145 - Iconic Partner Leader Breaks Through to Help Us Become Better Allies

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A Beloved Ecosystem Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

This guest for Ultimate Guide to Partnering® needs no introduction. Gavriella Schuster is the former channel chief at Microsoft and now a three-time guest on this podcast. I was excited to welcome this recent Microsoft Alum for a conversation on her mission to address the diversity and equity inclusion gaps. This iconic partner leader breaks through to help us become better allies.

In Gavriella’s words

As a C-Level Microsoft Executive and global thought leader, I bring over 30 years of leadership in digital and cloud transformation roles. I build strategy spanning all aspects of business model and product development, launch, marketing, sales, and partnership, with operational execution excellence. Throughout my career, I have helped thousands of businesses of all sizes to digitally transform through technology. I have grown a P&L into $10B over 5 years, managed global sales revenues of $40B, and led a global portfolio of channel partners that has influenced over $1 trillion through Microsoft’s fastest-growing ecosystem. Learn more about Gavriella.

What You’ll Learn

Her DEI Pillars – Public Policy, Raising Awareness, Applying Technology (3:18)
Gavriella’s Ted Talk and Just Cause (8:15)
The STEM Gap (12:47)
What Can We Do? – Advocate, Listen, Lift, Include, Elevate, Sponsor (16:22)
The Path (22:15)
A Defining Moment (24:55)

It was so great to welcome back Gavriella Schuster. I hope you enjoy and learn from this amazing business leader as much as I enjoyed welcoming her back to Ultimate Guide to Partnering®.

Quote From This Episode

“So this is why I call on everyone to really work with intention to be an ally. And again, it’s both men and women, because there are women who were like me. Before I had my moment of realizing I had an obligation that I was in a position of privilege and power, and I needed to be the role model and be an ally, that we just need more allyship behavior.“

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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

ally, partnering, gabriella, people, women, vince, report, microsoft, gender equity, podcast, raise, technology, organization, ultimate guide, drive, talked, tech, moment, hoping, teach

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Gavriella Schuster, Vince Menzione

Gavriella Schuster 00:00

So this is why I call on everyone to really work with intention to be an ally. And again, it’s both men and women, because there are women who were like me. Before I had my my moment of realizing I had an obligation that I was in a position of privilege and power, and I needed to be the role model and be an ally, that we just need more ally ship behavior. Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now, your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione 00:56

Gavriella, Welcome back to the podcast.

Gavriella Schuster 02:35

Thanks, Vince. I’m so happy to be here. I am so excited to have you back on Ultimate Guide to partnering.

Vince Menzione 02:42

This is your third visit to this podcast. I can’t believe it. And last time you were a guest, you were leading Microsoft’s partner business. A lot has changed. So I’m so excited to have you back to talk about today about life post-Microsoft. So welcome.

Gavriella Schuster 02:59

Thank you. Thank you.

Vince Menzione 03:01

So you left Microsoft last year, and you have been amazingly busy like no dust is settling on Gabriella here, I was checking your LinkedIn page. And boy, there’s a lot of activity, a lot of things you’ve been up to. So I was hoping and give our listeners some updates.

Gavriella Schuster 03:18

So I left last September, but I was planning to leave for probably about a year or so I had, you know laid some tracks for what I wanted to do, which is really focused a lot more on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I just didn’t have enough time with that and a full-time job. So since I left I’ve been reading a lot and I and that’s what I try and share on LinkedIn is I find some really interesting research articles, just information on how we can drive for more diversity, equity, and inclusion in high tech, particularly gender equity, which is just going in the wrong way. And I’ve been trying to find ways that I can accelerate change at scale. How do I really drive awareness? I’ve identified three areas where I think it would make a huge difference if we could get them done. One is that I would love to see some public policy require any organization that has more than 100 employees to report their diversity figures in a transparent way. They all create an EEO one report that they send to the EEOC, but that is private data, and it doesn’t go anywhere. What I’d love to see is the SEC require that report become public, because that would enable us to get at an apples-to-apples comparison and a common taxonomy on how we report on diversity. We would be able to do benchmarking and really understand by industry by job role, where our challenges really are across diverse or city inequity, relative to is it recruiting? Is it retention? Is it promotion, etc? Because today, a lot of that is just based on research surveys, highly skewed data. So that’s one thing is really getting that to be a transparent requirement so that investors could make better decision making. And we could generally have a much cleaner view of the ecosystem, and people could make better hiring and job decisions, and then investment decisions.

