One of the pivotal moments of my career as an entrepreneur was hearing Jeff Hoffman share his legacy as a founder of Priceline.com, uBid.com, and ColorJar, and most importantly, what he was able to accomplish with the results of his work. His quote, “Our success is someone else’s miracle,” has become InfoTrust’s purpose as an organization.
But what does it really mean, especially with regards to equality in the technology field?
For years, InfoTrust has been using a significant percentage of its profits as a company to fund the InfoTrust Foundation, allowing us to contribute to causes in our communities. Our annual Basket Brigade brings our entire team together from all over the world in a collaborative effort to give back. But while contribution to the community is a foundational part of our organizational DNA, there is more to making miracles than outward financial contribution.
I always feel awkward when I hear, “In the case of emergency, put the oxygen mask on yourself first,” but this selfishness is rooted in obvious common sense. As we are bringing miracles into this world, we need to make sure our first priority is to take care of our team—and by our team, I do not just mean employees, but also their families. As we are doing that, why not become so good at it that people will come to us to learn how to do it and become inspired to apply the same systems in their companies—simply because it’s good business?
That said, InfoTrust is setting out on a journey as a pilot company aiming to earn a “Supporting Women in Tech” maturity model certification. Once complete, we hope that our team can and will:
- Use the success of the company to implement more progressive management and people systems into our organization;
- Use our results to show other organizations that doing good within your business is also good businesses, and;
- Get more employers to believe what we believe, do what we do, and inspire them to adopt similar principles and move even an inch closer to providing more miracles for their employees.
We have a lot to do on the path to equality in tech, so let’s get started.
Implementing the Supporting Women in Tech Maturity Model
Implementation of such transformational practices within an organization means focusing on the following areas:
- Professional development/promotional opportunities
- Parent-friendly policies
- Anti-bias training
- Equal pay
- Hiring practices
- Cultural norms
In some of these areas we are performing well, but as a small business, there are others in which we feel we are still lacking. As InfoTrust goes through this certification process, we will document our systems and link our articles to this post; the end result will be a comprehensive resource center that you can use to make a change in your organization and support our mission.
Above all, we encourage you to turn our and your success into miracles for others.
