Career Growth Advice from Alaina Percival, Tech Marketing Leader | Career Tips for Women in Tech Marketing

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 100
Featuring Alaina Percival, Co-Founder of Women Who Code

Episode Title: #100 Career Insights & Advice from Alaina Percival, Co-founder of Women Who Code

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Alaina Percival



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there. My name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the To Be Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. To Be Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you, encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Today is such a special show. It's our 100th episode at To Be Bolder. I have had the fabulous fortune of interviewing amazing women and today is no exception.

We have Alaina Percival. She is the co-founder of Women Who Code. Under Alaina’s leadership, the organization grew to serve 343 members in 147 countries. Alaina has had published articles in Forbes, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. She is an accomplished tech speaker. Alaina has spoken on a range of topics from development and retention models to intersectional diversity and equity-centered decision-making and data strategy for the United Nations to social justice and advocacy and STEM at Harvard University. Alaina is also an angel investor, a venture partner at Valor Ventures and a scout for PICUS Capital, and in 2022 she taught women-lead technology at Georgia State University. Alaina, thank you so much for being here.

Alaina Percival (Guest): Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And just to correct one thing, we have 343,000 members now, so we're serving quite a few. I'm very proud of that.

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. Yes, that is so amazing, and I appreciate you being here. Okay, so in doing my homework to have you on as a guest, I read up on you and I found some of your travel and your adventures very fascinating. Can you share with our listeners your background and tell us about your career journey and how you became the co-founder and the previous CEO of Women Who Code?

Alaina Percival: Oh yeah, so I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm a mom. I have two young boys, but I'm originally from Atlanta and I ended up out of university getting a congressional scholarship that brought me to Germany for a young professional exchange. And so, I ended up staying for four years total after getting a job with Puma there and starting off my career. It was just this fantastic place to be starting my career and developing sort of a more international focus within my career. And I went back and did an MBA and that again had an international focus. So, it was a dual degree program through the Sorbonne in Paris and then an MBA with Georgia State University and did company visits in China, so it still was deepening that kind of global focus in my career path.

After that I went to work for a really small women's performance footwear company which was really more of a startup feel even though it was before my tech journey. So, when I had the opportunity to move out to San Francisco, it was one of those cities that was on my list. You know, if you get a chance to go there, go. And so, I did and I'd had this fantastic career up until this point and people were like, you work for Puma, like the shoe company, you know, what about Google, Microsoft, Facebook, you know, like where's your tech credibility? And I hit a couple of walls that I just hadn't experienced before in my career, and I started learning to code on the side.

I started getting involved in the tech community and this kind of little community that was almost our secret group for a while just started to, you know, suck me in. I fell in love with spending time with smart women talking about technology and then the world started talking about we need to teach girls to code, we need to teach women to code. And I was sitting in the tech industry among all of these brilliant individuals that day after day were having to prove themselves that they were actually technical.

I remember one early story that someone told me is, you know, she was a software engineer at a company, and she was at the booth at a conference and the gentleman who was the recruiter's name was Brian and someone walked up to her and said, are you Brian? Because it was easier to imagine that her name was Brian than that she was an engineer at the table. And so, the level of bias just made me realize we need to be elevating the needs of individuals in the industry and helping to support their path, their attention, their leadership journey to be able to create even more equity alongside teaching girls to code and getting more women to get technical and join the industry.

Mary Killelea: That's an amazing story and there's so many women who have to thank you for opening up the doors and seeing this void and taking action and starting Women Who Code. You've done amazing work. What do you find most rewarding about your work?

Alaina Percival: So, the individual stories, absolutely. And then the people that I often get to know the most are the people who volunteer. And a lot of people think that volunteerism is pure service, but we have practice based and skill based volunteering. So, when you are a Women Who Code volunteer, it means you are, you know, maybe organizing events where you're getting project management skills, as well as building your network as a leader, or you're delivering a talk, which means you're elevating your thought leadership to a community. And since one of the biases women face in moving from individual contributor to leader is that the hiring managers can't imagine your leadership skills until you demonstrate them. It gives you an opportunity to demonstrate and practice your leadership, and then go back and say, Hey, you know, I did this, I ran this project, I gave talks at these different locations.