Vince Menzione 05:32

So you’re saying that information isn’t readily available? So there’s a little bit of a black hole for us right now, a lot of the information we’re gathering or we’re reporting on is antidotal. Is that what you’re saying? It’s a

Gavriella Schuster 05:42

big call. So organizations choose to report what they report. So for instance, Microsoft reports on information, but there’s no standard for it. So they reported how they want to report it, as do many Fortune 500 companies, and then not all of them do, and really only the ones who think they’re doing something about it, report. So you get this very skewed view of what’s going on.

Vince Menzione 06:07

Right? That’s very interesting because I don’t think many people know that including myself. Yeah.

Gavriella Schuster 06:11

So that’s one thing as I’m lobbying for that to happen. The second thing is, I would like to raise awareness of the gender equity challenges in high tech specifically, and really encourage men and women to be better allies to those that are not in a privileged position in wherever they are. So raising awareness to what is an ally actions our allies take, and I had to become one. So that’s another area where I’ve been really focused. And I created an ebook that talks about how do you hire for diversity? And then how do you act like an ally? And then the third area is obviously tech, right? Because that’s my roots is how can technology really drive for digital transformation of organizational culture? Looking at, there’s a startup group of dei tech, if we can get that to be more mainstream, then we route out a lot of the embedded bias that exists within current HR

Vince Menzione 07:18

systems. Can you expand on that just a little bit.

Gavriella Schuster 07:21

So I’ll give you an example. There’s an organization called included, that automates a lot of the work that I had been doing as a leader in Microsoft had been doing with HR manually. So for instance, I required in my organization that every candidate pool had at least two diverse candidates and two external candidates, and that we had a diverse hiring panel now that relied on the honor system with my team. And I would just ask a lot of questions. This technology is actually a data mart that pulls API data from about 30 different HR systems. So depending on which ones you have in your organization, and pulls all that data together, and you can put rules in like that. And as a manager, it would actually flag for me if one of my teams wasn’t following the rules that I had set out in the organization. I’ll give you another example at the review time, and we would do all sorts of kind of manual manipulation on the data to see if we had any unconscious bias sneaking into the reviews or rewards that we were providing to people. This system does all of those kinds of calculations in automated and just presents to you any red flags, it’s really that kind of stuff, where it can be embedded in your systems, and you don’t know it, and it shines a spotlight back out.

Vince Menzione 08:51

Those are three great pillars. By the way, we’re going to talk, we want to talk more about gender equity challenges and Ally ship in a moment. But I want to bring you back to a point in time. When you were on the podcast in November 2020. You had just flown back from Colorado, I believe, from that TED talk that you delivered. And it hadn’t been released yet. So it hadn’t been readily available to people like myself to listen to. But that was, I believe, a defining moment. So many people that I know talked about your TED Talk. In fact, they still talk about that TED talk. And I was hoping you can bring us back to that event for a moment and what it meant to you.

Gavriella Schuster 09:29

Yeah, sure. So that was my stake in the ground. That said, this is very important. We are at a crisis moment. And we need to take action now. Actually, I think since then, things have actually gotten worse. So I’m hoping we’re still at that crisis moment that I’m still hoping we can turn the tide and start getting back to better. Yeah, it was a way for me to raise the flag and say, look, it is not getting better. It’s not okay. You may think of a moment when you’re like, Oh, I think things are getting better. There’s usually one or two women in the things that I do, or the places that I go. And there’s Yeah, one or two, I don’t know how many 1520 100. Right. It was really my first real stake in the ground on a very public moment to, as I said, lay the ground for where I wanted to go. And the work that I wanted to do.

