SUMMARY
Elisabeth Kurek, an American expat and international marketing executive, discussed her 18-year career in the tech sector, emphasizing her role in driving diversity, equity, and inclusion. She highlighted her experiences at companies like AWS, NTT, and PTV Logistics, focusing on the importance of diverse teams and the financial benefits of DEI. Kurek shared her challenges in establishing DEI initiatives, particularly the need to tie them to return on investment. She also stressed the significance of male allies and inclusive leadership, recounting pivotal moments that shaped her career. Kurek underscored the importance of everyday acts of inclusion and the need for continuous learning and empathy to foster a truly inclusive environment.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- Navigating cultural differences in global tech companies
- Building coalitions to drive DEI initiatives in tech
- Balancing remote work culture with traditional office expectations
- The critical role of male allies in empowering diverse voices
- Creating inclusive spaces beyond the workplace
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Connect with Elisabeth on:
Elisabeth Kurek LinkedIn
Elisabeth Kurek Twitter
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It is my duty to take a stance and to drive change. The higher you are, the more power you hold, and for me, the more responsibility you have to empower.
Welcome to the inclusive exec series where Inclusive Matters connects your D&I ambitions to measurable business results. Join us as we spotlight inclusive leaders around the world who are driving commercial success with effective DEI strategies.
An American ex-pat and international marketing executive Elisabeth has 20 years of global experience, including marketing leadership roles at AWS , NTT , IONOS and 1 & 1. Elisabeth most recently served as CMO for PTV Logistics, a German founded international tech company, backed by Bridgepoint private equity and Porsche SE.
Welcome, Elisabeth.
Thank you, Chandre. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
Navigating Global Tech as an Expat
Great. So where are you in the world?
I’ve been living and working in Berlin for about seven years now.
And in the tech sector of all things, what’s it like with your work around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
Yeah, so I’ve been in the tech sector now for 18 years, which saying that out loud even shocks myself, because it seems like it was just yesterday. My very 1st role in tech I had just finished my master’s degree in educational linguistics and the company was called 1&1. They had just launched in Germany, 42 people in the U. S. at the time.
And they hired me because I speak German. I had studied German in undergrad in college and I got started knowing nothing about tech. In my interview, I still remember. 2 of the elements, 1 of them, I had to read an article in, classic German print publication and was asked questions about it to test my German and then they asked me what a domain was and I had no idea.
So I can say at 1 point, when I started a person said to me, “Oh, what are you doing here? You’re not going to last 3 months”. And yeah, lo and behold, here I am 18 years later, still here.
After 1&1, I was based in Florida for a few years for a company called Verio. It’s part of NTT Communications, a Japanese company. Got into, partner marketing, channel marketing, and really my 1st global experience. So from there, I was in Seattle for a few years. The company, the Parallels Holdings and started out in audience marketing. But I had always wanted to live and work in another country. And have that experience, so not just on business trips, which I had been doing pretty regularly, but really to live in a new country and get to know the culture, the working culture and that opportunity came about. My partner is also German. So another motivating factor and yeah, so, I moved over to Germany with two suitcases. Sold everything in my apartment in Seattle, my car, and yeah.
Your first company was a German company and you started working in the U S with them. And then you worked in the U.S. with a Japanese company. And then you said, okay, now it’s time to really get your toes wet and see the world.
And in Seattle, our company was international, but the founder was Russian, so that was also a very interesting experience.
Excellent. I want to talk about more of the personal experiences while you were in this industry from your career, from your perspective what things began to stand out?
Okay, even starting out in my days at 1&1. When we were preparing for the 1st television commercial in the US, we decided to organize focus groups where we were visiting small cities across the US.
And we would listen into what customers or potential customers were saying about our products or about the company. And so I have very fond memories of that.
