Ancestry CEO Deb Liu Says Women Need to Reframe Their Relationship to Power

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1:13Deb Liu:I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief of HBR, and welcome to the new world of work. Every week on the show, I talk to a leading CEO about the challenges that he or she is facing at our company. We have a great guest today, but before I introduce her, I want to read a word from our sponsor, Unisys. The way you see the world depends on how you look at it. Where some see barriers, others see breakthroughs. Unisys creates technology solutions so that you can see one breakthrough lead to another. Unisys, keep breaking through. All right, so my guest today is the CEO of Ancestry, Deborah Leo. She began her career as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group and has since worked for some of Silicon Valley's most recognized companies.

1:58Deb Liu:At PayPal, she was director of corporate strategy and product management. At Facebook, she held major positions in app commerce, platform monetization, and games. And two years ago, she took over the reins at Ancestry, the nearly$5 billion consumer genealogy platform. born. Deb also is author of the book, Take Back Your Power, 10 New Rules for Women at Work. And she has a lot to say about gender issues in the workplace. Now, due to some scheduling conflicts related to this is Thanksgiving week in the US, we had to pre-record this conversation yesterday. So now here in full is my conversation with Deb Leo.

2:40Deb Liu:All right, Deb Leo, thank you very much for being with us today. Thanks for inviting me. So let's jump right in. So I read your book, Take Back Your Power, 10 New Rules for Women at Work. But before I get into questions, I'd love to hear your take. What would you like to be the primary takeaway for people from that book? You know, I actually start the book saying power is not a dirty word. And that is absolutely true. I think we have this weird impression that actually wielding or having power is actually a bad thing, but the actual definition of power is just the ability to influence people and events around you, which is something we should all want with every single day of our lives.

3:16That just means having impact. But it's really, you know, that you have more power, which means that in the circumstances that you're in, actually taking advantage of the things that you can do to move things towards justice, move things towards, you know, the things that you're passionate about that you're actually delivering to your customers. That's what I want everyone to walk away with.

3:35Deb Liu:So in the book, I mean, I'd say the book attempts to be inspirational, but it's also quite clearheaded about the problems that that women have faced and continue to face in the workplace. Have you have you seen progress? Are you you know, in recent years, is there is there notable progress that you could talk about? Yeah, I mean, we have made so much progress over the years. is I've talked to a lot of women and some of the women I interviewed actually came of age and led through decades when things were really different. I talked to Lenore Blum, she was one of the first professors of math at Berkeley.

4:12And she was talking about how difficult it was and how she was eventually, her contract was not renewed, how she was almost kicked out of her next university before she went on to a great career and success. And what you have to realize was that overt discrimination was happening back then. Now it's actually much more covert. It's actually really unconscious bias. Very rarely is a woman told you can't have this job or you can't accomplish X. But instead, it's just the small things. And so the small things being for every hundred men that are promoted into management, only 86 women are. We don't tell the other 14 women that they didn't get promoted because they're a woman like they might have done 20, 30, 40 years ago.

4:48But instead, there's these subtle stumbling blocks that we're facing. And the challenge now, though, is rather than having something to point to, is that if you're one of those women that didn't make it, you always wonder, is it me? Could I have done it? When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast.

5:22That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com.

6:00Something different when actually, you know, structurally the system is a little bit set up so that there's a slightly tilted playing field. And yet that small, slight change actually makes a huge difference in the lives of the women that actually face it.

6:13Deb Liu:So this is Harvard Business Review's 100th anniversary. And as part of the celebration, we've been talking about some of the great articles that we've published and that have had the most amount of impact. We've also unearthed some of the howlers that we're frankly embarrassed about. And it took us a long time to start to get gender right. And I was recently at a public event on stage. And I read from a 1956 article that talked about how women needed to support their husband's career and they should tolerate and even encourage their husband, always husband, to work late, to go on trips. And then speaking to the husband, it sort of said, you know, and you might just find you need to find a new wife who will accommodate this lifestyle.

6:57Deb Liu:So, you know, it is, again, this is 1956. I wasn't in the job then, but we did publish it and have to own it. So there is a lot of progress. And yet, you know, I think a lot of women feel a lot of frustration still in the workplace. And, you know, I guess one question for you is, you know, you've decided to write this book even as you are, you know, CEO of a, you know, nearly$5 billion corporation. You know, what was the calculation there to try to be able to do both? You know, actually, I had been thinking about this book for a long time. So even before I became the CEO of Ancestry. Part of it was eight years ago, I started an open door policy.

7:38I let women who wanted to reach out, needed an ally to reach out to me. And over the course of, you know, eight years, I've coached over a thousand women and I realized it wasn't scalable. And so one of the things I wanted to do actually with this book was to say, what are all those lessons? What are the themes I was hearing? Women were asking, hey, why wasn't I promoted? Why is my peer now my manager. What am I doing wrong? You know, women would say, hey, I don't know why I'm not getting given stretch opportunities. I don't have a sponsor. And I realized if I just shared those lessons and took all of the things I learned from those thousand conversations and put it in a book, I could scale that to hopefully tens of thousands, if not millions of people.

