Heather J Brunner - Här är brudarna! - IND16

Good afternoon everybody, thank you so much for being here again. My name is Heather Brunner and I've been in technology now for 26 years. I started coding in COBOL and learned the first wave of technology to basically help automate back office systems and a lot of the first generation of technology. And then in the past 26 years, have seen every wave of technology from client server to ERP technologies and the rise of enterprise software, the rise of software-as-a-service, social solutions and social commerce. And now I am the CEO of a company called WP Engine, and WP stands for WordPress. We are a platform for helping our customers to build and manage websites and applications built on WordPress. And WordPress, as an open source technology, is really dominating the web. Over 27 percent of all websites in the world are built on WordPress. And not only the long tail of the web, the small websites, but actually 27 percent of the top 10,000 sites by traffic as well. So it's actually quite an interesting phenomenon to be a part of a company that is really helping to power the voice and technology of so many different types of businesses.

And so I'm going to just share with you a little bit about WP Engine, because I'm going to use WP Engine as a platform to talk about really something I'm super passionate about, which is building really diverse companies and organizations. And tell you a little bit about what we're doing and how we're doing it. We've talked a lot today about some of the problems and challenges around women in tech, diversity in tech. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what are we doing and how are we building and driving change. And so really fundamentally for WP Engine, our purpose is to help our customers to win online, whatever winning is to them. If that's revenue, if that's subscribers, if that's something to do with fundraising, however it is that they're defining success, we're there to help power that. And we've been a company that has been growing dramatically over the last six years. We were founded in 2010. We've been going through tremendous growth. Just in the last three years alone, we've more than 10x'd our revenue, our customers, our employees, and we're growing very, very rapidly. And while that growth is really interesting, and that we have 55,000 customers in 130 countries and all these kinds of things are interesting statistics, but really what's more interesting is how we're going about it. How are we creating a company that has both very strong financial performance, very strong customer satisfaction performance, and building a company that really is unique. And I think what we're doing in terms of our environment is building a company that is consciously focused on building and incorporating diversity as a core part of the organization.

I've never been part of an organization in technology in 26 years this diverse. Most organizations I've been a part of are much like what Monica talked about earlier, where I was the only woman on a team, perhaps the only woman at the executive table, where there was not a lot of diversity in terms of either gender or age or background. And one of the things we're really proud of is that we're building a company now that 65 percent of our executive team are women. Women lead, again, the CEO, CFO, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, and also our SVP, our Senior Vice President of Engineering are all women. We have 31 percent of our non-executive management are women. We have almost 30 percent of our company overall are women. And then another thing in terms of just overall ethnic background, 30 percent of our team is non-white. And so again, this is for us something that's really important, not only to have that gender diversity but also have background and ethnic diversity. Something that's pretty unique. Never been part of a technology company that did not require a college degree. And at WP Engine, we decided to actually open up and allow for people to apply who have the skills, the work ethic, the service orientation that really match our culture. And we now have 33 percent, a third of our company, does not have a college degree. But even despite that, we see the level of progression and movement from our company and people. This is across all different types of roles, not just junior roles, but we're actually looking at people and their merits, their backgrounds, their expertise, and also their potential for some of our entry-level roles as well. And we also have 5 percent of our company self-identifies as LGBTQ. I'm not sure if you guys use that same term? Okay, great. So basically for people to say I'm willing to self-identify that I'm openly gay, I'm openly transgender, etc., in our own organization, I feel accepted and feel like this is a place I can be myself. And so also for us, it's really important. We have made it very clear that for all roles across the company, people get paid equally for equal work, equal pay. And again, this seems so crazy, it's 2016 that we're having to talk about this, but unfortunately it's not necessarily the norm. It's not the norm in tech and it's not the norm in many industries that you have this type of level of diversity and also this level of focus around equality and pay.

