That time I realized I don't want to be a "Panda"

In my entrepreneurial journey, I went through a little detour.

A couple of years ago I decided that managing a business wasn’t enough and started a new startup. To mix things up I decided to avoid the traditional “start a business close to home” approach and go to the US.

I don’t want to go through all the ups and downs of my startup experience but rather focusing on something that opened my mind like nothing before.

Talking to a potential investor, I realized how different my life could have been with more diversity in it.

She was going through something terrible in her life, and that brought us discussing the Rules of Shiva.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a set of rules that are supposed to be followed during a mourning period.

I never heard of it and when my potential investor said “How come you don’t know about it?”

I had no other option than candidly answering “I don’t know any people of Jewish faith”.

She looked at me as if I was saying “I don’t know what Google is”.

So it dawned on me how limited the diversity of my existence was.

There was no ethnic diversity in my life and I never interacted with people of different faith rather than Catholics at the time (and only because in Italy it is very common to define oneself as “Catholic” traditionally, as if it was something you have to follow by default).

I sadly realized how narrow, limited and closed my circle was.

Catholic. Caucasian. Cisgender. Etherosexual. That was it.

When my interlocutor introduced me to her set of beliefs, she opened a door to knowledge for me.

It helped me better understand not only her personal situation but created a new scenario.

As a business owner, my ambition is to grow a bigger and bigger company each year, and this sets the tone for the inclusivity process.

It also helped me better understand what happened next.

12 month later, I was approached by a smart and successful manager at one of the top tech companies in the world; after a brief conversation he invited me to join his company’s European Advisory Board.

He didn’t hide the fact that he was asking me because I’m a woman but instead of feeling offended by it [I don’t want to be considered a Panda or some other kind of endangered species that needs protection, and I don’t want to be a quota either] I understood his point of view.

He told me that in the American board the proactive search and inclusion of more women led to a whole different approach when it comes to making suggestions, finding solutions and giving inputs.

Diversity was a game changer for them and I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this board myself.

As a woman in a tech company without a tech background, my assumption was that I couldn’t be of any help to any kind of board or committee.

And this is a common assumption for us women.

As a Hewlett Packard famous internal report stated, women apply for jobs only when meeting 100% of the criteria and so it goes for institutional roles as well.

I always considered the boardroom as a place where I had no right to be, because of my lack of technical skills… but thanks to this opportunity now I know that sometimes, this is the biggest strength.

If you can offer a wider approach to the matter, and not lose yourself in the technicalities, you can increase the level of effectiveness of the team.

We all have some kind of knowledge otherwise in this fast-paced world we wouldn’t even have a job in the first place. So let’s try to see our strengths for what they truly represent.

Since then I used this approach in my company hiring process too.

For too long I let the bias distract me and influence my actions.

We went from the 25% female presence of our early days to 33% of 2017 to the astonishing result of 62% for 2019.

I can proudly say that we met the diversity goal that I (unintentiaìonally) set for the company.

and unintentional is a key word here because if

I feel the obligation to make my immediate circle the reflection of my values so that change can be perpetrated and shared even outside my company.

What was born as a male-led, local company now is a group of thriving professionals coming from different Italian regions, different European countries and with a gender representation that is more equal than ever.

Sometimes conversations happen and at first, we tend to see them as stand-alone episodes, like mine with my investor.

But if we pay attention to them, really trying to understand what that conversation can teach us, we can constantly learn new things about ourselves and our lives.

Just to be clear: I love pandas, polar bears, puppies, kitties, hedgehogs and every cute animal ever created on the face of the earth.

I only hope that in the foreseeable future we can drop the “pink quota” for good and become a main presence in the board rooms, lead countries, run businesses, conquer the world.