And what you hear is, you know, our Mexico City director who let me know in under a year that her salary had increased 200%. Another leader who started off as a volunteer with us as an individual contributor, and in under a year got promoted to lead, and then to director. And so, you know, they're high potential individuals, but what someone equated it to is like, you know, getting a business degree from Stanford, that you are opening doors, you're building connections, you're practicing leadership, and it just ushers you forward. And it's part of practicing it yourself, part of creating an opportunity for you to see yourself as a leader, but then also giving the world an opportunity to see you as a leader, and it can happen fast.

I remember one of my favorite stories was a volunteer who was just attending events, and the person who led the event was running late. And so, she had said, you know, I've been coming for a while, I can just stand at the front of the room and introduce everyone to one another, kick things off, talk through what we're going through for the night. And she said, at the end of just a couple of hours, she looked around the room, and everyone in that room saw her as a leader. And she was able to then see herself that way as well.

Mary Killelea: That is so impactful and so critical for changing the trajectory of a woman's career. I love that shift from not, it's more than volunteering. Tell us about Women Who Code's mission and how it has evolved over the years. I know you got a new CEO recently, so fill us all in.

Alaina Percival: Yeah, so Women Who Code's mission is to empower diverse women to excel in technology careers. So, we've always been focused on those of you who are in the industry, and building up your technical skills, while weaving in leadership and networking. And what you often see is if you're uncomfortable to go into a networking situation, what you're actually doing is you're going to learn a technology skill. And then you just happen to meet someone who works at a company that might be interesting for you to work at, and they're interested in the same technology you're interested in, and you become friends.

I remember one of the events that we had, one of our board members showed up, and so we often kick things off with a question of the day. And so, my icebreaker was has Women Who Code impacted your career, and if not, what made you decide to join? And I remember going around that, like, you know, there were 20 or 30 people there that day, and it was, oh, you know, I decided to go to a hackathon with, you know, the person sitting next to me, and we won second place. And then the next person was like, I work from home, and I don't, I just feel alone. And I come here, and I'm surrounded by amazing, brilliant people, and it makes me feel motivated. Or I got laid off, and within two weeks, someone here at Women Who Code referred me to their company, and I got hired. And so, I just heard story after story, and I was like, wow, this is exactly why I do this. This is exactly what our mission's about. So I've been leading the organization for a little over 10 years, and I think that when you love something so much, you have to look for opportunities for it to grow.

And so, we have brought on just an incredibly talented new CEO within the organization. Her name is Julie Elberfeld. She is the former CIO of Capital One. She was the first executive sponsor of Women Who Code. So her journey with us is also over 10 years. And I remember she started off as an individual contributor in technology years ago, and her telling the story of how throughout her career she somehow sometimes gotten opportunities to advocate for others. And sometimes people advocated for her and how she just really learned from that. And some of the things that stood out to me was, after she had her children, she said, I need to work from home. And this was before you work from home. And so they said no. And so she said, Okay, I'm gonna quit. The industry almost lost her. And fortunately, the other person who knew how to do what she did quit shortly after that. And they said, Oh, turns out you can work from home. And so it created change. It forced a company to say, we can do things differently.

But then because of that experience for her, when someone needed flexibility in their role, she said she would go to their manager and say, she could share that job with someone else on the team. It could be two people doing 20 hours. And if we can retain them for this two year period, or five year period that they need more flexibility in their role, we can retain them in their industry for 30 to 40 years. And when you do that as a company, you're that people first in how you build your policies and your practices, you create team members that want to stay with you and value you as an employer. So having those practices and finding no matter where you are in your career opportunities to advocate is just so critical.

Mary Killelea: Does someone have to know how to code in order to be a member? Or like, because I know a lot of people are trying to pivot and seeing opportunities within the tech, but they have no idea how to begin or where to begin. So is that a criteria?

Alaina Percival: No, absolutely not. So, about a third of our community are in either less technical roles or looking to transition into the tech industry. So, while our core focus is people who are in the industry, we highly value accessibility. So, we have, you know, thousands of videos online, we have close to 2000 free technical events every single year. And so it's a great platform for you to go in and try out five, six different programming languages, figure out which one is actually the right one for you to be learning, identify which of the resources that we have are where you want to go deeper, which community or group you want to really hone in on that's going to help you the most in your career journey. And so I think really that accessibility gives you the opportunity to talk to other people in other companies and ask them, you know, why have you chosen this path? Why have you chosen this programming language?

