Laura is a change-making entrepreneur. In 2008 she co-founded Silver Tail Systems, a company that protected over one billion online accounts before it was acquired by RSA in December 2012. Laura began her career at the National Security Agency and then Britannica.com before pioneering anti-phishing practices for eBay and PayPal in the early 2000s. Driven by the importance of helping organizations become more productive, innovative, and effective, Laura has researched the changes required to move today’s organizations forward. Laura’s new company, Unitive, is developing software to transform the talent management landscape by bolstering traditional human resource processes with software to eliminate unconscious bias. In 2012, Laura was listed on Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business list, Fortune’s list of Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, and Business Insider’s list of Most Powerful Women Engineers. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics.
Business
Beyond Tech’s “Pipeline Problem” towards Inclusive Meritocracies
In the year since I last attended Techonomy, we’ve seen major shifts in the workforce. In 2015, millennials became the largest labor force in the United States. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates 40.4% of the employed labor force are now in alternative work arrangements. Employers have to find new ways to attract and retain top talent for the horizontal, distributed workforce of the future. The session I’ll join on Nov. 9, "Scouting for Talent, Digging for Diversity," will explore the causes for today's business diversity shortcomings as well as ways tech is disrupting and rebuilding the structures of old.
Diversity
How Software Can Help Move the Needle on Diversity
Even after spending my whole career in tech, I’m still taken aback by each new diversity stat that underscores the systemic and trenchant bias in our industry. One of my recent favorites: 76 percent of feedback given to women included negative criticism of a personality trait, while only 2 percent of men received such feedback. Or this from Fenwick and West: 45 percent of tech companies in Silicon Valley don’t have a single female at the executive level, compared with only 16 percent of the rest of S&P companies.
