[Women in STEM] Rashim Mogha, Customer Market Leader and General Manager, Skillsoft

Rashim Mogha is a customer market leader for leadership and business solutions at Skillsoft. In that role, she leads the group’s content, platform, customer success, sales, and marketing teams in delivering compelling experiences to customers. Previously, she held leadership roles at VMware, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, and Automation Anywhere; where she built high-performing teams and launched innovative solutions.

She is a prominent evangelist for women in technology and a frequent speaker at global conferences. Forbes and the Association for Training Development have featured her thoughts on leadership, training, and other issues, and Business Chief USA called her “the woman to watch.”

Among other honours, she was the Woman of the Year at the Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley in 2019. She also featured in the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame in 2020. With CiOL, she talks about how the IT sector can become more inclusive to women in STEM.

What is your role in Skillsoft? What are your immediate goals for the company?

At Skillsoft, we empower people to unleash their edge through experiential learning. As the Customer Market Leader and GM of the Leadership and Business vertical, my role concentrates on leading the content, platform, customer success, sales, and marketing teams to deliver compelling experiences to our customers.

Organizations across the world are radically changing. Priorities like digital transformation, customer centricity and diversity of thought are critical to this change. These organizations expect every employee to be a leader and lead through the change with empathy and purpose. My goal is to empower these organizations with innovative solutions that help them build and retain a strong leadership bench with power skills to succeed in today’s digital age.

Has the inclusion of Women in STEM changed over the years? How can the change be snowballed?

Women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). This is a socio-economic issue that requires a multi-pronged approach including shifting the societal mindset. The onus of solving this issue lies with women, organizations and society at large. Here are some key aspects of how to bring and retain more women in STEM:

• Encourage girls to choose and stay in STEM by creating an environment of self-efficacy and social belongingness. Data shows that girls who choose STEM in high school or college often find themselves in a class full of boys and do not “feel” that they belong in that setting. By introducing STEM early on in school and developing early interest and confidence in science and technology, we can help girls overcome confidence and belonging issues.

• Remove implicit bias by showcasing women leaders in STEM as role models: We become what we see. When women see other women role models, they can see themselves in those role models and strive to get there. When men see women as role models, it helps shift their mindset that women are capable of being strong leaders in STEM.

• Hold leadership accountable for building a diverse and inclusive culture at the workplace: This starts right at the hiring stage. We need to make sure that we remove conscious or unconscious bias at the hiring stage. In team settings, we need to ensure that women have a voice, they are heard, and their ideas are valued.

• Sponsor women and be their champion: To truly build an inclusive culture, we need to support and empower women; so that they can thrive in the workplace.

In the new normal, how are the roles of Women in Tech changing? What are the new challenges for women in tech?

The pandemic has affected everyone. But women have been disproportionately affected whether it losing their jobs or dealing with burnout, or even being passed over for promotion. A recent study shows that 5% of male tech professionals have been laid off due to the pandemic, compared to 8% of female tech professionals losing their jobs. Data shows besides having to figure out how to work and demonstrate success at the workplace in this new normal, women in the tech sector also had to figure out logistics around childcare, schooling, and household chores. These unpaid tasks amounted to over 92 hrs. per month leading to stress and burnout.

Women have been relooking at their careers and making decisions of leaving their jobs in technology; especially if they are the primary caregiver.

The impact of women in technology is undeniable. What do you think should be the ways to keep women engaged and appreciated in the workforce?

To thrive, businesses need to create real-life solutions that work for all. This is possible only when they bring a diversity of thought while creating solutions. That’s exactly why we need more women in technology. Here is what we can do to keep women engaged and motivated at work:

• Make sure that we build an inclusive culture where their opinions are valued, and ideas are heard.

• Build a culture of continuous learning so that they can build power skills and leadership skills.

• Create a culture where the organization gives flexibility to women to build work-life harmony.

• Celebrate their successes at work and beyond.

• Bring more women to the leadership team and build a pipeline of women leaders.

• Create avenues for women to give back to the community through mentorship and speaking opportunities

In senior roles, how many women are on the top at Skillsoft? What is the company doing to bring equality in genders in senior leadership roles?

I have worked with many large enterprises and have always felt the scarcity of women leaders. I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of women in the senior leadership roles at Skillsoft across various functions. Our CMO is a woman, our SVP of product management, talent, product marketing are women; I lead one of the three markets at Skillsoft. We have several women leaders in our sales, customer success and professional services teams.

Skillsoft has and continues to not just build a culture of diversity but also one of inclusion and equity. From internal initiatives like all women all-hands to celebrate women leaders and change the mindset of the workforce to industry-wide initiatives like the podcast on pink pandemic to highlight how pandemic has disproportionately affected women and provide concrete steps on how to help women forge new pathways, Skillsoft is helping customers and partners to make this world an equal world for all.

What should organizations do to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the new hybrid workplace?

If organizations want to grow and thrive, they need to build a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion. The efforts need to go beyond training. To provide an analogy, celebrating diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being invited to dance at that party and equity is making sure everyone had the same access to the dance floor at that party. DEI is a continuous initiative and here are some actionable steps:

• Take a stance: The leaders must share their commitment to build a DEI culture within the organization.

• Educate the workforce on how to be inclusive especially in the new hybrid workplace. For example, training on best practices on how to have virtual team meetings where everyone gets an opportunity to contribute to the ideas.

• Build a culture of growth mindset: It is important to provide people with an opportunity to try out new ideas and share their learnings with the team.

• Provide psychological safety: Many people are afraid to take risks, speak what they think, or voice their opinions because they fear that they will upset their managers. When leaders provide psychological safety to their team members, they encourage diversity of thought and promote inclusion and equity.

• Promote continuous learning: By promoting continuous learning, you provide your workforce with an opportunity to upskill themselves for new job roles and build a diverse leadership bench.