1st of all, the team itself, you know coming together, we had people from different backgrounds, different ages, and it just came about organically, right? And so we had some diversity there among the team, but then even meeting the customers Our target customers were small business owners and you really see the diversity amongst small business owners. And At the time, that was really in focus the percentage of women who were business owners. I remember Etsy, Business owners with Etsy were women who are founding their businesses, I can also say we had a close partnership with Black Enterprise Magazine with Maximilian Hamilton, So Black business owners and to see that in the focus groups because this is the picture of America.
Yeah, through then coming over to Germany and working for AWS, which is an American company so that was a really interesting perspective as well. And being American, so understanding that culture and communicating back to Seattle, but being feet on the street here and listening to what customers were saying, what partners were saying and communicating those needs back and to say, okay, what’s in the market is not always what was essentially coming out of corporate and, Amazon does have a a customer centric approach. Being able to communicate that back, but to advocate, because there are a lot of customer needs coming in and say, okay, how do we. How do we develop that?
Inclusive Matters has actually done a study on what the small business owners look like in a global sense, and they’re extremely diverse. In fact, many are started by people with immigrant backgrounds. And so you have companies that are not just the startups as we think about in the tech sector that have a certain demographic. You have a wide spread.
Addressing Challenges to DEI in Tech
That’s something that everyone understands, regardless of morals, regardless of political positions, everyone understands bottom line.
That being said, when you talk about AWS, being the feet on the ground in another country and being able to then communicate the changes or interpret what’s happening in your market for the company. You’ve told me about the benefits. Where have there been the challenges around, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion for you and your work?
So I would say the biggest challenge was a topic that Chandre that I know you’ve been focusing on, which is the monetary relationship. In 2015, I had been talking about the women in my industry. We need some sort of support and advocacy group for women in tech. And what I realized was that if I try to start this myself it would be slower and I’m 1 person, but if I would take the approach of a coalition or partners, it could come about much more quickly. I met the chairman of an organization called i2Coalition. It stands for Internet Infrastructure, and they’re all of the major tech companies that have any sort of internet infrastructure, like physical infrastructure. So GoDaddy is a member, Google – Amazon, – Web. com, so all the big players and When I, had the idea, I approached the chairman, Christian Dawson, and he said, “Okay, it sounds good, but you have to come to one of our, our meetings and pitch the idea”. And Chandre, the 1st call that I was on you have to understand it’s also a tech coalition.
So they do other things like legal matters or security technology where I had no idea what most of the people were saying on the call. And I was a little bit nervous, and then I got on the call and I was like, yeah, “Hi, I’m Elisabeth. I’m here to present a topic on Diversity & Inclusion. And at the time, DEI was not a term right in the mainstream, at least in tech that I had heard. But surprisingly, we did get a lot of support. for the group, But they have their guidelines and they said, okay, you have to come back with a proposal and it on the next call.
I prepared my points, came back, pitched and it went through. There was momentum there, but the challenge that I saw was tying it back to ROI, or the financial impact on the business, because that’s something that everyone understands, regardless of morals, regardless of political positions, everyone understands bottom line. And then when these studies started coming out okay, diverse teams are more profitable.
That’s when we really saw some momentum. For me, the challenge has always been. Okay, you get some people on board or they say, yeah, that sounds good. Let’s go ahead and do it. But, it’s 1 proving the financial impact and secondly, getting funding in order to be able to prove this, right- to be able to get some things kicked off.
When you’re talking about being able to make the business case for DEI, what I connected with from many others who have shared a similar experience is that it’s getting the buy in, getting the discussion points to pivot to, okay, this is a topic that is affecting not just me , but also the leaders who don’t expect to be considered diverse.
And me being in a CMO position now and a marketeer by heart, it’s value prop, right? It’s for executive leaders to see the value of DEI and why it’s important for their business. So that’s 100%. That’s the topic. Yeah.
I’d love to hear more about the areas where diversity needs to be increased in IT. We hear about women in STEM, and it’s constantly this battle of finding talent that is – female or a person of color. But where did you see it?
