The empathy that Richard gained from being the dad of daughters helped him see that his firm’s informal mentoring process wasn’t working for many women as well as it was for most men. He noticed that most male associates easily found mentors because the partners were mostly men with whom they could easily relate. But talented female associates were often falling through the mentorship cracks, which made it harder for them to achieve their full potential at his firm.
Starting as the leader of the corporate department, Richard created a mentorship program to support women’s development. He identified the partners who were the most skilled at mentoring and the best positioned to provide valuable work experiences. He then asked all of the associates to submit requests for partners they might prefer as mentors. That was particularly useful for many women who faced greater barriers to seeking support directly from powerful male leaders. Richard then set about thoughtfully pairing the most effective male mentors with aspiring women associates. He also asked the partners to become proactive rather than reactive. In particular, he asked the male mentors to identify challenging, high-profile opportunities for their women mentees to hone their skills.
Richard also made sure that mentoring and diversity contributions are considered every year when setting each partner’s pay. “It should be a badge of honor for men to sponsor women,” says Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and that’s definitely becoming the case at Fenwick & West. One of the things that Richard is most proud of as the firm’s Chair is that women corporate associates often request him as their mentor.
Research supports Richard’s belief that strong mentoring is key to retaining women. Women who have valuable relationships with male mentors are more loyal to their organizations, in part because male mentoring creates a feeling of inclusion, which is in short supply for women in male-dominated industries. This is something that most men don’t realize. At the same time that eighty-two percent of women report feeling excluded at work, ninety-two percent of men report that they don’t exclude women at their jobs.
In addition to mentoring, Richard has also tackled some of the structural barriers to women’s success. “We need to experiment,” he says, and he’s willing to challenge conventions when needed. He helped design his firm’s first job-sharing arrangement, where two attorneys each worked part-time and shared the same clients, office, and email inbox. His goal was to support reduced-hour work in practice areas where full-time client demands had made part-time legal work challenging. His firm has also encouraged clients to switch from billable-hour fees to fixed fees, which lowers the pressure on attorneys to log extremely high working hours. “Billable hours have become less of a factor for partners over the years,” says Richard, “and that has been very beneficial to the goal of recruiting and retaining women, not to mention the job satisfaction of many men.”
Although Gordy and Richard know that more work is needed before the legal profession offers an inclusive work environment for women, they’ve established their firm as a leader. Fenwick & West has been ranked among the country’s top ten law firms for diversity by The American Lawyer and Law360, and it’s been recognized for ten years as one of the Best Places to Work by the Silicon Valley Business Journal and the San Francisco Business Times. In 2016, the Euromoney Legal Media Group Americas Women in Business Law Awards recognized Fenwick as the best national firm for women in business law in North America. The following year, Silicon Valley’s legal newspaper, The Recorder, honored five women from Fenwick—more than any other firm—on its prestigious list of Women Leaders in Tech Law.
In 2016, Gordy was honored for his work expanding women’s opportunities in the legal profession by receiving the first annual “Bill Campbell (Man Who Gets It) Award” from Watermark, a Bay Area group of women executives and entrepreneurs. Watermark CEO Marlene Williamson launched the award because she knows that women will break down leadership barriers more quickly with the buy-in of men.
The award is named after Bill Campbell—who’s known as “Coach” throughout the Silicon Valley—because of Bill’s long-time support of women. Like Richard, Bill is a proud dad of two daughters, Margaret and Kate. Bill began his career as the CEO of Go Corporation, the spectacularly well-funded Silicon Valley start-up that sought to mainstream pen-based computing. Bill later became the CEO of Intuit and served on Apple’s board of directors.
Bill’s most important role, however, has been as Silicon Valley’s behind-the-scenes advocate for women. Throughout his career, Bill quietly dedicated himself to mentoring, supporting, and opening doors for many of the first female executives and entrepreneurs in the tech industry. “Bill was focused on diversity, especially gender diversity, before it was cool and even in the news,” says Shellye Archambeau, one of Bill’s mentees who became the CEO of MetricStream.
Other women who proudly count themselves as Bill’s mentees include Caroline Donahue, the former CMO of Intuit; Donna Dubinsky, the former CEO of Palm and co-founder of Numenta; and Juliet de Baubigny, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. “There is no doubt the opportunities he gave me vaulted me in my career,” says Donna. “It gave me a seat at the table in a fundamental way.”
Shellye wholeheartedly agrees. “He was definitely a strong figure in my career,” she says. “We have a talent shortage in tech and we are not leveraging fifty percent of the population the way we should. But Bill has enabled more women’s talent to be not just tapped, but given the opportunity to demonstrate the full talent that they have.”
Mari Baker, a former Intuit Vice President, was on maternity leave in 1995 when Bill picked her for the VP role. She doubted whether she could do the job with a new infant, but Bill made the position work. Bill had a rule that all company meetings must take place between ten a.m. and five p.m., in part because he wanted to spend time with his own kids. Diane Greene also credits Bill for recruiting her to the Intuit board of directors and convincing her not to leave the tech industry when the challenges became overwhelming. “He made us feel empowered,” she says. As a result, Bill’s mentees often dedicate themselves to mentoring other women. “He’s given women the sense that they belong,” says Diane, “and then they go out and give other women the sense that they belong.”
It was Bill’s idea to launch a women’s entrepreneurship conference, which is how he teamed up with Watermark. So it was fitting for Watermark to name its “Man Who Gets It” award after Bill. Fenwick’s Gordy Davidson was honored to be the award’s first recipient. “I have tried to be a vocal leader in recruiting and promoting women, with the simple argument that, otherwise, we will miss at least half of the talent that is available,” says Gordy. “All women need is the mentorship and the opportunity to demonstrate their talents.” He hopes to continue Bill’s legacy in the Silicon Valley for years to come. Bill passed away at age seventy-five in 2016, but he left behind two proud daughters, many successful women executives and entrepreneurs, two inspired leaders of Fenwick & West, and a more gender-inclusive tech industry.
Another tech leader who also figured out the value of gender inclusive workplaces early in his career is Adam Bain, the former COO of Twitter. Adam became inspired when thinking about his own daughter’s future. “I look forward to the day when both my daughter and my son can enter the workforce in an environment where women have just as much opportunity as their male counterparts,” says Adam.
To make his workplace a place where he’d want his daughter to work, Adam partnered Twitter with the United Nations HeForShe IMPACT Initiative. IMPACT commits corporate executives to publicly report their progress on gender diversity. Adam pledged to increase the number of women in tech positions at Twitter to sixteen percent and raise the total number of women to thirty-five percent by 2016. Adam was particularly focused on increasing women in leadership roles, where he set a 2016 goal of twenty-five percent. “When you think about the future, you often think about your kids,” Adam explained. “My first two bosses in business were both incredibly inspiring and powerful female executives and I learned everything from them. I want both my daughter and my son to have the same experience that I did, which is to have the opportunity to have female managers and mentors who inspire them to do things they never thought possible.”
To achieve his goals, Adam made several policy changes at Twitter,