As a global company, the international community is so important to us at Botify because recognizing our different personal & professional experiences helps to connect us all on a deeper level of understanding.
In that pursuant of understanding & solidarity, we hosted a Botify Women in Leadership chat for our global team to kickoff International Women’s Day. Kristin Langdon (SVP People & Culture) hosted a chat with Rachel Meranus (CMO), Nathalie Geoffrin (VP Technical Program Management), Meryl Serouya (VP Partnerships), Marlène Vieillescazes (Product Manager), and Jen Chittim (VP Customer Success, North American). A few words of wisdom from each of our leaders:
- Rachel Meranis (CMO): “When I was early on in my career I met a career coach & she told me to bury my soft skills or I wouldn’t get ahead; I looked her right in the eye and said, that is the worst advice I have ever heard, and I will do the exact opposite”
- Nathalie Geoffrin (VP Technical Program Management): “A good way to go to the next level is when you come to your boss, with a situation it’s always better to come with the situation and what you would do, and not just wait for them to tell you what to do. You show that you are closer to the next level, and if you don’t have the correct answer anyway, you learn something and you show that you are trying to to learn so it’s always a good way to show that you are closer to the next level.”
- Jen Chittim (VP Customer Success, North American): “Often women can feel sort of embarrassed about taking your work personally and truly caring about it. It’s OK to care. You shouldn’t be embarrassed that you care deeply and actually we need more people who do care deeply and like to bring that emotional self to work.”
- Meryl Serouya (VP of Partnerships): “You know, lean on those doubts that you maybe don’t belong. I could be completely confident one day in my skills and my ability to do the job, but when you’re in a room of 15 men, you can start to feel a little bit insecure and uncertain. To be totally honest, throughout my career that bias was blatant and I was just like oh gosh you know you don’t necessarily want to always put yourself in that situation, and even if people don’t think it, there’s an unconscious bias that we certainly have to face.”
- Marlène Vieillescazes (Product Manager): “How can an 18-year-old girl choose a course to become a CEO or CFO or a CMO as a career, if we don’t see a woman there? So, the first step, I would say is maybe stop waiting for a woman to show up and start searching for them, making them.
Hearing the stories and experiences of these incredible women at Botify is a perfect example of this year’s theme for International Women’s Day: #choosetochallenge. As IWD says, “a challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change so let’s all choose to challenge.”
