March is Women’s History Month, and March 8 is International Women’s Day. At AuthenticID, we’re incredibly proud of the talented women who drive our team forward, touching all parts of our operations: leadership, technology, marketing, customer success, software, administration, and more. Join us in celebrating the achievements of women everywhere, and help us raise awareness of discrimination.
We’re excited to share the stories of two AuthenticID team members, Stacey Griffeth and Meg Clark.
An Interview with Stacey Griffeth, Data Analyst Manager
What does it mean to be a strong woman?
Stacey: Confident in who she is and what she believes. Knows her strengths and weaknesses. She is not afraid to make her own path. She embraces what makes her unique.
What can we do to empower young women?
Stacey: We can teach by example. We support them in whatever their chosen path is, whether it be CEO, entrepreneur, or homemaker. We give them opportunities to make decisions.
What have been your barriers and how did you overcome them?
Stacey: I’ve had a tremendous amount of adversity and trauma in my personal life. Those experiences have taught me to be more independent, to control my emotions rather than allow them to control me, and to be more empathetic and compassionate towards others.
Growing up, was there someone in your life that inspired you to become who you are today? Who was it and why?
Stacey: My mother was out of the workforce for 20 years while she raised my brothers and me. When I was a teenager, she did some temp work and then started a small bookkeeping business. Five years later she found herself starting her life over, and grew her business such that she was entirely self-sufficient. She has continued to grow her business – even employing me on occasion – over the last 35 years, and it’s still growing! Her example of overcoming her own adversity, choosing her path, and never giving up has been a tremendous inspiration to me.
Why is it important that more women are represented in leadership, tech, and software roles?
Stacey: I looked up some statistics: women represent 58.4% of the US workforce, but only hold 35% of senior leadership positions. This continues to send the message that women are less capable and/or qualified than men. It keeps the bar low. Having more women in leadership roles would empower more young women to strive to achieve such positions themselves.
What piece of advice would you give to women in tech/software/etc.?
Stacey: Step out of your comfort zone; that’s where most of the learning occurs.
What female public figure, past or present, inspires you and why?
Stacey: Christina Applegate. She’s always been one of my favorite actresses, but watching how she is handling MS, her attitude, her strength, is inspiring to me.
An Interview With Meg Clark, Success Analyst
What does it mean to be a strong woman?
Meg: The same thing as being a strong human, waking up every day and continuing to fight for what you want in life and what is right. Being strong also means asking for help, knowing where your limits are, and respecting them. Setting boundaries with others and demanding that people respect them. Being strong is standing up for yourself and what you need to get you where you want to be.
What can we do to empower young women?
Meg: Show them they can be anything, support women’s rights and issues, and show them that they are just as important as young men. Teach them that the default isn’t male, teach them that they have as many choices as they want, that if they want a career and nothing else that is great, if they want to be a mom that is great, if they want both that is great. Don’t push them into gender roles. Support them if their passion is tech and support them if it’s makeup, show them that whatever they love is valid. But most importantly, create role models that look like them, and give them people to look up to that they can relate to. Show them that women can do their dream job, women can hold power. Don’t just tell them they can be anything, show them.
What have been your barriers and how did you overcome them?
Meg: I grew up below the poverty line, I was lucky that I had access to computers and such from my siblings so I could still learn how to build a PC or code. I have dealt with some severe mental illnesses over the course of my life. It hasn’t been easy to get where I am and I’m still working on getting to where I want to be. I have learned to keep trying no matter how hard things seem, to believe in my abilities, and let them speak for me. I’ve also learned to ask for help when I needed it, even the strongest people aren’t going to be capable of doing everything on their own.
Growing up, was there someone in your life that inspired you to become who you are today? Who was it and why?
Meg: My older sister, we have an age difference of 9 years so she was always so far ahead of me. I looked up to the way she always knew what she wanted and worked towards it. She is the reason I fell in love with math and computers and studied computational mathematics. She always pushed me to think critically and logically about the questions I came across, she would have me thinking critically about the tv shows I watched and had me trying to predict what would happen next. She is the reason I have the skills I do today.
Why is it important that more women are represented in leadership, tech, and software role?
Meg: Currently, there are many roles that we separate by gender, implicitly telling people that women can only do certain functions and the rest are for men. Only certain special women can make it in a “man’s world”. The more we represent women the more we contradict that idea, and the more we show young girls they can be anything, that they don’t need to be special to work in tech, they just need to enjoy tech.
What piece of advice would you give to women in tech/software/etc.?
Meg: Be unapologetically yourself, if you are good at something don’t let anyone try to push that to the side or diminish it. If no one will champion your skills champion yourself. Use what power you have to bring others up with you and look for those that will do the same for you. If your intelligence or skill scares someone, that is on them and only them, never let someone else dull your brilliance.
What female public figure, past or present, inspires you and why?
Meg: Katherine Goble. She lived in a time that was entirely against her and managed to become integral to NASA and the first orbital mission. She may not be well known but without her, we would not have been able to orbit the earth or go to the moon as quickly as we did. While I don’t deal with nearly as much adversity as she did I aspire to be so unignorably good at whatever I am doing that even those that do not agree with me have to acknowledge my abilities.