And I know for us in the U.S., I think we look to Sweden and we see a country that is really known for its progressive stance on women in the workplace, on healthcare, on leave, and on pay. And so I think that also, but the discussion this morning, there's still a lot of work to do even here in Sweden. There's a lot of work to do for us in the U.S. as well as a lot of work for us to do in the global technology community around continuing to be a force for diversity and for this type of change. And I really believe that diversity attracts diversity. When I joined the company, we were about 40 people. There was only a couple of women, there were only a few people that didn't have a college degree, only a few people that were not white. And so one of the things that we saw as we started to hire people and kind of open the aperture for what we would allow in the company or welcome into the company, we saw that more and more people, as they found this being a place that they could be themselves, really focus on our core values, that they would then attract and basically refer other people. So actually, 60 percent of our employees come referred from another employee. So again, there's a very powerful effect around that, around helping people say this is a place I want to work, this is a place where I can be myself, this is a place where I can grow, I can advance, and then attracting and really energizing other people to come and look at the company. And so for us, we are on a very conscious mode to increase diversity.

I'm not sure how many of you guys, if anybody here does yoga? A couple of you do yoga? Okay. Well, my instructor, I love yoga, Fabio, I don't believe you. So my instructor always opens up every class with, set an intention for your practice today. Set an intention for your practice. So again, like that first, I think for all of us here, you who are leaders, who are entrepreneurs, who are folks who are really driving change in your business, set an intention for diversity. I hear a lot from folks like, well how do you add more women? How do you add more people of color? How do you attract more people? Well, first off, you have to be intentional that that's what you want. And you have to basically say it out loud in how you communicate to the world about your brand, about your company, whether it be to customers, whether it be to recruiting, whether it be to your employees, and say we're setting an intention that we desire to be an accepting, open, and diverse organization. So I think that's really, really critical in this journey. And I think another thing for us is, you know, we really believe and we've taken time to really say these are our core values as a company. And I'll share them with you a little bit, not in a lot of detail, but hit some of the highlights. But really for us, a big part of embracing diversity is that people actually feel like their voice can be heard, that they really do matter, and that they can be themselves. And so because if you can say, well, oh, we welcome women, but then as soon as you're there, the workplace, you get shut down, you don't have opportunity, etc., or that I come into the organization and I'm gay, like my opinions or my beliefs, I feel like I have to hide it, well, that's not creating diversity because that basically shuts down the very thing that we're trying to embrace and to try to drive that difference. So really for us, our core values are really at the heart of how we think about creating that diverse background.

So our first value, and I'm not going to go through all of this, I'm just going to hit what I think is a highlight here, but our first value is do the right thing. And really the point I think is really helping to drive that is to embrace the difference as a first statement. When it's right for the customer and right for the company, and you're proud of your decision, you've done the right thing. So what that means is that in the same situation there can be two answers, that we're going to entrust you to do what you think is right. And you're going to use your common sense, whether you're the office manager, you're a first-line junior engineer, or you're an executive, do the right thing, use your judgment, and be empowered to do that. So again, that's one way that we really focus on helping people to embrace who they are, and that we want them to use our judgment, that we've hired them for a role and we trust them. And if everyone else is doing that, then all together we're going to be continuously doing and finding that thing that's right. The next one is customer inspired. And I think really what this is all about, the one thing I would say here is that for everyone in the company to know that what's fueling us in our business is the ability to represent what's best for the customer. And so if everyone's thinking about what's best for the customer and think about that, whether if I'm in support and I'm giving ideas around product, or I'm in the product organization and I'm spending time helping on sales calls, if I am an executive who then needs to come into a situation to help at the front line and support, that everyone's thinking about bringing that energy together. And that an idea can come from anyone as long as it's basically trying to focus on how is it going to advance and try to help our customer, that we are going to be open to that. It doesn't have to be that customer ideas are only coming from the people who talk to customers all day, they can be coming from throughout the company. And that we really want to be driving that level of openness.