Oh, yeah. I mean, I, on the gender side, I’ve seen it because I lived it. The 1st tech conference I attended, it was in Washington, D.C And I remember going there and walking in like massive trade show people everywhere. There were not a lot of women at the event and I sat down and I started talking to a woman who was sitting across from me and she said, yeah. I’m pretty sure that we were the only two women at that conference that were not booth babes.
They’re basically like hired sexy models to get the attention of the participants. They’re there to get people to come over to the booth. I mean, we’re talking like 2007 and even now we’re in 2024 and just recently a project that I was advising on that topic came up and you’re like, really? I thought we were over this, but no, it’s still a topic to this day.
Connecting Inclusive Leadership to Business Results
So with you in marketing as your core function, where do you see that you’ve been able to connect your inclusive leadership style, skills, work to the results of the products and services that you’ve been out there promoting?
One of the examples that comes to mind is the topic of working from home versus coming into the office. In the tech scene and living in Seattle formerly, that wasn’t even a question. You could just work from wherever. you get your work done, trust people and it’s done. And then coming over to Germany. That was the first time in years, I’ve heard of the term, home office , and I was like, Oh, okay.
Companies where you’re required to come into the office, and this topic actually just came up because of Amazon’s announcement from Andy Jassy that they’re asking all the employees to come back in. That was not the case at AWS when I was working there.
So let me ask, because it sounded like you said it, when you were in Seattle working with companies there, that it was the culture that. remote working was normal. It didn’t come up because of what happened after COVID?
When I first moved there, and you have to understand too, because I moved from Florida to Seattle. That’s a massive jump. So I remember when I first moved to Seattle too, and people were like, yeah, I’m working from a coffee shop tonight. I was like, oh, okay. Like I had to also get on board with it or like even sitting in a workshop. I’m also from the Northeast, so I’m like a go go person. So also to learn from that and say, okay, sometimes we need to brainstorm and sit and reflect. But yes, that was, that was quite common. It wasn’t even a topic. It just was part of the culture.
Okay. So the tech sector was already working with the asynchronous working style. And now, AWS Amazon is saying that people come to the office every day now. What do you think this is going to do to the work environment and culture?
I don’t want to say that one approach is right or wrong. You have to see what works for you and for your business. At one of the other companies that I was working at, they had an office policy, and what I found is that for people on my team this would be a blocker.
Were they working from the office every day?
Yeah. And so what I saw was that. It was not going to work and my role as a leader is to lead my team to support and empower them. And so I just said look, do what you’ve got to do. I understand, and if you have any issues, if anyone says anything to you, if you have any pushback from HR, you tell them to talk to me. And you know, what’s Chandre, what’s interesting. There was not a single case of that.
So actually there were no complaints. By giving the team also the freedom and the understanding, to say, okay, I get it. We’re in a situation that’s out of the ordinary. It’s okay to do what you can do today, and they actually wound up really performing. We definitely had hit our goals.
From an executive, C level perspective, there was no, no noticeable impact, right – wow- even though we, the employees, had this freedom.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it depends on the type of business as well. Is a business where it’s face to face, that might not always be possible, but there are other things you can do to be flexible.
You front loaded this, expecting your staff to say, do what you need to do, we’ll work as much as we can, but you are also clear that you were ready to adjust the deliverables, yet the results matched what was originally set.
Exactly. – That’s excellent.
It was an understanding point and said, talk to me, but they actually didn’t even need that because of the flexibility and I would guess just that understanding as a team to say, okay. Elisabeth understands others on the team, and we’re doing this together. provided a bit of motivation to deliver that.
How did that go with your peer counterparts? Were they doing the same thing?
I guess it depends on the company. Yeah, in my AWS days, that was also very much encouraged. I would say if you have a more traditional company, they might not be as open minded to it. They might say, okay, well, Elisabeth has her own way of working. But what I’ve seen is as long as you’re delivering I mean, people could be like, okay, she’s weird or she does things a bit differently. But if you’re delivering, typically, they’re not as many questions raised.
