It’s entirely possible that tomorrow, when you are waiting in line for a morning coffee or commuting on the train, you will read a headline that says something along the lines of “Majority of U.S. Companies Make Active Decision to Turn Down Profits: Fortune 500 companies say ‘no thanks, we would rather make less money this year.’”
The headline might be a bit a stretch, but the underlying truth is sound: The imbalance of genders in leadership positions is the same as companies actively choosing lower performance.
Research shows that companies tend to perform better when there are more women in leadership positions. A 2020 Bloomberg article showed that large UK firms with board seats that were at least one-third held by women performed ten times better than those that had less gender diversity. In addition, companies with a workforce composed of at least 30 percent women significantly outperform those that have less representation, according to McKinsey and Company’s 2023 report on diversity and the workplace.
And while the percentage of change is increasing, the overall percentage of gender equity in leadership is low. Pew Research Institute found that women account for a larger share of Fortune 500 C-suite and board members than they have before. However, those percentages — roughly 10 percent of chief executives and 30 percent of board members — are still very low in comparison to the population as a whole.
Built In Chicago — which proudly has a leadership team that is 75 percent women — spoke with three women in tech who were recently promoted to or brought in as leaders for their companies. We spoke with them about career journeys and their leadership plans for the new role.
Grubhub is an online food delivery marketplace.
Describe your new role. What does your day-to-day look like, and what are the biggest priorities you’re focused on addressing?
In my role at Grubhub as an engineering manager, I lead the back-end team responsible for expanding into new verticals like grocery and alcohol delivery. My day-to-day focus is on four key areas: building great products, developing strong teams, fostering individual growth and staying connected to the technical aspects of our work. For product development, I collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure that we deliver meaningful value to both merchants and diners.
On the engineering side, I work closely with my team to maintain technical excellence by reviewing designs and adhering to best practices for scalable, reliable products. Developing strong teams has been a key focus. I’m proud of how quickly my team has come together and successfully launched two major programs, integrating large merchants into Grubhub’s platform. As a manager, helping my team grow professionally is a priority. I actively support their development by providing opportunities to lead and grow, while staying engaged in the technical side to guide the team effectively.
What has your career journey looked like so far? What experience are you bringing with you into your new role?
My career began as a software engineer at EMC, later acquired by Dell, where I worked on enhancing storage provisioning and expanding analytics capabilities for networking and compute systems. As I grew in my role, I discovered my passion for mentoring and supporting team development. A pivotal moment in my career was transitioning into a leadership position, where I led a team of full-stack engineers and became a product owner.
“As I grew in my role, I discovered my passion for mentoring and supporting team development.”
During my time at Dell, I led the integration of networking products into Dell’s cloud-based monitoring software for data centers, expanding analytics capabilities and improving overall system performance. At Google, I managed a team focused on improving the user experience for the Image Viewer in Image Mode and Web Search. One of the highlights was leading the integration of multimodal search, enhancing image searches beyond text-based queries.
With this diverse background, I bring experience in building distributed systems, a strong focus on system design and a commitment to fostering an environment where teams can thrive.
What are you most excited to accomplish with your team over the next year?
There’s so much I’m excited to accomplish with my team over the next year. Grubhub offers a wealth of opportunities, from learning new areas to tackling exciting engineering challenges. One of the key areas I’m particularly enthusiastic about is driving business growth through our work on new verticals. Expanding into categories like grocery and alcohol delivery and bringing more merchants onto the platform will not only provide our users with more options but also have a significant impact on the company’s trajectory.
Another priority that excites me is the development of my team members. My goal is to ensure they continue to grow as engineers and professionals. By providing them with challenging projects and opportunities for leadership, I hope to foster their growth and see them thrive in their roles.
From a technical perspective, I’m eager to address some of the complex engineering problems we face, such as optimizing our processes for onboarding new merchants. Onboarding more merchants faster, ultimately driving Grubhub’s efficiency and growth. Lastly, I’m excited to contribute to Grubhub’s collaborative and inclusive culture, working together to tackle meaningful challenges.
Strata provides financial software, data and insights to drive decisions and performance.
Describe your new role. What does your day-to-day look like, and what are the biggest priorities you’re focused on addressing?
