balance, how to dress professionally, and families. We are going to be the experts in the room on M&A, Leadership, and the future of AI. We are headed into the last half of the year with tons of these sessions to go. So, let’s pull together and volunteer for panels, submit your ideas for sessions and ride the wind of change that is here my geeky sisters.

Bio: Brook began her career in IT in the corporate sector running departments all over the US, from small businesses all the way to multi billion dollar companies. She later moved to the MSP space and really found her niche in IT. Starting from the ground up, she has worked in all aspects of an MSP from dispatch to engineer to project management to vCIO to COO. Rebuilding MSPs while working as a consultant allowed her to help hundreds of people and companies be able to grow and mature. While consulting she found the Channel of the MSP world and realized there was even more to learn, new ways to be able give back to the community and a whole new area to conquer. Since joining the Channel, she has found a new space to be passionate about her love of IT and an avenue to help those passions grow to fruition.