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Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University

Newsmakers

Alumna Cheryl Ainoa

Alumna Cheryl Ainoa

Cheryl Ainoa : Women Leaders in Tech : Forbes

Alumna Cheryl Ainoa MBA ‘00 was featured in Forbes as one of the top female leaders in technology.

Alumna Cheryl Ainoa MBA ‘00 was featured in Forbes as one of the top female leaders in technology. Ainoa is the chief operations officers for D2L, a global cloud software company. Forbes interviewed her asking her to share her advice and help more women in technology rise to leadership positions. Read an excerpt of the interview:

Understand the promotion dynamics

Cheryl commented, that when men believe that they're about 60% ready for the next thing they start lobbying for the promotion. Women generally won't start doing that until they're near 100% confident they can do the work. (I’ve seen this in my mentoring of women.)

Cheryl has the stats:

“For a woman engineer, going from level one to level two takes three years versus with a male it’s typically 18 months. Is it because the guys are better or more ambitious? No.  It’s because the men are putting their hands up earlier.”

I’d like to close with perhaps the most powerful story of my entire interview with Cheryl (in her own words):

“Once when I was passed over for a promotion, I just assumed my boss had made his choice. So I went out and took the next recruiter call that came in. About a month later, I went in and gave notice and he was shocked and asked why I would be leaving. He said he had no idea I’d even wanted that job.  He said the reason I didn't get access was because there was this bigger reward coming. They were really lining me up for a much bigger role.”

“Needless to say, I stayed.”

“That experience was a real lesson for me,” she explained. “I needed to be much more proactive with expressing my wants for the next job and being clear about the outcomes I am producing.”

Find the full feature here ».

 

LSB Newsmakers, LSB Alumni, Cheryl Ainoa, MBA