But I've also had someone who was the receptionist at a tech company say, love coming to women who code events, I'm learning to code, my goal is not to become a software engineer, but now I know what everyone's talking about. And I personally learned to code, and my goal also wasn't to become a software engineer, but I wanted to be a leader in the tech industry. I wanted to be a leader in business. Every industry, by the way, is a technology industry. And that means if you want to be a leader in any business and any industry, you're running a technology company. And so it gave me the language, it gave me the knowledge of what I could accomplish and what I could ask for and just understand how to move forward in a leadership position. And so while certainly the majority of our community are technical, everyone is welcome.

Mary Killelea: That's really good to know. How does your organization differentiate themselves from others? Because there is a growing, which is wonderful, there's a growing selection of other organizations that women can become a part of. What is your differentiation, if you will?

Alaina Percival: Yeah, so we are primarily focused on people who are in industry. And so you've probably heard of Girls Who Code, if you've heard of women who code, and hopefully one day all girls who code will become women who code. And so, we work very well with other organizations, but we're actually focused on adults, people in their career, upskilling, staying engaged, a sense of belonging, leveling up throughout their career. And we also are language agnostic. So, a lot of the other organizations out there might just be focused on Python or one particular topic. But we're the largest and most active community out there. So, among the 2,000 talks that are being delivered, there's still probably more talks in Python than maybe a group even just focus on. And we have that year-round nature, but then we're also global. So, we serve members in 147 countries. And it's amazing when you go to a Women Who Code event in Taipei or a women who code event in San Francisco or Berlin, and you still see that Women Who Code DNA throughout the organization and throughout the event.

Mary Killelea: For someone who hasn't been to one of the events before, I assume you have virtual and in person, what could someone expect? And this may be just too random of a question, because I'm sure there's different topics, but like an energy or a vibe or the community sense.

Alaina Percival: Yeah, so first to your question about in person or remote, we do both. I think initially we were almost all in person and maybe 5% remote. And then in 2020, we had to take our 1,800 annual events and make them all digital. And so now we're starting to go back in person as well. But an average women who code event would be one that has a technical focus where you might have a short intro talk, whether it's 15 or 20 minutes around a topic, and then you might all kind of break up and program in a particular type of language, or it might more in the digital space be more of a workshop where you're all going through something in particular together.

Mary Killelea: When you were starting off in the initial days of founding the company, what was the biggest challenge from people that you were trying to either get to embrace sponsor and support the organization or what was the challenges that you dealt with? And I'm assuming some of those barriers have come down.

Alaina Percival: Yeah. You know, some things felt easier and some things felt harder. We hit in a moment amplifying the need to support women in the industry right before the Me Too movement started. And right before all of these other things were taking place that were reminding people that actually building up more equity in leadership and technologies is critical. And so, I would say the one thing that the one problem that still persists is that we're a non-profit and so our funding comes from either donations or corporate sponsors, and only 4% of funding goes to women and girls of philanthropic funding. And I'm pretty sure only 4% of that 4% goes to women. I don't have that data point, but people see a lot of funding going to girls.

And getting people to understand that how critical it is, how powerful it is to support women in the industry to stay in their careers and thrive, and it actually takes effort and is valuable and the fastest and easiest way to create greater quality in the tech industry. And really getting companies or individuals to support that monetarily. So people when you say it are like, that's great, go and do that.

Mary Killelea: So you touched on inequity, but I'm going to go inequity and pay. And it's very real. How can women become more comfortable and transparent with talking about salaries since we know knowledge is power?

Alaina Percival: Yeah, there's a lot of data out there on the internet now, so that you are able to be in a strong position to know where you should be coming in at. Google is rewarding companies that are or job postings that are listing the salary ranges. So, I say Google, I mean like the search engine results.

Mary Killelea: That's good to know. I didn't know that.

Alaina Percival: Yeah, there is incentive now to be a little bit more transparent about that. And you need to practice asking because it's not comfortable. The women are penalized for asking, and so often we don't do it. I feel like it's always emphasized like women don't ask, but the truth is like we don't ask because when we say we want more, you get penalized for it. So, you need to practice. You need to get really comfortable doing it.

