June 11, 2024 • 29 mins
Corporate boardrooms and senior executives are facing unprecedented scrutiny. The convergence of complex social issues, technological advancements, and global events is reshaping expectations around transparency, accountability, and ethical leadership. From sustainability standards to cybersecurity threats, leaders must navigate a challenging environment where innovation meets responsibility, shaping the future of leadership.
In this episode, I'm joined by Coco Brown, the founder and CEO of Athena Alliance. Coco delves into the profound shifts in corporate governance and responsibility that have taken place over the past few decades.
We explore the increasing visibility and accountability required of corporate boards in today’s interconnected world. Coco provides valuable insights into how boards must now navigate complex social issues, technological advancements, and global events. She also explains how corporate messaging is shifting away from mass marketing towards community-driven strategies that foster genuine engagement and product success.
Join us for this enlightening conversation that champions diverse impact and strategic governance in an ever-evolving corporate world.
We discuss:
- The evolution of corporate governance
- The critical role of diversity and inclusion in executive leadership
- Why it's important to gain cross-functional experience within an organization before aiming for board roles
- How communities are helping organizations define and promote products
- How to build communities around products to dominate marketing categories
Athena Alliance: https://athenaalliance.com/
Connect with Coco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cocobrown/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Tech Beyond the Hype, the podcast where we talk to experts and leaders
about the latest tech and business trends to figure out what's shaping the future
of work. Welcome back to the show.
Today, we have a very special guest, Coco Brown, joining us to share her insights
on leadership and diversity in tech.
(00:22):
Coco is the CEO and founder of the Athena Alliance, a digital platform that
connects top executives with board opportunities.
She's a recognized leader within the tech industry, known for her expertise
in executive coaching, board governance, and advancing diversity and leadership.
In the episode, Coco and I discuss the challenges and opportunities that face
(00:45):
women and non-binary people in tech leadership roles,
as well as the importance of diversity within in corporate boards,
and her own journey as an entrepreneur and advocate for women in business.
I'm so excited to share this episode with you because aside from the fact that
we had so much fun recording it, Coco brings a wealth of experience and a super
(01:09):
fresh perspective on navigating the tech industry.
Her insights into leadership and diversity are really timely and I'm sure will
be invaluable for anyone thinking about what it takes to succeed in today's wild world of business.
I did have a little bit of a cold whilst recording this episode.
Music.
So apologies in advance if I sound more gruff than usual.
(01:32):
I hope that you can give me some patience and also just, you know,
take the opportunity to listen more
closely to Coco and all of the awesome insights that she has to offer.
So without any further ado, let's dive into this interview and hear from the
ever inspiring Coco Brown.
Music.
(01:55):
I'm Coco Brown. I'm the founder and CEO of an organization, a company called Athena Alliance.
Athena is a platform for community and advancement for For executive women,
many of our women have 25, 30 years of career behind them.
And they're looking at what is the professional relevance into the next 20 years.
(02:17):
So they may be reaching that pinnacle point of their career where they're trying to get the top role.
Or they are interested in advisory work and board work.
They may be entrepreneurial. They may be wanting to really explore investing.
And they may also be thinking about things like starting a podcast,
writing a book, teaching at a local university. So we call that your portfolio of impact.
(02:41):
And rarely is anyone pursuing just one thing by the time they're at a mid-senior point in career.
They're usually really thinking more biographically about themselves and their potential.
So we are nurturing that whole potential. So think of us as the modern university
experience for people who already have a bunch of career behind them,
(03:01):
not just launching into career.
My own background, I've been in Silicon Valley for a little over 30 years now.
I started my career in the HR side of technology, doing a lot of compensation
design and analysis, and then teaching young engineers to be managers,
helping them grow their chops.
(03:22):
Eventually, I ended up in a tech company called Taos. And by the time I was
28, I was the vice president of professional services for them,
which meant I had about 700 people under my responsibility. possibility.
By the time I was 31, I was running the company and I had to do a turnaround
for the company because we had nearly imploded in the dot-com bust.
And over the next 10 years, I grew that company.
(03:45):
We grew it to 54 million-ish when I stepped down from running the company and
stepped down from the board.
I stepped down from running the company in 2012 and then I stayed on the board
another two years, sold my interest to the other two guys.
And then a year later, They sold the company to IBM.
So that's 17 years of my career.
And then I set out and built a consultancy where I was working with CEOs and
(04:10):
their executive teams around strategic planning, both on an annual and quarterly basis.
And then I built Athena, which I was talking about. That's amazing.
It sounds like you have a super extensive background in executive governance,
having been in that position yourself and then going into consulting and all
(04:31):
the work that you mentioned that you've done with executives and CEOs.
How would you say that the outlook has changed with respect to corporate governance
during that time from when you first went from VP to CEO to now?
Would you say that there's any shifts that you've seen in terms of priorities
and the way that the outlook is from the top?
(04:53):
Yeah, I was on the board of Taos for 12 years.
But there's this saying that if you've seen one board, you've seen one board.
So I would say that even though that is true, my real experience of the board
landscape and my depth of knowledge of the board landscape really started seven years ago.
(05:17):
And so I'm best able to tell you more directly my own experience of those last
seven years. it's always good to know what the history is and.
Boards and governance really didn't take shape in the way that it currently
even is until the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
It's really a 50-year time span that you actually see boards having any real
(05:41):
responsibility and ownership toward shareholder, let alone stakeholder.
Before that, it was more about the organizing structure that was much more related
to hiring and firing the CEO. There was a lot more of a sort of internal functioning
focus and boards were very isolated. They kept to themselves.
So a lot of things are relatively young, but they're also really slow to change.
(06:07):
But the biggest thing that happened in terms of governance and the overarching
structure of governance for businesses is in the last five years,
so much has happened that has brought the board to the forefront that in the past hadn't.
