Friday, March 29, 2024

Serena Williams Joins Board of Tech Firm; Aims to Boost Diversity in Silicon Valley

Serena Williams attends the "Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between" Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2017 in New York City.
Serena Williams attends the “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between” Costume Institute Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 1, 2017 in New York City.

*Serena Williams has joined the board at consumer survey firm SurveyMonkey and has vowed to address head on the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley.

The pregnant tennis star, set to marry Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, said she is troubled by the fact that high-paid tech jobs are filled mostly by white and Asian men. According to Fortune, tech firms based in Silicon Valley have been accused of failing to deal with sexism and a lack of diversity.

SurveyMonkey, which competes with online survey startup Qualtrics, collects customer feedback from online surveys. Most of the Fortune 500 companies use the service to gain insights, but survey data depends on the types of questions asked and knowing what to ask. That unique insight can be hard to get in a room that is not full of diverse people of different backgrounds.

“As a business professional, I’m constantly asking questions. I want to hear the positive and the negative to figure out where I can improve,” she told TechCrunch in a statement. “Like SurveyMonkey, I’m driven to ask what’s happening, and why. We also share a fierce commitment to letting all voices be heard.”

This is Serena’s first foray into Silicon Valley. Her “voice on the board sends a strong message to our company, investors, and the industry,” said SurveyMonkey’s current CEO Zander Lurie. “We want change agents at our table.”

According to Fortune, Lurie and Williams started talking about the possibility of working together after they attended a dinner party at Sheryl Sandberg’s house last fall. “Everything just came together easily,” Williams told the magazine.

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