2. Krisztina Orosz #genderEqualityRoleModel #WTMVIE


Show notes

Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVymPmvTBe8

Krisztina Orosz was Main Organizer of #WTMVIE conference back in 2016. Listen to our podcast about how years of volunteering shape a person’s future; the positive bias of putting the word “women” in your community name; why being authentic is important also in startups, especially being an authentic leader and about the startup environment, how it is really like.

If you want to know more about what Krisz’ job role at Anyline(https://anyline.com/) is, we reference another cool podcast where Krisz was invited on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVu4Sjq-6vo

Additional resources mentioned during and after the podcast which Krisz wanted to you know about:

Books:

  • Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

Podcast:

  • I Weigh with Kameela Jamil - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-weigh-with-jameela-jamil/id1498855031
  • Happy Place with Flo Perry: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/flo-perry/id1353058891?i=1000467161491

WTMVIE talk:

  • How to break the brotopian cycle by Kaitlyn Chang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLpAfoZ3DSg&list=PLVr4my5fwE_XrRRqwW4LIYsPN2z5eaV2O
  • Krisz’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisztinaorosz/
  • Krisz’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kriszly/

Transcript

  • TIMEA: Hey Ramón!
  • RAMÓN: Hey Timea!
  • TIMEA: Let’s talk gender equality.
  • RAMÓN: I love the idea. Gimme a second I just gotta grab my coffee, I hope you’ve got yours, too!
  • TIMEA: Yep, right here.