Vince Menzione 10:27

This is your just cause. And I’d like to peel back with you. We didn’t have this conversation last time. You’re wrong. But I’ve had Dr. Michael drew bay here a couple of times. Now. We’ve talked about personal philosophy, and just cause and you’ve been pretty deliberate about this. Yeah, seems it is your clear, just cause? And can you articulate for us?

Gavriella Schuster 10:49

Why? Yeah. So the why is because I don’t think that women should have to go through what I’ve been through. And that, but it is just not. It’s not right, as a society, that we continue to segregate women, and that these gaps, these equity gaps continue to exist. I also believe that as a society, that there’s a lot of research showing when women are equal participants in the workforce, equal participants in an organization, better things happen, greater innovation, better decision making higher profitability, higher revenue per employee. So there’s a lot of research that backs that up. And I had read Melinda Gates book moment of lift, which was one of those bolstering moments for me when I was like, Yeah, and it goes way beyond even what I’ve seen in my small world, that when you enable and empower women, to be productive participants in society, a lot of the challenges society faces go away. And it’s it really was like, Yes, this is what I’m here for. This is why I got to where I got so that I could be a voice, I could be a megaphone, I could amplify this message and drive for change.

Vince Menzione 12:17

You mentioned earlier, like we’ve gone backwards, why do you suppose we’re not seeing enough positive movement, I still look around the room. And it’s still a bunch of white guys, right? In the technology sector, we’re very much a white male dominated sector. And then also the money that’s being raised. First of all the CEOs, the representation is at the CEO level, striking how limited it is. And then also the other fundraising activity. All male founders, for the most part. Yeah.

Gavriella Schuster 12:47

Yeah, Eve also there, I think there’s a number of reasons why tech hasn’t changed. Because when you look at other fields, like the medical field right now, it’s almost 5050, in terms of the student population, male, female, in a medical field is similar, even in science, but not in tech. And so I think there’s a few things. One is the curriculum, the tech curriculum hasn’t changed in 20 years. And so it’s it is heavily male bias curriculum, not to mention that it actually doesn’t really prepare anybody, I think, for coming into tech these days, but it’s heavily male bias.

Vince Menzione 13:31

So talk to me about that male bias curriculum, because I don’t like maybe as an observer, I’m blinded to this. But tell me more about it.

Gavriella Schuster 13:38

If you’re in schools, and I’ve seen this because of my children, and you want to learn how to program gaming, they still go back and teach you a lot of shoot ’em up gaming. That’s how they start to

Vince Menzione 13:49

cheat teach you what, what cowboys and Indians.

Gavriella Schuster 13:53

Yeah. And so that’s very not appealing. What the research shows appeals to younger girls is this idea of a higher mission. And that’s not they’ll teach you like that. It’s about problem solving, and what the bigger picture is, and how do you problem solve through that that’s really what innovation and tech is today. But that’s not the way that they teach that. And that they also do teach it very much in silos and piecemeal small, you get small snippets, and very much like you’re just sitting down and doing just doing a bunch of math or something. And so I don’t think this is just like deterring women. I think this deters a lot of people, younger people when they’re going down because they think technology Oh, cool. And they think of the ways they use technology today. And then you go into a classroom, and that’s not what they’re teaching. Right. So I think that’s the beginning, then it snowballs from there because there is still a lot of bias within the education professorship that this is still that boys are better than girls. roles, men are better than women. And so they tend to call on the boys more. And even I was mentoring somebody. And we had a conversation a couple of months ago. And I was talking about ally ship, and what does ally ship look like? And I said, women tend to get interrupted more often, when they do bring forth ideas, they tend to be dismissed. And then there’s that heating. And there’s even words for these things, right? Where a guy will say exactly what a woman said, and everybody thinks it’s brilliant. But when the woman said it, nobody even paid attention,

Vince Menzione 15:35

right? You’ve talked about this before. What did you refer to it as heap heating, Heap eating?

