Silicon valley director Anita Sands on challenges women face

Dr Anita Sands sits on the boards of three Silicon Valley companies. Photo / Supplied

Anita Sands
• Professional director on the boards of Silicon Valley public companies Symantec, ServiceNow and Pure Storage
• Age: 43
• Education: A former Fulbright Scholar, she holds a Masters in Public Policy and Management as well as a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics.
• Career: She spent a decade in leadership positions in financial services in Canada and the U.S. before becoming Chief Operating Officer of UBS Wealth Management at age 33. She now serves on the boards of three public companies - Symantec, ServiceNow, and Pure Storag - and private companies ThoughtWorks and AppBus.
• Family: Married to John with a three-year-old daughter and five stepchildren

Ask a woman about how they feel about negotiating and they will say it feels like a visit to the dentist, says Silicon Valley director Anita Sands.

But, she says, for men it's like winning the ball game. And that is part of why women entrepreneurs are on the back foot right from the beginning.

Sands is in New Zealand to talk about the challenges women face in getting to the top and why board diversity is a solution rather than a problem that needs solving.

She has had plenty of experience in both a male dominated corporate world and now sits on the boards of three technology companies in an industry where fewer than a third of workers are female.

Sands is about to start a new role lecturing at Princeton University on female entrepreneurship.

Like many other countries New Zealand has seen an explosion in the number of women entrepreneurs but many struggle to finance their businesses and grow them.

Asked why it is harder for women entrepreneurs Sands says a lot of it goes back to
the systemic barriers that women leaders in general face.

"So you take something like negotiation for example and you look at the research and men are four times more likely to enter into negotiations than women are. They see the world as generally more negotiable."

"in the realm of female entrepreneurship you really have to actively push yourself forward in terms of asking for everything you need for your business to succeed and obviously funding is the most clear example of that."

Sands grew up in Ireland the oldest of five children and completed a PhD in Physics before switching to public policy by moving to the US to study.

She worked in the finance sector and became the chief operating officer of the wealth management division of Swiss bank UBS at the age of 33 before deciding to ditch the finance sector for Silicon Valley.

"I decided at age of 38 I would pack up my life in New York, leave financial services, get a job in tech maybe, become the next Sheryl Sandberg - and that was the plan."

Sands says if Symantec hadn't been prepared to look outside the square someone like her would not have got onto the board.

"I was living in New York, never been a CEO, never worked in tech industry. It takes a tweak in process to allow someone like me to get a shot in Silicon Valley."

Now she is on the boards of five companies - three publicly listed. But women board directors remain thin on the ground in the US and in New Zealand where just 22 per cent of directors on NZX listed companies are women.

"We are not moving the dial far or fast enough."

Silicon Valley director Anita Sands will take to the stage on Wednesday at an event for International Women's Day. Photo / Supplied

She says the reason its is so slow is because diversity keeps being framed as problem.

"I keep telling people it is not a problem it is a solution and in fact it is a fundamental business imperative. There are so many big challenges facing boards - how are you going to tackle that if you have every person around the board which comes from the same background thinks the same way, shares the same biases?"

She says diversity is a business imperative not a nice to have.

Sands says changing the recruitment process is key.

"Most searches have criteria like ideally a former CEO, that takes the pool of people down to a puddle and ideally be someone known to someone on the board. As long as you start the search on that basis you are never going to move the dial."

And she says a token woman on the board is not enough with three being the "magic number" to shift the culture in her mind.

"One woman on her own can feel very isolated. Two and the men think she has got a buddy so we don't need to pay too much attention to her and worse if you disagree - the men are like oh my lord the girls are arguing what do we do? But when you get to three that is when you change the culture."

Sands climbed the corporate ladder at a young age but admits she wasn't very happy working within a Swiss bank as she felt like she couldn't bring her whole self to work.

It's easy to see why the bubbly, talkative Irish woman might have felt out of place in that sort of environment.

Sands says a sense of belonging is a huge part of getting the best out of workers.

"If you have to leave a major part of yourself at the door or your back story or circumstances when swipe your badge when you enter the building - every day just to do your job - leave part of yourself behind - that is very painful - I think women for many many years we did feel we had to check our personal lives at the door - we couldn't talk about our kids, couldn't be seen to leave early. And thankfully the world has moved on from that a lot and we now have flexible working environments and alternative working environment and much more friendly policies."

Sands' life has changed dramatically in the last six years after meeting her now husband John who was a widower with five grown up children. The couple also have a three-year-old daughter between them.

"I was on the path to being a CEO and I had to decide do I want my next job to continue to pursue career or do I want to make this relationship work?"

She decided on the latter.

"I decided six years ago flexibility mattered and time with John and Rosie - that mattered. And if that meant I wasn't a CEO or wouldn't make the kind of compensation I would of made I had to be okay with that - for this chapter. I think women if you are not clear what you are solving you get sloshed around by every conversation."

For now she is taking the gigging path as a director, on the talking circuit with a new job lecturing at Princeton University, and is soon to be a grandmother.

*Dr Anita Sands is speaking at a Global Women Event on March 4 at the Auckland Museum for International Women's Day.