The Me Too movement, COVID, so a global pandemic in the US,
(06:31):
George Floyd, you have things like a boat gets caught in the Suez Canal and
now everybody's trying to figure out what does that mean to global commerce
and supply chains and resourcing.
So many different things start happening that all of a sudden boards go from
this very isolated, introspective function to being very visible and called
(06:53):
to task all the time has become a totally different world.
And the boardroom is a domain now that has a lot more responsibility.
Do you know what questions to ask to make sure that the company doesn't have
a cyber attack or that we're on track with everything going on in AI and at
the same time that we know what to do when a big social issue hits and those kinds of things?
(07:14):
So it's a totally different world. It's interesting.
Sometimes when we do a podcast, it's funny because I'm preparing for an interview
and I really think that I know what's going to be said or what the answer is going to be.
Usually I'm more or less on the right lines, but I feel like here I really wasn't
expecting people to talk about social issues and the impact that they've had
on the boardroom. That's super interesting.
And I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective because I come from
(07:36):
such a tech background where the focus is very much on innovation and tech.
Once you get to the boardroom, it all blends together, right?
I think the thing is that most of us grow through a tower of the business.
And then our lens on the business really is very clouded by that tower.
And once you get to the board, you have to see the entire business.
And actually, if you don't see the entire business well before you get to the
(07:57):
board, you're not getting to a board.
And then that's why there's still so much of a disposition towards, I want a CEO on my board.
It's because that's the person who really sees the whole business.
But you can get to that point of view by being very cross-functional in your thinking.
So by way of example, from a tech perspective, in the last century,
it used to be the case that the concept of brand and product was delivered to the public, right?
(08:24):
If we saw a commercial that said Coca-Cola creates peace, we're all like,
oh, wow, drink a Coke and I get a smile. That's amazing.
Like, brand was created for us. and
now in the modern world everything is so
interconnected that actually brand and
product is a response to what's going
(08:45):
on in society and if it's not society will tell you very quickly if you've got
it wrong and that comes on all sorts of levels for example did mark zuckerberg
think when he created facebook that 15 years later or whatever it was that the
world would be calling him to task and saying, you're undermining democracy.
No, he never thought that his platform was going to undermine democracy, right?
(09:08):
Would it be used as a platform to shift entire decision-making around politics?
And then this is the big existential question going on in technology now with respect to AI.
What might happen down the road that we're not seeing right now because we're
all in a race to go adopt it and make it happen and leverage it?
(09:30):
And that's the stuff that goes on in the boardroom is these big existential
questions around what are we building?
And where are the risks in it? And you can't just ask that question from the
point of view of the technology itself.
You also have to say, who are our buyers? Who are our users?
And if your ecosystem isn't feeling hurt on all levels, you're going to lose the ecosystem.
(09:50):
System so things like black lives matter and
roe v wade and these are core societal
issues that find their way into the product via
what the concerns are of
the daily lives of the people who either buy build or are
affected by your product in some way totally yeah that makes a lot of sense
it's almost like as organizations become more digital and have a wider presence
(10:15):
the responsibility is much bigger as well you have to be much more sensitive
to all of the different things that are going on within your communities and
across your stakeholders,
and people's visibility into what the organization is doing is much bigger as well.
It's not the same as when Cone for Collier was for Peace and that's the only
image that you're getting. Cone for Collier is that one brand message.
(10:35):
Yes, because now the question would be like, and how do you do that, Coke?
Are you ensuring that there's no slave labor anywhere at all in your entire supply chain?
How are you doing that? Yeah, that's a great example.
We would examine Coca-Cola and say, where do you get every single piece that goes into that product?
The paint on the cans, the metal for the cans, the syrup for the soda.
(11:00):
And is there anything in there that is in contradiction to the brand statement you're making?
So the responsibility for top level executive board members is so much greater
because not only do you have to be on the mark with everything that's going
on and be clear on what your organization's position is.
And then when it comes to marketing or any kind of messaging that you're doing
(11:23):
externally, making sure absolutely everything that you're saying is 100% true,
or that there's no way that people are going to go against what you're saying
or find data that proves what you're saying is wrong.
A good way to think about it is in the United States,
we had this back in the 90s, on sadly, it's so recently, but back in the 90s,
(11:43):
we went through this whole sort of internal process as a society to come to
like real rules around sexual harassment.
And as an employer, as a manager of managers, your responsibility isn't, did you know?
Your responsibility is, should you have known?
And in a jury of your peers, would they have seen it this way?
(12:05):
If they had known, whether you knew or not. So extrapolate that sort of thought
process to other things.
Should Facebook have known that its platform would be used in these ways?
And you can't know everything. So Wells Fargo is another great example.
Should the board of Wells Fargo have known that deep in the system,
salespeople were being incented to create false accounts because they were getting
(12:28):
bigger commissions on the number of accounts they opened.
So they created false accounts for customers, which had a huge backlash and
really undermined the ultimate success of Wells Fargo and the brand value of Wells Fargo.
That's a huge hit to the business, right? Right. And so who's held accountable?
Ultimately, the board, because even though the board couldn't have known,
(12:50):
they didn't have the right questions, the right measures in place,
the right eye on the ball to have been able to get the right information surfaced
and the proper behavior in the business.
And so that's the direction we're moving in for corporate governance is that
direction of accountability is where we're headed.
And it's being supported by the fact that we can get more and more transparency
(13:14):
in data. You can get a lot of false data, obviously, but we also are moving
in a direction where we have more data available to us than we ever did before.
And we can look at it in all sorts of different slices and dashboards and whatnot.
And so the desire to hold a greater accountability is being mapped by the ability to do so.
So that's the thing. Governance doesn't need to be taken so literally to the
(13:36):
point of, did I know or didn't I know?