Where the best gets better. Again, this is another thing I would say is really important, is that people really feel like they're given the opportunity. So once you come into the organization, it's a two-way agreement or a pact between the organization and you around how you're going to advance. That everyone should have a plan for the future and be thinking about how they're going to continue to grow and evolve their careers. And again, that's something that's very important. So just in this year alone, 20 percent of our organization has had a promotion. Because again, focusing on how do we continue to grow and invest from within, how are we investing in training, how are we investing in the development of people and helping them continue to grow. And again, this is across all spectrums in terms of all organizations and also across all different types of roles. Built to last. This is really what it focuses on for us, is what's important, that we're having a long-term relationship with our employees, that we're in it for their success, their success is our success, and that we're thinking about building that long-term point of view over time, both with them as employees, but with our teams, with our company, with our customers, and taking that long-term perspective that we're invested in their success. And I think again, that comes back in spades from our employees and their excitement, their feeling like we're really investing in them. And then aspiring to lead and committed to giving back. You know, one of the things we talk about all the time, that everyone in our organization, at every role, in every function, everyone is a leader. And that everyone has the potential to grow and make that impact. That leadership is not a position, leadership is action. And so what actions are we going to be taking to aspire to continue to lead in our industry, in our community, in the open source community that we're in. And that's a big part of how we thrive. So again, that whole spirit of our core values all coming together to say you can be yourself, you're empowered, you can make an impact on our customers, on our company, you're an owner. All of our employees are owners in the business, they all have equity no matter what level they are, and that you can lead and help us continue.

So again, back to that whole thing around bringing together the diversity, I think part of it is that state of mind. And here's a couple other things I wanted to share. So building on that foundation of your values, it's really how are you intentionally embracing diversity. And the first one I want to talk about is agree to disagree. I think in too many organizations they don't embrace difference and also don't consciously help to create an environment that allows for junior people to disagree with higher people, people who have more experience. And so a lot of things we try to do is really make sure that our values ensure that, if you think about for your business, how do you allow for that individual freedom to decide and act, just like we talked about, do the right thing. Encourage discord and disagreement. So when I meet with all of our new employees, I tell them you are welcome to disagree with me. I want you to disagree with me, and I will disagree with you, as long as we do it in a constructive fashion and we can work together. Then ideas can flow. And so I think if people know that, okay, it's okay to say I don't agree, I think that's too few organizations cause that. So therefore there's only one right answer, there's only one way for things to get done, and it shuts down versus allowing for information and ideas and things to flow and for there to be those disagreements, because disagreements usually surface more creativity and better ideas. And then also, treating your team like equals. So we host a meeting every week, kind of a weekly town hall for all of the organization, and we share with them, it's like the family table, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly of what just happened. Here are some of the great news that happened, here are some things that we need to go work on. We share openly, share our financials. So we teach everybody how to read our financial statements. We teach them what the key KPIs are for the organization. And for a lot of people coming into our team, this is the first time they've ever been exposed to that. And it unlocks them in terms of their ability to really see how their role and how they can make a change or make an impact into the business. And so again, treating your team with really embracing that kind of openness. And then again, we are very focused on this, and you really ensure that you're consciously embracing equality of pay and that you're advocating for that. Because again, my belief is that should be the norm.

