From Programmer to VP: Ribbon’s Sarah Walker on Impactful Career Advancement for Women in Tech
Native New Yorker Sarah Walker loves everything about city life. “I grew up on Long Island and I currently live in Downtown Manhattan,” she says. “I'm a New Yorker through and through.” But she doesn’t mind getting away from the city every once in a while to spend time in nature with her husband and daughter. “We love to boat, we love to ski, we love to hike,” Sarah elaborates.
When she’s not exploring the bustling city or spending time outdoors, she’s leading a team of leaders as the VP of Product and Engineering at real estate technology company Ribbon.
Sarah has grown her career intentionally around social impact. We sat down with her to learn more about her journey from a Programmer to VP, and to hear her advice for other women looking to advance in their tech careers.
A Marriage of Business and Technology
Sarah’s initial plan was to pursue a career in finance when she decided to major in business in college. “My first two years really focused on broad, business-oriented classes like marketing, finance, accounting, et cetera,” she says. But when she scored a summer internship doing Quality Assurance at her father’s employer, something shifted. “I really enjoyed it. I thought, ‘I don’t love my finance classes, but I really love this.’”
This experience led Sarah to shift her concentration within business to Computer Information Systems. With this new trajectory, she was able to craft a career path where she’s gained experience that allowed her to leverage both her business and tech skills. “In my career, I’ve always not been just a pure technologist, and I've never been purely a business person. Now, I'm running both product and engineering and I feel it's a perfect culmination of my skills and experiences,” says Sarah.
Intentional Career Moves
Having graduated at the cusp of the dot-com era, Sarah’s been able to see the evolution of the internet and technology industries. “I saw all this activity going online, and it was really exciting,” says Sarah. With many businesses aiming to build an online presence, she worked as a programmer for consulting companies and delved in the ad-tech space. “I loved it because of the complexity of the technology and it was really interesting work on an intellectual level,” she states. But she wanted to use her skills for something bigger. “Optimizing advertising campaigns doesn't really have the greatest impact on the world.”
So, she searched for an industry that would allow her to work toward a cause she aligned with. “ I wound up taking my ad tech skills and working at a cybersecurity company focused on ad fraud prevention and detection,” she explains. With this new endeavor, she did more than just fight cybercrime, she focused on getting to the root of it. “We worked with the FBI, got servers seized and shut down overnight, and individuals got arrested,” reminisces Sarah. “It was this amazing time in my life where I was using technology to stop criminal activity."
Her time in cybersecurity sparked her journey to work for more mission-driven companies. “I like when [my work is] not [just] about increasing the number of customers, but it’s focused on solving problems,” she says.
This mindset shift led her to the nonprofit world. “I worked at Thorn, a nonprofit that was founded by Ashton Kucher and Demi Moore to identify and build technology that helps rescue children who are victims of child sexual abuse," Sarah explains. "It was really hard work. Probably the most important work I'll ever do in my career.”
But the emotional toll and the hardships of the pandemic resulted in burn out. “It was a hard subject and it was just really hard for me to think about enduring for the long run," Sarah admits. So she took some time to contemplate what her next career move would be.
“I thought, ‘I can’t go back to an ad-tech job or any type of fluff work. I need to do something that has a true mission,” Sarah explains. That was when she was approached by Ribbon, which offered her a space to do impactful work within the real estate space. “[At Ribbon,] I could work on a mission of hope versus a mission after something terrible has already happened," she shares.
Fulfilling a Mission at Ribbon
Ribbon is a first-of-its-kind technology company transforming the real estate transaction by delivering certainty, transparency, and joy to the home buying process. “We turn everyday buyers into competitive buyers,” Sarah explains. “When you put in an offer on a home backed by Ribbon, you become an all-cash offer to that seller which makes you more competitive."
Adapting to the new space at Ribbon, she quickly learned that homeownership in the United States is a key to intergenerational wealth among other physical and mental health benefits. “What compelled me to go to Ribbon was [the possibility] of helping individuals and families be able to build wealth and to change the rest of their lives," she shares.