It's much more about should I have known and should I have been able to know?
Yeah, that's interesting. it's a very nuanced line between did I and should
I it's a very thin line between the two in terms of like how you go about demonstrating that.
Well, your defensibility then becomes about your process.
(13:56):
Did you do all the things that reasonably one would have done to know?
And did you cover up anything along the way? Did you turn a blind eye?
So then in the court of law and the court of societal law, like the court of
public opinion, you get more leeway, more freedom,
or more forgiveness when it's clear that your behaviors were designed for success,
(14:19):
even if success didn't happen. in.
So those are all the pressure points that are coming at boards.
And a lot of it is coming up boards from a technological perspective.
It's coming up boards from a cybersecurity risk standpoint,
and how much companies hold that is somebody else's information and life and
(14:40):
what their responsibility is to hold that and are they doing the right things to protect it.
And then AI, similarly, are not just innovation.
Are you falling behind in innovation because you're not paying attention?
But also, are you running so fast in innovation that you're potentially doing
something down the road that you should see now?
If you took a breath and thought about it, you're about to destroy X, Y, and Z.
(15:04):
Those things are very much innovation conversations and technology conversations.
And then another really big one is, who are you building for? And is that fair?
Are you building an unfair advantage for a subsegment of society when you should
be building for everyone?
Like when the early sort of facial recognition issues were like,
they don't recognize people of color, right?
(15:27):
Because it's only designed to recognize white people. And it was all designed
by white men, like those kinds of things.
When it comes to the diversity and inclusion element, or the making sure that
what you're putting out into the market is as inclusive as it can be,
I guess the thing that comes up for me and the question that I imagine a lot
(15:48):
of the audience would also be thinking is, when we're talking about boardrooms
generally don't have a historical level of diversity in themselves.
Themselves even now when you've got organizations like Athena Alliance that
are pushing for more diversity with respect to gender but then you push past
that level onto race and other aspects of difference and the diversity still
(16:14):
isn't catching up with where it potentially should be.
How does an organization like yours where you're training people to get into these positions.
How do you go about helping people to.
Achieve that when it comes to putting something out that is going to be as inclusive
as possible and having that thought process that is it's like what we've been
(16:37):
talking about already in terms of the accountability level but then also ensuring
that some of the accountability level but from a,
community perspective that you're including as many people as possible yeah
in the u.s still Still, only about 4% of executive roles are held by BIPOC people.
However, at Athena, 37% of our community is racially diverse.
(17:01):
We make point of saying, okay, so it may be 4%, but we're going to have a disproportionate
percentage of that 4% in here.
And you also have to take an attitude that says, if it's only 4%,
there's a whole bunch of people who's right below that layer that deserve to be in that 4%.
That deserve to be up at the next level who have been completely illogically
(17:24):
looked over. So we got to pull them in.
And then the thing we do at Athena is we don't do anything that every human
doesn't need who's looking to do the things that our members are looking to do. All humans need it.
It's just that we're uniquely offering it to women and non-binary people because
that's the segment of society that deserves the competitive advantage right now.
(17:48):
Until things are equal, it doesn't make sense to pretend they are.
So we are disproportionately giving this incredible value to a part of the society
that needs that competitive advantage.
So it's important for us in the truth of what we do is that we're not trying
(18:09):
to say, oh, you guys need training that the others don't need.
It's no, I'm in fact, actually underrepresented people when they're achieving
something that somebody else already has.
They raise the bar while they do it because they have to work so much harder.
So it's not like we're doing like this, we're doing this.
And then everybody else is gonna have to catch up.
(18:29):
Then that's on a performance level. This isn't on a equal share level.
We're going to get to an equal share level.
But when we get to an equal share level, the bar for performance has been risen as well.
And so as that bar is being raised, the consciousness is raised.
This consciousness around how we do these things, what kinds of questions come
into the boardroom and how we tackle the kinds of questions that come into the boardroom.
(18:53):
There's less let it be as it is just go grab
market there's more what is the impact in the world because it's
a natural phenomenon of underrepresented people
coming into the dialogue i love that the more that you bring in
diverse perspectives it seems almost obvious
when you say it totally i mean yeah at the same time because historically
it hasn't been the case that it has to be said that when diversity
(19:16):
is brought into the room a different way of
looking looking at things takes place naturally because different
people with different experiences bring the table different points
of view perspectives and also come at
challenges or problems in a different way just purely
based on who they are and where they come from or right well
then lived experiences like so that's awesome going back a little bit to what
(19:40):
we were talking about with brand messaging go to market we were talking about
the code clothing strategy and how before Before you had organizations who would
have this one big brand message that would be everywhere,
they'd see an image and you would instantly know that's Coca-Cola.
Do you think that approach is changing with technology in any way?
(20:02):
And if so, how would you say that is changing?
Yeah, it absolutely is changing. So it used to be that the marketing,
the idea was plaster everywhere, be everywhere, make sure everyone knows you
and say it a bazillion times.
And then it's, oh yeah, the only option is Kleenex, dominate with the brand, dominate that way.
(20:22):
And now I think more and more is the competitive mode that is not the marketing and advertising.
Are we in every commercial? Are we, do we get that key spot?
That's not creating the competitive mode. what's creating the competitive mode
is the virality of the brand.
It's the community that gets built around the brand.
And my favorite example of that right now is this product called the Birdie Buddy.
(20:47):
I think I call it Birdie Buddy. It's actually Bird Buddy, but it's a birdhouse.
It's literally a plastic birdhouse.
And it comes in different colors. And you can get the version that also has a solar charging.
And what it does is it has a built-in camera and it takes bird Bird selfies.
And the reason I call it bird selfies is because it's as if a bird was taking a selfie.
(21:07):
They do all sorts of funny things and you get to see close up whatever bird you love.
