Organizations are knee deep in their respective digital transformations, trying to create a more evolved, technology-based way of doing business. Technology companies, ironically, are not accelerating the pace of bringing diversity to the workplace to keep up with the speed of innovation required to successfully fill the data gap while transforming digitally, according to Kim Stevenson (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of data center infrastructure at Lenovo Group Ltd.

Tech companies began releasing “diversity reports” in 2013 to provide transparency into their inclusion efforts. However, industry insiders feel that these reports are mere “performance art” and nothing is indeed changing, Stevenson pointed out. And the fact that the needle is moving slowly has many companies rethinking the way they recruit talent.

Unlike much of the industry, women play a starring role at Lenovo in shaping the future of the datacenter. “It’s a very diverse company, and that diversity plays out in our president’s staff, which I am a member of; half of the staff are women,” Stevenson said. “That may not sound unusual, but it’s very unusual in tech.”

Stevenson spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Lenovo Transform event about diversity in tech and how it is changing the customer experience at Lenovo. (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Kim Stevenson in our Women In Tech feature.

Women in tech by the numbers

Current studies also bring to light that the “bro culture” still reigns supreme in the industry. It is an interesting contrast to other industries where studies show that companies with women at the helm have a 15-percent increase in profitability.  The tech industry cannot lose sight of that statistic when only 21 percent of its leadership roles are held by women.

In an industry where only 22 percent of women believe that the companies they work for are taking action to hire and advance women in tech roles, Stevenson, who had a long career history as the chief operating officer at Intel, recently joined Lenovo because of its management team.

“I had good experiences with the management team, and I wanted to leverage that. In fact, it’s been a seamless transition because I knew the management team and I understood some of the dynamics that we’d be facing together and the challenges that we wanted to take on together,” Stevenson said.

Specifically looking for a position in the data center industry, she found that the incumbents did not add value in a market that is undergoing rapid changes. The fact that Lenovo did not have legacy baggage and had a “big change agenda” was the tipping point for her decision to join and stay at the company.

Stevenson’s perspective looks to shift the other issue regarding women in tech: retention. In 1991, women comprised 36 percent of the workforce in tech; in 2016, women only make up 20 percent of the computing workforce. The statistics for women of color being involved in tech are even more disappointing. The number of African American women in tech is at three percent, and that number for Latinas is at two percent.

Change begins at the top

While women represent 34 percent of Lenovo employees, the company is conscience that it has to make more strides in diversifying its headcount. In January 2017, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing (known as YY) released an article, “YY: My Commitment to Diversity,” where he quoted a famous Chinese saying, “Women can hold up half of the sky.” In the article, he pledges to not only hire but develop women leaders through the company’s Women’s Leadership Development Program and Women in Lenovo Leadership. 

The data center infrastructure group at Lenovo is a result of that promise. Stevenson is working with a number of female executives on a core initiative to improve customer satisfaction.

“It’s very unusual for me as a woman to have the opportunity to work with other women. It’s an interesting thing because we are focused on driving more customer centricity as a company, and in particular in the data center group. What you see with this natural collaboration is that we are all focused on the same problem and we are willing to leverage the strengths of one another,” she said.

So why is it so important to have diversity in Silicon Valley? At the core of the gender and diversity problem is that as we move to machine learning and artificial intelligence, it simply doesn’t work without gender neutrality. If 80 percent of the programming and concepts are mostly developed by one sex or one race, it is impossible to relate to a whole population.  

Women also bring a unique perspective to technology, which they primarily consume. So having female ingenuity is essential for technology companies to gain insight into the end-user, she added. In the future, the tech industry must become diverse to be competitive.

Taking a top-down approach is the key for Stevenson. “I do think it takes a management team that has an open mindset to solve problems in different ways, and you know, if [at] our core ‘different’ is better, we’re willing to do it differently,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of the Lenovo Transform event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Lenovo Transform. Neither Lenovo Group Ltd. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE