#ChooseToChallenge the Status Quo During International Women’s Day
International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women across the globe and marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. This year, the theme is #ChooseToChallenge, which brings light to gender bias and unequal treatment women have faced in the workplace and beyond.
As IWD21 nears, Extreme’s Women’s Leadership Council is looking back and reflecting on the accomplishments of all women. To celebrate internally, we plan to share powerful quotes from historical figures and highlight inventors who made a positive impact on society with our employees the entire month of March.
As we look to #ChooseToChallenge, we’re hosting a special guest speaker, Sophie Le Ray, the Co-Founder of EVE List – a global not-for-profit organization dedicated to connect and equip rising professional women and support organizations aiming to reach gender parity. In this fireside chat, we will dive into Sophie’s vast experience around finding one’s purpose, operating in challenging environments, developing resilience, and most importantly, allyship – the process of building relationships based on trust, consistency, and accountability across the dominant and non-dominant voices in an organization Sophie is an entrepreneur, author, and experienced business facilitator who has lived all over the world, including the US, London, France, and Dubai.
We also reached out to our employees and asked them to share their thoughts on the path forward for gender parity in the workplace and their advice for women entering the workforce. I’m pleased to share them with you.
It is crucial for women starting their careers to have a dream about where they want to go and, of course, a plan on how to get there. There are two great moves you can make to accelerate your learning, your growth and amplify your career:
- Find a mentor who has deep experience and the willingness to give back and invest in the up and comers.
- Make offers of help to your leadership. Identify areas where you can help by taking work off of their plate and engaging on the criteria for the successful delivery of the work. If you can help that person, they’ll help guide and develop you. It’s all about gaining experience and proving that you can do the work. This philosophy or mantra is focus on giving “value-in” first before having any expectations of taking “value-out.”
This International Women’s Day, choose to cherish the women in your life, for they bring a unique perspective that will open up a much richer and brighter world. As the late great Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” What will your next step be?
There has never been a better time to be at Extreme Networks! If you’re interested in joining us, I encourage you to visit our careers page and learn more about our diversity and inclusion initiatives. Please stay tuned for more updates from Extreme’s Women’s Leadership Council, Extreme’s Diversity & Inclusion Council, and the many more Employee Resource Groups at Extreme.