The reason that BirdBuddy is dominating the market is because they created the
community around BirdBuddy.
So everybody's like, oh, I spotted a three-footed albino, blah,
blah, blah. Look at this.
And so there's this huge community. You can live cam your BirdBuddy.
(21:31):
Everybody loves I can see what birds are doing in Germany right now.
But that happens through community, not technology.
And yet, it's technology that got us here.
Technology is leading us in a place where, yes, the product has to be great,
and you have to have colors that people love. And like if Barbie pink is the
(21:53):
new color, make sure you have it for the birdie buddy or whatever, right?
Like you have to be on top of what's going on societally. But the product is
being led by how excited society gets about it.
It's like Apple. And Apple is not a technology brand.
It's a luxury brand, right?
Why do people wear Apple watches and have Apple? It's because in the United
States, it's considered like a luxury brand.
(22:17):
It's a lifestyle. And there's so many different examples of that kind of community-led approach.
I don't know if you can call it an approach, but companies that have managed
to grow through the communities that.
Or obsessed with them, basically. The language of the last decade or two has
been product-led growth.
(22:38):
And now I think we are moving towards community-led growth.
Yes, the product is creating the community at first, but the community then
defines the product over time.
And the community over time is what allows the product to scale and sustain.
Sustain i guess it it does loop
(22:59):
back to what we were talking about with respect to the shareholder
value because ultimately you can
market a product as much as you want but if the people that you're targeting
don't find value in the thing that you're selling they're not going to latch
onto it and then with this kind of community-led approach that you just mentioned
(23:22):
it's almost like the The community takes hold of that product, runs with it,
and grows it in a way that the organization potentially never could because
it doesn't have the ability to do.
With the BirdBuddy example, they don't have the millions of videos of birds
that they're going to get through the community that's then going to amplify
their position on the platforms that people are sharing those videos on. Yeah.
(23:46):
That's super interesting. So when it comes to the marketing,
corporate messaging and branding, do you think that you have to then cede control
to your community when it comes to how they're using and discussing your products?
What's happening in the world of marketing? Actually, we actually are,
Athena puts on a number of courses.
We have the board course I mentioned. We also have a course on drop the ING out of marketing.
(24:09):
So become a chief market officer.
And this is not my expertise. This is the expertise of some incredible market
builders that are our faculty and the genius of a woman named Christine Heckert,
who has been the chief market officer for a long time.
If you don't define the category, you have to dominate the category,
right? So there's a category you're playing in.
(24:30):
The category is bird watchers, people who love birds, bird watching.
And so Bird Buddy not only came out and dominated, but they also defined the
category. But the way they were able to define the category was they locked
in on something that people were missing, which was the close-ups of the birds.
Their birds that were doing these
(24:51):
funny things that would be captured and then they could capture the
moment and then they just show up and it's like little presents in
their inbox right they got all of the product and once
you've got the product then the ongoing chief market officer is okay so we got
the product right and now we need to really create community around it and think
about the billboards with photos taken on an iphone and that's that's an example
(25:16):
of this That's marketing going,
wait a minute, rather than us posting photos that we,
Apple, took of what an iPhone can take,
let's do entirely big billboards with photos other people took.
Random, normal human beings took these photos and put their name on it,
maybe even where they come from or whatever.
(25:36):
Because what that's going to do is create community. Because then people are
looking at that billboard and going, a normal, random human took that.
I could do that with my iPhone, right? Right. Like I could do that.
So you basically secede the ownership of the product to the community.
But your job as the market officer is to facilitate that.
(25:59):
Right. And to jazz it up and to ensure it feeds itself.
But you so you own the product. I don't own the product. Right.
It's subtle, but it's market genius.
Absolutely. Yeah. It's super smart. not it's like finding these different
ways that you can encourage the community to take
part and have an active role in ultimately promoting
your company through their participation that's really
(26:22):
cool and i guess a massive jump from what we're talking about with the coke
branding putting your message out there everywhere and being the loudest voice
in the room it's such a just totally different approach which i guess 10 years
ago no one really would have thought about because because the technology just wasn't there.
We couldn't imagine any way than what it was at the time.
(26:45):
I do feel, I'm just thinking whilst you were talking, we've done a hell of a
lot of promotion for Bird Buddy.
So before we go, other bird watching technologies are available.
This is not sponsored by Bird Buddy, but I also wanted to ask you,
do you have one yourself?
Actually, and I'll just give them a little dig. The bird buddy I bought my stepmom is not working.
(27:09):
And we've been madly frustrated by it.
However, the bird buddy that's working for my mother-in-law is,
and she's absolutely obsessed with it.
So I don't have a bird buddy myself, but I buy them for others. And so far, I'm 50-50.
But it sounds like you've made great choices for presents for mothers-in-law and parents.
That's a great choice. Yeah. Maybe I'll order for the next Christmas or birthday
(27:32):
day that comes but that's my way yeah please thank you so much for joining me
for today's podcast it has been an absolute pleasure having you on and i've
had so much fun talking to you.
Before we go is there anywhere that you would want our audience to find you
yeah from a technology perspective we support a lot of technologists and one
(27:56):
of our members was the cto of dofcusign as an example.
And we have a peer group for engineering and product leaders.
And so that's a good reason to check out Athena. So the best thing to do is
just go to our website, AthenaAlliance.com.
And then I'm super easy to find on LinkedIn. I'm Coco Brown.
And usually, if you type in Coco Brown on LinkedIn, I always pop to the top.
(28:19):
And if you connect with me and tell me you saw me on this podcast,
then I'll have a little bit more relevant sort of connection to and know why you're reaching out.
Thank you so much. We will make sure to add Athena Alliance's website and your
LinkedIn profile link to the show notes.
So to anyone listening, check those out in the podcast notes.
(28:40):
And thank you so much again for joining us. And I hope to speak to you soon.
