Q & A: TECHNOLOGY Roundtable.

PositionIndustry Outlook - Discussion

Utah's Silicon Slopes has hit critical mass, making it poised for unprecedented recognition and success. A talent shortage is the only fly in the ointment. But with their willingness to disrupt traditional educational models, our panel of tech execs is optimistic about the opportunities for change.

PARTICIPANTS

CODY BRODERICK

inWhatLanguage

MANNY CHAVEZ

Impact Video Cards

CARINE CLARK

Banyan

KAT KENNEDY

Degreed

SHARON KITZMAN

Dealertrack

TOM STOCKHAM

Experticity

GILBERT LEE

Pluralsight

MITCH MACFARLANE

Instructure

FRANK MAYLETT

RizePoint

DAN MIGHT

Homie

ERIC MONTAGUE

Executech

MARC PORTER

Holland & Hart, LLP

TRICIA SCHUMANN

Bach Health

KRISTY SEVY

Fuzeplay

JULIE SIMMONS

Contravent

CYDNI TETRO

ForgeDX

SUNNY WASHINGTON

Because Learning

PREMIER SERIES SPONSORS

MODERATOR

A special thank you to Sara Jones, co-founder and COO of Women Tech Council, for moderating the discussion.

What have been some of the opportunities that you have seen as Silicon Slopes has gotten a lot of press nationally? And conversely, what are some of the challenges that you have seen?

LARK: I serve on the board of Silicon Slopes. So I get to see it from an interesting view. There are countries that are watching Utah and there are states and cities that are saying, "What's going on in Utah? Because we thought Utah was a backwater and it's actually not. What have you done?"

But the challenge we face is we continue to struggle with diversity in the state. We continue to struggle with how to keep the workforce educated and how to make it easier for young people to get money and expertise in growing companies.

SEVY: On the flip side, the struggle with diversity is also a positive for people like me who are willing to dig in, because it is easier to create opportunity for yourself. There is more opportunity where people realize they need diversity and they are more willing to stretch their hand out and give you a chance and welcome you into the environment.

SIMMONS: From a client base perspective, what we experienced is the Silicon Slopes branding does help us. Even though out-of-state clients may or may not have heard of it, when we tell them about all the growth Utah is seeing in the tech sector, it helps our reputation.

LEE: The thing we are seeing is competition for talent, which is good for the state because you have a lot more good companies that are getting built up. But it's also a challenge because we are always looking for engineers. Our recruiting team is working really hard. So it's both good that there's competition, but the talent pool is where we need to grow for Utah.

TETRO: There's two sides of that story. We talk often about the diversity issues inside of the state. And across the state we actually export a lot of our senior female talent because they can't find jobs here. Obviously we have an engineering talent issue. But on the other side of that, there's a lot of effort that needs to be done to create more integrated networks of men and women across the state so that people can more easily find jobs. Because as we have grown up, we haven't done that effort as much.

We track a bunch of senior women who are actively looking or get tapped for positions, and a significant majority of them actually end up out of state because they are not in the same networks as their male counterparts to find positions inside the state. So as we think about talent and expansion of talent, we have to figure out how to solve some of the networking issues so that diversity actually gets placed at the top.

Over the last couple of months, we have had a lot of CEOs of fairly large tech companies come and say, "I need to get more diversity in my senior ranks." And one of the challenges they have is they actually have no women in any of their ranks. Not the senior boards or director levels. So we need to find ways to help accelerate some of the senior leadership into a lot of our tech companies. We have to figure out how to keep some of that talent here in those positions, because it's not staying in Utah.

MAYLETT: I have hired two C-level positions in the last 12 months. One was a CTO. And we had a very difficult time finding female candidates. For the CFO position, we found two or three female candidates that were highly qualified, and couldn't land them. So there are companies that are trying.

But your point about integrating the male/female professional networks is incredibly important, because odds are I could have found either of those positions here. My network wasn't wide enough. That's the challenge.

KENNEDY: We are in Silicon Slopes, but we are based in San Francisco. And the difference I see in the two networks is here your network stays pretty close; where there, you can get a meeting with anyone, any time, whenever you want it. It is a community. We could do a lot of work to build the...

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