  • TIMEA: Hello to all our podcasters. Hi Ramón!
  • RAMÓN: Hey Timea and welcome Krisztina.
  • KRISZ: Thank you Hi.
  • TIMEA: Hi, do you have a nickname Krisztina.
  • KRISZ: Not officially, no, but on social media I do I do use a nickname but I’m not gonna say it. People have to find it out, it sounds funny if you say it out loud so I’m not gonna say it!
  • TIMEA: But I am gonna call you Krisz though, right?’s
  • KRISZ: Yeah that’s fine. I don’t really consider that a nickname it’s just a short version of my name.
  • TIMEA: Okay thanks for being on our podcast, you are our first guest!
  • KRISZ: Thank you I’m really really honored to have that badge, thank you.
  • RAMÓN: As are we. We are so excited that you agreed to to come and chat with us a little bit about what you’ve been doing and how your efforts towards gender diversity and equality have continued forward. I’m super humbled!
  • KRISZ: Thank you.
  • TIMEA: So Krisz we go back a long time but still we would like our podcasters to get to know you a little bit better, so let’s just start with listing three random things about you.
  • KRISZ: I am a very big plant mama, and I’ve always been a plant mama but I kind of really gave into this hobby during the quarantine so now in a small apartment I am the proud owner of over 50 plants and this collection is probably not going to become any smaller. I only learned how to ride a bike this year so I’m very proud of myself! It was February it was raining and I just bought a bike and I went out and learned it and after I learned how to ride a bike I have not ridden a bike anymore because it was only the challenge, it was just doing it.
  • TIMEA: Yeah but it was also the lockdown.
  • KRISZ: Yes that’s true and a third random fact is that I know a lot of random facts like I know where cichlids come from and I know which two lakes in africa have the most amount of cichlids and I know what water PH water should have for certain several fish types to live comfortably, or you know spread them facts mostly about animals. Yeah big animals fan.
  • TIMEA: Feel free to drop some of them.
  • KRISZ: Most of the ones I know are dirty animal facts so probably not the best medium.
  • RAMÓN: Ah, because I was about to ask what is your favorite one but I think we might not be able to air it in that case.
  • KRISZ: No, no, I mean I can say it and you can cut it out but I don’t know if you want the work…
  • TIMEA: No, no, let’s go back to our cup of coffee and tea.
  • KRISZ: Yes
  • TIMEA: And to our gender equality topic. So, one of the main reasons why we’ve invited you today is because you took the challenge in 2016 to organize one of the yearly Women Techmakers Vienna conferences, so you were what we call a main organizer.
  • KRISZ: Yes.
  • TIMEA: And I’d like to focus a bit on the years that you did a lot of volunteering in different organizations where we also met, and then converged to the topic of gender equality. Why did you get involved back then, and then going into what does it mean for you now with the role that you have? So, let’s just talk freely, tell me about your volunteering years.
  • KRISZ: So, funnily it started during high school in coming from Romania we were encouraged to volunteer especially if we wanted to go abroad at some point and I started volunteering at Habitat for Humanity, they build houses for underprivileged people or people who can’t afford to get a loan via normal channels, so they still have to pay for their house but they only pay for the materials. All of the construction work is done by volunteers and I was one of those volunteers, I had a chance to meet a lot of international people a lot of companies are doing team building events where they go and build houses. So it was a really, really cool experience and you really felt that you’re doing something that matters, and in that period I realized that very often the people who were applying for these houses were also either single mothers or women who were fleeing from abusive situations or they were the stay-at-home mom because they had to be the stay-at-home mom because the husband was the only one who could have a job or who could afford to have a job and someone had to stay at home to take care of the kids. So it wasn’t, I was a bit too young to kind of understand that this has to do with gender equality, but thinking back, you know, hindsight is always 20 20 so thinking back I kind of noticed this as well. And then I continued my volunteer path also during my student years in an organization called board of european students of technology where we (Timea) also met, actually, and it’s also funny because it’s a technical student organization but I was studying economics, so not really technical, but I was also doing construction work during my high school years, so you know, a lot of random stuff about me and I met a lot of different people during that my time in that organization, obviously women in STEM and women in technology is a big topic, and I think oftentimes people forget that it starts at a very early age. So when you’re already a student or when you’re already working, as a woman in STEM or tech, it’s perhaps sometimes a bit too late to kind of learn new things, or it’s very difficult to get rid of all the societal input that you’ve gotten over the past two years, even if it’s in your subconscious, because it’s a feeling and very often times it’s difficult to put into words, so obviously meeting a lot of women who were studying tech or studying I.T, computer science, machine learning, engineering or whatever. I started to get a different feeling about it. I never really considered myself a woman in tech because I was studying economics and most people who study economics are women, even though most people who win nobel prizes for economics are guys. Very interesting. Anyway…
  • TIMEA: It’s true. So but with the student organization with BEST you had more exposure to the technical domains.
  • KRISZ: Exactly yeah and I started having more and more discussions and putting myself in the shoes or finding myself in the shoes of women in tech because I was suddenly being considered a woman in tech simply because I was volunteering in that organization right and growing up one of the, let’s say, unintended positive consequences of communism in Romania is that people of my our generation who grew up, they were never really discouraged from studying anything technical because during communism it was ‘you just do the thing you do’ it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or a man, so I never….
  • TIMEA: Was felt less of a bias, basically.
