Kita celebrates IWD - A note from Kita’s CEO
The theme of this International Women’s Day is #breakthebias.
Clearly there are myriad forms of extreme bias women and girls around the world face, and these are heart-breaking and rage-inducing in equal measure.
More subtle forms of bias are seen in the business world, which is a space I have navigated for over 15 years. My career pre-Kita was in legal business development, marketing and strategy, which like many job fields is largely female dominated at junior levels and male dominated at senior levels. I made it to a senior-level, and I was always passionate about mentoring other women to do the same.
As CEO of Kita, I feel hugely fortunate to be in the position to make a greater impact. In that vein, when I was looking at the IWD website, its “mission” area – Building workplaces where women thrive – stood out.
Kita is soon to be hiring and we want to build a workplace that does just this.
I’ve hired lots of people in my career, but never in the context of a start-up and never in the context of my own company. So, when thinking of our first job description, I Googled for some tips. One article I found was – “Here Are The Words That May Keep Women From Applying For Jobs.”
I have never felt that my gender has held me back from new opportunities. But when I read this article, some of the start-up cliches listed as off-putting to women struck home, e.g.: “We work hard and play hard.”
NOPE. I work hard and then rush home to play with my kids before bed. After work drinks just create more weekend work.
Clearly not everybody is the same, and these articles can sometimes be offensive in their own right. But it is important to consider the subtleties of bias, and how we can overcome them.
One way to do this is via company values.
Paul, Tom and I founded Kita in December 2021 and then, like now, we had a zillion things to do and not enough time to do them. But one important thing we made time for was discussing the values that have driven us in our personal and professional lives to-date, and how we should incorporate those into Kita’s values. One of the things I love most about working with Paul and Tom is our complete alignment on this.
However, it isn’t enough to just have stated values, those values need to embed into operating culture, including hiring. This is of utmost importance, as success in building the best team is success in building the best business Kita can be.
The best team is undoubtedly a diverse team. And you can’t get a diverse team when expecting everybody on the team to have the same lifestyle and thus working style.
Therefore, one of our operating principles under the value of Ownership is: “We all have different lives – get your work done well and on time, and we trust you to do it on the terms that work for you.”
I have seen the importance of this principle first-hand.
When I returned to work from my first maternity leave, my boss gave me high-profile projects with hard deadlines but otherwise flexible in-office hours. The combination of interesting work with the ability to manage my own time made all the difference to my career success immediately post children.
I have since worked with many women (and men) who have had children or taken on other caring responsibilities, and I have always followed that same standard. It infuriates me to no end when people leave promising careers because of a lack of flexibility (and really foresight) from their bosses.
As we start hiring, I want one thing to be clear.
At Kita, you don’t have to hide your life responsibilities to “look good” in the interview. We want to understand who you are and how you work best. Because we want to help you be the best that you can be as you grow and change in your life and career. And we believe you will help Kita (and us personally) do the same.
