Philanthropy

NCWIT had a “town hall” event at the National Academy of Sciences Auditorium last Wednesday. Along with the NCWIT participants were a number of special guests, including Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Rick Rashid (SVP Microsoft Research), and Senator Mark Udall (D-CO). The agenda included a keynote address from Padmasree Warrior (EVP and CTO of Motorola), an Executive Branch Panel, and a Congressional Panel. I wasn’t able to attend because of my trip to Paris, but Lucy Sanders (NCWIT’s CEO) told me the event went extremely well. Thanks to everyone who participated.

On Friday, Microsoft announced that it had donated $1 million to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. I was at Seattle University at the Future Potential in IT seminar where this was announced and got to say a few words on behalf of NCWIT to the 500 people (mostly students – about 25% women) that were there. I’ve been chairman of NCWIT for the past 18 months and this marks a huge milestone for us. A year ago Avaya partnered with NCWIT at the $1 million level, making them NCWIT’s first “investment partner.” While we have a great workforce alliance, Microsoft has stepped up in a huge way and is showing real leadership with our organization as our most recent investment partner. ...

I stumbled over a post on the re:invention Marketing blog (a toolbox for & about enterprising women) about BusinessWeek’s recent article on tech entrepreneurs under the age of 30. Kirsten Osolind points out that of the 16 “cutting edge entrepreneurs under 30” that were highlighted, none were women (ok – two were women – Sandy Jan and Elaine Wherry – of Meebo.) I forwarded this to Lucy Sanders, the CEO of National Center for Women & Information Technology – and she logically responded “well Brad – blog about it.” Interestingly, the ratio (2:16 or 12.5%) is about the same ratio of high school girls to boys that take the AP Computer Science test.

After writing a “where are the women?” at Sun post last month, my partner Heidi reminded me that two high profile Silicon Valley CEO’s – Carol Bartz (Autodesk) and Kim Polese (Sun, SpikeSource) – are Sun alums. Last weekend, the Rocky Mountain News ran a nice profile of Barbara Bauer, VP of Software Engineering and Development at Sun’s Louisville, CO campus. Bauer (no relation to Jack as far as I know) was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and had some good thoughts about attracting new blood into the technology field.

Jonathan Schwartz – the president and COO of Sun – just posted on his great trip to Sun Mexico and raved about their recent performance. He posted a picture of “the winning team” – my first reaction was “where are the women?” I know Sun is a member of the National Center for Women & Information Technology Workforce Alliance so I was a little surprised. I decided to dig a little more and discovered that two of twenty three senior execs are women and two of nine directors are women. Unfortunately I had no easy way to go any deeper in the organization – it’s certainly conceivable that there is a higher ratio of female engineers at Sun than female executives – although if history is a guide this probably isn’t the case. ...

As you may know, I’m the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). NCWIT’s mission is straightforward – to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. NCWIT has had an awesome fall, including accomplishing the following. Hosting a superb national meeting at Carnegie Mellon University. Establishing a partnership with Cisco on an awareness campaign that leverages Cisco’s national educator’s network to reach students, teachers and parents. Creating an entrepreneurial alliance in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation . Creating a K-12 alliance. Adding several new members to the Executive Advisory Council, including Linda Dillman (EVP & CIO Wal-Mart Stores), Charlie Feld (EVP of Portfolio Management, EDS), and Ruth Bruch (SVP and CIO, Lucent Technologies). It’s been an honor to work with Lucy Sanders, the CEO of NCWIT, and her team on year three of this incredibly vibrant organization.

I’ve strongly encouraged my portfolio companies to incorporate “philanthropic activities” into their businesses early in their life. I don’t advocate any particular focus – I simply encourage founders and leadership teams to think about what they can do to make a difference. Historically, most large public companies have some amount of philanthropic focus, but this is often missing early in the life a company. I’m proud of a number of my portfolio companies that have incorporate philanthropic programs into their businesses early, including Rally Software’s 1% Fund , StillSecure’s 1% of Revenues to Lance Armstrong Foundation, and NewsGator’s 3% of Revenues to Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts. ...

My friends Ben Neumann and Chris Ueland have a clever idea for helping out Hurricane Katrina victims called MillionDollarHelpPage. They’ve taken the idea that Alex Tew came up for MillionDollarHomePage and repurposed it to be a Katrina fundraiser with the goal of raising $1 million.

I’ve been chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology for the past year. I recently wrote an article – which is up on the NCWIT web site – on why I chose to get involved in NCWIT. I’ve reposted it here for convenience. The most common question I’ve received over the past year, regarding the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), is “why is the board chair a man?” ...

A short spot on National Public Radio today titled Computer Science: Calling All Women does a super job explaining why I’ve been working with Lucy Sanders on the National Center for Women & Information Technology . In three minutes and thirty seconds, you’ll hear what the issue is, why we care, and a few of the things we are doing.