Using Leadership Privilege to Drive Change
But another aspect of this is also with the leadership roles you’re in. You have a level of influence that isn’t necessarily present in the less senior levels. Somebody who might do things differently at the senior level is, tolerated more. Like you said, that person’s the odd one out. We’ll let them do what they’re doing because they’ve been doing it. We don’t know how it’s done yet, but let them handle it. And I think that’s one of the big differentiators versus having somebody in a more junior role deciding I’m just going to try this on my own and then having to, ask for forgiveness afterwards.
100% percent Chandre, and I have to tell you I am in a privileged position and I never forget that. I can do that. It’s still risky, but it’s very different. For me. It is my duty to take a stance and to drive change. The higher you are the more power you hold and. For me, the more responsibility you have to empower.
Let’s talk a little bit about , what I call the Acts Of Inclusion. These are the everyday gestures and behaviors that a person can use to welcome & invite another person & their perspectives into your environment. You can do this on any level from allyship to endorsement. But it’s the small acts that are pivotal in our careers. Who is the person that made it so that you are where you are now? Who could help you set your trajectory and in effect influence on your behalf when you weren’t necessarily in the room?
For me, 100%, the key words that you just said, Chandre, we’re “in the room”, because you have people who are very friendly and then behind closed doors, that might not be the case. For me, have been several and it is a mix of backgrounds that have empowered me. I have to say for myself the allies have been key.
Especially executive male eyes, male allies who are able to drive change within companies, but also in my network now if I have a question or approaching a job, decision or anything of that nature. I have them in my, in my virtual Rolodex my LinkedIn, where I could call them and say, Hey, do you have a minute? And they will tell it like it is. And they’re passing this knowledge, which typically, because there aren’t a lot of women at the top that’s in that closed room and they’re, sharing that to me, they’re making introductions for me and saying, oh, that’s Elisabeth.
Empowering Diversity Through Allyship & Sponsorship
I’ll just go back to my very 1st role in tech and I’m going to give him a shout out. His name is Matt Barry. He’s a chief product officer. Matt at the time was early on in his career . We were at our holiday party, and one of the of the men in the company came up to me, I didn’t even know I was just sitting there having a beer and he came up and said. Oh, who are you? I should have had your job. And I thought okay who is this person and Matt Barry without batting an eye turns around and looks at him and says. Hey , Elisabeth speaks fluent German and has her master’s degree from an Ivy league school. Who are you to say that to her? And even now, it’s giving me like, goosebumps to share that because you know what?
He didn’t have to do that. And. He was early on in his career, but he said, no, you know what? This is not okay. And I’m going to call out this behavior in front of everyone. And at that moment, I knew too, Hey, this guy’s got my back. I can trust him to this day. He’s one of my top male allies. Yes. 100%. You need that super strong network, but the male allies are also critical to drive change.
I believe that they’re critical to drive change. We all have privilege. I talk about this a lot. We all have different types of privilege. But the ability to reach the levels of leadership in the tech environment. Okay. There’s still a lot of barriers, and either women, minorities underrepresented groups, can keep banging on that wall. “Just let us in”, if you will, or you can have somebody from the other side of the wall, just open the door. – perfect – the ally to let this happen, this free flow of opportunity. And so I would ask you, what would you think is important? What skill sets should a person bring to the room if they want to influence on behalf of others.
The thing for me is the inclusion part. When I 1st joined AWS, I was in a sales position in enterprise sales. So are typically target customers with a revenue of, 500 million euro or more so high enterprise. And it was greenfield. So it was very competitive. The time there were not very many women in these positions. I know my team, I was the only woman, right? And I was based in Berlin, but I was traveling to Munich where the majority of my team was. It’s a very simple thing, but it went a long way. My colleague, Christian just said, hey, Elisabeth. After work, do you want to go to the beer garden and have a beer? And you know what, Chandre, that meant the world to me because I was just normal. I was just like two people having a beer. It wasn’t like, Oh, she’s the woman in the office. And I don’t know if we should ask her.