One of the stories that I remember hearing is down to two candidates, and they were both negotiating their salary. And the recruiters that were working were like, you know, the woman candidate, she has this and she has that. And the hiring manager was like, yeah, but the other candidate, the male candidate, he has that and that. If we're fighting for him, we can be fighting for her too. We can't offer them different salaries. And I think that you have to find your place to be an advocate and you have to know your numbers and practice so you're comfortable doing it and figure out what's going to work for you. Make sure you're asking, but realize, I think as the Barbie movie says, you smile and you move forward, but realize it's not fair game. That's not a direct quote, but something similar to that.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. So a few years back, companies were embracing diversity, equity and inclusion, understanding the benefits from social pressures. But then I think there was like this economic decline, layoffs started happening. I've seen or noticed that DEI investments within organizations seem to be kind of first on the chopping block. What can we do as women to ensure companies know this is of value to us, kind of one of our non-negotiables, and speak up as a unified force?

Alaina Percival: Yeah. I think if you're inside of a company, ask for it, ask what you're doing, advocate for it internally, figure out what you can do within your power, within elevating your voice to be able to let the company know it's important. If you're interviewing, you're interviewing the company also. Ask what are you doing and choose the companies that are aligned with your values because you're going to be spending a lot of time, a lot of important hours of your life dedicated to making that company better. So, make sure it's a company that is doing something you want to see happen in the world.

Mary Killelea: That's awesome. What drives you?

Alaina Percival: Oh, I am ambitious. So, ambition drives me, but impact also, the impact, the stories. You know, I can wake up every day and do the hard things because of what it means to the community and the individuals who get the most value out of the organization and the volunteers who give their time and benefit from it as well.

Mary Killelea: So, networking can be somewhat of an uncomfortable thing for some women, but we know it's so critical for career growth. How did you build yours early on? I mean, I'm sure your network is incredible doing what you've done for the last 10 years and your education, but what were some of the early challenges and how did you establish that pattern?

Alaina Percival: Yeah, so I would say do it differently now. Times have changed a little bit and people are so accessible. And I think it's really important to one, if you're very uncomfortable with it, imagine it's making friends. It doesn't have to be a fake relationship that you're just trying to support your career on. You're actually wanting to talk to someone who's doing something that you'd like to be doing. And they're probably a really cool person because they've chosen a similar path to what you want to go on. And so, reframing it in your mind a little bit helps. But then the specific tactics that I recommend for people who are starting their careers is think about your top 10 or top 20 companies.

Go on LinkedIn and find someone who is like the level you want to go in on or one or two levels above. So you're not like, oh, I'd like to be a software engineer for Apple. I'm going to email Tim Cook, but go and see if there's someone who has been a software engineer for a year. Apple, reach out to them. Someone who's been there for three years, reach out to them. Someone who's working on a specific product within an organization that you'd want to work on. Reach out to them and then set a goal for yourself of reaching out to three to five people on LinkedIn or whatever their social media channels you might be finding people on. And just saying, hey, you know, can we do a Google Meet or a Zoom meeting for 10 minutes? I'd just love to hear how you decided to work for this company. And come into that meeting and not everyone will respond, but if you're reaching out to five, one of them probably will. If you're finding five of them do, well, you might not have to do it the next week. If only one person responds, then you should find five more the next week at other companies that are interesting to you. And you do that for two to five months and you have an incredible network. So, when you go into those meetings, have a couple of questions, honor their time, like come prepared, like what made you decide to work there? Ask those questions and at the end say if I saw a job inside of your company, would you be willing to put my resume in for it or connect me with the hiring? Look, look who the hiring manager is and point me in the right direction. I'd probably say yes, because especially in technology and software engineering, there's often referral bonuses if you are the person who ends up getting hired. And it gives you an opening to follow back up and, you know, cut through the stack that's just coming in through like LinkedIn or Indeed and have, you know, that, that point of connection inside of the company. You make it as easy as possible for someone to help you.

Mary Killelea: That's such good advice. You've been resilient in your career. What advice around resilience do you have for women?

Alaina Percival: Yeah, I think resilience is, um, is something that's critical. And I think for any, anyone who's founder or co-founder of a company that needs to be one of your superpowers. And I mean, for me, my passion, my passion was a big part of it. I would say there's been times when I'm better and worse at work-life balance and things like that. But just truly loving and believing in what I do, it enables me to make it through the hard moments and, you know, being a co-founder and a CEO, I thought you get to a point and it was like, Oh, it's glamorous and it's easier. That's not true. It's the whole company now relies on you. So there's a lot of pressure there, and their livelihoods. And I would, I would joke if there's not someone to do it, it's me. So like, if there's not someone to sweep the floor at the end of the day, I'm sweeping the floor because the floor needs to get swept. And, you know, but on the flip side, you also get these amazing moments where, um, you know, I got to ring the bell at the New York stock exchange and, uh, and, you know, the, the really exciting moments too.

