Tech companies all over Silicon Valley regularly take heat for the lack of diversity among their employees. There are many different opinions as to why gender and ethnic representation is so skewed. Early education, pipeline deficiencies, bias in management, and genetic factors have all been suggested.

One woman who’s worked in technology for 25 years attributes it to a combination of factors. Jen Cohen (pictured) is vice president of operations at Toyota Research Institute. She once found herself the only woman in an otherwise all-male tech company. The discomfort that can come along with that is real, she revealed.

“I thought it was going to be a great opportunity, and I loved the technology that they were doing. And I was excited to do infrastructure and operations and support it — and it was really a bad experience,” she said. Cohen doesn’t believe her colleagues purposefully created an adverse environment for her. However, the atmosphere did not feel welcoming to her, and she quit after a short time.

Cohen’s love of technology spurred her to carry on. She moved to another company and managed to build a long, fulfilling career. She advises women who love technology to stick with it and says there are practical ways to address discrimination.

Cohen spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Women Transforming Technology Conference in Palo Alto, California. They discussed the diversity question in tech, as well as TRI’s work in autonomous driving and robotics (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

TRI gets tough on hiring pool

Cohen’s daughter is a computer science major. The classroom breakdown clearly indicates that there is a dearth of women in the pipeline. “The fact is, my daughter is in a class with four girls and 40 men. There’s no judgement there, but that’s the reality,” she said. “But I also think we could demand as hiring managers to have a diverse pool come to us,” she said.

At TRI, Cohen does not consider any applicants for positions until the applicant pool is reasonably diverse. Diverse can mean all sorts of things — she does not have quotas for certain groups, she explained.

She believes that having a more diverse team of employees develop product offers practical benefits. “We’ve heard studies that talk about women-run companies and those with women on boards … [and they show that] profitability and innovation go up. So I think the more inclusive we are, the better all of our technology that comes out of the valley is going to be,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Women Transforming Technology Conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Women Transforming Technology Conference event. Neither VMware Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE