SAPinsider Technology Executive Forum Issue 1 2021

about STEM degrees. There are many variants of STEM that require different skillsets and maybe they can help steer children to find a match to their strengths. My husband is an engineer, and our house- hold has always leaned toward STEM. Of our three children, one is an engineer, one is a medical doctor, and one works in cybersecurity. They all decided on STEM careers because they saw their parents flourishing and talking about interesting things, and I’m proud of them all for it. They never were afraid to make a go of it. Q: What does having diverse, equal, inclusive perspectives mean to you, and why is it important in the tech industry and SAP space, in particular? Innovation requires diverse perspectives so you can hear alternative ways to look at problems. As an example, several times, after discussing some technical issue with one of my male peers, he would look at me and say, “I never thought of it that way before.” I was definitely not smarter than he was, but because my experiences differed from his, some- times my brain would think about a problem in a different way. Now, whenever he has a problem, he wants to draw it out on my whiteboard and have me ask random questions so we can trigger a different thought process that might lead to a solution. I find that cross-functional teams provide a very diverse set of critical thinking that is invalu- able when designing a solution or trying to solve a problem. Diversity can be in gender, in race, and in functional departments. For example, when a scientist and a marketer work together — talk about different insights and perspectives being used to arrive at a solution! It’s important for everyone to have a voice and contribute. In the SAP world, the key to successful implementations is having resources involved who understand the big picture and the overall business processes. It is invaluable in working with SAP soft- ware to know the end-to-end process of how a piece of data is entered and transformed throughout its life cycle. My best SAP resources have been people who started out on the business side and then transferred to IT. Those individuals are key because it’s easier to teach people the technology than it is to teach them the business at the in-depth level you need. Q: Have you seen a change in women’s impact in the technology industry? Are the opportunities for women increasing? My current company is very gender diverse in the scientific area, and I see women climbing the career ladders who, in time, will be a part of the leadership team. We are very open and caring to ensure there is no bias regarding who is awarded opportunities or promotions. In the IT department, I make sure we hire new people based on their skillsets and experi- ences, not on their gender or race, and that there is no wage disparity based on gender or race. Unfortunately, I see very few resumes from women in the IT field. However, in the IT industry in general, I have seen women gravitate toward proj- ect management where their communication and organization skills are highlighted. I have seen good women developers, but the ones I know don’t seem to want to continue in that capacity long because they seem to crave working with people more than they enjoy the back-end programming life. Some companies are making a conscious effort to encourage, promote, and nurture many women into top leadership positions. For example, SAP itself is aware of the gender gap and is trying to address it by making diversity a priority. For a brief time, we had Jennifer Morgan as co-CEO of SAP. In 2013, SAP SAPinsiderOnline.com 23