Gavriella Schuster 15:41

Yeah. And so when I was talking to her, she said, Oh, that happens to me in class all the time. And I and she said, we’re set up in teams. I’m oftentimes the only girl in the team. And then I try to share my opinion, shape the direction of the team, and the boys will say, Oh, you’re being so aggressive. Oh, you’re being too bossy. And I just get so worn down. I just stopped. No, don’t stop, don’t stop.

Vince Menzione 16:10

So what can we do? Well, we’ve had Jennifer DDA, who I know is a friend, yeah, another ally. And we’ve talked about this subject of STEM and training and the like, what can we do differently? What could we do better.

Gavriella Schuster 16:22

So this is why I call on everyone to really work with intention to be an ally. And again, it’s both men and women. Because there are women who were like me, before I had my my moment of realizing I had an obligation that I was in a position of privilege and power. And I needed to be the role model and be an ally, that we just need more ally ship behavior. So you know, I’ve defined in my ebook, there’s six ally ship behaviors, advocate, a listen, lift, include, elevate, and sponsor, those are actions that you have to be very intentional about, you have to really focus in the situations that you’re in to raise your situational awareness to see and understand what’s going on around you and where somebody might need an ally. And the first three of those actions, advocate, listen, and lift are reactive, you don’t need anybody’s permission to be an ally in those situations where somebody is getting constantly getting interrupted when somebody is being dismissed, or somebody’s being asked to do something singled out or excluded because of their race or their gender at you. That’s a sense of human compassion, that you own the situation. You don’t look around and try and shame or blame anybody and you try and change the dialogue, you disrupt the status quo, right? So those three don’t need anybody’s permission to do the last three are proactive. So include elevate and sponsor where if you’re going to be an ally to someone you do need their permission because you are going to spotlight you are going to elevate their position you are going to sponsor them into new opportunities. And so you need to be working together and they need to agree that’s something they want to do.

Vince Menzione 18:33

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Gavriella Schuster 20:22

Yeah, I would like to see you be allies, active allies in every situation, everywhere that you go, think about? Are the people who should be here represented? And if not, how do I point them out that out and get them represent to even take a stand that says, I’m not going to participate in something that doesn’t have equal representation, that I am going to have that raise my own situational awareness to, to get out of my own head in the situations that I’m in and to really pay attention? Listen, lift up those around me, build people’s confidence, build confidence for the women, let them know the things that they’re doing well, and that I’m here, and that I’m supporting them in their leadership and authority ally ship takes working with intention every single day, every single moment,

Vince Menzione 21:21

I couldn’t agree with you more, as you might know, when I brought back the podcast, back in June of 2020. And the world was on fire during that time. And I looked around even at the list of guests, the first 60 episodes, and we’re still very much white male dominated. And I personally have been very deliberate on this, as you might

Gavriella Schuster 21:40

know. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate your allyship. I do.

Vince Menzione 21:43

Thank you. I do it because I believe in it. And I was raised by a very strong mother had both parents were very wonderful parents, but a very strong mother. And I learned quite a bit about the strength of women and what women bring and ensuring that gets people that those voices are lifted. Yeah. So let’s talk about you like we haven’t really discussed, we talked about this, but we haven’t talked about other things that Gabrielle has been up to. So what does life look like for Gabriella three to five years from now.

Gavriella Schuster 22:15

So I have also been, I’m on the board of directors for a few different startup organizations, which is great and enables me to continue my work in tech and play a similar role to the one I played at Microsoft really, in terms of setting the direction coaching an organization and driving for growth. So that’s been really fun. My husband and I bought a house in California so we could get away from the rain in Seattle.

Vince Menzione 22:43

It doesn’t rain in Seattle. I saw pictures. It looks lovely. It looks lovely.

Gavriella Schuster 22:51

It is and so my husband and I we go like nice, long walks on the beach with our dogs. And it’s great because it’s a dog friendly beach. So we run into so many it’s like a dog party every day.

Vince Menzione 23:03

We have a dog friendly beach here as well. I love it. I love it.