8:15Deb Liu:How has your life changed since you published the book? I mean, now you're sort of out there as an authority. Has that changed your life? You know, my life is, I was literally before running in here cooking lunch for my family. So, you know, I feel like in some ways, having a family of three, you know, with three kids and my husband and my mom, who's who's has cancer living with us has kept me humble. And in fact, it reminds me that so much of our life is not lived on the kind of what you see on social media, right? The successes, getting the amazing job or joining export or, you know, getting your book published that so much of life is actually the day to day, which is what keeps me, you know, reminds me that we can have influence in small ways and big ways.

8:58Deb Liu:So one trueism, and I want to know if you think it's true, is that the Me Too movement in some ways has run out of steam. But let me ask you the question, to what extent do you think the Me Too movement has changed the status of women in the workplace? Well, I think it's changed the conversation. It's made us so much more aware of things that were hidden for so long. I think that that the Me Too movement itself is not about the actual just talking about what happened, but it's really changing our behavior and what is acceptable in the workplace. You look at what happened 30, 40 years ago, the kinds of sexual harassment that was very open, and now as we evolve, I think that we're learning every single year, every decade, how we can be better and more sensitive, and how we can actually call each other into account about some of these things.

9:47Things that were acceptable 10, 20 years ago are no longer acceptable today, And that will continue over time. And so I think each of these movements, you know, there's two steps forward, one step back, and then we keep moving forward towards, you know, more equality and more opportunity for everybody. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

10:17Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together.

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11:01Deb Liu:So what would you say to women who are enormously capable, but feel that somehow they just don't have the right stuff to be in the C-suite, to be CEO? You know, I felt that way not that long ago. In fact, I share the story of my friend is PGC Mo. She is the CEO of Instacart. And many years ago, we were I don't know, I went to her office, I was upset about something at work. And I just was grousing about something as she goes, You know what, we're gonna be CEO someday. And I left, because I just thought that was such a crazy idea. And you know what, this time, like about two years ago, when and I was talking to Blackstone about the ancestry role and she eventually became CEO.

11:43We joked about how she knew where we were gonna go and I didn't. But regardless, I was the person who never aspired to this and she was somebody who has such clarity of vision. She knew the world, the mark she was gonna make in the world and both of us ended up in similar places. And that means that it is possible. You don't have to dream since you're a little girl that you wanted to be CEO, but it is possible if you just take back your power and you take those opportunities as they're given to you.

12:09Deb Liu:So, you know, one issue that comes up with women in the workplace is this idea of imposter syndrome, that not just women, but women in particular, feel that they just, they don't belong where they, in fact, do belong. It's been written about so much that we ran a piece recently that actually said stop talking to women about this idea of imposter syndrome. But what do you think? I mean, there's imposter syndrome. from this also, you know, the sort of fake it till you make it idea, the sort of act like you belong until you get there. Where do you come down with some of these concepts? Well, you know, recently I went to a CEO conference and there were over 200 CEOs there.

12:49And in that room, I was the only woman of color. And it was probably less than 10 % women. And you know, I had to think for a second, I stopped for a second, I thought about it and I said, you know what, I can think about it as I'm an imposter, I don't belong here. or I can think of myself as I'm the first person that looks like me in this room. And that means that next year there'll be two, three, four, five, and that it will change. And over time we will change this together. And so I have always taken this idea of imposter syndrome because everyone feels it, men and women. There's been a lot of studies that say that, but the bigger thing is what do you do about it?

13:20Do you let it cow you? Do you let it put you inside of yourself? Or do you actually say, you know what? I'm gonna take that energy and I'm gonna use it as fuel to get to where I wanna go, which is I might feel like an imposter, but I'm gonna turn it on its head. One idea of turning on his head and how I do it is, I say, you know what? I might not be the expert at X, and I might not be as smart, I might not look like anyone else, but I bring something really special to the table. I'm gonna learn faster, I'm gonna try harder than other people. And that has given me the ability to overcome that when the time comes.

13:53Deb Liu:So another truism that people sort of casually throw out there is this idea of the queen bee syndrome, that women who have made it to the top, I guess, hold onto it so tightly that they actually are not encouraging other women, you know, instead of being a role model and a sponsor and a, you know, helpful hand, actually the opposite, sort of preventing other women from rising similarly. Is that a real phenomenon or is that, you know, an incorrect perception? You know, I wrote about this in my book because I had just done so much research in the book and And there was, I actually had to shove a note in at the end that says a note about Queen B syndrome in the middle of the allies chapter.

14:33And it's because it's something we hear a lot. Women are terrible mentors and leaders and they push other women down. And actually I was reading a number of studies. One of them, the most salient said that that's only true in a circumstance where there's only one slot. So when women are competing for the one slot, say in a law firm partnership or in the C-suite, then yes, it's absolutely competitive. But actually, if you look at all the studies, when women make it onto boards, when they're the CEO or in the C-suite.

15:24podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. They run organizations.

