12 Questions: Pandora internet radio's Sara Clemens

Clemens says she inherited her work ethic from her parents. Photo / Peter Meecham

Hawkes Bay’s Sara Clemens is one of Silicon Valley’s few female senior executives, a strategist who has worked with Xbox, LinkedIn and is now chief strategy officer at Pandora internet radio. She says her aim was always to make it in the Valley

1. Where does your ambition come from?

I learnt a lot about hard work from my parents. My mum worked in the supermarket for 45 years and Dad was at the Port Authority in Napier until deregulation in the late '80s. He had a series of jobs after that and ended his days working in an apple picking factory. I very distinctly remember Dad getting laid off. There are two economic things that have impacted my beliefs and attitude to work. One was Mum and Dad paying off their house, when I was about 6. I didn't know what freehold was but I knew it was good. They'd both saved every cent they'd earned since they left school at 14 and that was security for them. And then Dad being laid off. He got a job quite quickly but it was a shock, really, that you could be a hard worker and the Government would fire you. I think a lot of people felt like that.

2.Was education important for your parents?

They were both so smart but had to leave school early because of their big families. Dad was in the middle of eight kids and Mum the youngest of 12 and both of their fathers had died when they were young. People would always be like 'are you Catholic' and we'd say no, just poor. They wanted my two sisters and I to have options. We were taught to read before we went to school and Dad did homework with us every night.

3. You grew up in the 80s - did you believe 'girls can do anything?'

Absolutely. It was just how things were. Dad taught us how things worked. We weren't allowed to drive the car until we could change the oil and the tyres. He was working at the Griffins factory coding their production systems and there were flowcharts and things he would share with us. Understanding how things worked was really important to him.

4. Were there computers in your home?

No and it's really interesting the drop of women coders that happened in about '84. That's when home computers came in and it was very much an engineering endeavour, very masculine, to make a computer up for your home. The next wave of entrepreneurs from that time were all men. I did computer science at Colenso High School that year - it was a new subject and I remember learning how to code pictures. I coded a picture of Garfield. I think I was just always interested in technology.

5. Are there many women where you work in Silicon Valley?

At Pandora we're 50 per cent women but the ethnic diversity is still not there. All over the valley it's mostly white and Asian. Every woman who has worked in technology has experienced that sense you are up against the environment. The language you use won't necessarily resonate. When I was at Xbox there would be 25 people in a meeting and I was the only woman. The worst thing was by the end I didn't even notice. But that said, in Silicon Valley you really are judged by what you do, not who you are. And I've only had delightful experiences there.

6. Does being in the minority change the way you act?

No, you have to be who you are. Every time a younger woman asks me 'how do you embrace assertiveness?' I'm like 'just feel comfortable in who you are'.

7. How did you get into tech?

I had wanted to be a journalist and studied that, then got into broadcasting policy work in Wellington. Policy is really just strategy but for the government. I spent 18 months working in the allocation of non-commercial radio and TV frequencies when the internet turned up and changed everything. I think technology has done nothing but enable goodness in the world. It opens doors for people. It connects us with people and families. My husband is in technology too - we've been together for 25 years - and he had a British passport so that's where we went. But if you're in technology, Silicon Valley is where you want to be. We entered into a pact: whoever got a good offer from a global technology company first should take it. I got a great opportunity with Microsoft.

8. Is the Valley conducive for families?

It can be but we don't have kids. We always thought we would but got to our mid-30s and thought do we really want to do this? Both of us really love our careers. We knew we'd need one primary caregiver, the person who would be there when the school calls and your child is sick, but with my job I was travelling 25 to 45 weeks a year. If the school called I might be in Israel negotiating a deal. Neither of us wanted to be the primary caregiver. Then we thought what if we outsourced that role but that wasn't the model we felt like we wanted.

9. Do people always ask why you don't have kids?

Yes. It's still pretty rare I guess but I was asked a lot more in my 30s. Now I'm too old and people have stopped. At first I'd just say no, when they asked but now I think it should be OK to say we've decided not to. A lot of young women ask me about it.

10. When have you been at your lowest and how did you pull yourself out?

In 2001 the telecommunications market crashed into an abyss. I was at a European role in London and we were moving to Paris. We'd given up our apartment, set up the new one, then on September 11 the Twin Towers came down and next day my company shut down the European operations. I rang my husband and said not only do I not have a job, but we're homeless. It was the first time I'd ever really failed but now I'm genuinely glad it happened. My career has been much better for it. You learn from failure.

11. Do you ever switch off?

Every year my husband and I take two weeks off which is unusual in the US, and we go offline. I hand my mobile phone in and give my boss only numbers for the hotel for an emergency. I look forward to that every year. It's like being reset.

12. What should we be teaching our children, in your opinion?

Teach them how to learn. It's developing that muscle. No one remembers anything they did at university, but you learn to identify a problem, break it down, do the research and work out what the solution set is and being fully motivated around that. And yeah, coding. Understanding how tech works is useful.