  • KRISZ: Exactly, everyone was equal, everyone was the same, and I never really had that feeling that I’m different or that I can’t do what I want because of my gender and funnily enough I started realizing this more, and more, in the western world after moving to Vienna and volunteering more and more in these types of organizations and.
  • TIMEA: Then you did the volunteering in best you did in Vienna.
  • KRISZ: I started in romania but most of it was here. I started in Romania yeah but most of it was here in Vienna. So I was part of the board here at the technical university, and I did a lot more events and then the next step with your help was to go into Women Techmakers and being part of the organization team and then actually being the main organizer one year. But anyway, it’s obviously a team effort. You can’t organize an event like that by yourself, it’s insane.
  • TIMEA: I think Ramón was already there by then, 2016.
  • KRISZ: I think your sister Pilar was there.
  • RAMÓN: Pilar was an organizer. I might have attended 2016 was that the one in Microsoft.
  • KRISZ: Yeah.
  • RAMÓN: Yeah, no, I sadly didn’t make it.
  • KRISZ: Yeah, it was a good event. And yeah it reinforced my belief that okay there is something wrong in this environment and we should talk about it and we should address it and obviously then I started working in technical startups where there the disparity continues so I try also to do within my company or talking to other women in other companies, we’re trying to maybe build something up now where we can support each other and where we continue having this conversation, so that as I said all of the things that you learn and you have stored in your subconscious can come out and be broken and that you can grow as a woman in tech.
  • TIMEA: So from your story it seems like a natural flow that you went into women techmakers where you could maybe get a better influence over the situation or understand it more and back then you were already working with startups, right?
  • KRISZ: Yes, so I started at a startup then I moved on to an incubator where I saw different kinds of startups and now I’m at a scale-up former startup depends on your definition everyone has their own definition of a startup.
  • TIMEA: Okay, so you’re very much anchored in the startup ecosystem and you know the issues for women in startups in a tech startup.
  • KRISZ: Yes, very much.
  • TIMEA: Okay, and you say that you’re looking to network people and women that are in this situation.
  • KRISZ: Yeah so there was this plan with a friend of mine laura from mindmeister which is also quite a successful startup you should have her as well on, we are talking now to make our own little, probably a meet-up at the beginning, to kind of assess a bit the environment of women in startups and see what they need and continue. I think the big difference that we of how we want to do things is a lot of these events focusing on supporting women in tech are women-only, and if you have a conversation about a problem but you only talk amongst yourselves it’s very difficult to get the word out and oftentimes you need to have the the word women in the name for example because you need to make it clear that you want to target women but having the name or the word women discourages a lot of men from attending because you have the feeling that it’s only for women.
  • TIMEA: You learned probably from Women Techmakers.
  • KRISZ: Exactly, because we were trying a lot to get men as well to the event and yes we actually heard the feedback that “but I thought it’s a women-only event because it has women in the name”.
  • TIMEA: Yeah that was kind of followed us for a while.
  • KRISZ: Exactly yeah, so we’re trying now to we’re only in the brainstorm phase but we’re trying to start up something and see if it works and obviously we’re focusing first on Anyline and MindMeister because we know our teammates but the next step is to then make an official announcement and invite anyone from the startup scene who wants to join.
  • TIMEA: Yeah tell us when that happens because if it’s one thing we love to do at Women Techmakers is to showcase other communities and gatherings and meetups and initiatives for that matter so that’s really cool! Okay, so you still keep this flavor of volunteering and in your life one way or another besides the plan?
  • KRISZ: I mean I love my job and I love my plants but I mean I do need to socialize more with non-colleagues so I’m trying to find new ways of doing that while maybe making an impact.
  • RAMÓN: So I’m curious is there is there any kind of place where our viewers and listeners could keep an eye on, maybe on our show show notes where an announcement could come.
  • KRISZ: I mean I will definitely let you know when there’s something but as I said we’re only in brainstorming phase now nothing is official I think it’s gonna take a little bit of time. But yeah, no, definitely I will let you guys know and I’m hoping that our as our community grows then we can do something together as well I think yeah bringing in different points of view is is very very important.
  • RAMÓN: Absolutely, and I think your idea of exposure which is something that seems to sometimes be lacking is so key. So I think it’s really interesting that you’re approaching it from this angle, this idea of communicating the need for gender diversity and equality.
  • TIMEA: Thinking back on 2016 I really like that you brought in the community for us back then the whole topic of startups. It was something we haven’t focused on before, the women in startups and since then I’ve been also flirting with startups myself and started to understand some of the issues that are in that environment and the event back then was focused on putting female role models that founded successful companies in Vienna, for example on stage and that was great because you had this community, this network that you could bring into the event and I really enjoyed it. I fondly think about it and just recently I watched one of the videos, the keynote from back then and I like that you’re still on the same topic and mixing them together at the same time. Can you tell us a little bit what some concrete issues that you see from gender equality perspective in the startup world and potentially what do you want to pinpoint with your new endeavor?