Just over a year after joining the company, Sarah accepted a promotion as the Vice President of Product and Engineering and has been developing the team in that role for almost six months. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss some aspects of programming, though. "I love to get into the details, and sometimes, I wish I could spend all day coding,” she elaborates. “But I think the reason I've always been drawn to leadership is just the impact I could have."
Now as VP, Sarah is impacting multiple areas from project strategy discussion, people management, and company culture. “I put a heavy emphasis on really making sure my leaders are supported, and helping unblock them from their challenges, giving them coaching, and supporting them as they work through projects," Sarah says.
Advice for women in tech
In the world of tech, everyone’s career path looks different, and Sarah reminds us that the possibilities are endless. Whether you’re looking to become a highly specialized individual contributor or move toward management, here’s her advice for advancing in your career:
1. Build community. “Find your peers. I've gotten the best advice from others, even if they're not in tech,” Sarah says. Navigating through challenges is a lot easier when you know someone who is experiencing similar obstacles. Sarah encourages women to tap into their communities when they feel the pressure of being an “only” in certain spaces.
2. Don’t let the fear stop your progress. “There's going to be times where you're going to feel like, ‘If I take this particular role, I'm going to be an only for a little bit.’” But you must stay strong. “It's worth sticking it out because the rewards are great.”
With more women in positions of authority, bigger changes can be made that allow more women to move up the career ladder. “We need more people on the other side of the table,” says Sarah. “So, that might mean you have to stick it out, even when faced with adversity."
3. Keep up to date with your technical skills. Technology is constantly changing, so Sarah encourages women to stay on top of it. “Be an expert in an area, but have a good breadth of understanding. If you're a front-end engineer, learn back-end. If you want to accelerate your career, you have to have more under your umbrella.”
This is especially important when looking for new professional opportunities. “That's how we assess who we're promoting next; how they have proactively expanded on their skills,” Sarah shares.
These skills are also important for those looking to join the team at Ribbon. "On the skill side, we're looking across the board. From designers to engineers, to product managers, we have all those roles open,” says Sarah. “We're willing to train on different parts and we're open to helping people expand their skill set. But we do look for at least one area of strength, within the technical dimensions.”
But tech isn’t everything. She wants passionate and innovative professionals to join her team. “We're looking for mission-driven people,” says Sarah. “We want people that are coming here because they're passionate about what we do."
If you’re ready to start advancing in your career at a mission-driven company, check out the opening positions at Ribbon by clicking here.
3 Tips from Freddie Mac’s Courtney Liebowitz on Leading as a Woman in Tech
Courtney Liebowitz—now the Director of Governance, Information, Security, and Data Loss Prevention at Freddie Mac—didn’t have much experience with information security when she first joined the federal mortgage lender as a consultant in 2013.
Since starting at Freddie Mac, Courtney’s hard work and thirst for continual learning have led her to take on several new challenges, including her most recent promotion to director. We sat down to ask her what other key lessons shaped her path into leadership, and what advice she has for other women looking to follow in her footsteps.
Finding Her Stride as a Leader
As a consultant, Courtney taught herself the ins and outs of information security and quickly proved her mettle at Freddie Mac—her success didn’t go unnoticed, and she was hired full-time as a manager in 2018.
One of the things Courtney has appreciated most about Freddie Mac is how supportive the company is of her desire to learn and stretch herself.
“If you want to learn something new, or go to a different division, people support that, and there’s a lot of opportunity,” she explains. For Courtney, that opportunity has meant increasing responsibilities through promotions to senior manager, and most recently, director.
Leadership is something Courtney has taken to organically. “It’s in my nature to take on extra stuff, to fix things,” she says. But she attributes her development as a leader in large part to the support she’s received from Freddie Mac.
“I’ve had a lot of training experiences throughout my tenure at Freddie Mac. They’re absolutely supportive, and very much promote women in technology,” she says.
