New Media Delegation Seeks Innovation, But Not Diversity

by Jen Nedeau · 2009-04-21 12:57:00 UTC
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Yet another diversity FAIL in the world of technology.  While the State Department brings it's first "New Media Technology" delegation to Iraq with the noble purpose of exploring "new opportunities to support Iraqi government and non-government stakeholders in Iraq's emerging new media industry" - it forgot one big thing: WOMEN.

Check out the list of people who are going. Jared Cohen, a member of the Secretary of State's Policy and Planning staff, is leading the "New Media Technology" delegation to Iraq. Participants include:

  • Jason Lieberman, Chief Executive Officer-Founder, Howcast

  • David Nassar, Vice President, Blue State Digital

  • Scott Heiferman, Chief Executive Officer, MeetUp

  • Raanan Bar-Cohen, Vice President, Automattic/WordPress

  • Richard Robbins, Director of Social Innovation, AT&T

  • Jack Dorsey, Chairman-Founder, Twitter

  • Kannan Pashupathy, Director of International Engineering Operations, Google

  • Ahmad Hamzawi, Head of Engineering, Middle East/North Africa, Google

  • Hunter Walk, Head of Product Development, YouTube

  • Steven Levy, Senior Writer, Wired Magazine

Seriously - WTF?? It's not hard to find women executives in the tech-new media space. But of course, you have to be looking for them in order for them to be considered. Here is a list of women from Fast Company in case you are ever struggling to think of a few female alternates:

  • Gina Bianchini, cofounder and CEO of Ning

  • Caterina Fake, cofounder of Flickr

  • Eileen Gittins, CEO of Blurb

  • Sandy Jen and Elaine Wherry, cofounders of Meebo

  • Mary Lou Jepsen, founder and CEO of Pixel Qi

  • Tina Sharkey, president of BabyCenter

  • Rashmi Sinha, cofounder and CEO of SlideShare

  • Mena Trott, cofounder and president of Six Apart

  • Louise Wannier, CEO of MyShape

  • Genevieve Bell, Director User Experience Group at Intel

  • Sandy Carter VP, Service-Oriented Architecture & WebSphere Marketing at IBM

  • Safra Catzm President of Oracle

  • Susan Decker, President of Yahoo

  • Andrea Jung, Board Member of Apple (and CEO, Avon)

  • Julie Larson, Green Corporate VP of Windows Experience Microsoft

  • Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President of Technology Solutions Group of HP

  • Marissa Mayer Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google

  • Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook

  • Stephanie Tilenius, GM North America eBay

  • Padmasree Warrior, CTO Cisco

Diversity and inclusivity are two major reasons to bring women on board, but the lack of women on this delegation begs a few larger questions as eloquently pointed out by Jodi Jacobson in a recent conversation:

"If this is an international development aspect of our involvement in Iraq, then who benefits?  In a male-dominated patriarchal society, rich with religious tensions and no scarcity of fundamentalists, is there a gendered approach to access to technology, training, start-ups, capital, new media, old media, whatever?"

Additionally, the Women's Media Center reports that in 2009 there are 95.9 million men online and 103.2 million women online; that means that women are 51.8% of all internet users. It's not as if women don't use the internet, don't run tech companies and don't have a grasp on new media. But apparently, there are government staffers out there who don't have a grasp on what is truly effective diplomacy - multiple view points, a diverse group of interests represented at the table and the fact that when you add women, you really can change everything.

Thanks to Lorelei Kelly for the tip on this story.

Photo credit: Fast Company.

Jen Nedeau Jen Nedeau is a media relations professional and a writer based in New York City.
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