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We doubled the woman-identifying population in the engineering department in two years. To celebrate, I was invited to a leadership breakfast with our director of communications to get my insights on the progress we were making toward our diversity efforts.  

Being the engineer that I am, I did my due diligence to help me understand the bigger picture behind these numbers. I spent some time scrolling through the org charts posted on our intranet site and highlighted everyone in the operations side of the business that identified using she/her pronouns. Then, I highlighted those with engineering degrees … We didn’t just double the woman population in engineering, we almost tripled it! From 4 percent to 11 percent. 

After four years of pushing myself, I started to get recognized by my leadership team. I was selected for a four-person team to lead organization-wide business improvements prior to being promoted into a leadership role. It was at this point that they started sending me to leadership conferences where I built connections with folks at the director level and above.  

One day, while having lunch with one of these directors, she admitted to me that she remembered when I was hired four years earlier. When I asked for clarification, she responded by saying that news had traveled across the company that they hired a female engineer, and everyone in her department cheered. Her department resided in an office building three miles away from my office.  

To say that I was the “Token Female” is an understatement. Admittedly, it took a long time for me to stop loving this title and the opportunities that came with being the only available option. But, by the time I was invited to breakfast to discuss diversity improvements, I had it figured out.  

To say that I was the 'Token Female' is an understatement. Admittedly, it took a long time for me to stop loving this title and the opportunities that came with being the only available option. Share on X

Eleven percent is an abysmal number for representation of women engineers. The fact that my leadership team thought this was something to celebrate was one of the final nails in the coffin for me when it came to believing the sincerity of their diversity efforts. No, it wasn’t the horrendous treatment I had personally received from my director, and it wasn’t the blatant sexism that I faced on the daily. It was cold, hard facts that showed me they truly didn’t care. Promoting themselves in such a pretentious way only made the truth clearer for me. 

11% is an abysmal number for representation of women engineers. The fact that my leadership team thought this was something to celebrate was the final nail in the coffin in believing the sincerity of their diversity efforts. Share on X

It’s not difficult to find candidates to increase your organization’s diversity. We are everywhere. I graduated from engineering school. More than 11 percent of my graduating class was women. If anything, it takes effort to maintain a uniform population of employees.  

I previously provided our human resource team with the contact information of a woman who started a business to connect corporations with recent college graduates with the sole purpose of increasing the number of female engineers in the working population. They declined to speak with her.  

When the Lean In movement reached its peak, it was the woman from HR who said we couldn’t hold “Lean In” meetings on company time. 

I once wrote an entire proposal for why I thought the better candidate for hiring was the woman who answered questions thoughtfully and demonstrated the ability think critically versus the man who wanted the job because his girlfriend moved to our city and he wanted to move, too. They hired him after I left the position. 

Even now, years after I left that organization, I watch the notifications on LinkedIn as I see my white, male colleagues receive promotion after promotion while those who demonstrate excellent leadership ability and truly care about their employees and the work they do sit stagnant in roles year after year. It goes unsaid that these folks also happen to be non-white, non-male, or both. 

What I learned from this experience is that the numbers tell a story that no one wants to hear. The dreamers of the world, like me, want to change these statistics and we see clear ways to do so. The reality is that organizations without diverse populations are that way for a reason: They don’t want diverse populations.  

Numbers tell a story no one wants to hear. The dreamers of the world want to change these statistics and see clear ways to do so. The reality is organizations without diverse populations don’t want diverse populations. Share on X

If you do happen to see someone who ticks a “diversity checkbox” in a position of authority, it’s likely they exhibit the same kind of thinking and behavior as their white, male counterparts. I should know, I used to be that person. I learned how to thrive in corporate spaces, modeling myself after those who had the kind of success I wanted. It was exhausting, and I felt like crap most of the time. Once I stopped “playing the game,” things got much more difficult for me. 

If you see someone who ticks a 'diversity checkbox' in a position of authority, it’s likely they exhibit the same kind of behavior as white, male counterparts. I used to be that person. It was exhausting, and I felt like crap. Share on X

These spaces are not safe for historically marginalized groups. And when those people eventually give up and leave, or “quietly quit” as the internet is now saying, they are blamed and degraded. The more I learn about narcissistic behavior and gaslighting, the more I realize that corporations like this aren’t just problematic, they are straight-up abusive. 

They pit historically marginalized employees against each other, creating the illusion that there’s only room for one person to successfully climb the ladder. They control behavior using finances — threats of job loss and promises of promotions that never come. They put you into the most challenging roles and give you zero resources to succeed.  

As a burnout prevention coach for change leaders, I know the devastating effects this can have on a person. That’s why I’m still here, holding tight to my dreams of changing what leadership in America looks like and providing my services to support those like me. I do believe it’s possible for us to do this difficult work, but I also know that we need to be prepared with the proper tools to make it a fair fight. One of those tools is understanding the situations we are putting ourselves into. 

I love numbers — I have a minor in mathematics to prove it. Numbers are reliable and can tell you a lot. But they can also be manipulated and twisted to tell a false story by the person or entity using them. If you see an organization boasting about the success of diversity hiring efforts, it might be worth questioning why there was a need for diversity hiring efforts in the first place. 

Numbers are reliable and can tell you a lot. But they can also be manipulated. If you see an org boasting about the success of diversity hiring efforts, why there was a need for diversity hiring efforts in the first place? Share on X