So that wraps up another episode of Tech Beyond the Hype.
I really hope that you enjoyed hearing from Coco as much as I did.
If you want to learn more about Coco Brown and the Athena Alliance,
Be sure to check out all the links in the show notes.
(29:01):
And don't forget to subscribe to Tech Beyond the Hype on your favorite podcast
platform to make sure that you never miss an episode.
Your support means so much to us. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Your input really helps make sure that the content we're creating is in line
with what you want to hear.
Thank you again so much for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious and keep
(29:24):
exploring the world beyond the hype. Tech Beyond the Hype is a TechTarget original production.
This is Tech Beyond the Hype, the podcast where we talk to experts and leaders
about the latest tech and business trends to figure out what's shaping the future
of work. Welcome back to the show.
Today, we have a very special guest, Coco Brown, joining us to share her insights
on leadership and diversity in tech.
(00:22):
Coco is the CEO and founder of the Athena Alliance, a digital platform that
connects top executives with board opportunities.
She's a recognized leader within the tech industry, known for her expertise
in executive coaching, board governance, and advancing diversity and leadership.
In the episode, Coco and I discuss the challenges and opportunities that face
(00:45):
women and non-binary people in tech leadership roles,
as well as the importance of diversity within in corporate boards,
and her own journey as an entrepreneur and advocate for women in business.
I'm so excited to share this episode with you because aside from the fact that
we had so much fun recording it, Coco brings a wealth of experience and a super
(01:09):
fresh perspective on navigating the tech industry.
Her insights into leadership and diversity are really timely and I'm sure will
be invaluable for anyone thinking about what it takes to succeed in today's wild world of business.
I did have a little bit of a cold whilst recording this episode.
Music.
So apologies in advance if I sound more gruff than usual.
(01:32):
I hope that you can give me some patience and also just, you know,
take the opportunity to listen more
closely to Coco and all of the awesome insights that she has to offer.
So without any further ado, let's dive into this interview and hear from the
ever inspiring Coco Brown.
Music.
(01:55):
I'm Coco Brown. I'm the founder and CEO of an organization, a company called Athena Alliance.
Athena is a platform for community and advancement for For executive women,
many of our women have 25, 30 years of career behind them.
And they're looking at what is the professional relevance into the next 20 years.
(02:17):
So they may be reaching that pinnacle point of their career where they're trying to get the top role.
Or they are interested in advisory work and board work.
They may be entrepreneurial. They may be wanting to really explore investing.
And they may also be thinking about things like starting a podcast,
writing a book, teaching at a local university. So we call that your portfolio of impact.
(02:41):
And rarely is anyone pursuing just one thing by the time they're at a mid-senior point in career.
They're usually really thinking more biographically about themselves and their potential.
So we are nurturing that whole potential. So think of us as the modern university
experience for people who already have a bunch of career behind them,
(03:01):
not just launching into career.
My own background, I've been in Silicon Valley for a little over 30 years now.
I started my career in the HR side of technology, doing a lot of compensation
design and analysis, and then teaching young engineers to be managers,
helping them grow their chops.
(03:22):
Eventually, I ended up in a tech company called Taos. And by the time I was
28, I was the vice president of professional services for them,
which meant I had about 700 people under my responsibility. possibility.
By the time I was 31, I was running the company and I had to do a turnaround
for the company because we had nearly imploded in the dot-com bust.
And over the next 10 years, I grew that company.
(03:45):
We grew it to 54 million-ish when I stepped down from running the company and
stepped down from the board.
I stepped down from running the company in 2012 and then I stayed on the board
another two years, sold my interest to the other two guys.
And then a year later, They sold the company to IBM.
So that's 17 years of my career.
And then I set out and built a consultancy where I was working with CEOs and
(04:10):
their executive teams around strategic planning, both on an annual and quarterly basis.
And then I built Athena, which I was talking about. That's amazing.
It sounds like you have a super extensive background in executive governance,
having been in that position yourself and then going into consulting and all
(04:31):
the work that you mentioned that you've done with executives and CEOs.
How would you say that the outlook has changed with respect to corporate governance
during that time from when you first went from VP to CEO to now?
Would you say that there's any shifts that you've seen in terms of priorities
and the way that the outlook is from the top?
(04:53):
Yeah, I was on the board of Taos for 12 years.
But there's this saying that if you've seen one board, you've seen one board.
So I would say that even though that is true, my real experience of the board
landscape and my depth of knowledge of the board landscape really started seven years ago.
(05:17):
And so I'm best able to tell you more directly my own experience of those last
seven years. it's always good to know what the history is and.
Boards and governance really didn't take shape in the way that it currently
even is until the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
It's really a 50-year time span that you actually see boards having any real
(05:41):
responsibility and ownership toward shareholder, let alone stakeholder.
Before that, it was more about the organizing structure that was much more related
to hiring and firing the CEO. There was a lot more of a sort of internal functioning
focus and boards were very isolated. They kept to themselves.
So a lot of things are relatively young, but they're also really slow to change.
(06:07):
But the biggest thing that happened in terms of governance and the overarching
structure of governance for businesses is in the last five years,
so much has happened that has brought the board to the forefront that in the past hadn't.
The Me Too movement, COVID, so a global pandemic in the US,
(06:31):
George Floyd, you have things like a boat gets caught in the Suez Canal and
now everybody's trying to figure out what does that mean to global commerce
and supply chains and resourcing.
So many different things start happening that all of a sudden boards go from
this very isolated, introspective function to being very visible and called
(06:53):
to task all the time has become a totally different world.
And the boardroom is a domain now that has a lot more responsibility.
Do you know what questions to ask to make sure that the company doesn't have
a cyber attack or that we're on track with everything going on in AI and at
the same time that we know what to do when a big social issue hits and those kinds of things?
