June 7, 2017 The Skanner CAREERS EDITION Page 5 CAREERS Serena Williams Accepts a New Challenge — in Silicon Valley Williams joins SurveyMonkey board hoping to push tech industry in a more diverse direction SAN FRANCISCO — Tennis star Serena Williams has 39 Grand Slam titles, four Olym- pic medals, major endorse- ment deals and her own line of clothing and accessories. Now she is embarking on a new mission: She says she wants to help tech companies diversify their workforces and solve one of the industry’s most vexing problems. Williams, 35, will get her chance as she joins a Silicon Valley boardroom. Online sur- vey service SurveyMonkey announced Williams’ appoint- ment to its board on Wednes- day, along with Intuit CEO Brad Smith. “I feel like diversity is some- thing I speak to,” Williams said in an interview with The Asso- ciated Press. “Change is always happening; change is always building. What is important to me is to be at the forefront of the change and to make it easier for the next person that comes behind me.” Williams didn’t offer specif- ics about her goals as a corpo- rate director. She implied that her very presence can help push the company — and, by extension, the industry as a whole — in a more diverse di- rection. Individual board members don’t usually exert great influ- ence over the companies they oversee, although they are of- ten compensated handsome- ly in cash and stock for their part-time work. SurveyMon- key, a private company, didn’t say how much Williams will be compensated. Valley Diversity Silicon Valley’s lack of diver- sity has become a recurring source of embarrassment in a region that has long sought to position itself as an egalitari- an place that doesn’t favor one gender, ethnicity or race over another. Yet that philosophy hasn’t been reflected in high- tech workforces , despite the efforts of companies such as Google, Apple and Facebook to fix the problem. Williams has been hanging around Silicon Valley more frequently now that she is engaged to high-tech entre- preneur, Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of the online fo- rum Reddit. Like many other African-Americans, she says she’s disappointed that the vast majority of high-paying technology jobs are filled by white and Asian men. At SurveyMonkey, which employs about 650 workers, only 27 percent of technology jobs are filled by women. Just 14 percent of its total payroll consists of African-Ameri- cans, Latinos or people identi- fying themselves with at least two races, according to num- bers the company provided to the AP. What She Can Do Williams’ appointment is part of the solution, according to SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie. “My focus is to bring in change agents around the ta- ble who can open our eyes,” he said. Diversity advocates say women and minorities add value to corporate boards — as well as companies’ executive ranks — by offering new per- spectives and advocating for a broader range of a company’s stakeholders, whether that’s customers, shareholders or employees. In a report on France’s quo- ta requirements for corporate boards, the business research group Conference Board found that the real value of adding women came from the fact that they were more like- ly to be outsiders. They were more likely to be foreigners, have expertise in more diverse business issues than men AP PHOTO/AARON FAVILA, FILE By Michael Liedtke AP Technology Writer In this Jan. 28, 2017, file photo, Serena Williams holds up a finger and her trophy after defeating her sister, Venus, in the women’s singles final at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia. Williams wants to help diversify the tech industry now that she is joining a Silicon Valley boardroom for the first time. Online poll taking service SurveyMonkey announced Williams’ appointment to its board on Wednesday, May 24, along with Intuit CEO Brad Smith. and more likely to have risen through the ranks outside tra- ditional networks, such as elite universities. This, in itself, can “substantively” improve the collective decision-making of a board, according to the report. Williams’ celebrity may help draw attention to the lack of diversity on corporate boards themselves, said Brande Stellings, vice president of corporate board services for Catalyst, a group focused on fighting for women’s rights at work. For instance, Afri- can-American women occupy only 122 of the more than 5,000 board seats among Fortune 500 companies, based on Cata- lyst’s analysis. “This is an opportunity to show you don’t want a board full of people with the same backgrounds and experienc- es as everyone else,” Stellings See WILLAIMS on page 7