July 2019 | Vol. 13 Iss. 07
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‘NAV-VING’ GENDER EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE
—Draper startup ‘righting history’s wrong’
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By Jennifer J. Johnson | j.johnson@mycityjournals.com
A
n androgynous Don Draper look-alike, with slickedback hair and suit worthy of a “Mad Men” episode, fills a screen with intriguing companions, including a Daenerys Targaryen body double and a vibrant Maria from “The Sound of Music.” Meet the director of marketing, a software engineer responsible for building online credit card and lending marketplaces, and the director of product marketing for Draper’s high-flying Nav financial-services company, which in February nailed a $44 million Series C funding round. All the “Navsters” (how the company refers to its talent) featured are women successfully navigating a high-tech startup culture often critiqued for its maleness. Their alter-ego characters represent their roles at Nav and how they help businesses groom themselves to best qualify, then secure, loans, credit cards and lines of credit. Their success is a combination of talent, drive and connections — and all that makes star employees, buoyed with a corporate culture promoting equity. “For most of recorded history women have been marginalized at best, oppressed at worst, in every nation that’s ever existed,” says Nav co-founder and CEO Levi King. “At Nav Female and male employees alike appreciate Nav’s work to ensure equal pay for equal work. The Draper company has 130 employees, with women we’ll continue to right history’s wrong and engage women fulfilling executive, managerial, technical and administrative roles, alongside equally paid male colleagues. equally with men at every level.” Seven out of 10 individuals in technology have read news can often, perhaps surprisingly, lead to inequality and a lack Startup culture not conducive to diversity? critical of the industry’s lack of diversity, reports the Comput- of diversity, explains Maggie Kruse, vice president of people Eighty-three percent of American startups are captained ing Technology Industry Association (CompTia). and culture, for the newly well-heeled startup. by white or Asian males, according to the Kapor Center for When it comes to the business of people — or attracting, “A lot of startups are not even thinking about diversity,” Social Impact. grooming and retaining talent for startups — startup culture she says. “They are just trying to go to market.” Continued Page 8
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