(07:14):
So it's a totally different world. It's interesting.
Sometimes when we do a podcast, it's funny because I'm preparing for an interview
and I really think that I know what's going to be said or what the answer is going to be.
Usually I'm more or less on the right lines, but I feel like here I really wasn't
expecting people to talk about social issues and the impact that they've had
on the boardroom. That's super interesting.
And I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective because I come from
(07:36):
such a tech background where the focus is very much on innovation and tech.
Once you get to the boardroom, it all blends together, right?
I think the thing is that most of us grow through a tower of the business.
And then our lens on the business really is very clouded by that tower.
And once you get to the board, you have to see the entire business.
And actually, if you don't see the entire business well before you get to the
(07:57):
board, you're not getting to a board.
And then that's why there's still so much of a disposition towards, I want a CEO on my board.
It's because that's the person who really sees the whole business.
But you can get to that point of view by being very cross-functional in your thinking.
So by way of example, from a tech perspective, in the last century,
it used to be the case that the concept of brand and product was delivered to the public, right?
(08:24):
If we saw a commercial that said Coca-Cola creates peace, we're all like,
oh, wow, drink a Coke and I get a smile. That's amazing.
Like, brand was created for us. and
now in the modern world everything is so
interconnected that actually brand and
product is a response to what's going
(08:45):
on in society and if it's not society will tell you very quickly if you've got
it wrong and that comes on all sorts of levels for example did mark zuckerberg
think when he created facebook that 15 years later or whatever it was that the
world would be calling him to task and saying, you're undermining democracy.
No, he never thought that his platform was going to undermine democracy, right?
(09:08):
Would it be used as a platform to shift entire decision-making around politics?
And then this is the big existential question going on in technology now with respect to AI.
What might happen down the road that we're not seeing right now because we're
all in a race to go adopt it and make it happen and leverage it?
(09:30):
And that's the stuff that goes on in the boardroom is these big existential
questions around what are we building?
And where are the risks in it? And you can't just ask that question from the
point of view of the technology itself.
You also have to say, who are our buyers? Who are our users?
And if your ecosystem isn't feeling hurt on all levels, you're going to lose the ecosystem.
(09:50):
System so things like black lives matter and
roe v wade and these are core societal
issues that find their way into the product via
what the concerns are of
the daily lives of the people who either buy build or are
affected by your product in some way totally yeah that makes a lot of sense
it's almost like as organizations become more digital and have a wider presence
(10:15):
the responsibility is much bigger as well you have to be much more sensitive
to all of the different things that are going on within your communities and
across your stakeholders,
and people's visibility into what the organization is doing is much bigger as well.
It's not the same as when Cone for Collier was for Peace and that's the only
image that you're getting. Cone for Collier is that one brand message.
(10:35):
Yes, because now the question would be like, and how do you do that, Coke?
Are you ensuring that there's no slave labor anywhere at all in your entire supply chain?
How are you doing that? Yeah, that's a great example.
We would examine Coca-Cola and say, where do you get every single piece that goes into that product?
The paint on the cans, the metal for the cans, the syrup for the soda.
(11:00):
And is there anything in there that is in contradiction to the brand statement you're making?
So the responsibility for top level executive board members is so much greater
because not only do you have to be on the mark with everything that's going
on and be clear on what your organization's position is.
And then when it comes to marketing or any kind of messaging that you're doing
(11:23):
externally, making sure absolutely everything that you're saying is 100% true,
or that there's no way that people are going to go against what you're saying
or find data that proves what you're saying is wrong.
A good way to think about it is in the United States,
we had this back in the 90s, on sadly, it's so recently, but back in the 90s,
(11:43):
we went through this whole sort of internal process as a society to come to
like real rules around sexual harassment.
And as an employer, as a manager of managers, your responsibility isn't, did you know?
Your responsibility is, should you have known?
And in a jury of your peers, would they have seen it this way?
(12:05):
If they had known, whether you knew or not. So extrapolate that sort of thought
process to other things.
Should Facebook have known that its platform would be used in these ways?
And you can't know everything. So Wells Fargo is another great example.
Should the board of Wells Fargo have known that deep in the system,
salespeople were being incented to create false accounts because they were getting
(12:28):
bigger commissions on the number of accounts they opened.
So they created false accounts for customers, which had a huge backlash and
really undermined the ultimate success of Wells Fargo and the brand value of Wells Fargo.
That's a huge hit to the business, right? Right. And so who's held accountable?
Ultimately, the board, because even though the board couldn't have known,
(12:50):
they didn't have the right questions, the right measures in place,
the right eye on the ball to have been able to get the right information surfaced
and the proper behavior in the business.
And so that's the direction we're moving in for corporate governance is that
direction of accountability is where we're headed.
And it's being supported by the fact that we can get more and more transparency
(13:14):
in data. You can get a lot of false data, obviously, but we also are moving
in a direction where we have more data available to us than we ever did before.
And we can look at it in all sorts of different slices and dashboards and whatnot.
And so the desire to hold a greater accountability is being mapped by the ability to do so.
So that's the thing. Governance doesn't need to be taken so literally to the
(13:36):
point of, did I know or didn't I know?
It's much more about should I have known and should I have been able to know?
Yeah, that's interesting. it's a very nuanced line between did I and should
I it's a very thin line between the two in terms of like how you go about demonstrating that.
Well, your defensibility then becomes about your process.
(13:56):
Did you do all the things that reasonably one would have done to know?
And did you cover up anything along the way? Did you turn a blind eye?
So then in the court of law and the court of societal law, like the court of
public opinion, you get more leeway, more freedom,
or more forgiveness when it's clear that your behaviors were designed for success,
(14:19):
even if success didn't happen. in.
So those are all the pressure points that are coming at boards.
And a lot of it is coming up boards from a technological perspective.
