I'd like to think my company HootSuite is anything but a stodgy old-boys' club. As a social media company, our employees are by and large young, progressive and open-minded.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The social-media landscape changes incredibly fast, so you have to be open-minded and nimble to keep up with it.
Today, 30-year-olds are becoming social entrepreneurs.
Companies and managers that find a way to harness social media stand to gain.
If you were just to look at Lockheed Martin, you'd see a lot of women in senior roles in our company and, not only that, our customers, so I don't consider it an old boys' club.
Anyone working at HootSuite will tell you that I don't sugarcoat my opinions. I heavily encourage feedback and suggestions - partly because I'm blunt about offering the same in return.
Fashion is such an insider's club, but slowly, the playing field is evening out. Through social media, everyone can have a front-row seat.
During the early days of HootSuite, when social media was still seen as a fad, I made the decision to treat our funding as if it were my personal bank account. That's not to say I blew it on fast cars and fancy dinners. Exactly the opposite.
Salesforce's Chatter is what convinced me that the company understood what is going on in the enterprise; this was the biggest attraction for me. I saw that Salesforce understands social.
With the never-ending stream of new social technologies, apps and platforms rolling out every day, its easy to get lost in the minutiae of social media. Yet for there to be effective change, especially within large, top-down, hierarchical institutions, a company must have an over-arching understanding of the new role it has to play.
I think I'm in a business where you have to look good, and it's totally youth-oriented.