  • KRISZ: So first of all I think a lot of these initiatives focus on female founders I think it’s absolutely great to support female founders, but I’m not a founder. I’m a women in tech in a startup and I don’t want to be a founder I’m not good at it and I know where my strengths are and so this would be one of the first, I wouldn’t call it an issue, but let’s say in areas that we have identified is that there are a lot of women who are in tech and who are struggling sometimes but they are not founders and there isn’t really a specific community or guidelines or a program that supports them. As well you have a lot of mentoring programs for founders but you don’t have mentoring programs for just women in tech it doesn’t matter if you’re a founder so that way.
  • TIMEA: You mean women in tech in startups.
  • KRISZ: Yeah exactly. Okay so yeah, we’re talking about the startups, yeah okay that would be the first one. Second one, this would be an issue I would say is startups of course came from the U.S in a way or this concept and there’s this very big mentality of the frat boy wearing a hoodie who’s building their startup and I know that in Europe it’s not as pervasive but I have the feeling that a lot of times especially because many startup founders are young (funnily enough successful startup founders are not as young as people would expect) but many first-time startup founders are young guys and they grow up with this idea that you have to emulate this american style founder, and unfortunately that also leads sometimes to attitudes or to behaviors that first of all are not as common in Europe second of all they may actually discourage a lot more women of joining a company or a startup than maybe in the U.S even because maybe women are just used to it in the U.S which is a very sad fact if it’s true but disclaimer I’m not sure if this is true. So this would be the second one is trying to showcase that you can be authentic and you should be authentic in your leadership style and having a balance between a more aggressive masculine way of thinking and a more nurturing feminine way of thinking is actually the best way to move forward because it’s yin and yang, it’s the balance in the world and you can’t just bulldoze your way through things, you know, you bulldoze a little bit and then you sweep up the little branches that were not caught by the bulldozer so, (very bad analogy) but you know what I mean. So this this balance between a softer approach and a more aggressive approach can actually cater to a lot more people and it can help a varied type of people grow, and I see that at Anyline, we have people from so many different cultures from America to South Africa to Brazil, so you know, Romania, really, everywhere, and some of them don’t react to an aggressive way but some do because that’s what they’re used to. So you need to find this balance and this would be the second part. So let’s say a bigger issue that I see that I would like to address trying to showcase that people believe in authenticity and whether that authenticity is soft caring nurturing or aggressive to the point, bullish even, there is a difference and that’s fine if you have different ways of expressing yourself there isn’t just one way of behaving for you to be successful
  • TIMEA: Yes and being different and being authentic is fine. I think that’s a very important message which I wanted to underline because what I’ve experienced in my environment so far is women in startup situations as founders or maybe as members taking on this bro culture, like trying to be one of the bros and then it just comes out wrong right, like you see the authenticity is totally out of the window, first of all, and then you just see these mixed signals that you don’t even know why they behave the way they do and then you start to understand that, oh, this is the pressure, the social pressure of being in this culture that makes you portray some skills that you probably don’t even have just to look tough just to be included. I don’t know what it completely is, but it was just awkward at the end of the day.
  • KRISZ: Yeah, and this is something that that not only applies to women it applies to men as well. They’re- Not all men have this way of behaving or have this way of leading there are many different kinds of people in the world out there. It doesn’t matter what gender you have and showcasing the fact that you can be yourself is very important. Once we did a leadership course last year and I asked the coach whether if this is the only way that I can become a leader, that I have to yell and shout and be super aggressive, then I don’t want to do this and he had so much experience and I asked him honestly like “Do you believe that I can grow in my role the way I am or do I have to behave like someone else please tell me because then I don’t want to go down” that path and he said actually that for every first of all you need to be authentic. All leaders in the world have this common trait is that they are authentic and second is for every one person that is visible and shouting out there there are a hundred quiet ones in the background who you don’t know anything about who are doing perhaps a much better job, and I really believe in that.
  • TIMEA: Yeah I’m so happy that you brought in the aspect that this is not just affecting women but all genders yeah also men equally, that don’t want to or don’t fit in the bro culture basically, and at the same time I see how you worked on yourself to understand to overcome this bro culture societal pressure in a way and discover that. I think it’s also about what what is woman leadership or what is authentic leadership right, so I think we are still kind of in transition and the society is trying to understand that hopefully we’re going to see more amazing women leaders like the prime minister in new zealand has always given us a good example, so I think you like her too.
  • KRISZ: Yeah.
  • TIMEA: Ramón what is your take on it, listening to two women talking about it?
  • RAMÓN: Well something that’s been bubbling in my head a lot as we’ve been having this conversation is you know, whenever I think of the the startup mentality the phrase “move fast and break things” comes up, right? And how actually toxic that phrase is because there’s you know breaking things, breakingm you know, I know it’s meant to be cute and like, you know, breaking breaking industries, or whatever, but it’s also breaking people it’s breaking… And what I find interesting is when these these cultures are called out or not, maybe not called out but also given feedback, let’s say, how unreceptive they are and how slow to change these are because of hiding, it would seem, behind a veneer of something like, “business as usual”, you know? “Business is slow, business is hard to change, but I’m young and I wear a hoodie, so move fast and break things but don’t tell me how to change please.” I’m curious because my experience with startups is very minimal just from reading, you know, social media and the news I’m curious, given that you’ve been at this for a while do you feel that there is some kind of reception to change coming a little more actively, lately? Or is that still kind of slow to adapt to different needs, different cultures…