In my new role as CFO, I oversee the finance, corporate operations and legal teams, with a current focus on integrating two legacy teams following a significant merger in August 2023. My immediate priorities include building the right team structure, integrating enterprise applications and laying out a midterm roadmap for automation to streamline processes. Additionally, a key part of my day-to-day involves maturing our strategic and operating framework to efficiently execute on our growth strategies. I’m also dedicating time to understanding our business, from the industry and customers to the competitive marketplace, which is all new to me.
“My immediate priorities include building the right team structure, integrating enterprise applications and laying out a midterm roadmap for automation to streamline processes.”
What has your career journey looked like so far? What skills are you bringing with you into your new role?
My career began at PwC in Arizona and later in Switzerland, where I learned to navigate fast-paced global environments. I then moved to Starwood Hotels, where I held roles in both corporate functions and hotel operations. Here, I developed key skills such as team management, communicating with owners, building automation and system improvements, and eventually worked in financial planning and analysis, where I consolidated information and reported trends to senior leadership.
Following Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood, I transitioned to STATS, a Vista PE-owned company. This experience sharpened my ability to operate in high-pressure environments, manage a global footprint and handle post-acquisition integrations, including the merging of systems and processes.
Most recently, I served as CFO at Pampered Chef, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. In this role, I deepened my understanding of strategic processes, fostered a culture of continuous improvement across the company, and honed my ability to influence cross-functional teams. These experiences have equipped me with the tools to effectively lead in dynamic and evolving environments.
What are you most excited to accomplish with your team over the next year?
I’m really excited about unifying our team under one system where we can win and grow together. This will allow us to identify synergies, streamline processes and implement automation improvements. A key focus will be building value-added work, such as internal business case development and reducing administrative burdens across the organization. Additionally, I’m eager to leverage AI and technology in our close process to drive efficiency and continue elevating the team’s overall impact.
Hireology is an HR tech company that empowers businesses to build great teams.
Describe your new role. What does your day-to-day look like, and what are the biggest priorities you’re focused on addressing?
I have had the pleasure of leading our demand generation function for a few years at Hireology. Most recently we have pulled our product marketing team with the rest of marketing and staffed up our partner and events teams. These staffing and team changes reflect exciting things to come for our platform and the priorities for the business.
My day-to-day is all about how I can remove obstacles and provide direction to our fantastic marketing team to get the word about what Hireology has to offer our prospective customers. What is awesome about that is no two days have ever been the same. I get great joy out of the daily problems my team — and our collaborators at Hireology — gets to solve and the unique ways we try to reach different audiences.
“I get great joy out of the daily problems my team — and our collaborators at Hireology — gets to solve and the unique ways we try to reach different audiences.”
What has your career journey looked like so far? What skills and/or experience are you bringing with you into your new role?
I am fortunate enough to have spent a large part of my career growing at Hireology. I started here to help us grow in one specific market given my experience in retail automotive with Cars.com, now Cars Commerce. Over time I have been able to take on more to help us grow beyond retail automotive and find unique ways to position Hireology.
I think the most important thing that has carried me through at Hireology — and is important no matter where you are as a marketer — is that I have a true passion for this business. I believe that Hireology has a unique offering that not only solves a business problem for the markets we serve but can fundamentally make a difference in the lives of many. I love the businesses and partners we get to work with in automotive, hospitality and senior care. And moreover, I truly find myself fortunate that I get to call Hireology home due to the individuals I get to work in marketing, sales, operations, product, customer success, etc. We say this a lot but “I love what I do and I love who I do it with.”
What are you most excited to accomplish with your team over the next year?
Hireology is at an exciting time in our journey. In the last two years we have brought in a whole new research and development team to take our software to the next level. They have worked with our revenue teams to really understand not only what the customer wants today but anticipate what they’ll need in the future. With that understanding as a guidepost, our product roadmap is the most robust and game-changing I’ve seen in awhile.
Additionally a dynamic set of leaders has joined the ranks of our revenue leadership team that is helping us build a best-in-class go-to-market team in the face of changing tech sales. We have added Emily Leu as our vice president of sales. Emily brings an extensive background in sales as a long-time leader, trainer and consultant and is elevating Hireology’s sales organization to outpace market trends.
