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