It's coming up boards from a cybersecurity risk standpoint,
and how much companies hold that is somebody else's information and life and
(14:40):
what their responsibility is to hold that and are they doing the right things to protect it.
And then AI, similarly, are not just innovation.
Are you falling behind in innovation because you're not paying attention?
But also, are you running so fast in innovation that you're potentially doing
something down the road that you should see now?
If you took a breath and thought about it, you're about to destroy X, Y, and Z.
(15:04):
Those things are very much innovation conversations and technology conversations.
And then another really big one is, who are you building for? And is that fair?
Are you building an unfair advantage for a subsegment of society when you should
be building for everyone?
Like when the early sort of facial recognition issues were like,
they don't recognize people of color, right?
(15:27):
Because it's only designed to recognize white people. And it was all designed
by white men, like those kinds of things.
When it comes to the diversity and inclusion element, or the making sure that
what you're putting out into the market is as inclusive as it can be,
I guess the thing that comes up for me and the question that I imagine a lot
(15:48):
of the audience would also be thinking is, when we're talking about boardrooms
generally don't have a historical level of diversity in themselves.
Themselves even now when you've got organizations like Athena Alliance that
are pushing for more diversity with respect to gender but then you push past
that level onto race and other aspects of difference and the diversity still
(16:14):
isn't catching up with where it potentially should be.
How does an organization like yours where you're training people to get into these positions.
How do you go about helping people to.
Achieve that when it comes to putting something out that is going to be as inclusive
as possible and having that thought process that is it's like what we've been
(16:37):
talking about already in terms of the accountability level but then also ensuring
that some of the accountability level but from a,
community perspective that you're including as many people as possible yeah
in the u.s still Still, only about 4% of executive roles are held by BIPOC people.
However, at Athena, 37% of our community is racially diverse.
(17:01):
We make point of saying, okay, so it may be 4%, but we're going to have a disproportionate
percentage of that 4% in here.
And you also have to take an attitude that says, if it's only 4%,
there's a whole bunch of people who's right below that layer that deserve to be in that 4%.
That deserve to be up at the next level who have been completely illogically
(17:24):
looked over. So we got to pull them in.
And then the thing we do at Athena is we don't do anything that every human
doesn't need who's looking to do the things that our members are looking to do. All humans need it.
It's just that we're uniquely offering it to women and non-binary people because
that's the segment of society that deserves the competitive advantage right now.
(17:48):
Until things are equal, it doesn't make sense to pretend they are.
So we are disproportionately giving this incredible value to a part of the society
that needs that competitive advantage.
So it's important for us in the truth of what we do is that we're not trying
(18:09):
to say, oh, you guys need training that the others don't need.
It's no, I'm in fact, actually underrepresented people when they're achieving
something that somebody else already has.
They raise the bar while they do it because they have to work so much harder.
So it's not like we're doing like this, we're doing this.
And then everybody else is gonna have to catch up.
(18:29):
Then that's on a performance level. This isn't on a equal share level.
We're going to get to an equal share level.
But when we get to an equal share level, the bar for performance has been risen as well.
And so as that bar is being raised, the consciousness is raised.
This consciousness around how we do these things, what kinds of questions come
into the boardroom and how we tackle the kinds of questions that come into the boardroom.
(18:53):
There's less let it be as it is just go grab
market there's more what is the impact in the world because it's
a natural phenomenon of underrepresented people
coming into the dialogue i love that the more that you bring in
diverse perspectives it seems almost obvious
when you say it totally i mean yeah at the same time because historically
it hasn't been the case that it has to be said that when diversity
(19:16):
is brought into the room a different way of
looking looking at things takes place naturally because different
people with different experiences bring the table different points
of view perspectives and also come at
challenges or problems in a different way just purely
based on who they are and where they come from or right well
then lived experiences like so that's awesome going back a little bit to what
(19:40):
we were talking about with brand messaging go to market we were talking about
the code clothing strategy and how before Before you had organizations who would
have this one big brand message that would be everywhere,
they'd see an image and you would instantly know that's Coca-Cola.
Do you think that approach is changing with technology in any way?
(20:02):
And if so, how would you say that is changing?
Yeah, it absolutely is changing. So it used to be that the marketing,
the idea was plaster everywhere, be everywhere, make sure everyone knows you
and say it a bazillion times.
And then it's, oh yeah, the only option is Kleenex, dominate with the brand, dominate that way.
(20:22):
And now I think more and more is the competitive mode that is not the marketing and advertising.
Are we in every commercial? Are we, do we get that key spot?
That's not creating the competitive mode. what's creating the competitive mode
is the virality of the brand.
It's the community that gets built around the brand.
And my favorite example of that right now is this product called the Birdie Buddy.
(20:47):
I think I call it Birdie Buddy. It's actually Bird Buddy, but it's a birdhouse.
It's literally a plastic birdhouse.
And it comes in different colors. And you can get the version that also has a solar charging.
And what it does is it has a built-in camera and it takes bird Bird selfies.
And the reason I call it bird selfies is because it's as if a bird was taking a selfie.
(21:07):
They do all sorts of funny things and you get to see close up whatever bird you love.
The reason that BirdBuddy is dominating the market is because they created the
community around BirdBuddy.
So everybody's like, oh, I spotted a three-footed albino, blah,
blah, blah. Look at this.
And so there's this huge community. You can live cam your BirdBuddy.
(21:31):
Everybody loves I can see what birds are doing in Germany right now.
But that happens through community, not technology.
And yet, it's technology that got us here.
Technology is leading us in a place where, yes, the product has to be great,
and you have to have colors that people love. And like if Barbie pink is the
(21:53):
new color, make sure you have it for the birdie buddy or whatever, right?
Like you have to be on top of what's going on societally. But the product is
being led by how excited society gets about it.
