Stiletto Network

collaboration and cooperation even if you don’t buy into it.  It’s that much fun.  Sure there is inspiration in the singular stories of individual females’ safe passage from dead-ends to rising successes.  Like Penny Herscher.  

When I flipped through the Contents and Index, I was looking for heavy hitters, preferably in manufacturing and supply chain.  What I found were women who have risen, mostly, in the areas of entertainment, start-ups, social media, retails, etc.  Not a lot of Carly Fiorinas or the iRobot lady.  But at least there are more of them, and they are richer, and they talk more.  So let’s go with it. 

Back to Penny Herscher, at one point CEO of Simplex Solutions, an electronic design automation firm serving the semiconductor industry.  Herscher in the 90s became part of a group of women who met for dinner, or coffee – powerful women like Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, Joy Covey, CFO of Amazon, Kim Polese, CEO of Marimba, and Dana Evan, CFO of VeriSign.  Since then, these women have all sold out, moved up, changed jobs.  Investors, mentors, advisors, all of these valuable roles developed for the women as they got more visible and accessible in this world.

“It was so validating when we started organizing these dinners.  It was incredibly helpful to meet with other women, telling funny stories about the absurdities of our lives, the way people interacted with us,” says Herscher, who is in her early fifties and sold Simplex for $300 M in 2002.  “As long as those gatherings don’t become a pity party.  I have no time for the ‘woe is us, men are so awful, it’s not fair’  But if the conversation is constructive, which it was, you can hae a lot of fun with women because you can be more relaxed.”