Although the topic of gender diversity[1] in technology has received much attention, there has been less research specifically looking at diversity and the CIO role. The huge professional services company, Deloitte, completed a recent study[2] examining this important topic. It's called Smashing IT's glass ceiling: Perspectives from leading women CIOs (pdf[3]).
Deloitte employs 85,000 people with revenue of $40 billion[4], so its attention to this topic is important. To learn more, I invited the study's lead author, together with a female CIO profiled in the research, to be my guest on episode 289[5] of the CXOTalk series of conversations with the world's top innovators.
Read also: She persisted: Transforming software engineering at Autodesk[6]
Kavitha Prabhakar[7] is a partner at Deloitte, where she serves clients across financial services and the federal government. Fumbi Chima[8] is chief information officer of the Fox Networks Group[9], which is the network business of the 21st Century Fox media conglomerate. Previously, she was CIO of fashion retailer Burberry and, before that, the regional CIO for Walmart Asia.
You can watch our entire conversation in the video above and read an edited excerpt below. You can also read the complete transcript.
Deloitte's research correlates gender parity with achieving business and financial goals. Rather than cast gender diversity as only an HR issue[10] related to "fairness," Deloitte argued that diverse teams perform better.
This argument removes any conflict between doing well financially and doing what's right. As a result, Deloitte's research makes an important contribution to the cause of gender