Experience Capital

Throughout my career, I have consistently sought out opportunities to explore something new.

Sometimes it involves changing industry, such as from aerospace engineering to building construction, from manufacturing to IT, and from IT to professional Coaching and Speaking.

At other times, it's the type of companies I've worked for, ranging from academic to startups, privately owned to publicly traded, non-profit and for-profit, and then entrepreneurship.

Even if I stayed in the same line of business, I explored different roles, including individual contributor as a software engineer, manager, architect, DevOps lead, SRE leader, technology leader, and executive.

Kweilin Ellingrud, Lareina Yee, and Maria del Mar Martinez, three senior partners at McKinsey & Company, refer to this type of experience as "Experience Capital."

In their book, "The Broken Rung: When the Career Ladder Breaks for Women--and How They Can Succeed in Spite of It", they discussed how important Experience Capital is.

They argue that 50% of your lifetime income comes from Experience Capital.

Women lack Experience Capital, especially in their early career stages, which significantly contributes to the Broken Rung and Pay Gap.

I encourage leaders, women, and their allies to read this book so that we can work together to fix the broken rung.

What is Broken Rung?

When the first promotions come around, the slide continues. For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women overall and 77 women of color get promoted.

This is something we all need to work together to fix.