March is Women’s History Month, and here at Valimail, we take advancing women’s careers seriously. Our Executive Team ran a formal nomination process to recognize three exemplary female leaders as our official nominees for Built In’s 2023 Moxie Awards, which recognizes rising women in tech. These leaders stood out in their performance, passion, and people-first leadership.
Not only are these women powerhouses in their contributions to the business, but they also embody the grace and humanity that distinguish a doer from a leader.
Congratulations to:
- Courtney LeBlanc, Senior Channel Development Manager
- Kristen Porter, Senior Product Designer
- Lelaina Vogel, People Business Partner
Each nomination included a thorough writeup from their managers, and we’re sharing a brief snippet below to give a well-deserved shout to each nominee and to set a bar on how we define performance.
Courtney LeBlanc
“Courtney and the Channel team that she leads are responsible for influencing 40% of the new business planned for the year. She is often the hardest worker in the room, and she led the pull-through of a partnership deal that will open up a new revenue motion for our business. She is also being honored for her extraordinary leadership in the Women-Identifying Network (WIN) ERG. She single-handedly created a speaker program that features respected women leaders speaking to topics most relevant to women with aspirations to rise in tech.” -DeShawn Dickens, VP of Global Revenue
Kristen Porter
“As Senior Product Designer, Krissy brings both innovative product design chops to the table and endless passion and commitment to representing the needs and interests of Valimail users. Krissy speaks with the voice of the user on our product team, harnessing her exemplary expertise to drive forward both the product team and our company. Krissy is also passionate about ensuring and supporting a collaborative culture at Valimail and is known as a constant champion for it. Not only does she bring this ethic to her own work, but she inspires others to do the same. Recently, for example, she has advocated for a work out loud work style that can fuel team collaboration across R&D. Krissy is an active referrer of qualified folks in her network and is one of the key values interviewers we tap when making decisions about who to bring into the organization. ” -Brian Craig, VP of Product
Lelaina Vogel
“Lelaina has been a powerhouse contributor since day one with Valimail. She has worked actively to make Valimail a more inclusive place for all, especially women, through efforts like securing short-term/long-term disability benefits to provide the most vulnerable additional wage protection. She has been blocking and tackling some of the thorniest issues at Valimail. She brings poise, humor, and strong frameworks to both elevate problems and make rapid change. Her help with bringing the data team together as one team enables us to put being data-driven into practice. Lelaina’s focused efforts and diligence on improving our onboarding experience and systems have directly increased our Glassdoor rating from 4.5 to 4.7 in just 3 months, putting the company above the industry average rating of 3.7. She fights – through structure, process, and data – for the most vulnerable among us, and is just generally a delight to work with.” -Julie Pridham, VP of People Operations
Women in tech
Taking a step back to look at women’s overall experience in tech, the data show significant room for improvement: women hold just 26.7% of tech-related jobs, and more than 50% of women in tech report gender inequality, discrimination, or sexual harassment.
A study by Danielle Li, an MIT Sloan associate professor, found that female employees are 14% less likely to be promoted than their male colleagues. Why? Li found that, on average, women received higher performance ratings than male employees but received 8.3% lower ratings for potential than men.
This experience gap is systemic, and allyship with leaders is vital to pull through on the change we want to see. One meaningful way to take a step in the right direction is to elevate and recognize the women on your teams who have a track record of making outsized impacts. So if your team hasn’t done so already, we hope you will participate in Built In’s Moxie Awards. The deadline closes in three days!
Congrats once again to our nominees, and good luck to fellow Moxie Awards contenders!