Mary Killelea: So there's a lot of women, unrecognized women, but women driving world changing work in technology. Who inspires you as I'm sure you've met many, many of them within your career.

Alaina Percival: Yeah, um, definitely many, but I'm not sure. I wouldn't have said this person before, but I will definitely say Julie Oberfeld, though, there's someone who has really inspired me. She embodies, really what we would want our, our members to aspire to. You go on that technical path, that individual contributor path, move into leadership. You look around you and say things could be, you know, were equitable and you add, you take the power and you gain to create change inside of your organization that improves the culture and the environment for those who don't have the same level as power of power as you. And then of course, your next step in your career is to go back and just really find a way to give back to the community. So yeah, our, our new CEO, Julie Oberfeld.

Mary Killelea: That's wonderful. Um, do you have a particular approach to goal setting with being so driven and ambition, ambitious?

Alaina Percival: I will say that the thing that stands out for me versus maybe other practices is when I do have a clear goal, I like to move on it. I don't, I am ready to go and I'm ready to like when, when I envision what the goal is and the pieces start to fall in place, um, I, I'm, I'm not wanting to hesitate. It's, it's go time.

Mary Killelea: Is that in your personal life as well?

Alaina Percival: I'm sure. Um, I will say that I'm like many other people and, uh, sometimes put my, myself, you know, it's easy to neglect yourself a little bit, like, oh, I'm going to go to the gym three times. Doesn't mean that I'm actually going to be able to sustain it better than other people, but when I have that, um, that clarity, that goal, it just makes it easy for me to go and I can put a lot of energy into it.

Mary Killelea: What would you tell your 20 year old self?

Alaina Percival: Uh, buy Bitcoin when it's 25 cents. No, but I mean, I can certainly say get in, like start coding right now. But I'm happy with the human. And so I'm happy with the choices that I've made in my life. I’m an adventurer and not in the sense of I'm going on expeditions every weekend, but I like trying new things. And, so I would say, go for it, continue to learn, follow your passion, code and also invest in Bitcoin as early as possible.

Mary Killelea: No one's ever answered that like that. I love it. Um, how have you been able to balance your career and being a mom? Cause that challenges so many of us.

Alaina Percival: Yeah, it's not, it's not easy. I found very quickly, I couldn't say yes to everything. So I had to saying yes to the things that I couldn't say yes to, or could say no to. And then, we really leaned into a strong culture of it's okay if your work hours and at, at four o'clock, you figure it out, you flex your time. But it's not easy. I will say I was traveling a lot before I had kids and even the first year that I had my first son and COVID was kind of nice because I stopped traveling for a couple of years, and got to really spend some quality time.

But the other thing is make sure your partner is I have an incredibly supportive partner and that makes a world of difference. Every time I have someone who is about to be a new mom, I say, if you're doing the feedings, make sure they're doing the diaper changes. You do input and they do input out.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Alaina Percival: To be bolder to me is when something's hard or scary, you do it anyway. You, you push forward and push through that. Um, so often when people say our fearless leader, like I'm not fearless at all. I just still go for it.

Mary Killelea: I love it. You're being bolder. I have enjoyed this, but before I let you go, I have a few fun, rapid fire questions for everyone. Um, winter or summer?

Alaina Percival: Spring.

Mary Killelea: Okay. That wasn't an option. I'd love how you go there. Comedy or drama?

Alaina Percival: Drama.

Mary Killelea: The beach or the mountains?

Alaina Percival: I love to hike mountains.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Cats or dogs?

Alaina Percival: Cats. We've got two.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Coffee or tea?

Alaina Percival: Iced coffee at all the way.

Mary Killelea: Okay. It has been amazing. You were the perfect hundredth episode guest. I have to thank you for everyone that's listening. The impact of the work that you have done has literally opened doors for so many women. Thank you.

Alaina Percival: Thank you. And if anyone's considering it, please join women who code at women who code.com.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at to be bolder.com. That's the number two little B bolder.com.