It's like Apple. And Apple is not a technology brand.
It's a luxury brand, right?
Why do people wear Apple watches and have Apple? It's because in the United
States, it's considered like a luxury brand.
(22:17):
It's a lifestyle. And there's so many different examples of that kind of community-led approach.
I don't know if you can call it an approach, but companies that have managed
to grow through the communities that.
Or obsessed with them, basically. The language of the last decade or two has
been product-led growth.
(22:38):
And now I think we are moving towards community-led growth.
Yes, the product is creating the community at first, but the community then
defines the product over time.
And the community over time is what allows the product to scale and sustain.
Sustain i guess it it does loop
(22:59):
back to what we were talking about with respect to the shareholder
value because ultimately you can
market a product as much as you want but if the people that you're targeting
don't find value in the thing that you're selling they're not going to latch
onto it and then with this kind of community-led approach that you just mentioned
(23:22):
it's almost like the The community takes hold of that product, runs with it,
and grows it in a way that the organization potentially never could because
it doesn't have the ability to do.
With the BirdBuddy example, they don't have the millions of videos of birds
that they're going to get through the community that's then going to amplify
their position on the platforms that people are sharing those videos on. Yeah.
(23:46):
That's super interesting. So when it comes to the marketing,
corporate messaging and branding, do you think that you have to then cede control
to your community when it comes to how they're using and discussing your products?
What's happening in the world of marketing? Actually, we actually are,
Athena puts on a number of courses.
We have the board course I mentioned. We also have a course on drop the ING out of marketing.
(24:09):
So become a chief market officer.
And this is not my expertise. This is the expertise of some incredible market
builders that are our faculty and the genius of a woman named Christine Heckert,
who has been the chief market officer for a long time.
If you don't define the category, you have to dominate the category,
right? So there's a category you're playing in.
(24:30):
The category is bird watchers, people who love birds, bird watching.
And so Bird Buddy not only came out and dominated, but they also defined the
category. But the way they were able to define the category was they locked
in on something that people were missing, which was the close-ups of the birds.
Their birds that were doing these
(24:51):
funny things that would be captured and then they could capture the
moment and then they just show up and it's like little presents in
their inbox right they got all of the product and once
you've got the product then the ongoing chief market officer is okay so we got
the product right and now we need to really create community around it and think
about the billboards with photos taken on an iphone and that's that's an example
(25:16):
of this That's marketing going,
wait a minute, rather than us posting photos that we,
Apple, took of what an iPhone can take,
let's do entirely big billboards with photos other people took.
Random, normal human beings took these photos and put their name on it,
maybe even where they come from or whatever.
(25:36):
Because what that's going to do is create community. Because then people are
looking at that billboard and going, a normal, random human took that.
I could do that with my iPhone, right? Right. Like I could do that.
So you basically secede the ownership of the product to the community.
But your job as the market officer is to facilitate that.
(25:59):
Right. And to jazz it up and to ensure it feeds itself.
But you so you own the product. I don't own the product. Right.
It's subtle, but it's market genius.
Absolutely. Yeah. It's super smart. not it's like finding these different
ways that you can encourage the community to take
part and have an active role in ultimately promoting
your company through their participation that's really
(26:22):
cool and i guess a massive jump from what we're talking about with the coke
branding putting your message out there everywhere and being the loudest voice
in the room it's such a just totally different approach which i guess 10 years
ago no one really would have thought about because because the technology just wasn't there.
We couldn't imagine any way than what it was at the time.
(26:45):
I do feel, I'm just thinking whilst you were talking, we've done a hell of a
lot of promotion for Bird Buddy.
So before we go, other bird watching technologies are available.
This is not sponsored by Bird Buddy, but I also wanted to ask you,
do you have one yourself?
Actually, and I'll just give them a little dig. The bird buddy I bought my stepmom is not working.
(27:09):
And we've been madly frustrated by it.
However, the bird buddy that's working for my mother-in-law is,
and she's absolutely obsessed with it.
So I don't have a bird buddy myself, but I buy them for others. And so far, I'm 50-50.
But it sounds like you've made great choices for presents for mothers-in-law and parents.
That's a great choice. Yeah. Maybe I'll order for the next Christmas or birthday
(27:32):
day that comes but that's my way yeah please thank you so much for joining me
for today's podcast it has been an absolute pleasure having you on and i've
had so much fun talking to you.
Before we go is there anywhere that you would want our audience to find you
yeah from a technology perspective we support a lot of technologists and one
(27:56):
of our members was the cto of dofcusign as an example.
And we have a peer group for engineering and product leaders.
And so that's a good reason to check out Athena. So the best thing to do is
just go to our website, AthenaAlliance.com.
And then I'm super easy to find on LinkedIn. I'm Coco Brown.
And usually, if you type in Coco Brown on LinkedIn, I always pop to the top.
(28:19):
And if you connect with me and tell me you saw me on this podcast,
then I'll have a little bit more relevant sort of connection to and know why you're reaching out.
Thank you so much. We will make sure to add Athena Alliance's website and your
LinkedIn profile link to the show notes.
So to anyone listening, check those out in the podcast notes.
(28:40):
And thank you so much again for joining us. And I hope to speak to you soon.
So that wraps up another episode of Tech Beyond the Hype.
I really hope that you enjoyed hearing from Coco as much as I did.
If you want to learn more about Coco Brown and the Athena Alliance,
Be sure to check out all the links in the show notes.
(29:01):
And don't forget to subscribe to Tech Beyond the Hype on your favorite podcast
platform to make sure that you never miss an episode.
Your support means so much to us. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.
Your input really helps make sure that the content we're creating is in line
with what you want to hear.
Thank you again so much for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious and keep
(29:24):
exploring the world beyond the hype. Tech Beyond the Hype is a TechTarget original production.
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