One of the most formative experiences Courtney has had at the company was a six-months-long executive leadership training for women in information security. “It was fantastic,” she says, noting how the training opened her eyes to some of the barriers women in the workforce face.
“Prior to the training, prior to seeing the data,” she explains, “it wasn’t something I was particularly aware of because I have never been made to feel that way—dismissed, or too assertive—at Freddie. Not at Freddie, not one time.”
Understanding the challenges that do exist has made her grateful for the environment she finds herself in at the company. In addition to the training she’s received, she has a great example to look up to in Betty Elliott, Freddie Mac’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). “My CISO is a very strong female lead. She's amazing,” she says.
Paying It Forward: 3 Tips for Other Women in Leadership
Courtney’s self-taught approach, coupled with the support she’s received from Freddie Mac, has led her to a fulfilling leadership role in information security.
Now, she wants to pay that forward to other women in the field.
“The most fulfilling part of my job is watching someone that I’m coaching, or mentoring come into their own,” Courtney says.
She shared three tips for excelling as a leader:
- Trust your gut. If you are considering taking on new opportunities, even ones you might not feel entirely prepared for, go with your gut. “Use your best judgment,” she says. “Your gut’s not going to lie to you.”
- Put others at ease whenever you can. Courtney shares an example of how she was able to encourage a mentee who was scared about delivering a presentation: “I told her, ‘I’ll be in the meeting with you. If you stop talking, I will start.’ And she’s been presenting extremely well ever since.”
- Know when to compromise—and when to walk away. “[In a workplace,] you have different personalities. Sometimes, you can work together to come up with a compromise. Other times, you may have to agree to disagree and walk away. But if you're just constantly battling, you'll never get anywhere.”
Want to work with Courtney at Freddie Mac? Check out their open roles!
GameChanger’s Anna Nickel On Why (and How) She’s Making Space for More Women in Sports Tech
Anna Nickel has a lot of respect for coaches.
She’s had impactful coaches throughout her two-decade career as a softball player. And now, as a coach herself, she understands the vocation inherent in the discipline—and how that purpose and drive is found at every level, from paid and professional to volunteer and casual.
“I’ve been coached by so many people in my life. I am where I am because of the people that have done that for me,” says the Softball Market Manager at youth sports platform GameChanger. “Now, to be one of those people who supports coaches, it’s pretty phenomenal.”
One of her favorite parts about coaching and being coached is how outcomes-focused it is, says Anna.
Anna’s worked to embrace that in her own career, especially as she’s worked hard to marry her passion for sports with a meaningful and satisfying career in tech. As a woman, she’s a minority in both areas and knows what it’s like to not see a path forward.
So now, she’s also working to extend that help and coaching to other women who want to succeed in her field.
We sat down with Anna to hear more about how she got to GameChanger, and about what she hopes her field—softball and professional—looks like in the future.
From the League to the Office
Anna grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where she spent the majority of her time outside doing something athletic.
“It doesn’t matter what I’m doing; I’m always competing,” says the lifelong softball player, who played in college and professionally (before being injured), and has coached internationally and privately. She’s now an assistant coach at a local college.
Her athletic passion first sparked her career goals. Anna grew up near the Nike headquarters in Oregon, and says she came to see it as a “mega marketing empire of coolness.” She dreamt of being part of the team that brought new products to market, that set trends, and that won—and kept—consumers’ attention via world-class storytelling.
Anna studied business in college and worked in her school’s sports marketing department. But with her now-husband back on the west coast, she declined a role in collegiate athletics marketing and found a job as a sales and marketing coordinator at a sports company.
A few transitions later, she was working in community marketing at Dick’s Sporting Goods, doing work she found inherently meaningful.
“At a high level, what are we marketing? Sports. Experiences that bring people together. What a great place to work. I just love working for a company that provides you with [things] you’re going to go make memories with,” says Anna, smiling widely.