  • TIMEA: Or is this the reason why you’re creating a new community?
  • KRISZ: I can only talk about like, Austria, Europe, a little bit, and I do see that we have a different style of doing things and it’s a combination, because of course, if most of the startups that are successful have this way of thinking of move fast and break things then of course people are going to think that’s the way to go, because they are successful. But I see a lot more our venture capital firm RBC project, from Berlin they have a much more holistic way of doing things, they’re much more supportive of different ways, they encourage you, they want you to grow, but they also care about the founders and the portfolio companies they have, and if you have such a company in the background supporting you, then you are also more confident that you can do things in a different way, which we are trying to do. I see that there is a distancing in a way from the American style of having a startup compared to the European style of having a startup. Yes, that may lead to perhaps less unicorns, but it also leads to a better quality of life, to better happiness of the people too, even if you have successes if you’re, if you have, I don’t know, 1 billion euro exit or a 2 billion euro exit is that really any different? Like, is there really a difference between that? I mean it’s really, it’s difficult to say in a way it sounds a bit eutopic, like it’s, you know, money is not everything, of course money can make your life easier, but if there’s still a difference and if you want to have a clear conscience that you did the things the best way you could, and people are happy working with you, and you’ve achieved something together as a team, then I think this is very different than the the type of culture we perhaps originally saw with startups, and I feel that this is going in the right direction in at least in Europe, at least in Austria.
  • RAMÓN: That’s a great, answer thank you, sorry I interrupted you!
  • KRISZ: No it’s okay, the whole gender topic of why I want to want to start this community is simply because I see a gap for communities supporting women who are not founders but still struggle with diversity issues and that is my main motivation because I can still continue women technicals but again I’m not really a tech maker, even though I align with a lot of the values of Women Techmakers, I can’t go to any startup founder female mentorship programs because I’m not a startup founder but I am in a leadership role I am a woman in tech and I have 20 colleagues who are in my position and who want to grow and who struggle sometimes with dealing with their senior male counterparts or simply with their senior counterparts and if I can provide a little bit to help them grow then I’m super happy with that. So that’s my main motivation of why I want to do something and I want to involve guys in the discussion I don’t want to start talking about women in tech about you know only with women because that’s only half of the problem, like I want to fix the entire thing not just half of it.
  • RAMÓN: It’s really inspiring, thank you so much. Well, thank you.
  • TIMEA: Let’s ask chris one more point about: if you have any resources or advice that you want to drop in the podcast for our listeners about the context that you’re coming from and I want to mention one point we have in the past in our conference invited Kaitlyn Chang and she did a talk “How to break the brotopian cycle”, so we wanna put that in the show notes because she talks exactly about this brotopian bro culture, in her Women Techmakers Vienna talk.
  • KRISZ: Yeah so I completely agree with that talk the second one is just gather a lot of knowledge that you can so for that I would recommend the book Invisible Women by, I think it’s Caroline, maybe you have it.
  • TIMEA: Yeah, because you borrowed it to me
  • KRISZ: Yes exactly, it’s Caroline Criado Perez and it’s just, it’s enlightening. It’s not only about startups but just general information about how the world is in a way built, and just read all the books that you can even if you don’t agree with them. For example I read “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg, I do not agree with it, it’s an interesting book but it doesn’t fit me and if it doesn’t fit you either, that’s fine, but it’s still an interesting viewpoint to have. Just get a lot of knowledge and then try and make your own opinion about things, I think that’s the most important thing, don’t just don’t get swayed in a direction. Try and read the opposite of it, if it’s you know, it reminded me of one video from the School of Life and one video was ‘why you should have children’ and then one week later they uploaded another video and the video is “why you shouldn’t have children” and that’s kind of the exact thing like you have to look at one two sides of the same coin because only then can you form your own opinion about things, so I think that’s very important, regardless of what you read, always read the opposite
  • TIMEA: Very good.
  • RAMÓN: Awesome advice thank you.
  • KRISZ: Yeah you’re welcome.
  • RAMÓN: It has been an absolute pleasure to have you Krisz. Before we let you go we’d love to ask: is there anywhere where our listeners and viewers can follow you or follow your work that you would like to give a shout out.
  • KRISZ: I’m gonna sound super corporate now but LinkedIn is the the, my social media of choice. Instagram if you want to see my plants.
  • RAMÓN: There we go, I’ll link both of those in the show notes.
  • KRISZ: Pleasure talking to you guys, thank you so much for the invitation and super, super happy to be the first one on your podcast. I’m very excited.
  • RAMÓN: The pleasure is all ours, thank you so much.
  • TIMEA: Thank you it was very lovely, and thank you to all our podcast listeners. This was a flavor of one of our podcasts with having a guest over so we’re very happy, and stay tuned!
  • RAMÓN: See you next time!
  • KRISZ: Bye!
  • TIMEA: Are you on the forefront of gender equality? You are invited on our podcast.
  • RAMÓN: That’s right! Or maybe you know somebody that we could have a chat with on gender equality? You should totally get in touch with us! We’re on twitter @GenderCoffee or any of the other contact methods on our show notes. We would love to you to get in touch and for us to have a chat.