Gavriella Schuster 23:06

Yeah, and my kids, I’m I’m spending some time with my kids. My My daughter is pursuing her Master’s my son’s getting his undergraduate degree. And it’s it’s enabled us to spend a little bit more time with them. And my daughter and I are actually going on a trip. We’re going on a trip to Europe in the summer for two weeks. And so I’m just like, I hope that COVID is doesn’t spike up again. And we stay well and we can go on the trip.

Vince Menzione 23:35

Wonderful. So I have a sense that you have this great source of inner strength, inspiration, where did it come from?

Gavriella Schuster 23:45

I think it is. It’s fed from the people that I have met throughout my career that I really get my energy from helping others and from helping not just helping others do things but empowering others helping others to find their inner strength and be able to fulfill who they are and walk into their own authenticity I get a lot of strength from watching people do that and so I like to work with people and help them to find that to find their center for me I think it started from my parents my my dad was in incredibly driven person and instilled in me a lot of the values of empowering others and helping

Vince Menzione 24:39

I recall you talking about your dad I don’t want to put you on the spot here but I do recall a conversation might have been a podcast where you talked about your dad went through a career crisis or however you want referred to it maybe lost his lost his role. Was that a spark for you as well?

Gavriella Schuster 24:55

That was absolutely a defining moment in my life. My my dad was funny enough about the same age as I am now. And he lost his job after 27 years in the same place. And it crushed him, his whole ego had been tied to his position, and he was lost. And I decided that I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. Now I have a different perspective on it now that I’m at that age. And I think that, sadly, he realized he wasn’t doing what he wanted to do. But he had no he had lost himself in his job and in that identity, and he didn’t know what he wanted to do. Whereas that was actually probably the thing that drove me to decide, hey, it’s time to go off and do this on my own. I was I was like, I’m, I don’t need to stay at Microsoft, I don’t need to be a corporate vice president to know my worth, and to be able to pursue the things that matter to me.

Vince Menzione 25:57

I just love what you’re doing. And I love your just cause. And I’m so delighted to see where you’re going on this journey. Gabrielle.

Gavriella Schuster 26:06

Thank you.

Vince Menzione 26:07

So let’s have a little bit of fun. Yeah, I love asking this question I might have asked you once before, but I’m going to ask you this again. Because I think maybe the answers might be a little bit different. But now that we’re like beyond COVID, and you’re traveling, which is wonderful. you’re hosting a dinner party, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this dinner party is amazing party, you’re gonna have probably on the beach in California, who would you invite? And why?

Gavriella Schuster 26:38

Ah, that’s easy for me, I would invite three women that I so admire that I think would help me to understand what I could do even more. And that is Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Michelle Obama, why would they just be so totally fun, I think at a dinner party, but I think they would really like we could really talk about the experiences that they’ve had. And I could learn so much from each of them.

Vince Menzione 27:09

What a great conversation that would be. I might have to come by for maybe a glass of wine or something. Or I could take the dogs on the beach for you while you’re having your party as well. That is amazing. Oh, wow, three amazing women, and role models. In fact, I follow each of them. I just want to thank you. I want to say sincerely how much how grateful I am for your friendship. You are always that person. I think I might have mentioned this once to you before. But no matter how busy you were, and as a corporate vice president, you’re pretty darn busy. You would always respond, you’d always reach out. And that to me means the world. And that’s just indicative of the type of person you are Gabriela. But for our listeners, any parting words, you gave us some great advice for certainly for all of us on ally ship. Any parting remarks for our listeners here today?

Gavriella Schuster 28:01

Yeah, like I said, the world is, I think, a little crazy at the moment with the war, which I just thought we were, I was hoping we were so past as a humanity. And then with what’s going on in our country, the division that’s occurring, I think we need to really all step into ally ship to look at the things that are happening and say, That was if that’s me, what how do I change this? This is humanity. This is me, this is my world. How do we get back to a path that enables us to be fully participating as our authentic selves and not hiding not having to hide who we are? And really, how do we all step into our ally ship?

Vince Menzione 28:51

Great advice for our listeners. Thank you so much, Gabriella, thank you for joining us today.

Gavriella Schuster 28:56

Thank you so much, Vince.