But four years in, she was ready for a new challenge. Dick’s had acquired GameChanger, a game livestreaming and scoring platform used by 500,000 youth sports teams across the country, when Anna first joined, and she’d been hoping for a chance to work at the tech company for years.
In late 2021, a position for a softball ambassador opened up, and Anna was approached.
“[The hiring manager] said, ‘You’d be in charge of supporting the softball community for GameChanger. Getting the word out on new features, building relationships, doing some grassroots marketing.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me up!,’” remembers Anna.
Now, Anna’s even happier in her role, serving as the link between a tech product she believes in and a community and a sport that she loves. “Having a lot of passion for something and getting to apply it has been really cool,” she says. “I’m floored by how many people at GameChanger love their job, love our mission, who truly believe that what we do is making things easier for coaches and therefore helps support them.”
4 Tips for a More Equal Playing Field
Anna considers herself lucky to have found a role in sports and tech that she loves, but she recognizes that not many other people like her find their place in her field.
“The amount of women in sports, it’s not very big. And then take the intersection of women in sports and tech, and that’s a whole other thing,” she says. “To be part of a company that values and respects my opinion, and wants me to challenge myself, I feel so fulfilled as a coach and a lover of sport.
She wants other women to have that same opportunity.
“As we grow, I’m making sure I’m turning around and saying, ‘Let’s get this woman in sport into this world, and leverage her expertise,’” she says.
Anna has several pieces of advice for other women looking to break into fields where they may be few and far between, including:
- “Take a lot of initiative. If you see a problem, go and tackle it. And if it's awful, you learn from it. If it's great, it benefits the team. So you're gonna learn a lot faster, not waiting for someone to give you the okay,” she says.
- Reach out for help and you’ll get it. “You can’t be afraid to say, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ or ‘I’m feeling stuck’ or ‘I feel a bit hopeless in this situation,’” she says. Going to books and podcasts for perspective and help is a great first step, but don’t be afraid to ask people in your network for a hand.
- “You don’t have to keep trying to go forward. When you hit that roadblock, recognize that there’s a right and a left and a backwards out of it. Don't be afraid to find a new path.”
- If you have to choose between a place you feel like you belong and a place that’s aligned with your career passion, optimize for belonging. “When you feel you belong somewhere, you can show up and do things not out of fear, but out of faith. You have to feel safe to make mistakes,” she says.
May she be the first of many, is the gist of Anna’s approach to leading by example.
“For me, success on the career side looks like helping as many women as I can get introduced to this world and recognize that it’s somewhere they belong,” she says.
“Knowing that their expertise and their love of the game is not wasted. It’s not like they have to hang up their cleats and be done forever. They can hang up their cleats, pick up an iPad, and say, ‘Hey, let’s go to work, and build better softball and baseball products.’”
Want to join Anna at GameChanger? Check out their open roles!
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WomenTech Network is hosting the third edition of the largest virtual tech conference for women, minorities, and their allies in tech, WomenTech Global Conference 2022 June 7-10. The conference is aiming at uniting once again 100 000 women in tech from all over the world. The theme for this year’s conference is evolving around the Future of Work, Open Collaboration, Tech Innovation, and how we as a community can make an impact and change in the world. #WTGC2022 will feature tech professionals, industry innovators, +5900 WomenTech Network Ambassadors, and +500 speakers from all over the world. Some of the speakers are the most accomplished women in tech from companies like Amazon, Discovery, Disney, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and many more.
WomenTech Network is one of the world's largest communities for women in tech with more than 60,000 members and 5900 ambassadors representing 172 countries. Since 2018 its founders have engaged +500,000 tech specialists to join in building a diverse global community inspiring and reaching +1.5 million people in 2021 alone.
The Network’s mission is to empower communities of talented and motivated women in tech through leadership development, professional growth, mentorship, and networking events to make a difference by building impactful and inclusive technology, while introducing them to like-minded people, inspiring speakers and opportunities at leading companies and innovative startups that aim to create diverse teams and a culture of belonging.