Open your doors wider, share information and opportunities more freely. So again, you'll consider in your organization, could you actually open the aperture in terms of applicants for certain roles? Could you actually embrace people who don't have a college degree? Into that, we've found a lot of times it is, we have people who have just not had the financial opportunity, they have the intellect, they have the potential, they have the heart, they're willing to work hard, they just haven't been able to afford to go to college. And they've been using open source or WordPress or other types of technology as a way to put food on the table, but no one will give them a break, no one will give them that first leg up into a tech company. And so we find those people, when they come in, and then we invest in training. So kind of like the invest inside concept, we really invest in internal training and development to make sure that when we bring those people in, they can get the right training and be ready for their role, whether they hit the floor working as a junior engineer, or they're working in sales, or working in our support organization. And so the other thing we do is we've really worked on internships across every single function, including HR, finance, engineering, sales, marketing, every single function. We really open up our aperture around working with interns, both undergraduate interns as well as people from different types of coding academies or technology academies, there may be doing workforce development, as well as MBAs. And that has been phenomenal. And those interns, we have an incredible rate of those interns turning into employees, but also they come in with a really fresh perspective. It's really for them. And then also again, we treat them as prospective employees, so they get to attend all of our meetings, our trainings, our open book management in terms of our financials, etc. So they really become a part of our team. And then also we sponsor scholarships for coding and workforce development academies. And that's been another really great partnership for us with the community to find people that again maybe have just not had enough opportunity that are trying to get that leg up for themselves. And so how we can sponsor scholarships for those people and then perhaps then give them an opportunity to become an intern or employee with our organization. And again, that's been a phenomenal partnership.

And I talked about this, when I first joined, when our CFO first joined our team, I told her we're going to practice open book management. And she was like, what? Hell no. Like, no. We're going to practice open book management. It's like, I've never seen it before, how do you do it? Well, because we're going to teach our employees how to read a financial statement. And we're going to keep teaching, we're going to keep repeating and show them how it works. And trust me, it's going to create an incredible return because people are going to know and to be able to see and put their role into context and be able to really understand the business. So if we share with them how we're doing, our financial performance, we share with them our strategic priorities, we share with them how things are going and what's going wrong, not going right, together everyone's going to be more motivated and more energized to go and drive the business and to drive really fantastic results, which we have seen in spades. In terms of our business, we've been very fortunate that our employees are constantly thinking about how to make things better. Because of that, we are giving them the context, we're setting the direction, and then they're helping to come in with being educated and very energized about helping to make it happen. And then invest from the inside. So really grow stronger from within. I think a lot of us probably here, or at least I know we spend a lot of time and energy in recruiting, for recruiting for roles and helping you say, how do we get more women into engineering roles? How do we get more minorities into engineering roles? Well, our answer to that is to actually try to find people from within our organization and allow them to do training and development within the organization, for them to have mentorship. We've seen this over and over again, people coming in again potentially without a college degree or coming in to a junior role, expressing a desire to go into engineering, expressing a desire to go into product management, and for us to just work with them on a plan to get them there and to invest in them. Together, they invest their time and energy, and they're still doing their day job while we're also investing with them to help them to get these new skills. We invested in the learning and development team at 40 people, we hired our first, or maybe it was 50 people, but at 50 people size company, we hired our first person focused on learning and development because we knew that a key part of how we're going to be able to grow was we were going to have to grow from within and to be able to teach and train people not only functional skills but also building in leadership development as well as management programs for people across the company as well. So that's been another big area of focus. So how do we continue to invest and groom our people from within to allow them to take on bigger and bigger responsibilities and more opportunity. And then that also creates different pathways for people to then give back and for people to then mentor others and to help the next person get a leg up across and promotions across teams.

So again, these are what I want to share with you, some practical ideas and some things that we've done that we've seen really great success. And I'm sure there's lots of other things in the future that we continue our journey. But I think these are some things that people say, what are you doing over there at WP Engine to have those kinds of statistics? And that's what I wanted to share, these are some of the things that we're doing. And so for us, where there's focus, there's progress. And again, I know we talked about this before, I've seen so much progress, particularly in the technology industry, for women and so many different types of opportunities for women in my 26 years in technology. And I think we've got so much headroom again to be an industry that really drives change, that really is a leader in diversity, and really making sure that there's opportunities for everyone to succeed and have that opportunity to grow. And so again, I think that really here, if we think about everyone who's here, the power of the internet, the power of the work that all of you guys are doing, how can you drive change? How can you be thinking about what's maybe one or two things you could do differently to really create an opportunity for more women to thrive, more diverse people to thrive in your organization? And so with that, thank you very much and appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.