“When women join the C-suite, they don’t just bring new perspectives — they actually shift how the C-suite thinks about innovation, ultimately enabling these firms to consider a wider variety of strategies for creating value.” — Harvard Business Review, Research: Adding Women to the C-Suite Changes How Companies Think, April 2021
It’s undeniable that the most gender-diverse companies are outperforming their less diverse peers. According to the Harvard Business Review, “Research has shown that firms with more women in senior positions are more profitable, more socially responsible, and provide safer, higher-quality customer experiences — among many other benefits.” As a leading Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) software provider, Cority has taken this mounting evidence to heart, making material progress in diversification among its top ranks.
In 2021 alone, Cority added three women to its senior leadership team – Simona Barcau, vice president of customer success, in February; DeAnn Poe, vice president of marketing, in September; and Carrie Young, vice president of strategic solutions, in October. Their placement raised the number of women in senior leadership positions at the organization to five out of six.
Cority is committed to diversity not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because it makes good business sense. In the last 18 months, the company has grown significantly with the acquisition of two companies. So, in terms of scale, it has become critical to have an organizational structure and diverse leadership layer in place to take Cority to the next level amid an increasingly crowded – and global – EHS software industry.
“Starting with our CEO, Mark Wallace, Cority recognizes that strong female leadership provides a lot of value in the way we want to evolve the company,” said chief revenue officer Stephen Molen, who was responsible for the new hires. “When you look at our customer base, especially in the health vertical, there is a lot of female executive leadership, and it is important that our company mirrors that.”
Getting there is not as simple as giving preference to qualified female candidates. Diversification has required a shift in hiring strategy, largely because qualified talent, especially in upper management in sales and technology, is composed of about 100 men for every woman. However, just as Covid-19 has increased opportunities for employees to work from home, it has eliminated requirements that Cority hire from labor markets close to the office. The result is an exponentially larger and more diverse candidate pool, free of geographic limitations, that Cority is leveraging with great success.
Simultaneously, Cority senior executives are newly focused on internal championing – encouraging and supporting high-potential, top-performing women and minorities across all levels to seek management opportunities.
“The inclusion of women and minorities provides diversity of opinion and diversity of background, and ultimately, it makes us more competitive. It’s a highly visible and noteworthy differentiator,” said Marlene da Costa, vice president of Human Resources.
Da Costa herself was promoted from within Cority a year ago and is now central to advancing the company’s diversity initiative.
“When potential candidates look at the leadership team or when they are interviewing for a position and they see a diverse panel interviewing them, I think it instills confidence that they can see themselves here, that they can see the company is invested in minority and female leadership roles and in diversity success stories.”
The recent hires of Barcau, Poe, and Young are just the beginning.
Simona BarcauSimona brings over 18 years of customer-focused experience to Cority, having had diverse leadership roles in customer success, professional services, product management, and software development that uniquely position her to understand the SaaS customer life cycle. Simona was formerly senior vice president of Customer Success at Varicent, after having served as the offering management leader at IBM for the Varicent portfolio.
DeAnn PoeDeAnn joins Cority with over 20 years of experience serving in marketing leadership, demand gen and marcomm functions at software companies across a variety of verticals. With a proven track record for building efficient, data-driven marketing teams, she is passionate about proving marketing’s impact on the bottom line and empowering her teams to drive sustainable revenue for the organization.
Carrie YoungDuring her 25+ year career in the EHSQ software solutions industry, Carrie has led high performance teams and implemented strong organizational change techniques. She brings a 360-degree view to her role as Cority’s vice president of Strategic Solutions, helping customers identify and execute solutions that drive powerful change. Carrie was formerly the vice president of operational excellence for technology company Waitr Holdings, the vice president of professional services at Sphera, the director of professional services at Rolls-Royce, process engineer at Vulcan Chemicals, and an environmental consultant at Trinity Consulting.