16:01They actually bring more women, more diversity in. And so if you look at it on a broad scale, it actually is the opposite. And I hate the idea of Queen Bee Syndrome because it's saying, you know, women push each other down, but that's absolutely not true unless it's set up in a competitive way. Instead, you actually see transformation happening because women are in leadership positions so one of the takeaways from

16:23Deb Liu:your book is that women really will benefit from having allies and particularly sponsors in the workplace um you know i think there's some people feel like yeah you know i've had that or i've had that all my career and some people who how do i do it and so what is your advice people who you know let's say for sponsors in particular how do you how do you get a sponsor who can who can help you in your career? Well, you know, first I want to define what a sponsor is. You know, we often hear about mentors, right? People give you advice and there's tons of women are over mentored and under sponsored, as they say, which I think has, they've been researching that for a long time, which is women are given a lot of mentors, people give them advice, but a sponsor is someone who puts their career on the line to open doors for you to actually say, I vouch for this person at my own expense that should this go wrong.

17:09And, you know, women actually have less And part of the issues with sponsors is that people tend to sponsor people who are most like them. You know, when I sponsor somebody, I'm much more likely, any individual is more likely to sponsor somebody who says, you know, I can see myself in that person 10, 20 years ago. I can see them becoming me someday. And I can remember what it felt like to be in their position. But in a workplace where we're not equal in a number of different ways, it means that those who get sponsored tend to look like the people who are already there. And so it's so important to cultivate sponsors.

17:37And I often ask, you know, how many of you in the audience have a sponsor? And when you look around, a lot of people don't know. And the answer is, if you don't know, you don't have one. Because a sponsor is like a tailwind on your career. You can feel it. You can feel people pushing you towards something greater, giving you opportunities you never thought, opening doors for you. And I greatly benefited that. I absolutely would not be where I am today, but for the handful of people I wrote about in my book who actually accelerated my careers in ways that I could never have imagined. And without those, in each of those individuals giving me the tailwinds I needed, to get to here, I would not be here.

18:12Absolutely.

18:13Deb Liu:So let's talk more about how did you get to where you are today? I mean, you talked about having people on the way, but were there one or two crucible moments in your career that kind of made you who you are today, Deborah Leo, author and CEO of Ancestry? Well, I just remember when I joined PayPal, I actually accidentally stumbled on a job at PayPal because I stopped by a career fair. And when I first became a product manager, I remember having to admit that I had no idea what the role was and I went to the VP I worked for Amy Clement and I said, you know I got this job, but I have no idea what this is and she actually taught me the ropes She showed me what it was to be a successful product manager And you know, I was leading the buyer experience and we were at paypal and we were acquired by ebay and suddenly I was in charge of a big chunk of the integration And she took a huge risk on me.

19:02I had only been a product manager Maybe two or three years when she in fact chose me to run that team to lead the integration and she gave me such confidence that she had a choice amongst many seasoned professionals and she picked somebody who was really new and made me not only a manager but the head of the team the biggest line of business at paypal and this is the kind of career accelerant that you can only dream of you know some it would have taken me 10 years to earn that role and so you know but i i didn't want to fail her i worked incredibly hard and i kind of built that team out and built that integration out.

19:35And the same thing was true. I was really stuck after six years of having kids. I, you know, I was working at PayPal, then I went to eBay, and then I went to Facebook, and I felt really stuck for six years. And not only didn't get promoted, I was, I took a demotion to go to Facebook. And I had gone from a manager of the buyer experience at eBay, managing 18 product managers to being a nice individual contributor in product marketing. And along came my seventh manager at Facebook. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work? Use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more.

20:13Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean.

20:51And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. HEATHER HILLSENSON, He spoke and he said to me, after two and a half years, he said to me, you know, you'll be a vice president here someday. And I remember laughing at him because he wasn't a vice president. And you know, he was he had bet his career on me. And you know, when you see that, you feel it, you are you can be nothing but grateful and want to pay that forward.

21:19Deb Liu:JOHN MCWHORTER, So when you look inside and look at your own skills and capabilities, what, you know, what what counts as your superpower, do you think, that again, has gotten you where you are? So I talked about how you know your superpower is something that comes easy to you but really hard to other people and as a result of it People can't see it. I just I love strategy I love kind of unwinding and weaving through and saying hey Here's like what we should do because it's you know, it's it's gathering all the information the customer research the data And then powering through and saying here's a recommendation.

21:51I started my My work actually as a strategy consultant and I have carried that through through products through you know, as I became a GM and so on and so forth. It said, you know, it's really a clarity of understanding of what our strategy should be. And so I have spent my career honing that and then building out teams to actually execute on those strategies.

22:11Deb Liu:So I'm gonna ask one more personal question then I wanna talk more about sort of what you do at Ancestry, but you know, you write and you've talked about how, you know, you're an introvert and you know, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you've made it as an introvert in a world that seems to demand extroversion? You know, there's a, I don't know if you've read Susan Cain's book, Quiet, but you know, it's like, the world has a huge bias, a huge bias that we don't talk about, which is towards people who are extroverted, who don't need time to process, who are able to speak on any topic on a dime and be comfortable in all circumstances.