So it’s the same thing I would say all the time to include people. Like even looking at your circle, women or how many, when you’re having a beer after work, how many people of color are in that circle? How many people from LGBTQIA+ community just diversity in terms of participants.
Are you not only in the workplace being friendly and smiling and saying diversity, but actually getting to know someone. And being on that human to human level. That’s what I found has made a difference.
That Act Of Inclusion goes a long way. I worked in executive search and a lot of times I would hear hiring managers say, “I want to be around somebody I can have a beer with”, and I would always chuckle because it makes sense. It makes you feel comfortable.
Here’s also an interesting perspective. I’ve turned it to, I would have a beverage with. Because you have a huge network out there. I’ve been in the Middle East working where drinking alcohol is not a part of their cultural norm.
But what activities do you do to be inclusive? I remember those happy hours but at the same time, it’s amazing to see how many people will back out very politely without a reason. But oftentimes it might be because there are just some cultural norms that aren’t necessarily being met.
The start process. People have the best intentions and we want leaders to have those intentions and make the action and make those introductions.
Aha Moment about DEI
What would be an aha moment for you in your career about DEI?
Just through our call and throwing out Maximilian’s name earlier, I would like to give an example. It was a moment of learning for myself. I mentioned when when I was working at 1&1 we, been advertising in Black Enterprise Magazine and Maximilian Hamilton, he was our partner at the time, said, “Okay, why don’t you all come down to the Black Enterprise Conference in Atlanta? And I was
My hometown, yeah!
That’s your hometown?! Awesome! Okay.
So we go and yeah, we go check in to the hotel the night before And Chandre, I was like at that party that night, the reception party, I was the only white person in the room.
Okay.
That experience, I am grateful to Max to this day, That was my moment where I thought, okay. Imagine how you would feel if, you were the only Black person in this room. And my experience of that, of being in the minority for, once in my life, because yes, I’m a woman, but I’m a woman, with light skin and light hair. So I don’t, I, I haven’t experienced, that I haven’t just experienced discrimination.
I haven’t experienced those types of things. And for me, that was, even though it was on in my career, something that, that has shaped me. Yeah. Yeah.
In Europe, gender is diversity. Diversity. That’s how it’s just been defined. Every company is that’s what we talk about, just gender.
Think about it like this. Most people on this earth have at least one woman that they have bonded with in their life that they are vulnerable with, that they know it could be a parent, a sibling, just on that level, we all have that.
What not everybody has is that same kind of bond with somebody who might be of a different race. Or who has a disability living with a disability who might be, that foreigner that is part of your family. And because of that, if you have limited touch points to a different lifestyle that’s where we talk about underrepresentation because we have fewer women in leadership.
But we have women pretty much everywhere else in our world, and we all are somehow intertwined and getting to know them and working with them. But it’s groups that we don’t see so much, that suddenly when you’re among a group, and you’re now the minority, it really does throw people for a loop. They can begin to say, ah, now I can understand what it’s like to not have my voice heard or my perspective heard because I am now the minority.
I’ll give another example. 1 of my very good friends, she’s Korean American. Covid, we were, keeping in touch and she said. “I’m terrified to go out.” And I said, I understand, with Covid and this was when nobody knew there was the vaccine wasn’t there yet.
People were terrified. I said, I can understand. She said, “No, Elisabeth. I’m not terrified that I’m going to get Covid”. She said, “I’m terrified that somebody is going to attack us because we’re Asian.”
Oh
And yeah. like, oh, my right.
My, my viewpoint on what I’ve experienced here. Gender. Yes, is covered, especially women where there’s a touch point. But outside of that, we definitely have a lot of work here.
Before we end off here, Elisabeth, tell us how we can get to know more about you?
The easiest way would be through LinkedIn. I try to stay active there and you could message me directly.
Thank you for your time, Elisabeth. And until next time, thank you, listeners.
Thank you Chandre.
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