JUNE 20, 2000
CAREERS Q&A
Lotus' Irene Greif: "We Need to Do More for Technical Women"
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The trailblazing research chief talks about the career challenges she has faced
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Irene Greif, director of research for Lotus Development Corp., knows what
it's like to be different. A New York native, she arrived as a freshman at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, 1 of only 50 women in a class of 1,000. A decade later, she was the first woman to receive a doctorate in computer science from the university.
After teaching stints at the University of Washington and MIT, Greif landed
at Lotus in 1987 to continue her research in the emerging field of
computer-supported cooperative work -- the study of interaction between
people and machines. At 51, she now oversees 35 research and development scientists from her office in Cambridge, Mass., and lives in nearby Newton Centre with her husband, a professor at MIT, and two teenage children.
This month, she will be one of five women inducted into the Women in Technology
International Hall of Fame, joining such past recipients as Autodesk CEO
Carol Bartz. She recently talked about her career with Business Week
Online's Jennifer Gill. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:
Q: Back in 1965, very few women were at MIT. What was that like?
A: I think it might have been the first big class of women, because they had
recently built the dormitory to be able to take more women. Having the dorm
helped because you had a place where you saw a fair number of women. You
didn't have women by and large in your classes: Especially in a 20-person
recitation, you'd usually be the only one. [But] I had been taught that it
was cool to be the only girl. My mother had been an accountant and was
always the woman who could figure all of that stuff out.
In retrospect, I realize there were things I really missed out on. People did
their homework together, and you either had to find people from your classes
who were in that small group of women in the dorm, or find guys to do your
homework with. Then you didn't know if it was a date or doing homework.
Q: Did both of your parents work?
A: My mother worked before she had children and then after my sister got into high school. Her first priority was to take care of us, but she knew she
could work. She didn't lose confidence not working for a bunch of years. [By
contrast], I always needed to keep going because I didn't think I could take
15 years off and be sure I could go back.
Q: Did you have mentors along the way?
A: I keep thinking about a math teacher who I had in junior high that I wish
I could track down because she really gave me sustained help. In the context
of classroom teaching, it's hard to have a lot of time individually, but she
would get me the teacher's copy of the book so that I could check my answers
as I went ahead of the class.
I remember a faculty member [at MIT] who explained to a few women in the dorm
that we really didn't need to be afraid of graduate school. There was this
sort of fear that you had to do new research to get a PhD. And he was
saying: You came to MIT as an undergraduate knowing that you were going to
spend four years and do your homework, and you'd get a bachelor's degree, and
you should think about the PhD that way too.
Q: How do you juggle work and family?
A: Oh, it keeps me busy. My husband and I send e-mails back and forth all day long to figure out who's doing what and how to keep things going. You never
have enough time. There have been times [when] I've had things going on at
home that kept me from traveling or where I've changed my priorities and
given more time to the family than work.
Q: What about when your kids were much younger?
A: When Eli was born, I didn't want to leave him at all. So if I was going on a trip, I would get my husband to figure out something to do also. Because we
were both academics, we could call people up and say, "Can I come visit? Can
I give a talk?"
Then, we could both go and take Eli, and take turns taking care of him. Until
we did one trip to Paris where Eli never switched time zones. He was about
two, and it was horrible. Whoever wasn't going to give a lecture the next day
had to stay up and play with him in the bathroom all night while the other
one slept. He was very cute, but I decided I had to face up to traveling alone
a little bit after that.
Q: Do you think women face a glass ceiling today?
A: People who were there ahead of you are the obstacle. They hire people they are comfortable with, they hire people like themselves. It's going to be a
while until there's enough people like us at the top to make room for the
rest. I don't know how you accelerate that change. I think it will happen
naturally by more people coming through the pipeline and from efforts at
diversity training.
The more that people throughout the workforce are made aware that they may be
letting their comfort level with people like themselves influence how
they think about people they're interviewing, the more they might be able to
expand the pool from which they will hire.
Q: Do you feel that Lotus promotes women within and is very proactive in that
sense?
A: Yes, we have a very active group, WILL -- Women in Lotus Leading -- and
many senior women in the company who are trying hard to be supportive of the
more junior women and mentor and bring them along. I think we need to do more
for technical women.
Young women still don't choose technical fields in large enough numbers, so the pipeline isn't as full as we'd like. But even when we do hire, we have the same problems seen at many other large companies where the technical community built over the years is predominantly male. It's hard to shift and make the day-to-day environment truly hospitable to women, and we need to do that to retain the ones we do hire.
Q: So why have you stayed?
A: Running research yet staying so close to product is a fairly unique opportunity. Many companies isolate their research groups, others don't have the luxury of doing research at all. At Lotus, I have been able to build a talented group of research, design, and development staff who focus on group work, making true research breakthroughs and having impact on business decisions.
I've had some supporters...some women, some men, but several people who could see beyond daily product pressures to understand the role of research and to remember what we did "yesterday." You need people who remember and help others remember what we've done in the past, because there can be gaps in between big "hits." Lotus has stuck with us while we are just thinking, and despite pressures to redirect funds to activities with more immediate payoff, and we keep coming through.
Q: Why do you think you made it to where you are today?
A: I recently heard a talk by Nancy Hopkins, the MIT professor of biology who led the influential study on gender-bias in the school of science at MIT. She says she was in denial most of her career, never seeing the discrimination or letting herself feel its effects. I suspect that's also what got me through as well -- something that can serve young women well at the right times in their careers, but not something to preserve. If by examining your situation and that of others around you, you can make changes [then you can] make denial an unnecessary skill for success.
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Copyright 2000, Bloomberg L.P.
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