Collision 2019: Diversity in technology still has a ‘long way to go’, says Cisco’s Rola Dagher

All the tech innovations at Collision 2019 can’t hide the fact that most leadership positions in the industry are not occupied by women, says Rola Dagher, president of Cisco Canada.

“I think we’ve done a good job so far from a diversity inclusion [perspective], specifically in technology, but we have a very long way to go,” indicated Dagher. “In the technology space, only 15 per cent of women are in director roles, or below director roles in technology.”

Dagher explained that while diversity and equality is an important consideration, ultimately, potential candidates need to be hired based on their skills and merits rather than fulfilling a quota.

“As a leader at Cisco, it’s been amazing to see the changes we’ve made from our CEO down to my level, where our CEO’s leadership team is 50 per cent women. At my level, we’re almost at 45 per cent as females. But for me, I don’t hire people to check the box, I hired people for talent and making sure we have the right talent at the right time. For the right positions, because to me, it’s not about checking the box of color, gender, or race, it’s about ensuring that talent that you’re going to bring in has everything it takes to get to get the job done.”

The conversation to invoke interest in STEM subjects — for both men and women — needs to start at an early age and heavily falls upon parental vigilance. Dagher believes that parents need to abandon a strict gender-biased mentality when it comes to steering their children towards a certain career.

“I think it starts at home. And it has to start at a very, very young age. If your daughter at five-years-old is interested in technology, there are so many programs out there that you could start encouraging your daughter, or your son to go into that career. You can’t say because she’s a girl, she shouldn’t be doing this. And he’s a guy, he should go into engineering.”

WOI2019-Rola Dagher Cisco
Cisco Canada President Rola Dagher (second from left) at the Women of Impact 2019 event with other attendees. (Source: Cisco)

An equally critical component in shaping a gender-diverse tech workforce is ensuring kids can have all the resources they need in early education. Schools need to support more high-quality programs to allow kids to experiment and experience the different facets of technology.

“It has to start in elementary school as well. Because by the time by the time a girl is a nine-year-old, she’s already kind of thinking: ‘Okay, this is what I want to do’, and there are enough programs that week and camps in the summer that you can guide your kids to go through it.  So today is the digital transformation, the fourth industrial revolution, where all you have is technology, and it is impacting human progress. So kids have so much more than they can do with verses 20 and 30 years ago because we didn’t have that luxury.”

Currently, Dagher is the president of Cisco’s Connected Women, a program that highlights female leaders in the technology space. She also frequently participates in Cisco events including Cisco Women Entrepreneurship, Girls Who Code, as well as the Connected North program.

In February, Rola Dagher was named as the “2019 Woman of the Year” at Women in Communications and Technology’s Leadership Excellence Award. Before helming the executive position at Cisco Canada, Dagher was the vice-president for Dell EMC’s Infrastructure Solutions Group. Throughout her career, Dagher has over 25 years of experience in leadership and the vendor market space.

 

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at IT World Canada. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at tli@itwc.ca.

Featured Articles

Cybersecurity in 2024: Priorities and challenges for Canadian organizations 

By Derek Manky As predictions for 2024 point to the continued expansion...

Survey shows generative AI is a top priority for Canadian corporate leaders.

Leaders are devoting significant budget to generative AI for 2024 Canadian corporate...

Related Tech News

Tech Jobs

Our experienced team of journalists and bloggers bring you engaging in-depth interviews, videos and content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives.

Tech Companies Hiring Right Now